This is my story—my way of unveiling a reality that echoes through far too many households, and yet so few dare to recount without the varnish of social pretence: divorces and separations that leave deep wounds upon our children, those innocent beings who should never bear the weight of adult battles.

Writing these words is no simple task. I do not know what my children shall think when, one day, they look upon the past free from borrowed voices dictating what they ought to feel or believe. Today, they live beneath a roof that was once our home. Still, I owe them my truth, even if they cannot yet grasp it. I owe them my struggle, so they may never again fall victim to the same tale.

This is the chronicle of how fear, ignorance, and the absence of support gradually cornered me, until I became the invisible woman within my own marriage. Sixteen years in which, save for the first few, everything became tainted by misogyny disguised as affection: prohibitions against study, against work, against growth, under the worn-out decree that “a woman must remain at home.” It took me far too long to understand that I had to let go, to grieve, to rebuild myself, and to give my children a mother both free and strong—even if that meant shattering everything.

Yet it was not merely a failed marriage; it was an entire machinery set in motion to erase me. I was denied the right to decide, to build a patrimony of my own, to safeguard my future and that of my children. Papers were signed under duress, powers of attorney exercised behind my back for years, dubious dealings in which I was but an empty name. Injustice reached even the very walls of the house where I raised my children—walls that were, one day, taken from us without a second thought.

And whilst all this unfolded, the messages were plain: remain silent, accept, make no waves. The double standards of society were merciless: what in me was branded “indecent” was, in others, deemed “proper and respectable.” And I, ensnared in a cycle of manipulation and emotional violence, came to believe I was worth too little to claim my rightful place.

When at last separation became inevitable, the cost was devastating. My name was shackled to debts not my own, my reputation smeared by falsehoods, my bond with my children fractured by the manipulation of one who had vowed to protect us and instead left us in ruins. And yet, here I stand, writing—because my voice is the one thing they can no longer take from me.

I tell this because I know I am not alone. Because, as in that emblematic case which once shook Latin America and gave a name to parental alienation, countless mothers continue to lose their children without having committed any crime beyond the wish to be free. Because silence has never saved anyone, and perhaps my story may become the outstretched hand I myself never had.

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