I share this story not only for me but for anyone out there who has been abused as well. Not everyone told, not everyone had someone they could tell so the abuse went on and that is devastating and heart wrenching and it's not fair. I was lucky to have been put into a great forever foster home. If you were abused I encourage you to tell your story just like I did. It will help others share their stories and it helps you heal. It will also encourage the ones who have not spoken up yet to tell someone. If you are being abused and are scared to tell, I understand. You are strong. You are brave. You can tell someone. Is it a family friend? Tell your parents or a family member. Tell a friend, a teacher. Tell someone you trust. I promise someone will believe you, not everyone will, but someone will. Is it a parent that is abusing you? Tell a family member. Tell a neighbor. Tell a friend, a teacher. Tell someone you trust. You can tell me.

I was sexually, verbally and physically abused by my father. I don't remember the sexual abuse because my mind repressed them. Hopefully they never come back, but there is a chance that they will. I do remember the physical and verbal abuse. I share my story and the abuse in my book Goodbye. (It's free to download on this site) I talk about the abuse and also talk about the death of my father. I hadn't talked to my father in over five years and I received a call from a California number and thought that maybe it was him. I didn't answer, I let it go to voicemail. It ended up not being him but then I put his name into Google and found an obituary and knew it was his. I made some calls and after a few hours it was confirmed, he had passed away. I was upset because no one told me he had died. Even though I hadn't talked to him, I still deserved to know. After he died I felt like I could finally move on with my life and let the past go, I no longer had to be scared of him. He was very protective of me and at times it made it very uncomfortable to be around him, especially when I was an adult. My relationship with him was very complicated and I felt obligated, I felt like I needed to be the daughter he wanted me to be, but deep down I didn't want to be around him and it took a very long time for me to stand up for myself and walk away from him. I always felt uncomfortable, on edge around him and for some odd reason I felt constant empathy like I had done something wrong, and at the end of our relationship he had told me just that, he told me I had lied.

After he passed away I felt free, I felt guilty because I felt free.

I took a DNA test because I wanted to know more about my family history and find some medical information. When I got my results back the first thing I noticed was that it said I was not in the slightest bit Portuguese. My great-grandparents were born in Portugal, so I knew right away that there was an error or... Yep. Robert was not my father. There wasn't an error, which meant that Robert was not my father and it hit me hard. This huge wave of emotion, I panicked. I wanted answers right away. Guiding Light, my second book in my Finding Solace Series takes you through my journey of finding out who my biological father is. I found so many answers that I had been looking for and also a family that I never knew I had! Growing up I didn't have a biological family of my own. I had my foster family which became my family. I had my grandparents (Robert's parents) But the rest of his family wanted nothing to do with me. Maybe because they thought I lied? Or maybe they knew that I wasn't his daughter. Either way, I can finally move on.