Leonora, I'm sooo sorry that your mum treated you that way when your "for all intents and purposes father" died! I'm stunned that she wouldn't understand your emotional connection with him - and especially when she insisted that you and your siblings were not allowed to say "half-siblings". He treated you as a father would do. You had every right to your feelings.

I hope you've been allowed/able to grieve that loss and process it, in spite of your mother's outrageous behaviour.

I've had a partial "solve" of a rather big mystery - just the other day. A few years ago, I learned that the man I thought was my birth father wasn't my father at all (I was adopted and later met my birth mother). Had an Ancestry DNA test and it couldn't be the Ukrainian man I was told it was; my father was of English heritage. The Ukrainian man was dead when I met her, a great way idea on her part, I guess - pick a dead guy that I can never get to know. She wouldn't say much about him but I found his family on my own and developed relationships with them for over 30 years - it was such a shock to find out they aren't my family at all.

I don't have a relationship with my birth mother anymore and she's impossibly stubborn. If I were to confront her and try to find out who my father really was, she would lie and say the test was wrong.

I spent a few days with a friend over the weekend and she took me to see a friend of hers for a little visit. The friend is a medium. Out of the blue, as we were talking about lots of different things, my birth father came through with a partial message but we were interrupted with other things happening in the house. She said she will continue with the message when we can find a time to connect. I can't wait. I was in tears - have been wishing I could find him or find his family or know ANYTHING about him but have no way to do that. My adopted parents and brother are dead; I'm short on family and would so love to have that connection.

Thanks so much for sharing your story. Sending you big hugs xoxo