Mind Body Mama: This I Believe

In January, the phenomenal Lee Sinclair made her first demand upon the twelve feminist self defense experts she’s calling her national Comet Group.

I’m a little star-struck to even be counted among this group, which includes Nadia Telsey (who founded the school where I was first trained as a self defense instructor), Ellen Snortland (the writer/actor/activist/writing coach whose name I drop as frequently as I can) and Shihan Linda “Ramzy” Ranson (an eighth degree black belt who has intimidated me since I first met her twenty years—and several degrees—ago.)

The Comets—whose name was inspired by Miss Maria Mitchell, the first American woman to discover a comet—are a group of advisors to Lee’s No Means No Worldwide project. As Lee says, “It gives me a good feeling to think of this group’s exchange of ideas as lights streaking across the sky from one woman to another.”

Lee boiled her first question down to this:

“What do you feel are the absolute essentials that a Self Defense class needs to provide for students? These may be strategies or beliefs or a philosophy upon which many other fundamental behaviors rely."

What an amazing opportunity this was for me to name my core beliefs about the work I’ve been doing and thinking about for the past two decades.

This is what I know:

• Self defense is everything you do to take care of yourself: mind, body, spirit. It is acting as if you have value. Self defense considers both short term and long term consequences of your actions in terms of what will be best for you.

• As the instructor, I am not the only expert in the room. Women practice self defense—take steps to protect themselves and their children—all the time. Women are the best experts about what strategies and techniques will work to reduce or respond to violence in their own lives. In my classes we always learn from one another.

• Self defense is about increasing women’s choices. There is no “right answer” in self defense, no silver bullet technique that will work in all situations. No two women will respond to a given situation with the same choice.

• Self defense is a right and not a privilege. Everyone has the right to autonomy of his/her own body.

• It is easy to hurt another person’s body. The techniques we teach work. You can learn them. You can use them if you need them.

• It is never your fault if someone chooses to attack you. If someone makes the choice to hurt you, they are responsible for that choice. You might have compassion for your attacker; you might even understand what compelled him to make that choice. You can take steps to keep yourself safer and learn self defense techniques. But taking responsibility for your own safety is not the same as taking responsibility for having been attacked. It is always the attacker’s responsibility for having made that bad choice.

• It is my deepest hope that my students will never have to use physical techniques to defend themselves. These principles guide my understanding of physical self defense:

o Do the least amount of harm necessary to neutralize the situation.
o Understand that any physical engagement includes a risk of harm to the defender.
o Reserve the most damaging techniques for the most dangerous situations.
o Select techniques that will do the least amount of harm to your own body while striking vulnerable targets on the attacker’s body.

• Like many others in our movement, I use the Five Fingers of Self Defense as a pneumonic for the steps of avoidance/de-escalation/response:

1. Use your mind and breathe.
2. Use your voice.
3. Create distance.
4. Fight back if you have to and with appropriate force.
5. Tell someone you trust.

Self Defense Snap Shot: One Year Anniversary of Violence, Unsilenced

I’m not bringing you a self defense snapshot today. Instead, I’m bringing you a whole album. I invite you to visit the inspiring work of Maggie at Violence Unsilenced.

Violence, Unsilenced is a community blog featuring personal stories of domestic violence and sexual assault. Each post is a brave and unique story of courage and survival. It is sometimes hard to hear these stories. But it always feels like a priviledge.

Violence, Unsilenced is an example of the very best things that technology can bring us. It is a holy space among the noise of the internet. A space of truth. A space of courage. A space of compassion and the power of connection.

Maggie says, “Whether it’s domestic violence or sexual assault/abuse, perpetrators control their victims by relying on silence and shame. We can break the silence, thereby eradicating that fear and shame one voice at a time.”

As anti-violence educators, we teach the Five Fingers of Self Defense:

1. Use your mind and breathe.
2. Use your voice.
3. Create distance.
4. Fight back.
5. Tell someone you trust.

Violence, Unsilenced is a triumph of Self Defense Finger #5. In the past year over 100 people have spoken out on Maggie’s award-winning blog. Thousands have posted comments of support, becoming the trusted someones.

In the two decades that I’ve been studying and teaching self defense, I’ve heard countless stories. People have an instinct to survive and to tell their stories. I’ve had neighbors tell me over the fence and shopkeepers over the counter, students tell me in classes and colleagues tell me in the cafeteria, how violence has impacted their lives. How someone tried to hurt them and they fought back: with their minds, with their voices, with their bodies.

I am always honored and humbled when survivors tell me their truth. As I am honored and humbled to bear witness to Maggie and all those who have spoken out in her forum.

Last night at the dojo we stood in a circle throwing palm-heel strikes and yelling “NO!” In that circle was at least one woman who had never done that basic self defense exercise: strike, yell. In that circle were one girl, one young women, two teachers, three mamas.

Women on a cold night getting stronger, yelling into the dark.

I thought, “I have been standing in this circle for 22 years.”

I thought, “There is nothing more important to me than these women, growing stronger.”

I thought, “Why isn’t this fight over yet?”

Maggie: I wish for us a world where there is no need for what we do. A world where women and children and men are safe, and no one needs to fight back or listen to one another’s stories. Because the violence is over and there are no more stories to tell.

But as we move from now to then, I wish you the continued strength of your huge heart. I see in your smile how you draw strength from the triumph of the survivors around you, as I draw inspiration from my brave, bold, powerful students. I wish for your movement to grow even greater and the voices of survival you’ve assembled to grow even louder. From your work I learn again how one person can make a profound difference in the lives of countless others. You are one of my heroes.

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.

mind body mama: Late to the Party

I used to be an overachiever. I used to be ahead of the curve, anticipate the obstacles, and wield an air-tight plan complete with contingencies. As much as I didn’t want to admit it last night when Janet Superhero cracked on the acronym, “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance” was a common by-word of my upbringing. I come by it naturally; I can’t help feeling behind if I am not ahead.

But there are other proverbs available by which to live one’s life. One of Ellen Snortland’s comes to mind: “If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.” And motherhood has mellowed me. As a mother, so much happens outside of what you’ve planned that planning seems beyond the point.

Plus, as has been noted, I really, really needed a vacation.

All this to say: I did not keep my (self imposed) deadline of posting last week. And I did not come up with a pithy way to wrap up 2009. But, serendipitously, my procrastination provided me with inspiration.

Some might think it better called “cheating.” But here’s another proverb for you: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

Bloggers smarter than I—like Lesbian Dad and Jen at Momalom—used their New Year’s post to round up their favorite posts of 2009. What a brilliant idea! And to think, if I had posted on time I would not have had a chance to steal imitate flatter it.

Instead of a monthly 2009 round up, I’m pulling together my favorite posts on a favorite subject. So if you’re late to the mindbodymama party you can catch up on what’s going on around here.

Raising a Strong Voiced Girl

Ellen Snortland says,

“One of the things that makes you an expert in your field of ‘how to’ is being able to discern that which is absent and then making it visible in an understandable, accessible way.”

This is, above all, what I am trying to do when I write about the intersection of self defense practice and parenting. Even though when I say those words out loud in the same sentence—“self defense and parenting”—as I did at a dinner party of Life Coach Jillian’s last year, people’s eyes glaze over and roll back in their heads and they get very quiet and tense.

What do they think I mean? Teaching my child how to mace her classmates on the playground? Using jujitsu to throw her clingy little body off me when I need some space? Practicing our blood curdling screams together? They’re probably thinking Stranger-Danger and that we spend our evenings studying the online sex offenders’ registry.

None of these are really terrible ideas—except maybe the mace. And the fact that kids are more often assaulted by people that they know than by true “strangers.” And the phrase Stranger Danger is hackneyed, over used, inflammatory, and ineffective.

None of that really matters, though, because it’s not what I’m doing.

This is what I write about: How I—and BirthPie, and Party Pam, and Life Coach Jillian and Foxy and all the black belt and color belt and car-pool mamas at The School of Love—parent our children so they can develop and strengthen the skills they need to protect themselves in this world.

The skills we teach are best summarized by the Five Fingers of Self Defense:

• Use your mind and breathe.
• Use your voice.
• Create distance.
• Fight back if you have to.
• Tell someone you trust.

We teach these skills the way we teach our kids any other deeply held values and spiritual practices: We let them see us practice. We teach by example. We talk about what we believe. We seize on teaching moments.

Here are some of my reflections on the intersection of self defense and parenting:

Mama Rage—Why we have to stand up for our kids, and why it is so hard.

Raising A Strong Voiced Girl, How To—A primer for the parent who wants to raise a girl who knows that she’s worth defending.

Hidden Hurt—What’s missing when parents ask their kids to change, “so they won’t get hurt.”

Get Your Self Defense On—My thoughts on how a violent episode played out in the media, and how my family turned a playground threat into a teachable moment.

Germ Warfare—Life with a girl who knows how to say “NO!”

Raising a Strong Voiced Girl—The essay that started it all, online at the sadly defunct http://www.mamazine.com/.

mind body mama: Holding You Up

Small's facility with language is such that she rarely makes those adorable kid mistakes with usage. When she does, she usually corrects herself quickly. But one we've managed to hold onto as a family is the phrase "hold me up" where you might normally hear the colloquialism "tide me over."

As in, "Since dinner's going to be a little late, I'll have an apple to hold me up."

