People may say that writing a memoir isn’t hard. It is just writing about your life; it can’t be that hard. However, in my case, it was that hard.

Saying yes to writing this memoir was saying yes to bringing out a part of me I wanted hidden. It meant that I had to relive those traumatic moments I had struggled to bury. It meant opening old wounds; wounds that never really healed. And most importantly, it meant fulfilling a promise.

Before he passed, my dad made me promise to write about his life experiences, the struggles, the betrayals, the wins, and everything in between. It was a challenge, one that I knew I needed to fulfill regardless of how I felt.

I was close to my dad and he was my hero in more ways than one. As the first child, I didn’t just hear about most of the struggles, I experienced them. I was the child who saw her father work endlessly to give his family a permanent home. I was the teenager who watched her father’s strength fail on the days when life got too hard. I was the adult who saw her father endure false allegations for a crime he never committed. Every single memory was ingrained in me. They were a part of me as much as they were a part of him.