What took you so long!?!
The day after I found out my birth father had passed away, I found myself on a phone call with his brother (my UNCLE!) for the first time. He asked a perfectly reasonable question given the situation, one that I had been wrestling with in some form for 25 years; why did I wait so long to reach out? I don’t remember what I said that night, aside from explaining that I needed to get over the anger I had felt for so many years. But that answer was incomplete because the real answer takes to long to explain. Please understand, my anger was real. For almost the first 21 years of my life, I thought I knew who my father was and thankfully, I was told the truth. While I am forever grateful that I now know the truth, it was still jarring. I felt betrayed by almost everyone I was close to, including the family member who decided to break the news to me. Time and truth helped me heal, and I was able to start forgiving everyone, including the family member who took a stand to tell me.