Forgotten Password for iCloud Notes

I have forgotten the password I created for my iCloud notes and the hint I created is not really helpful for me. The notes I need to unlock are really important and I desperately need to get into them. My understanding from what I have read on the Apple Support Communities forums is that these notes simply cannot be recovered without the original password and even if I reset the password, it only applies to new notes that I make, not the old ones. This is ridiculous and an extremely flawed system. Is this true? Or does anybody know a way around this?