UPDATE TO: I [21/M] have been looking for my sister [18/F] since 2014. I found a way to contact her last night, but I'm not sure how to do it.

This is an update to this post I made in January last year. Not many people saw it but I figured I'd update anyway because I got some good advice and, I don't know, the outcome might be something good to read while having a poo or whatever. Fair warning, this is a lot longer than I expected it to be.
tl;dr (for the original): Sister has been involuntarily no contact with me since my parent's divorce. She lives with my narcissistic mother who would do anything to make sure I never see her again. I've found a way to contact her and I want to do it, but I don't want to step in her life and **** it up for her. What's the best way to proceed?

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Update: Well, I'm 23 now. Finished university, starting a real job, Dad and I no longer have depression, life is pretty good. As for my sister, a few interesting things happened to say the least. Firstly - I took the overall consensus from the original post and didn't make any attempt to contact her. I did drunkenly check her the page from time to time to see if anything had changed, and I found that I'd be unblocked on my main facebook account. Probably around August that same year, my sister rang my aunt and said she wanted to arrange a meeting with her and her son (our cousin, obviously). My aunt immediately rang my Dad and I and told us the good news, we were both uncertain about how we should take it but overall we were pretty happy.
They all meet up and apparently my sister has also been kicked out of our mother's house for some reason or another and is staying with a friend, and she hasn't spoken to my mother for over a year (at this point in November). The story goes that my mother and her new victim managed to ostracise themselves from all their friends down there and my mother took out her aggression on my sister, so she stormed out and turned up teary-eyed at this friends house and has been living with them ever since. She asked about me and my father, if we were doing well, and if we 'hate her'. Obviously my aunt assured her that we definitely don't. My sister says that she wants to get in contact with the both of us but she wants to take it slow and she didn't know how we would react. In my view that's completely understandable*. That's interesting point #1.
^{*Just as a side note, my mother once smacked my sister in the face for wasting a tampon when she was 12. I obviously am not completely familiar with that uniquely female experience but I did get the joy of hearing that moment unfold - just for an idea of the type of person my mother is and what she did to us both as kids.}
Interesting point #2 happens when my sister goes, with her new boyfriend, up to visit our Nan*. Another cousin of ours (big family) is also present for this meeting. My cousin tells me that my sister told our Nan that it had been 'a few months' since she had last spoken to our mother, which is quite a bit different to 'over a year ago'. Whatever, maybe my Aunt misremembered the meeting. However, my cousin did say that she got a very 'off' vibe from my sister, and to paraphrase her own words heavily, 'you would think [Sister] had last seen us all last weekend - not 5 years ago. She walked in to [Nan's] house like she owned the ****ing place. She didn't really say why she was getting in contact with us and not [you or her father] other than she "wasn't ready", and she didn't really say why she hadn't spoken to her mother either. I don't know, I wasn't happy with it at all, and we were all thinking that you two [my father and I] should be in that room, not us. But maybe [your mother] has made me too paranoid.'
^{*My Nan is my maternal grandparent. I phone her as often as I can which isn't as often as I would like it to be admittedly and I know I'll kick myself for it. I digress - every time I do phone her, she always asks about my Dad and his new partner, and sends them both Birthday cards, Christmas cards, so on. To me it just speaks volumes about the type of person my Mother is when her mother is more concerned about the wellbeing of her ex-husband and his new partner. Just tryna get this point home to any doubters.}
#3 occurs when I find out that my sister asked my Nan for some money to help her out with University and not living with her Mother anymore. My Nan, being the lovely little 86 year old Welsh sweetheart that she is, gave her around ?2,000. Now, I'm happy to be proven wrong here, but asking for ?2,000 within a few hours of reconnecting with family that you haven't seen or made contact with for five years is very strange. I find out about this, because around November my Nan called me - because she had promised me an update on the situation - to tell me that for about a week after my Sister met up with them all, they had been in regular contact via phone and Facebook. Since that week - nothing. Unreturned voicemails, Facebook messages left on read, my sister had taken the money and ****ed off. I spent the day reassuring my Nan that she hadn't done anything wrong, and she definitely wasn't the idiot she thought she was for giving my sister the money.
#4 is the least interesting, but you'll be pleased to know that my ramblings end here at least. It should go without saying that since the first meeting in August with my aunt and her son, neither my Dad nor I have had any direct contact with my sister. On Boxing day, my sister finally calls my Nan and wishes her a merry Christmas. My Nan says thanks and hangs up. In January, on my Nan's 87th birthday, my sister calls up and wishes her a happy birthday, and also mentions that she's having some money problems. My Nan rolls her eyes and hands the phone to my Aunt who buys my Sister's sob story hook, line, and sinker, and rings me to tell me the, quote unquote, "good news" and that "it's different this time, she really wants to see you".
Around May (which is my Birthday month btw), my sisters sends a text to my Aunt to see if she has any old pictures of her. My aunt says she doesn't, but that me and my Dad might (which we do). My sister sends a text back saying that she will get in touch with us.
I know this is gonna come as a complete shock, but it's been radio silence since and in all honesty I'm fine with that. To me, it's crystal clear who my sister has grown up to be like. Toying with family members emotions, treating her own presence as a gift and using it to manipulate money out of people, inconsistent stories about her relationship with the one person she knows would be a deal-breaker if the rest of the family knew was still involved, and terrible at hiding her true intentions. Will she ask me for the photos? Probably not. Unless she gets really desperate and exhausts all other avenues for exploiting money out of people with pity stories, but even she knows that I know exactly who that money is going to. My mother knows that she's not in my Nan's will at this point.
If she does want to meet up, I will bring the photos with me. Part of me wants to bring two envelopes - half of the photos in one envelope, the other half shredded up in another, and depending on how well the meeting goes depends on which envelope she gets. I won't do that but it the thought of being that petty is very tempting.
I'm not holding my breath. She was 14 and I was 17 the last time I saw her; she's turning 21 this year and I was 23 in May. I've had my years of anger and grief and done my time with depression, I've hurt many people and many relationships along the way. I'm still learning what's normal and what isn't, but on the whole my life is split up into before and after, and for the most part my sister lives and will remain in the before. Somewhat because I want to maintain the memory I have of her and not taint it by knowing what she has become, somewhat because I'm not ready to go through what I overcame again. I've accepted my role in the universe as the recipient of bad karma to make up for all the good karma that randomly happens to other people. I'm okay with that; for the first time in my life, I've been the one in control. As for my attitude to her and my mother, the best word I could adequately use to describe it is "ambivalent". They could win the lottery and be on the news tomorrow or they could get hit by a bus - my reaction would probably be the same.
To everyone else out there with estranged parents or other family members - the one thing I learned is that estrangement is the best thing they'll ever do for you.
tl;dr: I didn't contact her, and it turned out to be a good thing, but not for the reasons I thought.


Source.