Carolyn Hax: Sister proves happy childhood memories aren't accurate

Dear Carolyn:

My siblings and I have very different memories of some things that happened in our childhood. One brother and I have much fonder memories of our parents than our sister, who frequently tells us we're "in denial" or "repressing memories."

I have always thought my sister is wrong, but we recently disagreed about something that happened on a family vacation 30 years ago, and she dug up some old photographs that proved her memory was correct and mine wasn't.

I'm now starting to think she's actually right about some of the negative things she says about our parents and our childhood, and it's making me re-evaluate some things, but ... is there any use in this? If one sibling and I have happy memories of childhood, can any good come from being convinced we're wrong by our other sibling? Or should I just stick with my happy memories and tell my sister to stop trying to make those memories unhappy?

-- Sibling

What a great question.

Life is objective -- things happen or don't, you're here or there, it's night or day -- but your life is entirely about your subjective experience of these objective things. It's not just what happens, but instead the compilation of what you notice, how you react, what you feel in the moment and afterward, what you remember.

So there's definitely merit to your argument for keeping your happy memories intact. Why change something static just to make it worse?

But while whatever happened 30 years ago is of course a fixed quantity, your relationships with your siblings and others are dynamic. They're now, and tomorrow. Your sense of self, too, is always in motion, ever-evolving as you incorporate the new things you experience into your body of knowledge about yourself and the rest of the world.

So, in that sense, a change to your understanding of the past could actually improve your present. Your relationship with your sister is a logical start. Note that even as you awaken to her accuracy, you still assume hostile intent: she's "trying to make those memories unhappy"? Not trying to be taken seriously, be accurate, be heard?

Plus, your repeated dismissals of her version of events have no doubt strained your bonds with her, so imagine the healing power of saying to her now: "You were right, and we kept dismissing you. That must have been so frustrating. I'm sorry I didn't believe you."

Even if she's an irreversible vortex of negativity, you owe her due validation.

Family discussions in general will get better, too, if you open yourself to revising history, because you'll come to these topics (and presumably new ones) with a more open mind. Maybe you can learn new things from each other, about each other, and about yourselves.

And, it's conceivable you'll improve your relationships with others, because this experience with family, memory, perception, re-evaluation, humility -- ongoing, if you let it be -- can teach you to think more critically about your own certainties and the source material backing them up.

There's also this: As you hold proof of your own fallibility, won't those "happy memories" have an asterisk? If not, then my congratulations for your ... mental discipline. But I suspect for most of us, the reckoning wouldn't come with a checkbox for opting out.