Since no one has yet confiscated my computer for crimes of philosophical and linguistic aberrancy and abomination, I'll go ahead and respond to this one too. lol (sorry, I'm "hangin' ten" on this one, to employ the surfing metaphor once more. lol)

In one of Barbara Kingsolver's novels there was this excellect description of what a railroad engineer had to consider in terms of throttle and brake in order to get a long heavy train both over a mountain pass, and then quickly into a siding at full stop. If he were to brake too soon, the train would not clear the pass. If he were to brake too late, he would pass the siding and his last chance to avoid a collision. Yet, the siding was close enough to the pass, and the train long and heavy enough to force a precise calculation.

According to the Sqrl manual of epiphany navigation principles, it is always good to pull into the siding as soon as possible after clearing the pass, the threshold of awareness in the case of epiphany. See, it goes like this, the epiphany unfolded itself; you may have provoked it by probing around its edges, but it unfolded itself. Once it unfolds, and you see it, now the authorship of the activity trades hands from your unconcious to your concious. In that switching over, the dynamics of the revelation begin to change. So at the end of the day, you are looking at a document, (for example) that would have been written by one person in the beginning, and concluded by another.

This becomes a good example of suspending belief. So after the AHA, the sqrl manual says to hold your breath, as if, and suspend the clinging activity to what comes next, it is not the same, lacks the validity of the unconcious. Well, not neccessarily, but the practice of not accepting those next impressions as fact is pretty useful generally.

I'll try to make this specific to forgiveness now. What if I were to paraphrase the initial epiphany back to you thusly? "...then suddenly l saw the history of my family in some larger context which causes my hostility toward them to whither" Then paraphrase the rest of the epiphany, the concious part thusly: "...one of the questions this brings up in me is of forgiveness, I wonder if I understand what forgiveness is?"

I'm not suggesting that you don't want to forgive your family. But I'm suggesting that this epiphany may go further than you think.

It is possible during a semi manic kind of time to set up a utopian standard for ourselves which doesn't actually survive that cycle. It can be a source of backlash for the depression to draw on. That's why the sqrl manul suggests pulling into the siding, I guess.

I hope this has some impetus for reflection in it for you and not anything to diminish any part of this process. I think you are expressing some of the noblest human sentiments here. And why shouldn't that be so, you are one of tthe noblest human beings I know.