Being the Sister of Two Brothers
About Jessica Myndio
You will see Jessica Myndio in a work out room full of energy. Willing to help others, you will see her very kind heart and you will also see how challenging it can be to be a P.E. teacher. You can see her being athletic, and always wearing some sort of sports clothes. She has two brothers and she is the youngest of the three. Having two brothers has shaped her identity today.
Could you start by telling us what it was like to grow up in a household with two brothers?
“That's a really good question and a fun question for me because I do have two brothers but one of them is a twin brother and he was born 5 minutes before I was. Then we also have an older brother who's exactly one year and one week older than us. We were all very, very close in age. Because we were so close in age, it created a closeness within our family. Growing up with two brothers was very active, very physical, and a lot of fun. My memories of my brothers and I were running around playing tag, and playing hide-and-seek in the streets until we got called in by Mom and Dad. It was a constant memory of playing and then a lot of memories of wrestling. We were all put into karate together. I remember we would spend a lot of time at home, fighting, playing wrestling, grappling on the floor, laughing, getting mad, then doing it all over again. It was a really physical household. If we weren't in sports after school, we were typically running around the house altogether…”
What were some of the fun things about having two brothers and what were some of the difficult or challenging things having two brothers?
“The fun things I remember about growing up with two brothers goes back to just how active we were active household playing all the time we were constantly in sports and playing outside on when we got older we were hiking and biking playing club sports it was just it was just movements and I didn't realize until later how much movement meant to me and it made me feel good make me feel confident but it made me feel quite playful as well so that was the fun part about the brothers the challenging stuff about growing up with two brothers not that I knew it at the time was not having a female companionship that that wasn't so much my mom I think because I grew up with two brothers I just had this natural connection to boys and I felt more comfortable at times with my dad and more comfortable with my mum…”
Did being sporty affect the way you were treated or seen as a young girl?
“I was always lumped together with my brothers and the boys and even later and sometimes now people just lump me in the group of the boys and sometimes I've had friends that have been envious of that because they see they saw the boys as social friends are potential boyfriends then for me they were just my buds my mates but they saw me in the Inner Circle of the boys so item is there is there is jealousy and other times yeah I'm not sure how I was perceived by by other girls or what not but there was definitely some challenges to being in the Inner Circle of boys and for most the time I never really noticed I was just apart of hanging out with boys and my two brothers.”
“I think my parents signed us up for every sport in the world so my two brothers went and it wasn't even a question of whether I wanted to go or not”
-Jessica Myndio
Do you have any advice for girls who either have many brothers hang around boys or have his brothers in general do you have any advice for the girls?
“My advice would be to number one pay attention to your female friends and develop ways to communicate with both males and females that's a really good piece of advice, and then I'd also say whether you grow up with brothers or sisters or if you like the company and feel more comfortable in the company of boys or girls it doesn't matter you need to do things that keep you active and instill confidence and for me that was growing up with two brothers and being surrounded and doing things in physical environments that brought and nurtured a lot of physical strength in me but a lot of mental strength as well so I would hope that for any girl.”
“My advice would be to pay attention to your female friends and develop ways to communicate with both males and females.”
