A woman found a diary she had never known existed while going through her mother’s things after the funeral. Lots of things from her mother had been written in it, but one thing really opened the woman’s eyes. She learned about scary things that happened to her parents that she had no idea were part of her family history.

After her mother died, the woman was filled with unimaginable grief.
Helen, a 36-year-old woman, told a really sad and personal story about her family that has turned her life upside down since then. In the first part of her letter, Helen talked about how she recently lost her mother to cancer and is still trying to deal with her grief. “My mom died of cancer a month ago,” she wrote. For two years, I had been taking care of her, and every day I saw her getting worse without being able to do anything to help her. Too late was the time of her diagnosis, and neither of the chemo treatments she had helped. It was expected that mom would die soon, but when it did, my grief was so strong that I couldn’t even cry to express it; I felt nothing.

In a special way, Helen and her mother were very close and loved each other a lot. “Mom loved me more than anything.” She was my best friend, my wisest teacher, and the nicest person in the world. She would spoil me. “I gave her twice as much love in return; we were very close,” she said.

The way Helen felt about her brother Sam, on the other hand, was very different. “My older brother Sam is the person I have never been able to fully understand,” she said. Since I was a child, he has always been very far away from me, and I never understood why. He wasn’t mean to me, and he never hurt my feelings. He treated me like I had a disease that if he talked to me, it would spread to him. This has always seemed so strange, since our mom loved both of us the same and our family didn’t have any bias.

Helen’s story is one of deep grief, complicated family relationships, and a surprise that has changed her life forever.

Soon after her mother’s funeral, things started to go wrong.
Helen kept talking, this time talking about what happened after her mother’s funeral. According to what she said, “Sam came up to me and told me not to touch Mom’s things in any way.” He told me that he would sort them himself and then let me pick out what I wanted. I agreed even though, deep down, I thought it was wrong of Sam to keep me from getting to Mom’s things. However, when Sam’s wife suddenly went into labor and needed him right away, Helen took the chance to sort through her mother’s things by herself.

Helen said of her choice, “I thought it would be unfair for anyone, even my brother, to keep me from getting to the things that belonged to the most important person in my life.” I didn’t listen to Sam’s advice and started going through Mom’s things on my own. I only planned to keep a few things because I thought Sam wouldn’t be interested in them because they weren’t important to him. It seemed fair at the time. “Now I wish I had listened to Sam and not touched Mom’s things, because what I found out during the process is really bothering me.”

The woman found her mom’s diary and read it.

Helen continued her story by saying, “As I was going through my late mother’s things, I came across a worn-out book that looked very old.” It was her personal diary, and the entries were from just two years ago, before I was born.

Helen found a handwritten note from her mother in the diary. It asked whoever found it to please respect her privacy and not read what was written. Even though she was warned, Helen admitted, “I knew I was going against my mother’s wishes by reading the diary.” But I was so sad that I wanted to connect with her and thought she would forgive me for what I did. She went on, “As I read it over and over, I finally understood the mystery behind my brother’s strange behavior all my life.” It was shocking that he wasn’t my brother at all, but my father!”

The woman was devastated when she found out.

Helen explained, “In my mom’s diary, she wrote about how I was conceived.” She wrote about how my dad couldn’t have kids after she married him because of health problems. They chose not to use a sperm donor and instead asked Sam, my dad’s son, to be the biological father.

“Mom wrote in her journals that they thought using Sam’s genetic material was the best option,” she said. They thought it would make sure that the child would have traits like my dad’s health and intelligence. Sam agreed to help them because he thought it would be good for their family.

Helen came to the conclusion, “At 36 years old, I know that my ‘father’ is actually my grandfather and my ‘brother’ is my biological father.” The two people I call “sisters” are really my aunts. This truth was kept from me for years by both my dad and mom. I wish I could have heard this straight from my mom; it would have cleared up a lot of things for me.

Helen is having a hard time accepting this new truth.

“After finding out the secret, I called Sam to talk about it,” she said. But his response was strange. He yelled at me and blamed me for invading his privacy. He even called me names. I had never seen that side of him before, and it scared and shook me.

“We ended up cutting ties,” Helen said of their tense relationship. “But I’m struggling with the pain of losing him.” I want to make things right between us and start over now that everything is clear. He was in my life, but now he’s gone. I feel alone and don’t know what I did wrong.

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