Belting Up

I received my new red belt the other day (since there's no way I'm getting the old one round my waist) and wore it for the first time tonight to class. It's a bit awkward since I'm so rusty and not being 18 anymore, but I'm working my way back. My body isn't what it once was, and there are some embarrassing things that happen post child-bearing that I now have to contend with that I didn't before.

It's weird being acknowledged as a red belt now, even though I earned it previously and have been assured that I have the skills there if unrefined. Now there's an expectation, and I have to work on my headspace. Seriously ... being in public is hard for me. Talking to people is hard for me, even ... especially people that I really really like. Which I think we have some amazing people at the school we attend, and they were a big factor in us choosing that school. It's just one more thing in a list of things that I have to work on, and in some ways it gets easier and harder at the same time.

I'm still working on my control in sparring. I keep wanting to do things that might be effective in a real fight (or possibly get me killed), but are not what we are working on. I find myself wanting to catch kicks and break legs, or throw people over my hip, which I came close to doing with Trenton tonight. Ah how grappling has changed my perception of martial arts, where my main goal was to get someone on the floor. That's not what we're doing though, and it's been so long since I did those locks. Trenton and I were joking that I fight "Wombat Style" since most forms are based off watching animals fight and using their styles. 

   

I freaked out a little the other night when I would tag one opponent and he wouldn't stop, which made me feel threatened and pulled out some interesting stuff, but it also rattled me. I did a stupid move and apparently sprained my thumb, which has made life more complicated. The thumb will heal quickly, even if I've had enough with resting it. The psyche takes more time to recover.

Apparently my subconscious was having a field day with the anxiety. Last night I had a dream where my instructor said that I was moving up to the next level, so he took me and the other higher belts to a balcony that looked over a 2 story drop. There was a pillar that stopped half way (a one story drop) up and we were supposed to do a back flip onto the top of the pillar, which the instructor demonstrated and expected me to do. I've done back flips off diving boards into pools or on trampolines (with limited success - the only exception being the spontaneous one mid fencing bout), but ... uh... and I woke up before I had to do the flip, but apparently I was going to try, do or die. 

I love Trenton's reaction of, "Don't do that", his usual response to things that are pretty much unavoidable, like my weird subconscious. Ah well, at least I don't have to wake up at 4am, run up a mountain, and then crawl back down on my hands and feet, like the Shaolin Monks. Maybe if I did, I could do a back flip onto a pillar though. I'll stick with getting back into the groove of gym + racquetball + Karate. The fever/sick I had last weekend knocked me down for a while, and I have to be careful it doesn't turn into an infection, which I think I'm fighting off because I've been dizzy and short of breath. If I don't rest, I WILL get sick again and not get well, but resting is maddening. Way too much experience with that and my crappy immune system. 

I've been sanitizing the house in hopes of warding off any more interruptions in the new schedule. Hopefully Monday it will be back to the gym for my 2 hours of cardio/weights/yoga and possibly racquetball. Going to have to get to watching the videos for Karate and practicing them on a regular basis, because even remembering things is harder than at 18. It's a challenge, but isn't everything that's worth fighting for? It is nice doing it with my whole family, even if it's weird fighting my husband... perhaps because I've seen him mad. I don't care if I've got a black belt and he's still a white belt, I would not want to get in a fight with him. Just trust me on this. He's a mostly a good guy... okay he's alright (Malcolm Reynolds Reference) ... but I would not want to be on his bad side.

Honesty is the Best ... way to get hurt ... but wouldn't trade it.

"In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a sacred white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, — even though it be covertly, and by snatches." ~ Herman Melville

Ever see that episode of Star Trek where Jean Luc Picard was tortured by being shown a number of lights and punished because he said what was there instead of what he was told to see. Welcome to the life of the abused.

This particular method of torture is called gaslighting, made famous thanks to an old black and white movie, where changing the gas lighting was a vehicle for convincing the victim that they were going crazy. Although I've experienced this directly from my ex-husband when he would laugh and lie about things, it's been something ingrained more post trauma than previous. It's a symptom of society that does not want to believe that bad things happen to good people, so someone must ultimately deserve it or is just trying to get attention.

