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?
Labels: karate, self-defense, underpants
