Hi {{{midwestmom}}}
Carrying around anger and resentment is a horrible feeling. Like you said, it drags you down. It's staggering to our own personal growth and happiness. Perhaps your perspective should be less focused on forgiving your mom and siblings and instead more focused on a level of release to ease your own pain.
I've had to forgive a person or two over the course of my life. In particular I had to forgive my exh in a very bad way and I harbored resentment and anger and ill will towards him for a long time. Because I swore I'd never badmouth him to his children, I held it all inside, occasionally ranting about him to a friend or my mom. I felt myself sinking and walking around with this giant weight on my shoulders and I felt like I was suffocating. It was a terrible feeling. It changed my perspective when I realized that by forgiving him I was not letting him off the hook for his misdeeds, but I was releasing myself from the stanglehold of resentment towards him.
The fact was I was going to have to deal with this man for many more years through life events like graduations, etc., and I needed to be happy and smiling again, even in his presence. MY anger and resentment was holding me back from enjoying ALL of my life, not just the moments when he was forgotten about, Know what I mean??
So, I journaled, I wrote down everything I was feeling. Then I wrote down my pure pleasures in life. And then I thought about his relationship to those pleasures, lessons I may have taken away from my experience with him. Of course, those involved mostly my dds. It was like a great transformation occurred!
I meditated about my feelings and I was able to look at the act of forgiveness as a gift to myself rather than granting a gift to exh. I bestowed upon myself the freedom to live and let go of the anger and resentment towards exh, to truly just see that it was what it was and let it go. I felt lighter. I was able to be in his presence without feeling such despair, anger and hatred. I had friends and family remark on how I could be so civil to him at family gatherings. I thought about my children's relation to him and I thought that my gift of forgiveness to myself was twofold - it also helped me to be a better mom and wife. In the long run, I really feel that the forgiver is the one who truly benefits from forgiving others. It frees us.
I really hope that you can find a way to forgive and let this go. Resentment is like a smoldering coal. It will just burn in your chest as long as you continue to feed it. Gentle hugs.
ps: An excellent movie I recently watched is The Secret - you should check it out.
