Hi Ned.
I think guilt is passed on from generation to generation.
Maybe not always but surely it is learned behavior.
I was made to feel guilty growing up because my family went to court against
the doctor who's neglegents caused the loss of the remainder of my sight and
in settling out of court they won money for my future.
The guilt trips really kicked in once I was a teenager and had some access
to the money.  They began expecting me to get my older brother out of all of
the trouble his drug use and irresponsibility caused him.
It went beyond that.
Once I was in college and returning home on the weekends my mom had moved
out to live with her new husband and informed me that she wanted to sell our
home place.
I had just come into a bit of money from the trust which had been set up for
my benefit and my mom told me that I was welcome to buy the home place for
that exact amount.
She sold the place to good people and regretted it but that is her problem.
It was not a place I could have lived at as a blind adult for transportation
reasons but still you hate to feel the responsibility to save the home you
grew up in.
I have also lost money to loans made to family members who never made right
on their debts.
Terri saw this sick family practis long before I ever realized anything was
wrong with it.
Luckally I wised up fairly young and we live a fortunate existance.
My family relationships are strained at best but the bible teaches us that
we are to leave our family and join to our marage partner forming a new
family and of course it is natural that we would try to realize the mistakes
in our own families and to build a better one within our own household.
Terri and I hope that we are doing that.
Perhaps if you were to share with your sister that what goes on outside her
own adult household is not as important as that which happens within and
that she is not responsable for other people's happyness.
I am going to stick on some notes from my Jimmy Evan's tapes here.
Some has to do with marage but all can be taken for whatever it is worth in
any relationship.

Take Care,

Four emotional facts of life
1  No exturnal person or event in life controls my level of emotional
health, my response to them does.
Thing to remember,
Life does not form me, my response to it does.
lesson, Forgive those who wrong you and don't hold grudges destroies us.
2  We marry according to our level of emotional health.
Health marries health and unhealth marries unhealth.
3  The only way you can change another person is to change yourself.
Lesson, if you browbeat your spouse they resent it.
The bible tells us,
This is how a woman changes a man,
You can change him without a word as they observe your good behavior.
How a man changes a woman,
Lay your life down for her and you nourish and you charish her.
Tell her the good things about herself.
4  emotionally healthy people can do the right thing if nobody else does but
emotionally unhealthy people are victims and followers and they don't do the
right thing unless everyone else does.