A perfect storm of power failure, family tragedy, and holiday traffic conspired to keep me from the blog this weekend. While I'm working on a post to convey the sadness and silliness of our Thanksgiving, I offer you this essay to hold you up. It's a companion to my post of a few weeks back, Nothing Lucky About It.

Not Unlucky Neither

So we’re clear on the concept that luck is not what gets most women through an attack situation.

More like grit, determination, survival instinct, fighting skills, strategy and courage.

But what about how they found themselves in those situations to begin with? Absent the ever popular victim blaming—she shouldn’t have been there/worn that/ fill in the blank—is it just bad luck?

“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I say no. I say that when we ascribe the cause of an attack to bad luck we miss a crucial piece of accountability. In that place, at that time, somebody chose to attack her.

It’s bad luck to walk down the hall and stumble over your own shoelace. It’s someone else’s crappy, mean-spirited, effed-up choice if he sticks his foot out and trips you.

I am not a researcher, not a social worker, not an expert in the psychology of violent perpetrators. I know it could be argued that some attackers are not fully in their right minds. Perhaps some are actually unable to make a better choice than to assault someone.

And I do understand that those who witness or experience violence are considered more likely to become perpetrators themselves.

But if you think about the statistics on violence, such as these that I borrowed from Erin Weed:

• For every 1,000 persons age 12 or older, there occurs: 1 rape or sexual assault, 1 assault with injury, 3 robberies. (US Department of Justice, 2005)

• Up to 47% of women report that their first sexual intercourse was forced. (WHO 2002)

and these that I borrowed from The National Coaliton Against Domestic Violence:

• An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year (CDC 2003).

• One in 6 women and 1 in 33 men have experienced an attempted or completed rape (US Department of Justice, 1998).

you very rapidly come to the conclusion that there are an awful lot of attackers out there.

And I have to think that some of them are people who who could do better.

Men who could refrain from hitting their intimate partners.

Men who could recognize that inability to explictly refuse sexual contact— due to inebriation, for example— is not the same as actually granting consent.

Men who could take responsibility for their own anger and not visit it upon their families.

Men who could refuse the culture’s definition of masculinity as inherently violent.

Men who could refuse the culture’s definition of the female body as their object.

Men who could take control of themselves—instead of the women around them.

My National Women’s Martial Arts Federation colleague Deborah Schipper asks, “What’s the difference between going somewhere and getting raped and going to the same place and not getting raped?”

“It’s the RAPIST in the room!” is her answer.

It’s natural to ponder the trials that come at us in this life, to wonder how our lives are fated or directed. But I’m giving credit where credit is due. It’s not lucky when a woman fights back successfully, it’s a triumphant of spirit. And it’s not unlucky when an asshole assaults, it’s a criminal choice.

mind body mama: Nothing Lucky About It

A few years ago I taught the Arthritis Foundation’s exercise program at my town’s Senior Center. My students in that cold basement room were ladies in their seventies and eighties. When I let slip that I also taught self defense classes they were riveted. One student was nearly bursting to tell me something.

I can’t remember the details, but I still see the urgency on her face as she told her story of survival. It was something that happened during the war, something that involved a long walk to get a treat of fresh peaches during that time of rationing and patriotic deprivation. The assault was unexpected and her response was equally swift and surprising. Did she rip off his eyeglasses or does my memory confuse her own thick lenses with her attacker?

What I know is that she fought back and lived to tell the tale.

But this survivor did not just tell me how she met an attack with courage and pluck and self determination. She also told me the story she’s been telling herself about that incident for sixty years.

“I was lucky,” she said.

I have been practicing and teaching self defense for twenty-one years. I can’t count the number of self defense stories I have heard. Women tell me their stories in self defense class, as expected. But they also tell me in karate class, in fitness class and over the backyard fence. They tell me in the supermarket and they tell me over lunch. They tell me between classes at karate camp and at the community college.

All too often they sum up the story the same way. “I was lucky,” they say.

There is nothing “lucky” about turning around in the moment just before someone grabs you from behind. There’s nothing “lucky” about telling someone to STOP and having them listen. There is nothing “lucky” about jumping up, running away, yelling before a menacing group can set upon you. There is nothing “lucky” about grabbing something close at hand and using it as a weapon. There is nothing “lucky” about crying out to a passerby for help and receiving it. There is nothing “lucky” about blocking your head during a brutal beating and avoiding permanent brain damage. There’s nothing “lucky” about learning a batterer’s cues so well that you can navigate his dark evil moods and keep yourself and your kids alive. There is nothing “lucky” about hitting out with your arms and legs and elbows even if you’ve never fought before and making contact with soft spots on the attacker’s body. There’s nothing “lucky” about strategically yielding to a demand—for property or for sexual contact—in order to protect your life or buy some time until you can make your next move.

In the self defense movement we are often frustrated by the way success stories get reported. Erin Weed documented one such case on her blog earlier this year: a woman was running when a man tried to attack her. She yelled and fought back and he ran away. The headline: “Woman Jogger Attacked in Broad Daylight.”

But our sexist socialization is glaringly obvious in women’s collective willingness to downplay the headlines we give our own stories.

We are socialized to believe that women can’t fight, to believe that we can’t possibly be successful against a male attacker, to believe that must wait to be saved because we don’t have what it takes to save ourselves.

“I was lucky,” we say. Instead of saying, “That motherfucker tried to rape me and I fought back with everything I had. I hurt him and he gave up.”

Or: “I told him to stop coming on to me and he stopped. He never did it again.”

Or: “I knew something bad was about to jump off and I got out of there. I ran faster and yelled louder than I ever thought I could.”

Or: “I had a feeling that all he wanted was money. So I gave him my wallet and he left. I was right.”

When you hear a woman telling a self defense success story—especially if that woman is you—please correct her gently if she tells you she was “lucky.”

“Luck’s got nothing to do with it,” I tell them. “You trusted your instincts. You were brave. You valued yourself. You were strong. You used your mind, you made good choices. You were fierce. You are a survivor.”

Mind Body Mama: Hidden Hurt

On Wednesday, the New York Times parenting blog Motherlode ran a question from a parent concerned about how she should handle her five year old son’s desire to wear a tutu for Halloween. After describing her son’s preference for “pink, and sparkles and bows,” the concerned mama wrote:

But now he is in kindergarten and he wants to be a ballerina this year. I think it’s time to have him put away the tutu and be more like the other boys. My husband says that we can’t change him, and while I know my question probably sounds like I want to change him, or that I am embarrassed by him, I really mean it when I say that’s not my reason. Instead, I am worried about him getting hurt. Eventually other kids will notice and the teasing is inevitable. And one day someone will fight him over this. If I can protect him from that by explaining that this isn’t the way boys dress, then shouldn’t I? If should, then when do I start?

Although I’ve positioned this blog as a writing vehicle, I submit the photo above as evidence of our family’s position on children and gender socialization. Consider it an example of “a picture is worth a thousand words.” If you're unable to see the photo for any reason, it is a six year old Small in a suit and tie playing with a collection of Disney princess Barbies. (The process by which my feminist soul reached an uncertain detente with the Disney princesses is fodder for its own post.)

Early in my blogging career I made my peace with the fact that I would not ever be the blogger who could bang out a timely response to important issues. This is unfortunate, because I often rant about the news that enters my consciousness (usually via NPR), and poor, beleaguered Sweetiebabyhoneylicious would very much appreciate my entertaining a wider audience with my strenuous opinions. I am not the multi-tasking modern mama, however. We’re committed to the slow lane and I do one thing at one time: serve my clients, take my kid to school, chop vegetables. It usually doesn’t fit my lifestyle to stop everything and post my analysis of the day’s news.

Fortunately, Misty at Shakesville was on-the-spot and posted a brilliant feminist response to the original Motherlode post within a few hours.

I witnessed the discussions on both blogs throughout the day on Wednesday when I was home with a sick Small and was heartened to see lots of posts in support of this boy. I weighed in at Motherlode (and later made a similar comment at Shakesville), saying, in part:

I am a mama of a gifted child, a lesbian, and a self defense instructor. I think all of these identities contribute to my belief that our most important role as parents is to give our children the competencies they need to succeed as their true selves–not to mold them into people who are apt to have an easier time in life.

If your child is likely to get picked on for revealing his true self, he needs a range of strategies to deal with that harassment. Hiding his preferences is one tool to have in the tool kit–as a gay person, I’ve certainly used it myself. But it’s not the only tool. Having a strong voice to stand up to bullying, knowing who his allies are, knowing that there are others like him in the world and developing his inner resilience are all strategies he may need to call upon.

A theme emerged among some of the commenters that could be summarized as: “The parents should let the kid dress how he wants, but they should warn him that he might get picked on.” We discussed the article at supper Wednesday night and Small offered a nuanced version of this opinion, something along the lines of: “The parents should let him wear what he wants and they should help him.”

I’ve been pondering this concern—of the mama who posed the question, who I believe to be lovingly committed to her son’s well being, and of the supportive commenters—as I witnessed another conversation, this one on the professional list-serve of the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation Certified Women’s Self Defense Instructors. The topic there was “what works in women’s self defense, and how do we know?” (I’ve got a lot to say on that and hope to post about it soon.) But the discussion brought to mind some bad old “conventional” (aka “sexist”) wisdom regarding women who fight back.

