This thread has a lot of resonances for me. I think the word forgiveness is just an impossible concept except maybe for saints, and I eventually just abandoned it, in my search for a little peace from my demons – I was the child of an extremely cold mother who actively disliked me and treated me as nothing but a burden and duty from my earliest memories. Oh and our pediatric dentist was horrible and didn’t use anaesthesia either, but it would never have occurred to me to complain, since it was freakishly frightening to speak to my mother about anything at all.
Like the OP’s mother, my mother became enormously defensive whenever her mothering style was even the slightest bit hinted at being less than perfect. She sent me to a psychiatrist when I was eleven, telling me that if I didn’t change I would have to find somewhere else to live. I had no idea what behavior she couldn’t tolerate because in my mind, all I did was hide as best I could. The psychiatrist told her (I learned this from my mother’s best friend many years later) that the problem was not me, but her. That was the last time I saw him.
I don’t love my mother. I have never experienced that emotion for her, that I can remember. But I don’t hate her either. It took about 40 years of work on myself, but something eventually just broke loose and floated away one day. I didn’t forgive her, whatever that means, but I just ceased to think about her much at all. I don’t have anything I want her to understand, or be punished for, or anything. She just doesn’t have a role in me any more. I experience this as an enormous blessing for which I am very grateful.
She isn’t a terrible person, just a weak, frightened, emotionally stunted person who made a truly wretched mother for most of her children (my oldest sister was treated entirely differently).
I’m happy to go to family events, I don’t get the bleeding ulcers I used to get, I feel fine. I grew up, in some sense. And another thing: I started acting out of strength, and that changed the dynamic of the whole family, who always expected me to pull a disappearing act. I showed up, I took responsibility, I was cheerful and proactive and helpful (never did any of those before), and eventually people stopped being snidely amazed and just accepted it. I feel almost as though I am not related to these people, I’m something between a usual guest and a friendly acquaintance.
From this vantage point I am able to be generous and helpful most of the time, which I do because I want to be a generous helpful person, not because I want anything out of them, because I don’t. I really really don’t.
I watch my siblings struggle with their childhood scars in pain and anger, which they blame on other people and try to exert vengeance and create constant suffering for themselves and inflict damage on others without ever seeing what they are doing. I’m grateful I am not doing that right now.
You can call it forgiveness if you want. I think it is about as good as I’m going to get, whatever you call it.