The goal was never to destroy the people who hurt my daughter.

The goal was only, and entirely, to make certain they never held power over her life again.

And every time I drive past that traffic light on Grand Avenue, I still feel a chill, remembering the frail woman I almost failed to recognize among the cars.

But then I think of who she is now — a woman who pays her own bills, raises her son with her head high, and decides for herself exactly who is worthy of a place in her life — and I understand that sometimes the most humiliating moment of a life is not the end of the story at all.

Sometimes it is the exact place where we begin, at last, to reclaim everything that was taken from us.