The myth goes like this: A woman shouldn’t fight back because that will only make her attacker angrier and she’ll get hurt worse.

As one of my NWMAF colleagues pointed out, this old husband’s tale has been repeatedly discredited by research. She referenced Pauline Bart and Patricia O’Brien’s book Stopping Rape: Successful Survival Strategies and research by academicians Sarah Ullman and Jocelyn Hollander that demonstrate that self defense works.*

The connection between these two circumstances, in my mind, is this: there is a hidden hurt to both people—the little “pink” boy, and the woman who is being assaulted— that is not being acknowledged.

People who easily conform to cultural gender expectations can have trouble recognizing the psychological cost of being closeted. They are thinking, “If he just dresses as a fireman for Halloween no one will laugh at him or beat him up. He won’t get hurt. He’ll be safer.” These folks are well meaning—I really believe they are. But are they really that far from those who would say, “I don’t mind gays, but why do they have to be so obvious?”

We don't mind these people, but why do they have to be so bigotted?

There’s a huge cost to not expressing who you really are—just ask any gay or transgendered person. The cost is enormous and, to many of us, unbearable. I don’t know if this kid is going to be some flavor of queer when he grows up, but I do know that asking him to hide a piece of his soul has a cost. Just because it would be easy for his mama not to wear a suit and tie and his papa not to wear “pink, and sparkles, and bows” doesn’t mean it’s easy for him. If it was easy and natural for him to walk away from that stuff, he would. He’s drawn to it for a reason that can’t yet be known. If this truth about his being is squashed or shamed away, it will hurt him.

Similarly, I think that men who advise women not to fight back (and the women who accept and repeat this pat advice) are not acknowledging the impact of rape—not to mention the myriad other ways women can be “hurt” in assault that might not result in obvious physical injury.

Here are some relevant assumptions I unpack from the recommendation that women remain passive in an assault situation:

• Sexual violence isn’t “real” violence. Only bruises, broken bones, etc. count as injury.

• The only lasting damage that can come from an assault is physical. Women are unharmed by verbal/emotional abuse.

• Women do not have agency in the world. They are subject to whatever happens to them. This powerlessness is synonymous with their gender and carries no negative effect.

I think about the world through a self-defense lens. Therefore I think of the tool kits we each need to have to deal with the crap that life will throw at us. Passivity, yielding, and hiding are not a loser’s game. They are crucial survival skills that have served and continue to serve many of us who would be victimized—women; gay, lesbian, transgendered, and other queer folk; people of color; religious minorities. I’ll keep “passing” and keeping my mouth shut in my bag of tricks; there might come a moment when those tactics save my skin. And while I hope I never have to make the choice to submit to a sexual assault in order to stay alive, I honor every person who has made this decision and lived to see another day. This kind of bravery and commitment to self is a triumph of the human spirit.

But vital as they may be, these are not the only tools available to us. Those who seek to be our allies do us a great disservice when they expect us to be satisfied with them.

My tool kit’s full of resources—like the family, teachers and friends who could help ballerina boy feel accepted and loved. I’ve got a strong voice like the one he’ll need to tell bullies to back off. He might need to yell sometimes; plenty of women have stopped assaults with a loud shout and I do believe that my brain-piercing kiai saved my life and a friend’s one night in Prospect Park. I know lots of ways to hurt another person’s body—it’s not all that hard—and if I need to, I’ll do it.

And I’ll keep working for justice and equality for all of us. As many commenters pointed out, the parents of this "pink" boy have a great opportunity to teach their son that “different” need not mean “less than:” an early lesson in acceptance and advocacy that will serve him—and the world.

In the absence of a world that is safe for all of us this are the tools we each can carry. And, sadly, must.

The Five Fingers of Self Defense

THINK: Use your mind and breathe.
YELL: Use your voice.
RUN: Create distance between yourself and danger.
FIGHT: Fight back if you have to and with appropriate force.
TELL: Tell someone you trust, and work for peace and justice.

*Edited 10/31 to provide thorough attribution: I posted this before receiving permission from my colleague Martha Thompson to quote her statement in its entirety:

...I think the important message from Pauline Bart and Patricia O'Brien Stopping Rape: Successful Survival Strategies has been confirmed by follow-up research by Sarah Ullman, Jocelyn Hollander, and others: if attacked, respond immediately, yell, and use multiple strategies. In other words, the specific techniques are most likely less important than dealing with the situation immediately, using one's voice, and using the tools one has until the attack stops.

Martha is the director of Impact Chicago and a NWMAF Certified Women's Self Defense Instructor.

Mind Body Mama: More Teaching and Practice

This is an essay I wrote over the summer and never posted. I think it illustrates one of the ways that the teaching of self defense requires the practice of self defense. We start every class with a meditation, a chance to practice Self Defense Finger Number One: Use your mind and breathe. We talk about how breathing and thinking helps us exercise choices and de-escalate conflicts.

This is probably the hardest work of self defense; it’s so much harder than hurting another person in body or spirit. Over and over I tell my girls: “It’s not ANGER=DAMAGE, it’s DANGER=DAMAGE.” That means: the more danger you’re in—if you’re facing an imminent threat of being killed or sexually assaulted; if you have few options in terms of getting away or attracting assistance—the more damage you may need to inflict to get out of the situation.

But being really, really pissed off? That doesn’t justify any damage, in and of itself. Anger is just a feeling—not right, not wrong, and not requiring any specific action.

As a mama, I get to practice calming down and getting centered any time my sweet girl throws a nutty and rides my last nerve. Fortunately those times are fairly few and far between. But as a self defense teacher for pregnant and parenting teens who would rather be anywhere than in my class?

I get to practice in every single session.

Here’s one such tale:

Kiki’s been riding my last nerve since the very first time she slunk into our self defense class, all 5’ 10” of her, bulky with 8 ½ months of pregnancy, cutting her eyes and not acknowledging me. I’d call “Circle Up!” at the start of class and she’d glance out from under her eyelids and announce flatly, “I’m not sittin’ on the floor.” She refused to say her name in opening circle. “It’s nice to see you,” I’d say, smiling past clenched teeth before shifting my attention to the girl beside her. “Next.”

Kiki made an issue of everything. When she did speak she was confrontational and negative. She wouldn’t listen to the instructions, then she’d demand to be advanced out of the beginner group. She’d do something once and whine, “We did that already” when I suggested more practice. She’d refuse to work with a specific group of students and then smile falsely and say, “I’m fine right here,” when I asked if she had a conflict with someone that I needed to know about. In one class something I said irritated her and she tried to stare me down.

The part of me that is a double black belt with twenty-one years of self defense experience thought, “Wow, this girl is so scared and overwhelmed.” It made me feel sad and tender for her.

The part of me that is still an angry, scared, overwhelmed seventeen year old myself sucked her teeth and thought, “Bitch, I could crush you with my little finger. Don’t even start with me.”

Needless to say, managing my own responses, Kiki’s behavior, and a class full of other students is exhausting. When she came into class this week with her attitude unchanged I felt my heart hardening to her—I actually felt something go hard in my chest. I felt my umbridge grow larger than my intention to be her teacher. I knew something had to change but I didn’t have the first clue of what it would be.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love as a choice. So during opening meditation I wondered, “How could this be different if I just love her?” The hard spot in my chest didn’t move. It was a big class, with two new beginners, three girls who have been around for a while and are excited about learning new material, and a whole bunch in the middle. There were two separate solely Spanish speaking groups, which probably meant there was bad blood between some girls that I couldn’t suss out since I don’t speak Spanish. Both of the brand new girls were white and solely English speaking, which is pretty unusual for this class and can lead to complex group dynamics.

In other words: the class was a five ring circus and it was my job to get all the plates into the air and keep them spinning, in multiple languages, cultures, learning styles, and experience levels while steering clear of inter-pupil conflicts.

Oh, yeah: and keeping myself from getting triggered by Kiki’s open hostility.

Things went well for a while. We’ve been working sinawalis, stick fighting combinations from the Filipino martial art Modern Arnis. The “advanced” group started piecing together the exercise they had learned the previous week while the others practiced a simpler combination. The two newcomers worked with my co-teacher on the most basic strikes.

Then I noticed Kiki working with Natasha, one of the most advanced students, on the hardest combination. Kiki had no business jumping in on the advanced work but I decided not to make an issue of it. But I did notice that Natasha was not able to hold onto the pattern with a less experienced partner. A quick fix for this is often to pull out the stronger student and work with her myself, to solidify her knowledge, and then put her back with her partner. This gives the stronger student an opportunity for leadership and allows me to spread myself out throughout the class. It might be more egalitarian to teach both in the pair but the chaos doesn’t allow me this luxury.

It is true that I affect a pretty brusque tone in this class. That’s partially my style as a teacher, something I’m known for in the karate school. Brusque is how I can be heard over a room full of clanging sticks and chattering teenagers. It’s also how I stay tough in a room full of tough girls. I flood them with warmth as they come in the door, whether or not they look at me. “Hola, Tina, your hair looks beautiful today.” “Hey, Wanda, where have you been? I missed you last week.” “Ashley, is your baby feeling better?” But when we get onto the floor I’m all business.

So brusque is how I ordered, “Natasha—with me,” when I approached them working together. And at that, something in Kiki exploded. If there was a video definition of “storming off in a huff,” it would show Kiki stomping away. I got Natasha up to speed, and then went to check on the damage.

