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I realized my moms cooking was actually quite basic. _________
I grew up speaking Spanish & find it difficult to retrieve English idioms sometimes. I want to say that I’m looking for a phrase akin to Dorothys feeling when the curtain falls on the wizard of oz.
How about the idiom dawn on? From The Free Dictionary:
dawn on: Become evident or understood, as in "It finally dawned on him that he was expected to call them," or "Around noon it dawned upon me that I had never eaten breakfast."
Your example:
It (finally) dawned on me that my mom's cooking was actually quite basic.
I also thought of "scales fell from my eyes". "Opened my eyes" may work, and variations on that such as "eye-opening", "eyes wide open," and "clear-eyed". "Saw the light" is another.
(My main source seems to be Todd Rundgren songs:)
Possibly, you could find this phrase of biblical inspiration proper for expressing at least some of what is felt in the uncovering of the type of truth your sentence evokes; I am talking of the celebrated "Let there be light", the motto of numerous institutions of higher learning. In this reference we find the following words.
