This is just a long and complicated story so please bear with me.

9 years ago I lost a baby boy in childbirth at 41 weeks who was stillborn. This was after a complicated and pretty traumatic pregnancy due to genetic complications from me and my husband leading to concern about the baby's viability and needing amniocentesis to confirm the baby was ok (we both carry a recessive gene that is fatal and has no treatment and there was a 25% chance that the baby had the disease and we would have to decide to abort or have the baby and watch it die over the first few years of its life). We ended up finding out he was genetically healthy around 20 weeks, the rest of the pregnancy was relatively normal, and then the pregnancy unexpectedly ended in a full term stillbirth. This really fucked me up, like to the point that it still makes me very sad after 9 years. My subsequent IVF pregnancies leading to two living children have been very high stress, filled with anxiety, and emotional. Motherhood/family is very important to me, I think in part due to losing my first child and just wanting to be very present and involved with my girls.

Fast forward like 4 ish years and my sister who I was always pretty close to published an article in a internationally read magazine (the online version honestly not sure if it was in the print version) and in the article she wrote about her own experience with post partum and as a mother to her son, but she included very private details and information about my son who died and my stillbirth -- medical information and other things I would never have agreed to share. She did not ask my permission and did not give me any warning ahead of time. I basically woke up one morning and a bunch of friends had reached out asking if I had given her permission to write about me and my son -- they were surprised that I would give permission knowing this has been a very painful experience for me and knowing that I am a private person. I had no idea what they were talking about, read the article, was very triggered reading it and long story short had an emotional breakdown. It was the idea that all these strangers were reading about my private life and had access to information that I would never have shared with them -- it made me feel first of all like I was back in the moments after my son died and secondly like I was being continually retraumatized by all these people reading about it without my consent. Acquaintances/work colleagues/etc who I never told about this experience started asking me about it and trying to talk to me about it -- people who I would not have shared with about my private life in that level of detail.

I told my sister I was very upset by this and I thought it was objectively wrong of her. We had a huge fight and essentially have not spoken since this happened. Our last communication was that she would ask my permission if she were ever to write about our overlapping experience again. This also really pissed me off because it made me feel like she was centering herself in my life and trauma and kind of trying to take ownership of something that literally did not happen to her. My perspective is that she did something pretty awful and that she has not apologized or taken any mitigating steps to repair. She did technically apologize -- she sent a note with flowers that literally said one line -- "we are sorry for your pain." I don't consider this any type of apology as she is not taking responsibility for her actions, I don't know who "we" is, and it is not enough of an apology to make up for what she did.

Fast forward to this year and she has now published a book also based on her postpartum and motherhood experience. I knew that she was publishing a book, but I assumed per our last communication that she would not include information about my son's death or anything about my family in the book. Well, I was wrong. A friend sent me a screenshot of one of the reviews in which my still birth was mentioned -- the review says "I also recoiled in the way she described her sister's stillbirth, and just hope that her sister was part of the process and agreed to having something so tragic and personal exposed in such a callused and frankly self-absorbed way." Well, I was not. And I am very angry again at the inclusion of my life and my son's death.

She has also been on podcasts where she lies -- 1. she claims she is very close to her siblings -- I have not spoken to her in years and plan to never again 2. she was asked if there has been "blow back" about what she included where she claims that all the "main characters" read many drafts of the book and were happy for her to tell her story. Well, maybe I am not a main character, but I did not read a draft and did not give permission or consent for what was included. Directly following this question from the podcast host the host then says I felt so bad for your sister with her stillbirth and then my sister just makes up a statistic that late term stillbirth happens to 1/100 women. Like just for the record, what happened with my son is a chance of 3 in 10,000 live births. I feel strongly that if you are going to act like an expert on a subject you should not make up data like that, and I feel like hearing something like that is wildly invalidating for women who have lost their children via stillbirth or any other traumatic incident. She also lies about stuff in the book -- not lies that have any real impact on the world but things that are not accurate. For example, she says that her husband came to the funeral of my son. This did not happen. I don't understand why someone would make up things like that. She also says she held my son in the hospital and while I was very out of it emotionally I am certain to the point where I would die on the hill that she never held my son. I know those things only matter to me and don't matter to the general point of her book's narrative. But, when the only the only way you get to be a mom to your son is through those very few memories you have, it feels like a really big deal for someone to do this.

Ok, so what do I do? My personal sense of morality is literally screaming for consequences. The first time this happened with the magazine article, I spoke to a lawyer and considered legal action. I did not take that route because it is quite expensive and there is not a possibly of putting the worms back in the can so to speak. This information is out there and I cannot do anything about it. I originally determined not to take legal action because I took my sister at her word that she would not do this again. Am I an asshole that I want there to be a consequence? Would I be the asshole if I tried to take legal action? Is there a perspective where I am the asshole for being angry about this? Do people think what she did is not such big deal? My family is kind of split on this and my parents are very complicity in her behavior and actions and have been very supportive of her and the book. I also feel bad that this has destroyed our once very close family and my parents are getting older. OK, there are so many details but that is the basic outline of events from my perspective.

EDIT: I will just add as there are lots of comments about getting a lawyer. I have spoken to the same lawyer after the publication of the article and now after the publication of the book. It is kind of complicated but my understanding is that there is a tension between freedom of speech and right to privacy. I am not named by my full name in the book, which provides a certain level of anonymity. However, my sister is has a public persona and is an "influencer", if you google her name plus sister I do come up. So there is a legal argument to be made that she violated my privacy but also that she is just exercising her freedom of speech.

To have a lawyer write a letter to her personally will cost about 10-15,000 dollars. I could afford that level of financial commitment but to actually sue would be much more expensive like 100,000+ and I could not do that. My lawyer has said that if I decide to send a letter, I can ask for whatever concessions I would like such as royalties or whatever but that if she says no, my only recourse is then to sue, which is very expensive.

EDIT 2: I do think the lawyer cost is high. This lawyer was recommended by a friend who works at the same firm, and it is a really high profile law firm in my city so definitely would be on the higher end of the spectrum. It was also explained that the fee would include researching the law in both states (where I live and where my sister lives) to understand which state had laws that were more beneficial and would lay the legal groundwork that would be needed if an actual lawsuit were filed. So I guess it covers more than just a lawyer writing a general letter and would include legal background and making a case that could also be used in further proceedings at some point. I have never needed a lawyer before and don't have much context for the fee structure.