I found Kiki working with Tiffani, one of the new girls. “It seems like I really hurt your feelings when I started working with Natasha,” I said. (I didn’t know I was going to say that. As I walked over, it seemed equally likely that I would say, “What the hell is wrong with you now?”)

“Yeah, that was just rude!” she spat.

I don’t have words to express my amazement at this young woman’s chutzpah. And yet: I did not say “Payback is a bitch,” or “I give as good as I get, babycakes.” I did not even roll my eyes.

I said: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. That’s just my style of teaching. I did not mean to offend you.”

Kiki still wouldn’t look at me, but she visibly relaxed. I saw her face soften and the tension slide out of her strong arms. I left them to work, and when I came back a few minutes later she said in a perfectly normal tone of voice, “She doesn’t want to work with me because of my belly.” So I gave Tiffani a little speech about how we let our partners determine when something feels uncomfortable or unsafe.

“I know Kiki is a strong woman who can stand up for herself,” I said, touching Kiki’s arm lightly. “You show respect for her by trusting her to take care of herself.”

There was no more drama before the end of class. Then, just as the girls were about to leave, Kiki made a joke about her belly and broke into a big grin. She got the whole room laughing.

Who knew this girl needed me to apologize for the very behavior she’s been displaying? Who knew that she needed me to show my respect for her not just in warmth and welcome, but in willingness to put myself in the one-down position? Who knows if her attitude will change? Does she think she got over on me somehow? Did the other girls witness me practicing self defense, staying calm and centered? Or do they think I got punked?

Kiki’s got a great aptitude for the work, as it happens, and I told her so on her way out. It would be wonderful if she’d keep playing with us. But I’m not counting on anything. I’m just going to keep meditating on love.

Mind Body Mama: Mama Rage

When my sister and I were growing up we spent our summer vacations at the town beach on Long Island Sound. Every day, my mother and her friends established an encampment that stretched from the bath houses to the shore. My grandparents were part of this clan, and my god-mother and her sons, who were so close in age to us as to nearly be our twins. Several teachers joined us, and a guitar teacher whose grandson visited for weeks each year. On a good day, there could be as many as fifteen or twenty sun-worshippers lined up for their devotionals.

The season-long party was structured by byzantine, organically erupting, staunchly enforced tradition. Each family had their established spot in the lineup; most sat facing the sun but my grandfather and his brother faced the crowd on tall chairs beneath a giant umbrella. There were locker alliances in which two or more families rented musty plywood closets for their chairs and blankets and toys. We had some celebrated infrequent guests, like my dad and Auntie Ollie, who were mocked for their unwillingness to commit every day to the discipline of sitting in the sand. There were constellation families who sat close to our orbit but never succumbed to the dark pull of its gravity. We played with those kids sometimes, but they were not part of our tribe.

The children obeyed communal rules about swimming or venturing out of sight. The snack bar was off limits but the coolers were stocked with sandwiches and dripping nectarines and sour green grapes. We never joined the “bad kids” who dammed the showers to create extensive canal systems, and we rarely rode the tire swings in the playground, but we could usually find a grown up to take us out on the jetties where we cut our feet on the coral and searched the crevices for crabs. The teachers in the crowd played a word game called “Jotto!” with golf pencils and red-printed forms on half-sheet pads. One of them left promptly at four to be home in time for cocktails. We were a superstitious crowd: talk of rain or the coming cold of autumn was strictly forbidden.

Among the crowd was another girl my age and her parents: her American business man dad and her exotic French stay at home mother. Her mother was playful and funny and not like the other moms. She wore swimsuits like ours, without skirts. She ran on the beach with legs toned by daily tennis and taught us to sing Frere Jacques. Once when I cried she gathered me onto her lap and crooned in French until my tears dried in amazement and wonder. She broke out then in crazy laughter, remembering that I was not her own bilingual girl. I was comforted and delighted.

What I remember of the dad is that he did push ups in the sand after he swam, his thick stubby body moving like a piston on powerful arms. And also, how we dreaded the days that he joined us at the beach because we knew that he would tease and torment my sister without mercy.

What did he do? He called her a nickname that made her squirm with discomfort. She hated it with every ounce of her little being. In my mind, I can see her face and body crumpling, her fists closing with useless rage. He spoke to her and she shrank; right in front of us she was diminished by his disregard.

When I think of this man now, thirty years later, I want to hit him. I want to get very close to his face and use my self defense voice to tell him what I think of a grown man who makes fun of a little girl. I want to tell him that the thought of his laughter at her impotent tears makes me physically sick and I wish I could puke on him to give myself some relief. I want to tell him that I will never sit with him on the beach again, that I will move my family away from him and will not allow him to speak to us if he cannot demonstrate respect and restraint.

But he is dead. And my sister is not a little girl, she is a grown up woman with a very strong voice and a baby of her own. And I am not her mother. I am mother to a different little girl.

But I wonder about all those women who witnessed this man’s behavior and did not stop it. The P.E. teacher who taught me to swim, who had a gravelly voice and an imperious manner, who raised her son as a widow and was thought not to suffer fools. Did she tell him to shut up when she saw my sister turned inside-out with discomfort? My own mother and god mother and grandmother: did they not see a man riding rough-shod over a girl’s “No”? Were they not horrified by the implicit lesson: You might say “No,” but if he is bigger, or stronger, or older, or more persistent, he doesn’t have to listen. He can do whatever he wants and you can’t stop him.

Was it fear of loss or conflict—or the loss implicit in conflict—that kept them from putting an end to it? In the white knight fantasy I see my mother packing her bags and storming off. But then what? What of the clan and the annual lobster bake? What of my sister and me crying that we haven’t had our last swim of the day, that we are mid-game with our friends and have yet to empty our grandfather’s cooler of cold, sweet melon and salami sandwiches? How do the summer days stretch out once she has she ruptured the calm veneer of tradition and decorum with her mama rage?

We imagine ourselves fearless in defense of our children. But the sprint down the beach to pluck the errant toddler—tipped forward now, his face submerged, his unbalanced body strangely unmoving—is not the only moment of heroism. Neither the yank on the arm that pulls her out of traffic or even the car seat ever perfectly buckled.

It is the trust in your gut feeling and your willingness to set and maintain boundaries. It is the sentence that Birth Pie taught me, the one she swears I taught her: “That doesn’t work for our family.” It is the loud, clear “No.” It is teaching by example that the bully is wrong. It is the expectation that grown ups will be safe and appropriate with our children or they will be cut off—no matter who they might be. It is the tolerance for loss and conflict that must accompany the ability to stand up for oneself.

It is much, much harder work than it seems.

Mind Body Mama: Unity Strengthens, Diversity Transforms

I did just re-enter the world from a feminist idyll of sorts.

It was not a purely separatist feminist idyll, but it was six days of being surrounded by powerful, committed and delightful women and girls in my residence, conference sessions, meals, and workouts.

Unfortunately, it was not the kind of feminist idyll where no one was triggered by her memories of violence, objectification or harassment. But it was a place where, when a woman was triggered, she was able to ask for help from someone who had the skills to gently reground her in the present moment.

It was not a post-racial idyll where no one need attend to issues of race and racism. But it was a setting where teachers were interested in the challenge of teaching across race, language and culture and discussed concrete strategies for doing so effectively.

It wasn’t a conference where instructors and volunteers would not benefit from diversity training. It was a conference where top notch diversity training was provided and participants talked about what they learned all weekend.

It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where the founding mothers establish a succession and power sharing plan from the organization’s inception. (If you know of a women’s organization like this, please let me know—I want to join RIGHT NOW!) But it was a week within which the elders came to the next generation of leaders in direct and indirect ways and said, “We are getting tired, and you are enormously skilled. We have raised you well and it is time for you to help us lead this thing.” And we made plans to do so.

It wasn’t the kind of a feminist idyll where we felt confident that the larger world shared our vision and concerns. But it was a feminist, anti-racist gathering on the campus of Oberlin College, renowned for its early admission of women and African Americans, in a city where pride in its abolitionist and civil rights heritage runs deep.

It wasn't the kind of paradise where no one ever said or did anything racist. But it was the kind of place where at least one white woman took responsibility for saying something ignorant and hurtful by making a public apology to the entire gathering.

It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where a young girl was never struck still by anxiety, panic and grief. But it was a place where, at the moment that happened, the girl was partnered with a mama whose own daughter struggles with anxiety every day. And the girl was passed seamlessly, within seconds, to a skilled practitioner of Trauma First Aid.

It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where all the white women know that anti-racism is their cause too. But it was a place where, when the word went out through the grassroots that “the women of color want more white allies,” a few more of us got over our racist selves and showed up at the Anti-Racism Council meeting.

It wasn’t a feminist paradise far-reaching enough to carry us through the airport without Homeland Security catching up one of our group--a middle aged African American woman with a few too many (beautiful, wooden, handcrafted) martial arts weapons in her carry-on. But it might have had some kind of halo effect. Because the young, white, male officer who held her at security for a long, long time finally spoke in a tone of genuine respect and regret. “You have several choices: You can surrender them. I’m sorry I can’t offer to mail them for you; they are too large for the mailers. You can give them to someone who is not flying today. Or you can go back and check your bags, and we will escort you through the lines.”

