Melissa Etheridge Reveals How She Forgave Sister She Accused of Abuse: ‘It Just Eats at You’ (Exclusive)

Melissa Etheridge believes that forgiveness is the key to healing.

The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, 63, opens up in this week’s issue of PEOPLE about her decision to move on from the sexual abuse that she has said was inflicted upon her by her older sister Jenny during their childhood.

“If you don’t forgive, it just eats at you, and you’re hurting yourself. My favorite quote is ‘Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping someone else will die,’” she says. “You have to say, ‘Okay, this happened, and boy, did I learn.’ If you can put appreciation and gratitude toward it and just go the other way, it doesn’t bother me.”

Etheridge first revealed the sexual abuse in her 2001 memoir The Truth Is…My Life in Love and Music. In her 2023 memoir Talking to My Angels, she expanded upon her allegations, writing that her sister began abusing her when she was 6 or 7 years old. Jennifer has not publicly commented on the allegations.

The “Come to My Window” singer wrote that when they were alone, her sister would “touch me sexually and demand that I touch her… As with many victims of abuse, I felt somehow responsible and shamed by it.”

Etheridge tells PEOPLE that now, her sister “is not even on my mind — ever.”

“Last year she finally came to a show of mine. I hadn’t seen her in 17 years, and I was like, ‘Well, hello. Look at you,’” she recalls. “It doesn’t matter. If I held on to that [resentment], that’s just making me sick.”

Etheridge has moved on from her past, and is now a proud wife to TV producer Linda Wallem and a proud mom of daughter Bailey, 27, with former partner Julie Cypher, and twins Johnnie and Miller, 17, with ex-wife Tammy Lynn Michaels. (Her beloved son Beckett died of an opioid overdose in 2020 at age 21).

The star is also helping others come to terms with their own pasts in the new two-part docuseries called Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken (out July 9 on Paramount+), in which she puts on a rock show for women at the Topeka Correctional Facility, a prison near her hometown of Leavenworth, Kansas.

“It was such a great experience, and I learned so much,” she says of filming the docuseries. “I can’t wait for the world to see it”

For more on Melissa Etheridge, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.