A half-sibling is someone who shares the same father or the same mother as you, but not both. If you have a half-sibling sometimes you can feel what it means. I have two half-sisters on my birth father's side and while I do consider them my sisters, I can feel that division between us. Of course, this has everything to do with being raised in separate homes and not the genetics we share or don't share, along with not getting to visit them very often throughout the year. It makes sense that I turned out very different from them. The bond I have with my little half-sisters is still strong no matter how different they are from me. Just because the word "half" is there doesn't mean I love them less and wouldn't do anything for them. I may feel and understand the term "half-sister" with the two of them, but that doesn't make them any less my sisters; they're just a different kind of relationship than my other two.
On my mother's side, I'm the middle child, so I have one sister I can look up to and one that looks up to me. My sisters and I are all close in age with only 5 years separating the baby and the oldest. The three of us are all "half" sisters with each other, but in our sisterhood half means nothing.
My sisters and I all come from different fathers, but we share the same dad. I learned the man who was raising me wasn't the same man who brought me into this world at a young age. The new information I received at about six years old changed nothing about the relationship between me and my dad, if anything it deepened the love I had for him. He didn't have to accept my older sister and me as his own, but he did just that. He raised us along with our little sister from the time I can remember and never treated us differently, which has had a huge impact on the way I feel about the girls I call sisters.
Speaking of my sisters, we are technically half-sisters as we fit the definition for it, but we don't let a definition define how we feel about each other. We all grew up with the same mom and dad, learning the same life lessons from them, and as we grow older, the same life lessons from each other. Between the three of us, we love unconditionally and know someone always has the other person back. We never refer to the others as our half-sister unless we're explaining why we all look so different or why my older sister has a different last name than the rest of the family.
Having a half sibling simply means you only share half your DNA with them. My half sisters share my whole heart, and no dictionary definition will ever change the love I have for them because half doesn't mean anything in this sisterhood.
