My Son Is An Attorney Who Stole My $5.8m Life Savings And Made Me Homeless. He Told The World I Was Senile To Cover His Gambling Debts. How Do I Recover When My Own Child Leaves Me For Dead?

My father survived Pearl Harbor. He came home and built a life with nothing but determination and those $58 in bonds.

He taught me that survival isn’t enough; you have to build something worth surviving for. I’m building that now: a foundation, a relationship with my granddaughter, and a path toward maybe, possibly, forgiving my son.

Grace would have liked that. She always said,

“The best revenge is becoming someone you’re proud to be.”

I’m not there yet. Some days I’m still angry. Some days I miss my old life so much it physically hurts.

Some days I wonder if Jeremy is really changing or just saying what he thinks I want to hear. But I’m trying, and that, I think, is what my father would have wanted.

The door’s open a crack. Not wide, not welcoming, but open. The rest is up to Jeremy.

As for me, I’ve got work to do, people to help, a granddaughter to mentor, and a life to rebuild—different from what I planned, but mine nonetheless.

And on my desk, in a frame next to Grace’s photo, I keep my father’s letter.

“You can’t help anyone if you’re destroyed first.”

I’m not destroyed. Broken, maybe. Changed, certainly. But not destroyed. And that, in the end, is victory.