Minister Annette C. Cox

Kreative Author's > Florida

Hey Lil Girl

Going From An Unwanted Girl To An Unstoppable Woman

byAnnette C. Cox (Author)

Annette C. Cox

My name is Annette Cecelia Cox, and my story did not begin in comfort, safety, or protection. My story began in shadows I did not choose, in childhood I had to survive, and in a world where love was often a stranger and pain knew my name before I even knew myself. I grew up in a home where there was chaos, where survival was a language, and where silence held more secrets than words ever could. I was just a little girl—small, tender-hearted, and searching for something soft to land on—when life taught me that not every adult is a protector and not every home is a sanctuary. My mother remarried a man who was a drug dealer, a drug user, a pimp, a gambler, a gangster, and a violent abuser. He beat her unrecognizably, tore through our lives with fists and fear, and stole pieces of my childhood I never got back. While my brother and I hid under the bed screaming for help that never came, I learned what it meant to freeze, to disappear inside myself, to become small enough to survive. Trauma shaped the early years of my life, carving deep wounds that I carried long into adulthood. And yet, even in those dark moments, something inside me refused to die—a whisper, a spark, a tiny voice saying, “Hey, Lil Girl… hold on.” As I grew older, the battle didn’t end, just changed shape.
I became a young mother fighting to protect my child from the world that once swallowed me. I worked jobs, faced poverty, endured neglect, and tried to rebuild myself with pieces that were never whole. I moved into my first apartment with pride, only to be handed burnt, smoke-damaged furniture as a reminder that some people expected me to settle for less. But something in me rose up—my backbone, my courage, my refusal to accept a life beneath my worth. I said “No.”
I said, “I am too good for this.”
And for the first time, I began choosing myself. My journey has not been linear. I have stumbled, fallen, made mistakes, and walked roads that were never part of my dreams. I wrestled with addictions, placed gospel music over the very moments I was struggling the most, and laughed through pain that should have broken me. I’ve been hurt, overlooked, misunderstood, and pushed aside. But through it all, God never let my hand go. Even when I didn’t know who I was, God whispered to me — “You are still Mine.” Every chapter of my life carries a lesson.
Every wound carries a story.
Every survival carries a purpose. Today, I stand not as the little girl who was forgotten, ignored, or unprotected. I stand as the woman who saved herself. A mother.
A survivor.
A storyteller.
A voice for the voiceless. I wrote 'Hey, Lil Girl' not to revisit the pain, but to reclaim it. To show that healing is possible. To tell the little girl inside me — and every little girl who has ever been silenced — that survival is not the end of the story. Freedom, healing, and identity live on the other side of truth. I am Annette Cecelia Cox.
These are the pieces of the life I lived.
This is the childhood I survived.
This is the woman I saved. And if my story reaches the heart of even one person who feels forgotten, then everything I endured has a purpose far greater than the pain.

By Annette Cecelia Cox — Autobiography

I never asked for the darkness that raised me. But it found me anyway.

If you’re holding this book, I need you to understand something before you open it: nothing in these pages is softened, polished, or made pretty for the world to swallow. I lived a childhood where most people wouldn’t survive, and for years, I carried the little girl inside me like a ghost I couldn’t put to rest. She whispered. She cried. She begged me not to forget her.

So, I didn’t.

This book is her voice… and my truth.

These chapters are the rooms I once hid in, the secrets that lived under my skin, the screams nobody came to answer. I learned early that love could wound, that silence could suffocate, and that some of the people who should have protected me were the ones I needed protection from.

But I also learned how to rise.

You will walk with me through the shadows I grew up in — and then you will watch me drag myself into the light. Not because someone saved me, but because I finally saved myself.

If you choose to turn this page, don’t expect comfort.

Expect truth.

Expect pain.

Expect a little girl who refused to die and a woman who refused to disappear. This is not just my story.

It is my survival.

It is my becoming.

And once you meet the girl I was…

You will never forget her.

Hey Lil Girl (Going From An Unwanted Girl To An Unstoppable Woman)

Annette C. Cox

Florida Author's

Hey Lil Girl
Going From An Unwanted Girl To An Unstoppable Woman

$ 24.00