I travelled across America to discover my mother’s secrets – and instead found that I have my own

My journey into the world showed me that adventures are for me, too

When my mum handed me the notebook, I was excited. It was from a trip she’d taken in the 1970s, visiting her aunt in Omaha, Nebraska. I had just done the exact same trip – a flight to New York City, then a Greyhound bus across the Midwest. I had made this trip to research the ebb and flow of women’s rights over a generation, but also to understand my mother better, and to tell the story of both in a book. This, therefore, was primary source gold: her private thoughts of that moment in time, perfectly preserved from nearly half a century ago.

Or at least some of them were. Because when I took the thin yellow pad in my hands, the faded paper covered in her unmistakable scrawl, I began to notice something. Pages had been removed. Some had parts missing, neatly cut off, as if folded along the line of a ruler and defiantly torn away. It had been redacted by my mother, like a document of national security, and forced into the light by a freedom of information request, by me, her daughter.

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