Self Defense Snap-Shot: On the Bridge

The self defense teacher grows accustomed to being asked, “Have you ever used your self defense?” Her answer: “I use it every day.” When the questioner is someone accustomed to practice—someone who prays or does yoga or employs affirmations or has already dipped a toe into the great river of martial arts—she may tilt her head curiously, already understanding how a philosophy and spiritual discipline can insinuate into every aspect of a person’s life. When the questioner is someone who doubts the instructor’s ability to kick some ass she’ll respond by rolling her eyes and sucking her teeth in impatience. “That’s not what I meant,” she might say petulantly.

The path between these two ways of understanding self defense occurs through stories It’s the only way I know to make the internal experience of self defense practice visible. The challenging student wants to hear how the teacher has kicked and punched and caused damage to another person’s body. But the every day work of self defense has nothing to do with kicking and punching and hurting. It is a silent and nearly invisible practice of breathing and centering oneself, listening to ones own deepest desires, facing fear, speaking up, and making ethical choices.

My colleague Sally Johnson Van Wright uses stories in an exercise she calls “What She Did Right.” It invites students to witness a woman or girl’s courage and self control and decision making skills as she practices self protection.

Today I’m introducing a new feature on the blog: Self Defense Snap-Shot. I’ll tell you some stories of how I’ve used my self defense practice in my every day life. I encourage you to follow along playing “What She Did Right”—looking for the moments where I employed choice and agency and relied on my self defense practice to guide me.

As you read these stories you may find yourself remembering your own Self Defense Snap-Shots—moments of assertiveness or trust in your own instincts or self calming. Please share your stories in the comments or on your own own blog with a link back here! Teachers love stories; self defense teachers love self defense stories.

It was early spring or late winter, one of those days when you can finally leave the house after being cooped up with a small child for so many stormy days. My daughter was two, maybe three, and I was pushing her in the stroller on the stretch of Cottage Street that washed out almost a century ago in the hundred-year-flood. I passed over the water where I’ve seen small boys fishing and once, a piano. From the little bridge I could see through the window over over the altar into my dojo, one small studio in the huge old factory building that dominates our town, the structure our firefighters call “The Big One.”

We were heading home, walking toward the traffic on the narrow, crumbling section of sidewalk. Up ahead I saw another mom pushing her own stroller. She was young and had two children much smaller than my girl. Two strollers won’t fit on the sidewalk at the midpoint of the old bridge. While she was still on the far side, before I had a chance to step off the bridge into the empty turning lane, the other mom steered her kids off the sidewalk.

That surprised me. It would have been safer for me to walk in the street. I was facing the traffic. My girl was much bigger than her babies.

As we passed, I said “Thank you.” I said it quietly. I don’t know if I smiled. I don’t know if I saw her eyes.

I know I said “Thank you.”

I was three paces past her when she turned and screamed, “You’re welcome, BITCH!”

I have heard self defense students say “I blacked out” to describe the explosion of rage across their brains that obliterates all other awareness.

I say, “I saw red.”

My neck snapped back and I saw her howling red face and her body moving away from me.

The heat and tightness in my chest was unbearable. It was like pain. The sudden tension in my jaw. My hands clenched. It was like being hit. It was worse than being hit. Everything went blank.

Like an animal, my body leapt to respond. A screeching, cursing, howl of a reply seared my throat and stalled behind my teeth. I could feel the spit flying from my mouth as I screamed back at her; I could feel her hair in my fist as I yanked it from her head and the tiny bones of her shoulders as I shoved her into the gravel.

My fuse—down to a stub after a long sleepless winter of mothering—was lit. I could hear the sizzle and smell the smoke.

But I couldn’t take my hands from the stroller. I couldn’t step away from my sweet burden on the street, on a bridge. The stroller formed a canopy around my girl and my body was between her and woman screaming at me. If I turned around, if I raised my familiar mama voice, the anger and danger would separate from the traffic noise and rain down poison on my girl. She had not noticed a stranger shrieking at me but she would notice me if I screamed or cried and she would be frightened.

“I said ‘thank you,’” I whispered, trying to catch the breath that clutched in my tight chest. “I said ‘thank you.’”

And I thought, “It feels bad to feel so bad.” It felt awful in every way to feel angry, frustrated, misunderstood, embarrassed, regretful. I could feel those emotions from my tight scalp to my clenched toes. I saw how the monster of rage could relieve the hot red stew of bad, bad feelings, how blacking out or losing it would get me out of this moment of feeling so awful.

But I knew that it was only a moment, and then maybe a few more moments, and that under the bad, bad feeling there was fatigue, and sadness, and eventually resolution. I could already feel the tiredness in my body as the adrenaline slipped away. I wanted to fall down on the ground and rest. I could see the gas station and the corner bar and the sidewalk on my street and I knew in only a few minutes I would be home and this moment of feeling so bad would be in the past.

I caught my breath, shaking. I never looked back. I took my girl home.