I have a half-brother, born from another mother, that I've never considered a half.
I was the first person since my grandfather to join the service and after me, my little brother joined.
His mother raised my full blooded siblings since we were very young and... she was a two-faced, lying, manipulative bitch that enjoyed her power of authority to punish us as many times a day as she could. She had a twisted view about us kids and it was important to her to be right in our father's eyes no matter the lie that we knew we got spanked for.
Our father divorces her after our entire family wills him to do it, time goes on, I join the military and after being away from my little brother and sister for five years I make it a top list thing for me to accomplish to build a better relationship with the both of them. To do that I knew I would need to do that through their mother.
We had a meal at a diner arranged by me and my siblings and I had a great talk with her and them. My other siblings still saw her as a great evil but I had grown past that and saw her as a necessary evil that created the comic in me who also loved to learn. From that meal I later was invited into her house with my little bro and sis and since I let the past go I enjoyed a growing and great new relationship with my little bro and sis.
And then my little bro joined the Army.
Then he proposed to his high school sweetheart (she said yes!) and after his school he was given 11 days to get married before he would be sent to Iraq.
I've had a few Socratic Method moments, but this...
My family is so extreme anti-their-mother that they've held separate graduation parties for both of them (among other events). When my older sister found out our little brother was getting married she started to create her own bride shower at her house after everyone learned that THE bridal shower was to be at our former step-mother's house.
The anger at this boiled my blood. My little brother was going to go to Iraq in 11 days and these people refuse to step in the house of someone they hated that they haven't dealt with in ten years?
The only time in my life I called a family meeting and it was me against all of the women of my family; my sisters, aunts, cousins and my grandma.
It took me two hours of berating them with words but I finally broke through their crazy tears of frustrations. To sum it up:
"You're not going to be in her house!"
I've been invited to her house, ate meals and... my little brother is going to Iraq. If you can't eat a fucking piece of cake in a house to celebrate the union of love then YOU ARE FUCKING DEAD TO ME.
Again, this was two hours of me repeating this over and over and over and over and over until the finally realized... their sacrifice of celebrating the union of love was but a small price to pay since our own blood was going to go to a place that he might never come back from.