At ten years old, I learned what it felt like to be unwanted. My mother sat me down and told me I was moving in with my grandmother—permanently. “I have a real family now,” she said. “You’re just in the way.”
Those words haunted me for years.
But my grandmother, Brooke, refused to let me believe I was unlovable. She became my rock, my safe place, the one person who never made me feel like a burden. She was there for every tear, every triumph, every moment my mother should have been part of.
Then, at Grandma’s funeral, I saw my mother again. She stood with her husband and my half-brother, Jason—the son she kept, the one she raised with love. She didn’t even look at me.
I thought that was the end of it. But life had other plans.
A week later, my mother showed up at my door, panicked. Jason had found out about me—about how she had hidden my existence from him. He was furious. He refused to speak to her.
For the first time in her life, she needed something from me. And for the first time in mine, I had the power to say no.
I didn’t slam the door. I didn’t yell. I just took Jason’s number and told her, “If he wants to talk to me, that’s his choice. But I won’t fix what you broke.”
Jason and I met. We talked. And for the first time, I had a brother.
As for my mother? Well, karma doesn’t forget.
