I nodded slowly, swallowing the lump in my throat, and stood. “Alright,” I whispered. My voice sounded smaller than I had ever heard it.

She didn’t follow me to the door. She didn’t ask me where I would go, or if I had enough money, or even say goodbye. She simply turned away, as if I were already gone.

I left quietly, my old suitcase bumping along behind me, my shoes clicking against the pavement. My heart pounded in my chest, but outwardly I kept my composure. I had learned long ago that dignity was often the only thing you could cling to when everything else was taken from you.

That night, I rented a small room at a budget motel on the edge of town. It smelled faintly of bleach and cigarettes, the carpet was worn, and the bed sagged in the middle, but it was a roof over my head. I stared at the ceiling for hours, wondering how my life had come to this point.

My daughter, the very person I had sacrificed so much for, had turned me out.

But the next morning, after the sun filtered through the thin curtains and I counted the small bills and coins in my wallet, something in me shifted. Despair was tempting—I could have crumbled, given in, accepted that I was unwanted and forgotten. But a fire sparked in me, faint at first, then stronger.