From the time I was a kid, I've been hard wired honest and it's been a point of contention through out my life. Can you imagine the torture it is to tell the truth and constantly be told that you are lying, because I can all too well, to the point that even when I do tell the truth, I just expect people to not believe me.

When I was around 3 years old, they changed the time that Tom and Jerry came on, so when I told my brother what time it was on, and it was different, I burst into tears. My mom had a hard time figuring out that I thought that I had told a lie and that God was going to strike me down right then and there.  My brother had no such problems however, and when he made untrue claims and I brought him books with proof, he would just say, "that doesn't prove anything." When I would be sick, since my immune system has always been on the puny side and eventually attacked my thyroid, he would accuse me of faking, because that's what he did (The acting of projecting one's own intentions onto another is called projection). And I think that's a lot of where this stems from, because the people who have most often accused me of making things up for attention or lying, are often the same people who happen to do such things on a regular basis. Therefore it's less to do with me and more to do with them.

When I was 12 and molested on a church trip by a boy in my class, he called me a liar saying, "You wish" and getting his male counterparts in on the taunting. The same boy, later chased me out into the water and held me under till I stopped breathing and I had an out of body experience, because well, I drowned. I shouldn't be here. I woke up alone on top of the water, staring at the sun, and coughed the water out of my lungs.  When I started at a new high school where he already knew everyone, he became the popular football player, and I had a reputation for being a liar. After repressing the memory, I became very depressed, especially in association with school, and I did indeed cut my wrists, which of course made more people pile on that I was an attention whore, instead of someone who was post traumatic. Suicidal thoughts were more of a constant companion than so-called friends. Things at home had heated up with my brother in the full swing of hormone hell. My parents had their hands full with him, and the incident that caused my woe was forgotten to all including me who repressed it just to move on, till my mother mentioned it one day and I relived the entire event in one horrifying wash. Looking back now it's easy to see that I needed therapy, but the closest we had was family therapy with everyone and while we were all in a lot of pain, my father did most of the talking and thereby got most of the attention. I sat quietly and when they finally asked me, I went down the line with keen analysis of what was actually going on, much to the surprise of the counselors. Because there's one thing that people forget about the depressed. They are depressed not because they are clueless, but because they are perceptive. The problem is, convincing other people.

It was once said by a friend of mine's psychologist that depression and intelligence go hand in hand. Stupid people don't get depressed, because they don't perceive the connections or information that disconcert those intelligent enough to grasp what it is and where it's going. This inability to affect the things that they understand but cannot stop often frustrates intelligent people into a state of hopelessness. There's a reason that ignorance is bliss.

But that's only the start of the pain. For those that don't care about others and aren't sensitive or empathetic, it's easy to shrug off the onslaught that follows. But being sensitive and empathetic, my hardship had just begun. There's a deluge of people who don't want to think about things or become depressed themselves, so it's easier to attack the source or deny its validity.  I had many worries when I was pregnant and the majority of them were truly founded and came true, while the lies of others were no comfort or salve to my grasp of reality. During that time I was labeled crazy for having a very real concern for the impact on my life of having a child, devoid of the delusions of this being anything but a huge sacrifice. She was worthy of that sacrifice, but it didn't make my concerns any less valid or ultimately true, when I ended up in the hospital with preeclampsia and congestive heart failure after giving birth.

Most of this gas lighting was a byproduct of poor choices as a teen while I was still self destructing over another sexual attack. Not to mention some dates that went down right violent. I've had health issues and pains, most byproducts of anorexia, bulimia, and exercising myself into the ground. Although the pains were real, I was literally dying to be pretty so someone would love me, and while in pain, being told "you are faking" is a horrible assault to the psyche. When doctors were no help, I started taking better care of myself and things began to even out. Others used this as proof that I was only faking, instead of actually taking charge of my life and health, and letting some things go. It's a lot easier for some people to attribute nefarious past intentions than to accept that someone might have actually made a move in a positive direction. It disrupts their ability to see things in black and white or allow others to change, which is why 20 years later I still find this crap crop up.