It wasn’t a feminist idyll strong enough from keeping our acquaintance from getting stressed out through the long delay and intense scrutiny. But it was a community strong enough to stand with her. So that she finally emerged literally into the arms of black women and white women standing together—some friends and some merely colleagues—bearing witness, keeping an eye out for trouble, and practicing relaxed readiness.

Suffice it to say, it was hard to re-enter the world to hear Judge Sonia Sotomayor being grilled in tones condescension by a bunch of white male yahoos whose names I perhaps should recall, but I prefer not to.

It was a delight to hear Sotomayor’s own voice—gravelly and measured, with the distinctive tones of Puerto Rico and the Bronx. But her staid and steady answers to the most obnoxious of questions left me restless and frustrated. I’m glad NPR’s Ari Shapiro explained it to me: Sotomayor’s strategy for these hearings is to be as boring as possible. If that’s what it takes to get a brilliant, ambitious Nuyorican Latina onto the Supreme Court, I can handle snoozing through her confirmation hearings.

But if Sotomayor cannot say it herself, I wish that an analyst somewhere—someone with the same gravitas and power in her voice— would put things this baldly:

“On the subject of Sotomayor’s remarks about the unique perspective and strengths of a ‘wise, Latina’ jurist:

The fiction that one’s identity—including such things as race, class, gender, religion, national origin, ability status, and sexual preference—do not influence the sum total of one’s experience, and thus come to bear on one’s perspective and judgment, is an illusion which is not only more easily maintained by those in positions of power, but which directly and concretely benefits those who have traditionally controlled access to political power: namely white, male, upper class, apparently heterosexual, Christian North Americans.

You may choose to believe that your identities as white, upper class, apparently heterosexual, Christian North American men do not influence your ability to have compassion, empathy and deep understanding of the broadest diversity of Americans influenced by your law making and justice. I say “choose,” because I do not believe that good judgment and self awareness accrue disproportionately to any specific race or gender. I believe that you have the capacity to recognize your own biases, to look into your own experience and understand how it may limit your comprehension of the law and its effects. I believe you have the capacity, and I believe that some of you choose not to exercise it.

So you may choose to believe that you are “neutral.” But those of us who you define as other: women, people of color, immigrants, non-Christians—know better. We know that our intellects are forged within our experiences, and we know that yours are as well.

We know that your judgments are exercised through the prism of your privilege and that your choice to deny this is a handicap that limits your ability to fairly and effectively govern.

Our legal system is a triumph of civilization. Our pledge as jurists to be as impartial as possible, to treat all who come before us fairly, and to maintain systems that ensure equity, are a hallmark of the unity of our great nation.

But our citizenry is not—and has never been—a homogeneous monolith. And the extent to which our leadership in the judicial, legislative and executive branches can reflect the diverse experiences of our people, the stronger, more effective, more compassionate and more equitable our government will be.

Unity strengthens. Diversity transforms.”

Mind Body Mama: Raising a Strong Voiced Girl, How To

Last week, I ventured forth from the School of Love to our National Women’s Martial Arts Federation for a week of teaching and learning. The theme of our camp this year was Unity Strengthens, Diversity Transforms, and it came true for me during the two day self defense instructors’ conference and subsequent four day martial arts camp. Over the next weeks I’ll be unpacking what I learned and discovered from working in this diverse and intensely skilled community around issues of women’s empowerment, violence prevention, anti-racism, and support for survivors of violence. Not to mention the jolt of inspiration and energy I received from sweating and laughing with my friends from near and far. My clients and friends at home are saying things like, “I’ve never seen you so happy.”

In a perfect world, I would have left you this column to peruse in my absence. But since I channeled most of my pre-travel anxiety into trying to determine how many pairs of panties I needed to bring (two per day—Birth Pie knew the answer all along, but she didn’t tell me until she got to Ohio) and fighting with my computer, I was not able to build an effective alliance with technology and schedule the post to appear on the right day. Therefore, I bring it to you now.

I’ve been in a self-defense state of mind lately.

A good portion is the inspiration I’m drawing from the work of my colleagues in the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation (NWMAF) and beyond. This year Janet Superhero travelled to South Africa on an arts exchange spreading her message of healing and violence prevention through words and movement; Lee Sinclair and Carol Middleton taught women in refugee camps in Kenya that they’re worth defending; Joanne Factor created more safety in Seattle; and Erin Weed taught girls to fight back on campuses all over the country.

The other portion is the warm reception Raising a Strong Voiced Girl received from colleagues and other mamas. It validates my intuition that this parenting work is a vital element of our self defense movement. But I don’t see many mamas writing to the experience of modeling and teaching self protection skills to girl (or boy) children. It’s hard work—one of the hardest pieces of parenting for me, and indivisible from the other really hard stuff, like walking a spiritual path and teaching about death and god and ethics.

At the School of Love and among the NWMAF-certified self defense instructors we understand self defense to be holistic, complex and far-reaching. Yehudit Sidikman says it well: “Women's self defense is not just about punching and kicking. It's about knowing that you are worth defending."

So just how do you raise a girl who knows she’s worth defending? I’ve started cataloging some of the principles Sweetiebabyhoneyliciuos and I use around our house. It’s a partial list, I’m sure, but it’s a snapshot of our philosophy in action.

We covenant with our kid that:

All feelings are OK. We swear by the teachings of Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish’s How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. When I first read it I almost cried remembering myself as a little girl who faced exasperation, mockery, and dismissal in response to her feelings—and this from really great and committed parents who were unfortunately illiterate in the language of emotion. We follow Faber and Mazlish’s advice to name feelings (“Sounds like you feel angry/sad/disappointed/etc.”) and then address them accordingly. Because despite the fact that all feelings are ok,

Feelings can’t make you do things. We always have more choices than we think. Small learned that we can feel sad and still have fun when a beloved friend died but life went on. She learned that she could feel anxious but calm herself down with yoga when the cat got badly injured and her mamas had to take care of him in a hurry. And I hope she learned that her parents could be out of their minds with frustration and anger, but she could still be safe and loved, when she cut her hair (and lied about it!) three times in one week. A mama at the end of her rope said in a strangled voice, “Go to your room” before yelling or worse ensued. Because we believe:

Anger is not a justification for hurting yourself or others. I work with a lot of teens who say they “had to” physically assault someone because she or he “made me so mad.” It’s hard for them to understand that you can be mad and still have volition over your actions. I don’t work in law enforcement but I imagine that prisons are full of young people learning that distinction in the harshest possible way. It’s hard for me to understand that anger doesn’t justify action, and I’ve been practicing mindfulness and anti-violence for two decades. Raising Small to be a peaceful warrior is my greatest inspiration for continuing my spiritual work around anger.

Everyone has things they are “good at” and things they are “working on.” Small is working on speaking up in class; Mama is working on calming down when she’s angry. There’s no shame in not being good at something. We are all perfect exactly the way we are and we are always striving to be better. This is how we live the Unitarian Universalist affirmation of the dignity and worth of all people.

Deep breaths are a great way to calm down. Small was able to handle blood draws early on by practicing deep breaths. She’s gotten more resistant to my advice of late—part of the contrarian nature of six, I suppose—but I’m thrilled to see her bow her little head to practice seiza mokuso (seated meditation) at the dojo. Connection to breath is a centerpiece of spiritual practice and the first step of practical self defense. If you’re breathing you’re thinking, and if you’re thinking you’re exploring your choices of how to respond.

Your body is your own. Small toilet trained late which gave us an opportunity to talk about who was allowed to touch her under her diaper—a short list—and why—to clean her up. She knows now that all the parts covered by her bathing suit are private. But moreover, she knows her whole body is her own; she has her say about all manner of physical contact and she can expect the grown-ups to listen. If a grown-up outside our immediate family swings her into a surprise embrace or plants a kiss on her silky cheek she hears a mama asking right away, “Is that OK with you, Small?” It’s my hope that will translate into an internal voice that helps her check in with herself; I hope she knows much sooner than I did to ask, “Is this OK with me?”

Call your body parts by their names. It’s my understanding that predators are put off by children who know the anatomical names of their body parts. Even if that weren’t true I’d believe that women should know the proper name for their genitals. Small has wielded the word “vulva” since she was very tiny.

Surprises are OK, secrets are not. It’s fine to have surprises but Small knows that she can tell us anything. We don’t have secrets from each other. We’ve role-played a situation in which another kid had a big problem and told Small but asked her to keep it a secret. Without prompting or hesitation Small responded, “I’m sorry, but you need help and I’m going to tell somebody.” That’s the friend I’d want to have if I was dealing with abuse, harassment, or bullying.

We expect you to stand up for yourself. In kindergarten, Small struggled with unwanted attention from a bossy but well-meaning special needs student who could not fathom that Small does not want to play her game at recess. As heartbreaking as it was to see my kid challenged in this way, I’m secretly glad that she had this benign opportunity to practice what we call Strong Voice. Every day she had to tell this girl that she didn’t want to play her game, she wants to play “Dog Pound” instead.

We expect you to stand up for others. At the School of Love and the NWMAF we subscribe to a feminist empowerment model of self defense which understands a complex framework of violence. I’ll talk more about this in coming columns, but our bottom line is a shared belief that racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ablism, and other systemic inequalities conspire to put people at different risk for violence dependent upon their privilege and position in society.

