Raised by Secrets
Chapter 1: Survival Became My First Teacher Growing up, security was something I heard about but rarely felt. Life taught me early that nothing was guaranteed and that the people you love can be here one day and gone the next. As a little girl, I was a daddy's girl. I adored him. He was my protector, my comfort, and the person who made the world feel safe. Then AIDS entered our lives. In the 1980s, an AIDS diagnosis was often considered a death sentence. I was too young to fully understand what was happening, but I watched the man I loved slowly wither away. One day he was there. Then he wasn't. No one prepares a child for that kind of loss. I remember the confusion. The questions. The emptiness. I remember trying to make sense of something that made no sense at all. Death had entered my life, and before I even understood what grief was, it had become a familiar visitor. What I didn't realize then was that a part of me was changing. The pain was so overwhelming that numbnes...
