“Get out of the car right now,” my mother ordered while rain hammered the highway and my three-day-old twins cried in their car seats, and when I begged her to stop because the babies were newborns, my father grabbed my hair and pushed me out onto the road while the car was still moving…

My mother’s voice was sharp enough to cut through the roar of rain pounding against the highway. My newborn twins were crying in their car seats behind me, only three days old, their tiny voices trembling in the storm.

“Please don’t do this,” I begged. “The babies are newborns. We can’t be out there in this weather.”

Before I could say anything more, my father reached back, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and shoved me toward the door. The car was still moving.

The world spun.

The next thing I knew, I was tumbling onto the wet pavement while rain and gravel tore at my skin. The cold asphalt slammed into my shoulder and knocked the breath out of my lungs.

I barely had time to stand before I heard my daughter screaming.

I looked up just in time to see my mother leaning out of the window holding one of the car seats.

“No!” I screamed.

She didn’t hesitate.

The car seat flew through the air and landed in the muddy ditch beside the road.

Then the second one followed.

“Divorced women don’t deserve children,” she shouted before the car sped away.

My name is Elena Brooks, and that night on the side of a storm-flooded highway changed my life forever.