My family held my 11-year-old daughter and cut her hair at a party because “it overshadowed the birthday girl”… The next day everyone was crying in front of the police1

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“If your daughter wanted to show off, then let her learn not to overshadow the birthday girl”, my mother told me, as if she had just justified the unjustifiable.

I arrived at my sister Marisol’s house at almost eight at night. I had been leaving a heavy shift at the General Hospital of Querétaro, with swollen feet, a wrinkled uniform and guilt stuck in my chest for not having been able to accompany my daughter Sofía to her cousin Valeria’s party.

Valeria turned twelve years old. Sofia was eleven.