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Hey everyone, Andrew Limbung here in for Mary El Segara.

Other Annie Sklaver-Orenstein grew up with two older brothers and she says she took

her first steps walking towards her oldest brother Ben.

According to my parents, he just asked me to walk over to him and I did.

And that was basically how it went from there.

We had a really beautiful, reciprocal relationship.

When I got older, he would come to me for advice sometimes.

And he made me feel like I mattered.

But when she was 25, her brother, Ben, died

while serving in Afghanistan.

The shock and pain of his death

destroyed her mental health for a long time.

It felt like nothing mattered at all.

I started having panic attacks and nightmares.

Nightmarves were really bad

and I would be afraid to go to sleep at night.

Despite how painful losing a sibling is,

this kind of loss is something people don't talk about often.

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