I was held at gunpoint when I was 12. I still haven't recovered from the trauma almost three decades later.

• When I was 12 years old and living in Brazil, I was held at gunpoint by a robber.
• It was only seconds, but to me it felt like the gun was against my head for a really long time.

I remember it vividly, even though it happened over 26 years ago. But how can you forget having a gun held against your head?

I was 12 years old and my family had recently moved to São Paulo, Brazil, because of my dad's job.

We had been there for a couple of months, long enough to know that my mom couldn't navigate driving me to and from school every day in one of the largest cities in the world, so my dad's driver took me.

I'm grateful it wasn't my mom driving the day I was held at gunpoint.

She had always told me, since I was very little, that if someone ever tried to rob me, I should give them whatever they wanted without reacting. "Material things are replaceable," she would say, "you're not."

Then when I was 7 years old and we were living in Bogotá, Colombia, a man tried to rob us with an ice pick, and her reaction was to scream until she eventually scared him away — the opposite of what she told me to do.

Now, as a mother of three kids living in the US, I relate to my mom in a different way. Growing up, I thought she was being overprotective, but now I know what it feels like to have your heart walking outside your body.

Guns are the leading cause of death in children in the US, and with the uptick of gun violence in schools, I worry about my young kids all the time. I don't want them to become a statistic.

It was a normal afternoon until it wasn't

My grandmother was in the car with me the day of the robbery. She became a widow young and often cared for me as my dad's career boomed and took my parents all over the world. She had accompanied the driver to pick me up at school that day, and we both sat in the back seat to go home.

I was telling her how I wanted to have McDonald's as an after-school snack, something that had become a kind of ritual after discovering the fast-food chain. Having a Big Mac was always the highlight of my week.

We stopped at a light. It was raining hard, one of those tropical storms that come in fast and leave you with little time to prepare. A man knocked on the driver's window and asked him to roll it down. He declined. The man knocked again. Something felt off.

The driver declined again and yelled from inside that it was raining and to go away. So he did, only to step right by my window, pull a gun out, and hold it against the glass where my head rested.

"Don't move," the driver whispered. I had learned enough Portuguese to understand and be petrified. I could see his finger on the trigger.

My grandmother was oblivious. She was looking the other way. I'm thankful that she never turned to look at me as I sat in terror. She didn't know what was happening until it was over.

The man yelled that he wanted our watches. The driver said no problem, to take his. His window either didn't work or he was too nervous to roll it down properly, and as the man with the gun got angrier, the driver opened his door and stuck his arm out. The man ripped the plastic watch from the driver's wrist and ran away.

I think that saved my life.

This all happened before the light turned from red to green, but at that moment it felt like hours.

The incident has shaped who I am as an adult

When the driver told my parents about the incident, he downplayed it, probably to keep his job. I never told my parents the real story. They were already overprotective, and being an only child, I felt like they would never leave my side again.

Now, as an adult, if anyone creeps up on me, I jump and panic. I grow impatient at lights. It's not because I'm in a rush, but because I'm constantly looking around, making sure no one is near my car. I'm ready to go the second the light turns green.

I don't allow our kids to make finger guns or play with toy guns. The thought of them makes me want to vomit.

I left Brazil after high school because I wanted to feel safe and have some independence. Years after college, I moved to the US, chasing even more safety, something I never felt growing up. I wanted that American dream of a house in the suburbs with kids playing on the street and riding bikes to school. I have that life now.

But I will never feel safe because I carry the PTSD of that gun against my head, and as I see headlines about gun violence pile up, I worry that by moving to the US, I might have put my own children in the same kind of danger I experienced as a child.