by On my 50th birthday, my husband whispered, “Surprise downstairs!”
I ran down—to find a woman waiting.
“This is Clara,” he said. “Your birth mother.”
I froze. I’d always wondered about her in abstract moments—but now she stood in my living room.
We met later at a diner. She told me strict parents forced her to give me up. She showed me letters she’d written each year. I cried reading them. Slowly, we built a fragile bond—until cancer took her months later.
In her will, she left me a journal with my father’s photo. I found him. He wept when we met.
For the first time, I felt whole—not from answers, but from truth.
