Home at last

Uncovering the truths that shaped my life

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What if everything you believed about your life turned out to be a lie? What if the person you trusted most, the one who had always been your anchor, the one you loved above all, had been keeping a secret that shaped your entire world?

For decades, I believed my father had abandoned me. I believed he had chosen to leave my mother and me behind, that he had never wanted to be a part of my life. And for just as long, I believed my grandmother - my protector, my safe place - had only been trying to shield me from more pain.

But what I discovered after her death changed everything. The truth wasn’t simple, and it wasn’t easy. It revealed fear, love, betrayal, and choices made under pressure - decisions that didn’t only change my life, but those of my mother and father as well.

This is the story of how I found my father, how I uncovered the lies that had kept us apart, and how I am still trying to reconcile love and anger for the woman who helped raise me. But to understand how I got here, I have to go back.

Growing up, I always felt different from the other kids. While they had what seemed like “normal” homes with moms and dads, mine was nothing like that. My mother was just sixteen when I was born - a child herself, still trying to figure out her own place in the world. My father, just two years older, disappeared five months before I was born. For decades, the story I carried was simple: he didn’t want me. He left my mother and never looked back.

For the first two years of my life, I lived with my grandparents and my uncle, who was only fourteen at the time. My mom was still living at home, trying to finish her education and find her place in the world. I was surrounded by adults, yet my world was fragile, balanced on the unstable foundation of my grandparents’ marriage.

One night changed everything. My grandmother wasn’t home and two-year-old me was crying, refusing to sleep. My grandfather snapped. He shouted at me, his face full of rage. My mother intervened, yelling back at him, standing between us like a shield. His response was chilling: he went to look for his gun.

My mom and uncle didn’t wait to see what would happen next. They grabbed me and fled to the neighbors’ house for safety. Not long after that, my grandmother made the decision to divorce my grandfather. Together with her, we packed up and moved out to start a new life somewhere else.

A few years later, my mom met someone, married him, and when I was five, my half-brother was born. For a brief moment, it looked like we might have some kind of family. But that illusion shattered when he slapped me hard across the face simply because I had blocked his view of the television. The mark of his hand lingered on my skin for days, a cruel reminder of what “family” had become. The marriage didn’t last.

After that, it was mostly me, my mom and my little brother. And of course, my grandmother was around whenever we needed her. She was the anchor in the constant storm of our lives.

It was hard to take in when she decided to leave South Africa to return to the Netherlands, her country of birth. She called every week, sent postcards with windmills and tulip fields, and visited during the holidays, but nothing could replace having her close.

When I was eleven years old, my mom met another man, and we moved in with him. Those months were heavy with tension - dark, frightening. It was in that house that I first saw my mother being hit. The sound of that first blow is something I will never forget. It was like watching my superhero fall, and realizing for the first time that she could break too. When my mom finally called my grandmother to say she feared for her life, my grandmother acted immediately. She got us on a plane to the Netherlands. Once again, we ended up in her care.

My mom’s life continued to be difficult. She found herself in more abusive relationships, and each time my grandmother was there, picking up the pieces. Over time, my bond with my grandmother deepened. She became more like a mother to me than a grandmother. I never missed having a father. I had these two women - my mom and my grandmother. And after seeing the kind of men who moved through our lives, I thought, if that’s what having a father looks like, I want no part of it.

When my mom met the man she’s married to now, I made a choice. I stayed with my grandmother. I didn’t want to be dragged into another uncertain relationship. I lived with her for about two years, and those were some of the most stable years of my life.

Later, I met my husband, built a family, and became a mother myself. Watching him be a kind, present, loving father awakened something in me that I had kept buried for so long. For the first time, I felt the urge to find my father. I wanted to know who he was. I wanted to see his face, hear his voice, maybe understand a part of myself I had never met. He was the missing part of my life.

My mom reacted with nothing but support. She had always been open about my father, never hiding the past from me.

Telling my grandmother, however, was like walking into a wall. She snapped: “Why bother? He didn’t want you then. Why would he want you now?” Her reaction stunned me. I felt small, like a child again. Deep down, I convinced myself she was right. If he hadn’t looked for me all these years, why should I look for him? So I pushed the thought away. But it never truly disappeared. It lingered in the back of my mind like a quiet ache.

In 2017, my grandmother passed away at the age of seventy. Her death left a deep hole in my life. I was devastated, and the grief brought old, buried feelings to the surface. Missing her so intensely seemed to awaken the part of me that had always quietly missed my father too. Years later, I decided it was time. It was now or never. He was only eighteen years older than me - he might still be alive. And even if he wanted nothing to do with me, I knew I couldn’t live with the regret of not trying.

My mom suddenly remembered a brown envelope she had once seen among my grandmother’s files while we were still living with her. Curious back then, she had peeked inside and noticed some of her old high school papers. Assuming the envelope contained only her belongings, she tucked it away with her own things and forgot about it.

Now, she handed me the envelope, thinking it might hold something useful - maybe old addresses, school records, or anything that could help me trace my father. And indeed, tucked inside were her high school documents and addresses from the time she and my father were together. But there was more. Hidden among those papers were copies of handwritten letters exchanged between my grandparents’ lawyer and my father’s lawyer.

One page at a time, I revealed what had been hidden for so long. My heart began to race. I immediately recognized my grandmother’s handwriting on several of the letters. They revealed that my father had been legally forbidden from contacting my mother, and that if he tried, there would be consequences.

