A visible advantage can rest on invisible help without becoming less useful to acknowledge.

Being helped does not make what you did unreal. The steady home, the loan nobody mentions, the person who covered for you, the introduction that came free: those made the work possible without doing the work. People often refuse to name them because naming feels like conceding that the achievement was not theirs, and that is not what it concedes. Both things can be plainly true at the same time.

Say the help out loud once, to the person who gave it if they are still around. It costs you nothing you actually had, and it tells anyone watching what the real path looked like.