When I was 10, I got a birthday card from a woman named Nancy.

I showed it to my parents, and they smiled and said it was cute.
I never saw that card again.

Twenty years later, after my father passed away, I was going through his closet—and there it was. The same birthday card.

Next to it was an old, yellowed envelope with a letter inside. It was from my dad.
The first line read:
“Mom should never know.”

What followed shattered everything I thought I knew.

The letter revealed I had been adopted. Nancy—who sent the card—was my biological mother. She had me when she was just 15 and left me at an orphanage. My parents, unable to have children, adopted me shortly after, never meeting her in person.

When I turned 10, Nancy had tried to reconnect. She sent that birthday card along with a letter to my dad. But he made the choice to hide it—to protect my mom from heartbreak and keep our family intact.

Now, everything I believed about my childhood feels like a carefully preserved illusion.