THE NARRATIVE ARC | MEMOIR

How My Half-Brother’s Journey Taught Me About Love and Acceptance

We can’t walk in anyone else’s traveling shoes

Toya Qualls-Barnette
The Narrative Arc
Published in
8 min readAug 16, 2024

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Little Black girl holding glass of orange juice
Image by Freepik

At the childhood intersection of curiosity and deep-seated desire to know my paternal side of the family, entered my 18-year-old brother from Dad’s previous marriage.

A chance encounter at Egberts, a favorite neighborhood coffee shop in Los Angeles, would imbed a spark that flamed in my heart for years to come. I was seven — the only child from Mom and Dad’s union. We were never a nuclear family under one roof. I could have used a sibling to balance Mom’s wrath.

Dad’s two older children had polar opposite reactions to our shared DNA. My half-brother, youngest of the two, excited about my birth, embraced the idea. Mom said as an 11-year-old he would ride his bike over to our house when I was a baby, spend hours playing with me — my half-sister avoided me like last Easter’s rotten eggs.

In her 14-year-old juvenile mind, the gods sent me to swoop her coveted position as daddy’s baby girl. She found no joy in my entry to earth.

Not that it mattered. Dad was an equal opportunity absentee father to us all. By the time I was born, her best dad memories lived inside her mind’s shattered rearview…

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Toya Qualls-Barnette
The Narrative Arc

*14x Boosted writer | Writing about the impact of relationships |Contributor to Chicken Soup for the Soul| Dreamer | Mother| HSP in drag