And then I found the other side. Letters from my father’s and his mother’s lawyer. They pleaded with my grandparents to reconsider. My father had wanted to marry my mother. He wanted to raise me with her. His mother had even offered to take my mom in if it was too much for my grandparents.

I was stunned. My hands trembled as the truth unfolded before me. Everything I had believed for decades collapsed in an instant.

When my mom visited, I shoved the papers toward her. She read them, and then she broke down. I had never seen her cry like that before - raw, uncontrollable sobs. She had never known any of this. She had believed, as I did, that he had abandoned her. It was the story we had lived by our entire lives.

How could my grandparents do this? How could they treat my father like he didn’t matter? How could they betray their own daughter like that? And how could my grandmother - the woman who was my safe place, who I had trusted most - lie to me all these years?

Growing up, I had often heard stories about the kind of controlling man my grandfather was. And before she died, my grandmother had spoken a little about her own pain - about how cruel my grandfather was to her. How he belittled her, called her ugly, told her no one else would ever want her and she was lucky to have him. I pitied her then, and hated my grandfather for doing that to her. I still do. But she had still kept this monumental truth from me. Now, I can’t help but wonder; Did she consider telling me then? Or was she trying to shape how I’d see him if I ever discovered the truth after she was gone?

In the first weeks after discovering what truly happened, I defended her. And I blamed my grandfather entirely. He was a narcissistic, abusive man. I told myself she lied out of fear. Fear of losing us. But after a few months, sadness shifted to anger. She was the one closest to me. She should have told me. My grandfather had never cared; I expected nothing better from him. But from her, I expected everything.

I remember confronting my grandfather about the letters, a few months before he also passed away. My whole life, he had been absent, not showing any interest in me. He barely called, never even bothered to send me a birthday card. But the moment he learned from my mother that I was looking for my father, he suddenly showed interest. Now I understand why. His response to what they had done was cold and distant: “People sometimes make decisions they think are best.” No apology. No regret. Just “people,” as if he was talking about strangers, not himself. But like I said, I didn’t expect anything from him. I knew he wouldn’t feel any remorse.

But my grandmother’s silence hurt the most. It made me question everything - her love, our bond, my memories. Her picture on my wall had always been comforting, but now I found it hard to meet her eyes staring back at me. Was her love real, or was it built on guilt? How different would all our lives have been if my grandparents had chosen to support my parents instead of tearing them apart?

In 2021, after decades of wondering, I finally found my father. It turned out he had searched for me for years but eventually lost hope. We had moved so often, my mother changed her name when she remarried, and without the internet, his search eventually hit a wall. But he never stopped believing. He held onto his late brother’s words: “She has your blood. One day, she’ll find you.”

And I did. Thirty-eight years later, we found each other.

I had spent years wondering if I carried any part of him. The resemblance was undeniable. The first time we spoke to each other on FaceTime, the moment was almost surreal. It was magical, but literally seeing the time we lost was heartbreaking. This wasn’t a father meeting his newborn daughter. It was a man connecting with the adult woman she had become - a woman who had grown strong without him, yet had always carried the part of him she never knew.

We have called every day since, sometimes multiple times, trying to make up for all the lost time. We fell in love with each other like father and daughters do. We laughed, we cried, we talked, and shared. When I finally traveled to South Africa with my husband and our two boys to meet him in person, it felt like stepping into a missing part of my story. The moment I saw him, it felt natural, warm, as if I had known him my whole life. I can’t even begin to describe the moment I hugged my dad for the first time. I felt like the little girl inside me, who had missed her dad for so long, was finally seen. It was like coming home.

Since then, we visit every year. Along with a father, I also gained a sister, two brothers, and a “bonus mom” - his wife, who welcomed me with open arms. Never once did she make me feel like an outsider. She took me in as one of her own. She calls me her “Dutch daughter.”

Of course, the grief for the lost years remains. He wasn’t there for any of the big moments in my life - my first day of school, my wedding, my pregnancies, the births of his grandsons. I had to miss him through it all. But most of all, I missed having the father I always deserved. Seeing old pictures of my siblings growing up with him still hurts - it’s a bittersweet ache. I should have been in those photos too.

Even now, I’m still processing what my grandparents, especially my grandmother, did. It’s a complex mix of love and disappointment, anger and understanding towards my grandmother. There were two versions of her, and I am learning to hold both in my heart.

I’ve come a long way. So has my mother. We’ve held each other up through all of this. She’s been my strength, and I’ve been hers.

Recently, I started writing fictionalized stories about this chapter of my life as a way to make sense of everything. Through writing, I try to step into their worlds - to understand their thoughts, their fears, their motivations, and the choices they made. Did my grandfather’s childhood - abandoned by his parents and sent to an orphanage - shape him into the controlling, abusive man he became? And did my grandmother, terrified of him, stay silent and comply with his plans out of fear, hiding the truth from us? Trying to see things from their perspectives helps me heal. It helps my mom, and it helps my dad. It reminds me that they were human, with all the flaws and complexities that came with it.

I’ll never have all the answers, and that’s okay. Despite everything, I am grateful to have my father in my life now - for all the moments we share and for all the memories we are still creating. Hopefully for many more years to come.

Me and my dad, Christman 2024

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Also read this wonderful essay by

Marie A. Rebelle

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