For five-and-a-half of the past six-and-a-half years, Blake Wilkinson, a Utah native who currently lives and works in southern California, has rejected family.

A little background. Wilkinson, my brother, was headed to Brown University for college. Before he did, around the late summer of 2016, he told me that he said he was going in with the beliefs he held. I don’t know why he told me this since I already had said that I didn’t share his beliefs in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Also, the institution is not just a religion. It’s also a culture and a lifestyle, in which he and I were raised.)

One thing that has been on my mind a lot since then is that he perhaps could not accept yet that I didn’t believe in the Latter-day Saint church. Because it’s possible that he was talking with me as though at least deep down, I shared his beliefs. The least-likely reason I find is that he wanted to talk with me about what was on his heart regardless of what I believed.

Wilkinson played for the Brown basketball team. During the 2016–17 season, there was a Pride game. Wilkinson refused to wear a Pride shirt that the players were required to wear in shootaround, while warming up. (After doing that, he was bumped from the B team in practice. I defended him to his coach. I told the coach that I support queer people and that I am queer. But I also told him that at the same time, the coach’s reaction was wrong. However, when I told Wilkinson that I did that, he expressed that he didn’t like that I did.)

In March or April of 2017, I posted on Facebook a Mormon Stories Podcast interview of an Alaska couple, Jake and Amy Malouf. They were excommunicated from the LDS church for publicly questioning it. My understanding is that as a result, Wilkinson asked my birth father to leave me without shelter. And my birth father, one surprising Sunday night as I checked out Utah Jazz-Portland Trail Blazers game highlights, did ask me to leave.

Later that year, Wilkinson unfriended me on Facebook. I made a comment to him on the social network that I regret. And I apologized and 100% meant it. However, he didn’t want to re-connect on the platform.

Since, Wilkinson has said that he will not associate with me due to my conflicts with my birth parents. One time, in April of last year, I was able to talk with him in person, which I asked him to do. We were in the same location because we were participating in a luncheon after one of our grandmothers’ funeral.

I talked heart with heart to him. It was about a year-and-a-half after he told my parents he was done with me. (I posted on reddit that my birth father, the mayor of his Utah town, posted signs in favor of police. The timing was what was key for me. He did that rather shortly after Minneapolis officers were charged with multiple felonies, including murder, in the death of George Floyd.) And I told Wilkinson at the luncheon location that if he still wanted space, OK.

I don’t know why I did that since he is at fault for the wedge between us. And sure enough, he seized on that, to say that he wanted space.

As a writer, I am always seeking to be sensitive. Wilkinson is a certified financial fiduciary. Which is great. Though not when it comes to sensitivity, perhaps.

When I came out as a transgender woman to my parents and siblings, Wilkinson’s response made me think that he was OK with it. He added that he still would not be associating with me.

Does that in a strong sense nullify his tolerance of me being queer?

He said that he doesn’t want to associate with me because I am at odds with my birth parents due to them having different religious and political views than I do.

It would be silly if that were the reason.

The reason why is because one of them first abused me in Oct. 2015. And since, they have each either abused me more. Or my birth father has enabled my birth mother’s behavior in this regard. I even went to a domestic abuse shelter because the therapist I was seeing recognized that I was in an abusive situation. (My birth parents have their moments. However, the tapestry here has been to be emotionally, verbally and psychologically abusive since I have been public about the church in a way that brings it negativity. And now, for being a transgender woman.)

Wilkinson also seems inconsistent about my criticism of me being at adds with my birth parents simply over religion and politics. My sister wrote an Instagram post that suggests that I made a “heartbreaking” decision. (And seems clear to anyone who knows us.) Which seems to be a reference mostly if not entirely to departing from the church.

I know that sibling relationships are different than parent-child relationships. However, when I asked Wilkinson if he was going to get on my sister given his reasons for getting on me, he ignored me.

Also, when I asked in 2019 if he would be willing to financially help me in some way, he started promoting the LDS church to me.

It’s amazing that while Wilkinson and I both are roughly in the Los Angeles area now, it doesn’t matter. That’s because we could not be further apart.

I did tell him that I care 0% about him and would not attend his funeral. And something else — I can’t remember what — expressing that I don’t care about him.

Scorched earth, to be sure. But now, four months later, I realized I don’t mean it. (I added that last sentence in Jan. 2024.) But only after years of shunning from him.

And he is one of just three reasons why my last name, legally, no longer is Wilkinson.

Wilkinson has a personality to act strongly when confronted with a problem. He was a Div. I athlete, always got astounding grades and today, seems to do relatively elite work. Or at least, he has made quick flights for work from southern California to northern Utah. He also demonstrates utmost loyalty. (The issue at hand results from his devotion to my birth parents.) His personality serves him well in various aspects of his life, I am sure.

But let’s just say that it hasn’t served me well.

And me lacking loyalty isn’t a moral shortcoming.

Wilkinson’s view of the church also likely is quite complex given that he met his wife through the church. He met her on his church mission and enjoys her and his in-law’s company today where he met her on his mission.

I still think fondly of times where I was Peter Pan and made him Captain Hook. And I wore a moth-eaten hat like Pan’s and a green polo. And made him wear a black, curly wig and a red bathrobe. And hold a hanger (the hook stand-in). And I think fondly of the many times we faced off in sports, despite the bounteous amounts of contention that accompanied it. (He is such a good athlete that the outcome of our sports games were always uncertain even though he is three-and-a-half years younger than me.) And he was beyond sweet to not start getting into basketball until around adolescence (and perhaps early teenage-hood) because he considered it to be my thing. He also was beyond sweet to replace “chicken” with “spaghetti” as his favorite food on a VIP board as a child.

And many times since, I have wondered what happened to that sensitivity.