28/05/2026
"I almost drove past her."
After a long day's work, I was heading home when I spotted a very young girl walking alone on the road. Something told me to slow down.
I recognized her, a girl I once taught in our preschool. She couldn't have been more than 15. She was walking in the direction of the next village, which is a considerable distance away, alone, on foot.
I rolled down my window and asked where she was going. She looked away. Wouldn't answer. But her voice, what little I heard of it told me everything. She had been crying. Hard. For a long time.
I stopped the car and got out.
After some time, she opened up. Her parents had just divorced. And her father, broken by his own pain had been pouring all of that anger and frustration directly onto her. This young girl. This child.
She wasn't walking to the next village for any ordinary reason.
She wanted to find somewhere remote. Somewhere no one would find her. And she wanted to starve herself to death there.
She was 15 years old. And she had already decided the world was better without her in it.
I am sharing this today because I want every adult reading this to understand something: children do not have the emotional tools to survive what we put them through as adults. When our marriages fail, when our finances collapse, when our hearts break our children absorb all of it. And sometimes, silently, it destroys them.
She didn't call a hotline. She didn't tell a teacher. She walked out onto a road and hoped to disappear.
The only reason I know her story is because I slowed down.
Please. Slow down. Look up. The child near you may be carrying something they were never meant to carry alone.
If you know a child going through family crisis — check on them. Not once. Consistently.
They need to know adults can be trusted. Right now, for too many of them, we are proving otherwise.
