I remember when I first heard about the book Little Women from my oldest sister. I must have been eight years old at the time, because I was at an age where the idea of a book about four sisters didn’t seem relevant to me in any way. Being the youngest of four sisters was nothing that had ever felt special to me. I was so used to it that it never occurred to me to wonder if this story knew what it was truly like to grow up with sisters.

It wasn’t until I was sixteen that I saw that this story understood what it was like to have sisters better than any story I had ever seen before. When my sisters and I watched the 2019 adaptation of Little Women on Thanksgiving in 2021, and we spent a good majority of the two hour long movie arguing about which one of us is which March sister, I knew that this was a story that held more relevance in my life than I knew.

Not only did this movie show that sisterhood is about cherishing the time that you have with your sisters, but it also showed that sisterhood is messy and chaotic. I could spend hours talking about the love that I have for my three older sisters, but just about every story on sisters does that exact thing. What stood out to me about Little Women was the way the March sisters didn’t spend two hours talking about how much they love each other and how they would do anything for one another. They spent it talking over each other, bickering about little things, and putting on plays written by Jo, the second-born sister. In my eyes, those were the most accurate pieces of a childhood with sisters.

My sisters and I were fortunate enough to remain close throughout our whole lives and into adulthood. That isn’t to say, though, that a good majority of our childhood was spent with us shouting over each other at the dinner table and in the car, the same way the March sisters do in many scenes of Little Women, or screaming at each other over who would have to play the animal sidekick when we played princesses. Even when we watch the movie together now as adults, we still bicker over who is Meg, who is Jo, who is Beth, and who is Amy.

I am so incredibly lucky to have three older sisters who have seen me through even my darkest days, but that is a given. I don’t need to write about how much I love the good moments with my sisters. What I love about my sisters is that we got to have a unique childhood experience that only girls, like in Little Women, with sisters got to truly know. Having a sister is a chaotic life to live, and I am eternally grateful to have had three.