But even that explanation is not simple enough for a six year old. So we talk about the Unitarian principles that “Each person is important,” and “Build a fair and peaceful world,” and we role-play interrupting racism. “I’m not going to play with her, she has brown skin.” I said in the role of a playground bully. “People with brown skin are just as good as people with our color skin, and we’re not going away until you play with us,” said Small. The role of white ally is one that I did not even know existed until I was in my twenties. That my daughter might have this skill from childhood gives me incredible hope for our future.

What about you, gentle readers and lurkers? What competencies do you value for your girls’ and boys’ safety? How do you nurture and support those skills?

Sermon: Love Will Guide Us

Sermon delivered Sunday, June 28, 2009 at Our House of Worship.

This morning, I want to talk about love: the love we choose, and the love that chooses us.

A few weeks ago, I found myself trying to explain the California court decision upholding Proposition 8—that was the ballot initiative that outlawed marriage between people of the same gender—to my six year old.

“In CA they decided that girl-girl and boy-boy marriages were OK, and then they changed the rule and decided that they weren’t OK,” I explained. Then I asked the question I’ve been waiting for someone to ask the Prop 8 proponants.

“Do you think that it stops two people from loving each other, just because they’re not allowed to get married?”

“Mama.” Alice has this way of calling my name when she’s about to say something really important. “Mama. No one can stop two people from loving each other but themselves.”

With more reflection she added, “It would probably make them sad. But it wouldn’t make them stop loving each other.”

It is not my usual response to laugh at those who hold an opposing political opinion to me. And yet: the proponants of Proposition 8 make me laugh. I think they are foolish. I think they are emperors with no clothes. I think they already defeated.

It is not that they don’t have, in the words of Adrienne Rich, “forces ranged against us.” It is not a small thing to deny people equal rights under the law. Couples who cannot marry lose security for their families. They lose access to one another under the most painful circumstances—one cannot be at her dying lover’s bedside; another faces deportation and forced separation from her American partner and children. These tragedies can and do occur.

But the most common penalty assessed to loving couples who cannot marry is an economic penalty. We pay more for health insurance when we can’t be covered by our lovers’ policies. We pay more in federal taxes. We are less secure in our retirements because we cannot access our partners’ social security benefits, and face inheritance tax on what would be considered jointly held property for straight couples.

Annoying, costly, inconvenient, disrespectful, undignified, dishonoring—not having equal marriage rights is all of those things. So why do my opponants make me laugh? Because that’s all they’ve got. They’ve got economic discrimination on their side, and on our side? We’ve got LOVE.

I know that many Prop 8 folks have deep religious beliefs that tell them that homosexuality is a sinful abomination. I feel so lucky not to have this belief—not to ever have had this belief. And I feel lucky to live in a country where we have a diversity of beliefs on this and other subjects. But what strikes me so strange about the opponants of gay marriage is that they don’t work harder for my salvation. I don’t experience them trying to convince me of my sin or bring me closer to their idea of God. Instead, they are tirelessly working to institutionalize discrimination against me.

There’s something so fundamentally un-American about this strategy: if you can’t beat them, make them pay more taxes. It’s as if somewhere they know what Alice knows—“No one can stop two people from loving each other but themselves.” They’ve given up on trying to win us over to their belief system, and are settling for costing us a lot of cash, anxiety and irritation.

As if love weren’t worth a little money and effort. As if love could “subordinate itself to cause or consequence.”

Did you see the video put out by those who are working to repeal Proposition 8? It features the Tom Petty song “Won’t Back Down,” which Leah so beautifully rendered for us as our prelude. The video not seem to portray the losing side of anything. The clip shows people from all over the country holding signs that represent their state and their support for equal marriage rights: “Standing with you in Alaska.” “Nevada’s on your side.” “Massachusetts won’t back down.” Nearly everyone is smiling in a way that just beams love and hope and compassion and faith— faith that we can hold one another through this struggle. The love in these faces is so tangible, it feels physically nourishing and sustaining to me. It says to me, “We are down, but we’re not out. We’re not even that far down, because we love each other, and we are not alone.”

My faith tradition honors my marriage, independent of law. The novelist Marilynne Robinson put these words into the voice of her character the Reverend John Ames,

"I might seem to be comparing something great and holy with a minor and ordinary thing, that is, love of God with mortal love. But I just don’t see them as separate things at all. If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love."

I am not a Deist, but I am incredibly moved by this vision. I think it holds inspiration whether one believes in a literal or metaphorical divine love. It is powerful—empowering, in fact—to consider that the love of our lives is larger than our own experience, that what we feel for one another is but a small reflection of the greater love which is available to us all.

I want to turn now to the love that we choose. It might seem risky, as a lesbian, to talk about choosing love. It is, after all, one of the arguments used by the forces that “range against us” –that we choose a sinful lifestyle and should not receive sanction in it. But I am not talking about who we choose to love. As Adrienne Rich says, “The accidents happen…they happen in our lives like car crashes, books that change us, neighborhoods we move into and come to love.”

I’m talking instead about how we love who we love. A few years ago I picked up a book that shook my world. It was not the kind of book I would ordinarily pick up and I’m embarrased now to tell you the title: Why Talking Is Not Enough: Eight Loving Actions that Will Transform Your Marriage. It was hot pink. You almost want to hide your face walking out of the library with a book like that.

But it was a classic case of “do not judge a book by its cover.” Because in this book author Susan Page, a Protestant minister—lays out her vision and advice for Spiritual Partnership and Loving Action within couples.

Page’s work is complex and I recommend that you take a look at it. At the risk of grossly oversimplifying her paradigm, I’m going to share my take-away—an insight that for me was as simple as it was profound. When I have conflict with my partner, I have a choice: I can stand up for myself—and I must—if the conflict violates some make-or-break principle of mine. But short of this, I have a second choice: I can act as if loving my partner is more important than the outcome of the conflict.

Page suggests Loving Actions—eight of them!—to support this challenge. I wish I could tell you that I’ve committed all eight to memory and employ them regularly to great success, and we are now living happily ever after. But Liz would rat me out in a minute. I do not employ Loving Actions successfully in even fifty percent of our conflicts; I’d be surprised if I remember as much as ten percent of the time.

But each time I do remember to take a breath and think—“What would this be like if I acted like I love her?”—I get to experience a moment of conflict transformed into a moment of love. It almost doesn’t matter if Liz notices a difference—maybe we fight less, maybe she wins more, maybe I seem like a cream-puff. But instead of a mundane argument, I get to touch what Robinson’s John Ames calls “a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality.” If that’s not dross into gold, I don’t know what is.

HYMN: There is More Love Somewhere


Now I want to tell you about some girls I know. And choose to love.

I wish that you could meet these girls, but you will have to take my word that they are beautiful—as beautiful as their names: Mercedes, Sujeil, Leslie, LaQuanda, LaTigre, Diana, Karacelys, MaryLinda, Rashe, Chiara, Anushka, Ashley, Maracelys, Eveline, Christina, Betsy, Wanda, Shayla.

Can you see them? Can you see a room full of gorgeous young women, tossing their hair, laughing, teasing each other, checking themselves in a wall full of mirrors?

I have to stop before the picture becomes too romantic, wipe the vaseline off the lens. Because these are the worst kind of teenager there is: these are teenagers being forced to do something they don’t want to do.

Let me back up a moment. For seven years, I have had the honor of teaching self defense to young mothers enrolled at The CARE Center, a GED program in Holyoke. For most of the girls—at least at first—participation in my class is not entirely of their own free will. And they are not shy to express their reluctance to be there.

The preacher John Ames was told by his father:

"When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it."

There is a wisdom conventional to the martial arts that mirrors this story, that tells us that each student teaches the teacher. So I try to see the challenge of teaching resistant teenagers— frequently offering insulting or antagonizing behavior—as an opportunity to rise to my best self. I do not believe in “the Lord” or “saving grace,” but I do believe that I am “free to act by [my] own lights,” that I can choose my response to what my students offer me.

A few weeks ago I got an especially rough group. Four greeted me and entered our training space; the rest hung back in the vestibule, cutting their flat eyes at me. I know the room is odd to them, with its bare wood floor and prohibition against street shoes, its broken down sofa, Chinese gong and double altar. I can’t imagine how much courage it takes for them to trust a strange, short-haired, blunt-spoken, middle-aged white woman and enter a weird and unfamiliar place. I know that much of their experience—much of their safety—is dependent upon saving face, not ever showing fear or ignorance or inability.

But how do you learn something new if you have to act tough all the time? How can you be open to learning things if you have to act like you have it all together every second? I know these things, but I still lose patience when ten girls decide to sit in the dark, in the coat closet, losing credit for the afternoon’s school attendance, instead of coming into my class. So I take a deep breath and turn to the students who will participate.

On the day in question, these four girls dug deep to follow my lesson. Through it all, the rumble of negativity carried from the hall into our sacred training space. I moved our circle further from the door and called group huddles to give feedback. I noticed a few bright eyes that strayed from the closet floor to peek around the door frame and see what we were up to, but I didn’t pay them any mind. We practiced strikes and blocks, wrist grabs and releases. The four girls practiced, asked questions, and learned. They resisted the siren song of malaise and defeat and refusal rising up from the antechamber. And with twenty minutes before the end of class, I made a choice.

