I had a little Winnie the Pooh push car — the kind you straddle with your legs, scoot forward using your feet, and steer with handlebars. It was a cheap kind of freedom, that feeling of pushing forward down the sidewalk, pretending it was something bigger than it was.
The sidewalk wasn’t in great shape — cracked, uneven, warped from midwestern seasons. I was too young to understand physics or momentum or what happens when velocity meets an abrupt stop.
But I learned quickly.
The wheel caught on a crack, and in an instant, I was airborne — flying over the handlebars and landing hard on my face. My nose bled. One of my front teeth was knocked out. I was stunned. Scared. In pain. I did what any kid would do — I ran home, crying, looking for comfort.
And then came the moment that defined the whole memory.
My brother’s dad — the man who had adopted me when I was 18 months old — scooped me up. But what you think happened next… didn’t happen.
He didn’t comfort me.
He didn’t clean me up.
He didn’t ask if I was okay.
He took me over his knee and beat the shit out of me.
Because I hadn’t been careful. Because I scared him, maybe. Because in his mind, fear and injury weren’t punishment enough — I still needed to be “taught a lesson.”
And that’s what I learned:
That pain could always be followed by more pain.
That accidents were sins.
That mistakes made me unworthy of gentleness.
That I had no right to comfort — especially if I’d “caused” the harm, even unintentionally.
As a mother now, I look back and feel rage on behalf of the little girl I was. Because falling face-first onto concrete was already more than enough punishment. The lesson was learned the moment I hit the pavement.
But instead of safety, I got violence.
Instead of reassurance, I got shame.
Instead of love, I got fear.
This moment carved a rule into my bones: Don’t go to them when you’re hurt. It only makes things worse.
And that’s the rule I carried. Into school. Into relationships. Into adulthood. Into parenting. Into trauma.
I was just a kid.
And I deserved to be held. Not hit.
Taught. Not terrorized.
Soothed. Not silenced.
This post is part of my Defining Moments series — the stories that shaped how I see the world and myself. Sometimes telling the truth is how I pull the shame out by its roots.
Fragments and Fire 
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