I WAS 3 YEARS OLD WHEN I LEARNED THAT LOVE COULD KILL ME.

My father was an intelligent but a deeply unstable and violent alcoholic.

One summer day when I was just three, I was playing on the living room floor with him, laughing and totally unaware that the energy was about to shift.

In an instant, the laughter stopped. His face changed.

He flipped me to the floor and pinned me beneath his weight.

I couldn’t move. I remember how the carpet felt pressing on my face and how his skin felt. I couldn’t breathe. Slowly I lost consciousness.

That was the day I learned that love could kill me. It was also the day my nervous system wrote its first false story: You are not safe. You are not wanted. You are not loved. If you do love, it could kill you. Love is found in unsafe spaces.

For decades, I lived from that code. I recreated danger. I sabotaged relationships. I mistook shared pain for supportive connection.

You see, we all came into this world like brand-new computers — perfect, uncorrupted — until others began installing software full of viruses: fear, shame, lack, unworthiness.

That programming isn’t ours. It’s theirs.

In The Empowerment Revolution, I talk about how deeply this programming can shape our journeys, and how imperative it is that we recognize when we are letting our past programming run our present lives.

You are not broken. You were programmed.

But you hold the power to rewrite the code.

So when you find yourself hurting, I invite you to pause and ask yourself:

“Am I reacting to what’s in front of me… or to what once hurt me?”

“Is this decision being made by the wounded child in me or by the empowered adult I’ve become?”

That single moment of awareness is where your revolution begins.