Sometimes I can’t help but think about how different my life would have been if I’d learned these truths 50 years ago.

If I had known my father’s identity…
If I had understood the world he came from…
If I’d realised the strength of the connections behind my bloodline…

No one would have dared to push me the way they did.
No one would have tried to break me, manipulate me, or treat me like I was small.
And I’m certain — absolutely certain — that my second marriage would never have happened.
I would have recognised the warning signs.
I would have stood taller.
I would have known my worth.

That’s the strange part:
a single truth, hidden for a lifetime, can rewrite your entire sense of who you were — and who you could have been.

My father is no longer here.
I will never get the chance to meet him, hear his voice, or ask the questions that only he could answer.
But the discovery doesn’t end with his absence.

If anything, it grows.

Every new piece I find — a story, a name in a memoir, a surviving relative who remembers him — adds another layer to a life I’m only just beginning to see clearly.

What a strange world we live in.
A world where you can spend decades searching for a face — and then, when you finally find it, everything you thought you knew shifts beneath your feet.

The story keeps unfolding.
And so do I.

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