I taught one final technique—hammer fist—and we worked it over and over to striking pads until I felt confident in each woman’s power and technique. Then I settled my four students against the bank of windows. I cleared the brochures and flyers from the card table and placed it square in the middle of the floor. And I brusquely climbed over the bodies in the closet to pull out my last four breaking boards from the supply shelf.

Both rooms got quiet when I set up the first board on the sturdy wooden supports. There was wild disbelief—“We’re gonna break those?” and surging confidence—“We’re gonna break those!”

As I approached the group to give my final instructions, I heard the one girl I knew telling the others, “She’s OK, I don’t know why they don’t just try it—if you do the class, she treats you right.” I turned to bow to her, one of the most heartfelt bows of my twenty-one years of practice.

I get so much wrong in this class, and fall short so often of what I want to offer. But I honor these women, I try to give my best possible teaching and when everything else fails, I just try to love them. Here in my favorite, most sacred space with these poor, scared, angry, victimized, violent, brave, belligerent, smart, silly, vilified young women—Puerto Rican teen moms, high school drop-outs, welfare recipients—I see the brokenness of the world. I see how small I am against it, and how hard it is to correct injustice or even just reach out across our differences. How hard it is to trust and know one another. I offer the teaching that I know best, in the hopes that the next time a man puts his hand around one of these girl’s throats, she’ll know how to kick his knees and break the choke hold. In hopes that the next time a girl with a razor in her hair starts talking trash to one of these young women, my student will have the presence of mind to walk away instead of stirring it up and getting slashed.

I asked my four students to love each other that day. I didn’t say that out loud; there is no way I’d get away with sappy nonsense like that. Whatever else their lives have handed them, they are teenagers first and foremost—caustic, mocking, irreverent. But I asked them to support each other as they stood before the group to break their boards and they did it. They stood up for one another.

“You can do it!” someone called. “Just picture your baby-daddy!”

And they did.

There are times when I wonder, what if it’s my student with the razor? Or, will she ever stop going back to the man who chokes her? Will she ever expect more of this world than violence against her or at her own hand? There are times when they are so angry, or so scared, or so tired of being powerless in their own lives, that their behavior soars past antagonistic and insulting, and it boils my blood.

So I take another deep breath. And in that breath, I just try to love them, these beautiful girl moms with the odds stacked against them. I think: what would this be like if I loved them? It feels radical sometimes—I’m not supposed to love these girls—I’m not supposed to even know girls like this, I’m supposed to stay on the white, middle class side of the line and let them live out their circumstances on the other side of the mountain, down in the ‘hood, out of sight. And other times it doesn’t feel radical at all—it just feels horribly inadequate, a finger in the dyke against an ocean of racism and sexism and classism, imperialism and injustice and oppression.

I did not know that I would love these girls when I took the call seven years ago asking if I wanted to teach self defense to teen moms who were “high school drop outs,” “drug- and gang-affiliated.” I did not know that I would love them as I discovered that those descriptors didn’t really mean anything, that my students are girls I will get to know one by one by one. I didn’t know that love would serve me as I struggled with my useless, stupid English in a room full of solely Spanish-speaking students. I did not know that I would love them the first time a student gave me the finger in class, or walked away to check her makeup in the middle of an exercise, loudly dismissed me as ignorant and irrelevent, or chose to sit on the sofa in liui of class, reading letters from her man in jail.

I knew that I would hear heartbreaking stories of violence against them—I hear these stories every time I teach self defense—but I did not know that it would be my heart breaking open to them. I knew that two decades of training would give me a lot to offer towards reducing their risk of violence, and I knew that it would it would not be enough. But I did not know that love would be my most important teaching strategy.

Because if I keep loving them, then I’ll keep trying.

Publications: Run to the Hills

Subtitle: Self protection strategies for women who run.

This publication is both virtual and actual. (Click on the blog title to get to the virtual version.) The Springfield Republican's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun--The Magazine is a free women's supplement that appears in kiosks and waiting rooms throughout our valley.

This is my very first newsprint by-line!

Mind Body Mama: Teaching, Doing

I learned a long time ago that sometimes teaching self defense requires doing self defense. As when I hear the voices of my teen class carrying all the way down the hall: abrasive, strident, posturing. I can tell how many of them there are, and how their collective mood is today: aggravated by a crummy lunch; laughing over a bawdy article; broodingly morose about having to come to class. I can tell these things even when I don’t understand the words they say, because they are most often speaking in Spanish and my Spanish, after teaching and learning with them for seven years, is limited to the names of a few body parts and the ability to understand their names, how many kids they have and the babies’ ages, only if they speak very slowly and clearly. I am at a deficit with my useless, stupid English, and I am outnumbered, and their dark moods are huge and volatile and impossible to predict.

So I take a deep breath. The first of the Five Fingers of Self Defense, the way we teach it: Use your mind and breathe. When I started teaching this class I used my mind the way I use it in every other class: I created curricula and lesson plans. But when week after week I found that the students I’d taught basics to the previous class were absent for this week’s intermediate lesson—one at GED testing, another on maternity leave, a third at a court date, a fourth expelled from school—I realized that planning was not the sensible way to go. So now I practice relaxed readiness and I use my mind to notice what the girls are bringing me that I can use to teach today.

A few weeks ago I got a sullen group of stragglers with a handful of bright sparks thrown in the mix. Of more than a dozen young women, I had only met one before. Four students had the courage to enter the dojo. The rest hung back in the vestibule, cutting their flat eyes at me, refusing to come in. I know the training room is odd to them, with its bare wood floor and prohibition against street shoes, its broken down sofa, Chinese gong and double altar. I can’t imagine how much courage it takes for them to leave the comfort of what they know, to trust a strange, short-haired, blunt-spoken white woman and enter a weird and unfamiliar place. I know that much of their experience—much of their safety—is dependent upon saving face, not ever showing fear or ignorance or inability. But how do you learn something new if you have to act tough all the time? How can you be open to learning things if you have to act like you have it all together every second? I know these things, but I still lose patience when ten girls decide to sit in the dark, in the coat closet, losing credit for the afternoon’s school attendance, instead of coming into my class. So I take another deep breath and turn to the students who are with me.

On the day in question, these four girls dug deep to follow my lesson. I taught the Five Fingers. I taught the Four Danger/Damage Targets. I taught strikes to the nose and kicks to the knees. Through it all, the rumble of negativity carried from the hall into our sacred training space. I moved our circle further from the door way and called group huddles to give feedback. I noticed a few bright eyes that strayed from the closet floor to peek around the door frame and see what we were up to, but I didn’t pay them any mind. We practiced wrist grabs and releases. The four girls practiced, asked questions, and learned. They resisted the siren song of malaise and defeat and refusal rising up from the antechamber. And with twenty minutes before the end of class, I made a choice.

I taught one final technique—hammer fist—and we worked it over and over to striking pads until I felt confident in each woman’s power and technique. Then I settled my four students against the bank of windows where the black belt board sits for tests. I cleared the brochures and flyers from the card table and placed it square in the middle of the training floor. And I brusquely climbed over the bodies in the closet to pull out my last four breaking boards from the supply shelf.

Both rooms got quiet when I set up the first board on the sturdy wooden supports Dusty built at my request years ago. There was wild disbelief—“We’re gonna break those?” and surging confidence—“We’re gonna break those!”

As I approached the group to give my final instructions, I heard the one girl I knew telling the others, “She’s OK, I don’t know why they don’t just try it—if you do the class, she treats you right.” I turned to bow to her, one of the most heartfelt bows of my twenty-one years of practice.

I get so much wrong in this class, and fall short so often of what I want to offer. But I honor them, I try to give my best possible teaching and when everything else fails, I just try to love them. Here in my favorite, most sacred space with these poor, scared, angry, victimized, violent, brave, belligerent, smart, silly, vilified young women—Puerto Rican teen moms, high school drop-outs, welfare recipients—I see the brokenness of the world. I see how small I am against it, and how hard it is to correct injustice or even just reach out across our differences. How hard it is to trust and know one another. I offer the teaching that I know best, in the hopes that the next time a man puts his hand around one of these girl’s throats, she’ll know how to kick his knees and break the choke hold. In hopes that the next time a girl with a razor in her hair starts talking trash to one of these young women, my student will have the presence of mind to walk away instead of stirring it up and getting slashed.

But there are those times when I wonder, is it my student with the razor in her hair? Or, will she ever stop going back to the man who chokes her? Will she ever expect more of this world than violence against her or at her own hand? So I take another deep breath. And in that breath, I just try to love them, these beautiful girl moms with the odds stacked against them. It feels radical sometimes—I’m not supposed to love these girls—hell, I’m not supposed to even know girls like this, I’m supposed to stay on the white, middle class side of the line and let them live out their circumstances on the other side of the mountain, down in the 'hood, out of sight. And other times it feels it feels horribly inadequate, a finger in the dyke against an ocean of racism and sexism and classism, imperialism and injustice and oppression. But if I keep loving them, I’ll keep trying.

I asked my four students to love each other that day. I didn’t say that out loud; no way I’d get away with sappy crap like that. Whatever else their lives have handed them, they are teenagers first and foremost—caustic, mocking, irreverent. But I asked them to support each other as they stood before the group to break their boards and they did it. They stood up for one another.

“You can do it!” someone called. “Just picture your baby-daddy!”

The first three girls were high spirited and boisterous, rushing to take their turns and high-fiving their successes. But the last girl was quieter, had trouble looking me in the eye.

