This is an anonymous story collected from the public as part of the Human Archive Project

I lived in the same house for 49 years and got married for the first time at 52 . Finding love like this was Grace alone .. to make it work required sacrifice.. much deliberation mixed with trust and faith allowed me to make a big move to the UK.

I ride an emotional roller coaster - harking back to how things were and how some things aren’t the same .. then I get that they can’t be the same even if I had stayed on .. everything is dynamic , and I am grateful for the many opportunities that have come. From my early teens my life was punctuated by farewells, as friends and family emigrated to various places in the world to leave the political unrest and later crime in our birthplace . Our community was diminished and I wept for the loss of potential and indeed the loss of the dreams and vision that we had of how we would be in our lives together.

Thanks to the technology that we have , I enjoy the connection from afar that my grandparents never had when 2 generations before they fled persecution.. when they left , they left everything behind.