We begged her for the pictures, and she refused

Dear Amy: About five years ago, my mother gave each of her four daughters something from her house, in preparation for a move.

I received the family money because my last name matches the engraving. My two young sisters received small trinkets and family heirlooms.

The problem is with our older sister, who received all the photo albums.

There are about eight of them, one dedicated to each of the daughters and the rest to members of the extended family, our parents and ancestors.

Amy, this is my past!

Our sister will not share these photos. She won’t take them to family functions. She will not scan them and make copies for us. She doesn’t even want to acknowledge the fact that they exist.

The rest of us have asked him time and time again. We offered to buy new photo albums to replace them when the pictures fall off the original albums. She says they were given to her and there is nothing we can do about it.

My mom tried to reason with her, but she won’t budge. My father tried to reason with her before he died.

Well, now my kids don’t know any of their grandparents, great-grandparents, or great-great-grandparents because of my older sister.

How can I make her see what she’s done to my family?

Injured in Ohio

Dear Hurt: Your question is quite common: when distributing family heirlooms, a brother or sister ends up with the entire collection of family photos; if they don’t share them, it can create a generation – or more – of hard feelings.

This could be avoided if the elders did not treat family photos as a single item, like a transmitted chifforobe – to be left with a child. Photos should be distributed to descendants, who can then share or exchange them with each other. That way, even if a sibling refused to show or share their stash of photos, other photos would still be in the family.

I think it’s possible – or likely – that your sister wants to deliberately hurt you and your other sisters. Could it be that you have all the money?

You and your sisters might suggest “swapping” various items given to you to access the photos.

Otherwise, these photos were given to her, and I don’t think you have much recourse to force her to share them.

Dear Amy: I recently decided to return to live with my mother and little sister for the remainder of the pandemic.

The problem is, I catch myself thinking some extremely mean things about them, since they’re both overweight.

I find myself thinking almost obsessively about how disgusting I find their bodies and feeling angry with the way they eat and their unhealthy lifestyle.

Maybe part of this is because I was nervous about my own weight – more so during the pandemic.

Do you have any tips on how to be kinder and less critical? How to get space from wicked thought patterns and prejudices? I don’t want to be like that.

I have a therapist, but I actually think I was too embarrassed to be honest about the ugliness of my internal monologue, because it turns me off.

Secret Mean Girl