I had built my whole self around having no history — no medical background to report, no family to list, no one to call.

And now there was a history, and it was vast, and it was mine: a mother, a name, a lineage of people who built things and did not let go of what was theirs.

I did not become someone new.

But I stopped apologizing for taking up space, because for the first time I understood that the space had always, by right, been mine.

Chapter 32 — A Year

A year passed — a year of healing, of learning, of stepping into a strength I had never been allowed to know I had.