I am the proud sister of two elder siblings. One, my sister, is three and a half years older and we have always been close; we share the same two parents. The other, my brother, is around six and a half years older and we were never very close; we share the same mother.

Now, if someone were to ask me why I wasn't close with my brother, I wouldn't say it was because he is "only" my half brother. There is only one contributing factor from his having a different male sperm donor than me and that is that he only spent around half his childhood around us, as he was often with said donor.

Most of our distance is caused by being two entirely different people. There is quite a bit of an age difference between he and I, so we only really had a few young sibling bonding years to work with and divide that by two and you can see why our relationship isn't so perfect.

That all gets into more private issues that I feel don't need to be disclosed, so I'll move on to making my point.

One day, when I was visiting my brother and sister-in-law, spending quality time with my two beautiful nephews, we were seated on the couch. I don't know how the conversation got there, but at some point he asked me if I resented him at all for not spending enough time with me when I was younger, for promises long broken and such things along those lines.

I honestly did not know how to respond, so I paused. In my head, all that materialized was a resounding, 'Of course not!' I mean, how could I ever resent someone for something that was, for the most part, out of his control?

This question got me thinking, deeply, about our relationship and why exactly we seemed so estranged.

I have known people who have resented their half-sibling just for being that. I have known people who get into arguments with their half-sibling and use the fact that they only share one parent as a reason to despise them.

I would never do that.

I am family-oriented. I feel that family is the most important thing to have ever existed within my own life. If a person hasn't experienced familial love and security at one point in their lifetime, they will inevitably feel it someday, even if only for that one day.

I forgive and love my family unconditionally, of course that doesn't mean I have to like them and I would never forgive something like child abuse.

Whenever I refer to my brother, unless I have to, I do not use the word half. I still grew up with him, he still shares more of my DNA than most any other person in my life. Referring to him as my half-brother feels, to me, like depreciating his existence.

I would never want to do that.

A half-sibling is very different from a step-sibling in that they are born of a parent of yours, you share a deeper bond because of this.

My half-sibling is my sibling. My half-brother is my brother. His wife is my sister-in-law. His sons are my nephews.

We are family and no superficial title changes that fact.