“What do you need so you can do this?” I asked her.

“I don’t like people watching me,” she said.

Until then, I’d ignored the peanut gallery that had gathered at the door. The ten women who had crowded the coat closet were now even more cramped trying to squeeze into the narrow doorway.

“Clear this space,” I announced, barring the inner door, pointing them out into the public hallway. They were aghast, incredulous. “Out!” I barked. I closed the front door in their stunned faces.

The quiet girl broke her board. We cheered.

I pulled out markers so they could sign and date their boards.

“Miss, miss, sign my board,” they asked. I signed in the clumsy marker, “Lynne Marie Sensei.”

We stood for our closing circle. I tried to find words to thank them for showing up for themselves, for taking a risk and trying something new. I begged them to come back to class again. I never know when I meet a girl if I’ll ever see her again.

“Oh, you’ll be seeing me again,” said the smallest, feistiest of the bunch. I hoped with all my heart it would be true.

They gathered shoes and boards and coats and purses. They thanked me for class and joined their cranky classmates to walk back to the van. The space stood empty but pulsing with their energy.

I took a deep breath.

The Five Fingers of Self Defense

THINK: Use your mind and breath.
YELL: Use your voice.
RUN: Create distance between yourself and danger.
FIGHT: Fight back if you have to and with appropriate force.
TELL: Tell someone you trust, and work for peace and justice.

Mind Body Mama: Get Your Self Defense On

I’ve been thinking about instincts this week. And how mine are fundamentally altered by my twenty-one year practice of self defense.

It wasn’t long ago that I congratulated a sister martial artist on practicing “kick-ass self defense” when she stood up for herself in a professional situation. I don’t know her well enough to interpret her surprise at that nomenclature, but she did sound surprised. I fear she shares the misaprehension that it doesn’t count as self defense unless there’s some kind of physical beat-down, or at least a physical threat. I hear that a lot.

Self defense is what we do to take care of ourselves and the people we love. In the very best cases it’s what we do before or instead of getting hurt. Lots of times it’s what we do in the midst of being attacked—emotionally, spiritually, sexually or physically. And too often it’s what we have to do after we’ve been hurt: the long road of healing and taking action so that the same hurt doesn’t happen again to ourselves or others.

Twenty-one years studying martial arts and self defense in a feminist, social-justice, anti-racist and anti-violence context has changed me. I don’t think like normal people any more. That’s a good thing.

It’s more than having had the scales taken from my eyes about racism in this country and my own white skin priviledge. It’s not just that I knew there was sexism in the media coverage of our most recent presidential race before Sarah Palin helpfully pointed it out. It isn’t even my habit of noticing and planning for breaches of security. Or my knowledge that secrets and silence do not increase safety, but diminish it.

It’s not just my belief that the responsibility for an act of violence lies with one party: the perpetrator. A woman ought to be able to walk down the street butt-naked and blind-assed drunk and not be at risk for rape, although I might concede she’d have some issues to address if she was making those kinds of life choices. Cold, lost and pukey might be appropriate consequences; sexual victimization, never.

It’s all of these plus my sense that all conflict comes down to two choices, each a face of compassion. The first choice is to yield, to follow the Budo wisdom of power in softness. Or in more Western terms, to pick your battles and let some pass. The second choice is to set your boundaries. Sometimes it takes the lightest touch to set a boundary; sometimes it takes a sledgehammer. Sometimes it’s a word. Sometimes it’s a fist.

And instinct. If there’s anything that twenty-one years of practice teaches me it’s to trust my instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, it’s not right. No need to explain or justify, just act: leave, set a limit, ask for help. (To learn more about instinct in action, check out Gavin deBecker’s The Gift of Fear.)

And then there’s the pinko-commie belief that safety is everyone’s responsibility. That none of us is safe until all of us are safe. That means that sometimes we have to stick our necks out to help the next guy—or more likely, the next woman—be safer. We have to imagine a risk to someone else as if it actually affected us, as if we were actually part of an interdependent web of life. We have to be brave even when it’s hard or scary.

Today I read the update to the nursing home shooting in North Carolina that I’ve been waiting for since the story broke on Monday. When I first heard about the tragic death of elderly long-term care patients I thought of the facility in Connecticut where Grandma Dottie lived out her final days and Big Alice still resides. It’s always shocked me that anyone can breeze through the front door and wander the halls. Fragile, voiceless residents lay motionless in their beds, televisions blaring. How easy it would be to hurt any one of them, even without malice: to drop a cigarette next to an oxygen tank or to just bring in the ‘flu. And there’s no barrier at all to those with evil intent, no safety protocol. It’s a free-for all! I wouldn’t send my child to a school so lax in oversight; why do we allow our elders and disabled to be so vulnerable?

But the kind of malice that inspired the killing of eight people isn’t typically brought on by anger at an elderly relative. Which is why I felt a validation of my own instinct when I read today that the suspect’s estranged wife was an employee at the facility.

It broke my heart to hear who has apologized for the shooting. It wasn’t the man with the gun. It was the woman he was hunting.

She thinks what so many people think—that domestic violence is a private matter. That this rage, this malice and insanity of his should have been contained in the sphere of their domestic life. That she shouldn’t allow the shame and mess and danger of it to spill out and hurt other people. That it was her responsibility alone to face, even if it meant facing her own death.

But there’s another version of this story. This one says that there’s only one person responsible for this act of violence: the man with the gun. This version says that none of us are safe until all of us are safe. That it’s all of our responsibility to reduce the risk of violence in our world. This version is buoyed by statistics about the impact of domestic violence on business’ bottom line and the numbers of women affected by it .

Here’s the thing about an epidemic: it’s the very opposite of an individual problem. I know it’s the commie-pinko in me, but I gotta say: if thousands upon thousands of people are going through something—diabetes or domestic violence or foreclosure proceedings—maybe it’s not an individual moral failure. Or thousands and thousands of individual moral failures. Maybe there’s something deeply and profoundly and systemically wrong.

Like agribusiness and capitalism and patriarchy and the absence of gun control, for example. I’m just saying.

An episode of playground self-defense offered an opportunity to help Small listen to her instincts and step up to protect others this week. Yesterday Small and I were noodling around on the computer when she wrote this:

“I need help ceeping my friend Corey safe from Leo”

A lot of prodding led to this story: When Small and Corey run too close to Leo on the playground, he tells them, “Get away or I’ll kill you with a knife.”

Small said, “I think it’s a game because it’s fun.”

Then she said, “Corey is really scared.”

Then she said, “I’m not sure if it’s a game.”

Fortunately, we know Leo and his parents and we think he and they are pretty great. So we weren’t too worried about an impending playground massacre.

But the teaching moment was before us. My parenting instincts were clear:

· It was time to set a boundary: Threatening language is not OK.

· It was time to model what to do when we hear threatening language: We tell the grown ups.

· It was time to demand courage from my small, scared daughter. Silence will not protect us. We had to be brave and take fast action to help her friend.

Sweetiebabyhoneylicious called Leo’s parents who said they’d talk to him right away. Then they shared some laughs about his other recent antics, including public nudity. And we made plans for a play date. Nudity, threats and all, we like this family.

This morning Small and I talked to Miss Chris. Small was terrified; she hid her face against the fence while I finished telling the tale to her teacher. After school I got her back to the computer for another dialogue. I got permission to share our conversation here:

Small: I was scaird when Mama told Mrs Cris onLeo.

Mama: What were you scared of?

Small: I do not know. Can I plees get on my identady And play games?

Mama: Soon you can get on your identity and play games, yes. But first I would like you to think
about why you felt scared. It is my job to keep you safe. It is OK to feel scared, but I would like to know what you were scared of. Did you think something bad would happen?

Small: Yes.now can I?

Mama: Let’s keep talking on the computer for 15 minutes. (Sets timer.) What bad thing did you think would happen?

Small: I thot what Leo said was true.

Mama: Did you think he would kill you with a knife if you told the grown ups?

Small: Yes.

Mama: Oh, Small, that is sooooo scary! It must have felt very frightening for you.

Small: It did.

Mama: You were especially brave to tell when you felt so frightened.

What Leo said is called a “threat.” Sometimes when people make a “threat” it feels really scary and it seems like they will be more likely to do it if you tell someone. But actually, you will be safer if you tell the grown ups. Then the grown ups can do their job and take care of you.

These are the things your grown ups did to keep you safe:

· Leo’s parents made sure he did not have a knife. They checked to make sure he was just saying something that he didn’t mean. They told him not to say scary things any more.

· Miss Chris found out that she needs to keep an eye on Leo so he doesn’t say scary things and he doesn’t hurt his K-kid friends.

· All the grown ups figured out that it was just a game, not real.

· All the grown ups felt proud of you for being brave.

· Your parents gave you extra hugs for being scared.

Small: Can I have one now?

(BIG HUGS!)

Mama: How do you feel now?

Small: Better.

Mama: I’m glad.

Small: Are you done?

Mama: Do you mean, is this conversation done?

Small: Yes.

Mama: Two more questions:

1. Can I share this conversation with Miss Chris? It would help her be the best teacher she can be.
2. Can I share this conversation with other grown ups who might want to know how to help their kids be brave and safe?

Small: Yes. Yes.

Mama: Thanks, Small. Time for games now.