When I tried to protect my 5-year-old daughter from my father, my sister and mother forced me away while my father yelled, “Your trashy little thing needs to learn manners.” Then he began hitting her with a belt until she stopped moving.

When I Tried to Protect My Daughter, My Family Became the Monster

The memory of that day never left me.

It’s not the kind of memory that sits politely in the past. It follows me. It slips into quiet moments, like when the house is still or when Lily laughs too loudly and I feel that reflexive, irrational panic—because a part of me is always bracing for someone to punish her for simply being a child.

I remember the sky most of all.

It was a perfect summer Sunday—blue, bright, indifferent. The kind of day that’s supposed to hold simple things: burgers on the grill, kids running through sprinklers, cheap plastic chairs sinking into lawn. A day that looks like safety in other people’s photo albums.

But in my parents’ backyard, safety was never guaranteed. Not for me. Not for my daughter.

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