Recovering lost safari window after using private browsing??? iPad A16 OS 18.7.1

Last night I opened a private Safari tab on my ipad A16 iPadOS 18.7.1. It actually opened a whole new Safari window. When I wanted to go back to my original Safari window with all the open tabs, it was gone. I went to the switcher window and only the private window was there. I went back to the dock and long pressed 'show all windows' and my original window was still missing. I opened a new window (don't remember the method) hoping my old window would show up but it was just a new window. I powered off and back on hoping that would fix it and it didn't. Any hope of restoring it at this point? And how did it close in the first place? I did nothing but open a private browsing window. In the past, the original Safari window stayed open and available on the switcher screen. How did it get closed? Thanks for any help!