Sisters

Conna Sonna Donna: The Bond Between Sisters

People often ask how children survive difficult childhoods. The truth is, we rarely survive them alone.

My sister Tonya and I were bound together long before we understood the circumstances that shaped our lives. Our mother disappeared when we were very young, leaving three children under the age of three to navigate a world that suddenly felt uncertain. As the years passed, our bond became more than sisterhood, it became a lifeline.

When I was six years old, we were living with our father again. The man now raising us was very different from the father he had once been. His behavior had changed dramatically after the use of hallucinogenic drugs. He introduced us to marijuana at an age when most children were learning multiplication tables and playing on monkey bars.

The world around us often felt chaotic and unpredictable. Adults came and went. Rules changed without warning. We never knew what tomorrow might bring.

In the middle of that uncertainty, my sister, brother and I searched for answers to the question that haunted us most: Where was our mother?

Five years had passed since she vanished from our lives. We missed her desperately. Like many children trying to make sense of loss, we looked for ways to feel connected to someone who was no longer there. Together, we participated in séances that Tonya lead, hoping somehow to reach her across the distance that separated us.

One afternoon we crawled into the truck camper top, lying in the side yard. Tonya's imaginary friend Pump, appeared during one of our ceremonies. My brother Mark and me held Pump's imaginary hands. Through Pump came a string of words that would become part of our family mythology: Conna Sonna Donna.

The phrase had no obvious meaning. It wasn't a language we knew or something we had heard before. Yet for us, it became magic. We chanted those words and they became a forge that bonded us together and gave us hope. We laughed and cried over them. We carried them with us through childhood, through separation, through years of growing up and finding our own paths in the world.

What began as a child's attempt to make sense of loss, became something far more powerful, a secret language of love and belonging. Even as adults, whenever we reunite, those magic words resurface. The moment one of us says, "Conna Sonna Donna," we are no longer burdened by the years between us. We were two little girls and a brother, finding comfort in each other, and creating light in the darkness.

When life felt unstable, my sister was my constant. When adults failed us, we leaned on each other. When grief threatened to swallow us whole, we found ways to laugh, imagine, and hope.

Childhood resilience is often portrayed as strength, but I think it's something gentler than that. It's the ability to find connection in the midst of chaos. It's creating meaning when none exists. It's holding onto the people who help you survive.

For me, that person was my sister.

And to this day, whenever I hear those mysterious words, Conna Sonna Donna, I am reminded that even in the most difficult chapters of our lives, love finds a way to leave its mark.