As a result of this, and an incident being molested by a doctor in Macon... sorry you don't have to cup my breast and compare me to your Catholic ex while listening to my heartbeat... I've had several issues surrounding any form of medical treatment. In 1997 when I asked the doctor about my thyroid, she pretty much yelled at me for even asking. 2007 I had to have my thyroid removed because it had been damaged and my immune system attacked it. While pregnant I had symptoms consistent with preeclampsia such as crazy high blood pressure that were over looked until I ended up in the hospital for a month with congestive heart failure and double lung pneumonia. And just recently when my heart was wonky, they handed me my EKG which clearly said "abnormal ECG" and was just wrong to look at. Then they told me I was fine... Most of this is in some ways saying "you're faking" "You're lying" and "you just want attention". And what these undertones do, is basically the same as gaslighting. When I go to the doctor now, it's very rare for my blood pressure to be anywhere near normal, because it's like going into battle and expecting an attack, an attack I'm not prepared for or in any way armed to defend. When you're sick, you are vulnerable, and don't have alternative options to going to a doctor, which may or may not result in being treated like you're doing it for attention from people that you would rather avoid at all costs. 

The other drawback is that I have good hearing, and when doctors talk about you on the other side of the door, you hear it "Gotta go pretend to be someone's friend" was said when I told the first doctor about being raped after reading an article about how rape victims are at higher risk for certain health problems so you should tell them. So that went well... Another treated me like a statistic when he found out, and I had to answer all sorts of questions about my family. I suppose being treated like data is better than the more commonly treated like an attention whore, when I'm white-faced waiting, hearing people I don't know character assassinate me, or in clear violation of Hippa, always brushed off as me being the crazy one. And honestly, I'm not 100%, but who would be in my shoes? That's part of what gaslighting does, it breaks your reality to the point that you start to think, well am I telling the truth? You begin to feel like you're lying even when you know you're not. But you also feel like you have to defend yourself all the time. Ultimately it feels like a life under siege, and there's no one at your back. 

The thing is that people who know me, know I'm honest... to a fault at times. I can be down right blunt, and if I find out I was wrong, I usually come back to correct it. My poor swiss cheese brain that has a hard time remembering chunks of trauma, does not have the energy for such games.  But I find that those around me do, and turn it into those very games, while putting the blame on me.  

People who are close to me have learned that I tell it like it is, and I don't do well with others who don't. I've had friends who used to lie occasionally. Then after being around me long enough, they learned to love the open honesty, so much that they were unable to go back to lying afterwards. There was one overwhelming response to this change - suddenly people didn't like them very much anymore. Those who have been afraid to tell me the truth, found that telling me was so much better than the alternative. After a lifetime of crazy crap, I've heard it all, and am relatively hard to surprise. The problem is that I often combat with logic, and that's where people take issue. Even emotions are fairly logical and rational byproducts of certain things, even if the core of the emotions isn't always what the person thinks it is.

So here's the deal. Don't judge what you don't understand. It's easy to write people off into a certain category. It's harder to cope with the reality of a person, a full human being of flesh and fault, life and laughter, flaws and merits. But just because you don't get them, doesn't mean that what they are saying isn't true. You can't know what it feels like to be that person, having been through everything they've endured. All you can do is know yourself, and that gets extremely hard when people are constantly attacking your perceptions.

Part of the problem with domestic violence and emotional abuse is the silence. The victim is often bullied into silence and afraid to speak up. Society likes to enforce this subconsciously by insisting that you aren't being positive, or that you're being a gossip, or whatever else to the person who is already in a hard position taking an even harder stance to stand up and stand against something. After being terrified into silence by multiple abusers, I've decided "No More" and I simply tell it like it is. Sometimes this is disconcerting to the listener, but it makes it no less true. The byproduct is that it opens up others to talk about things that they have never talked to anyone else about before, because the way I can nonchalantly handle the information and empathize with the person speaking. It's one of the reasons that psychologists exist. This is healing, if anything else, to know that you are not alone.

The other message that it carries is that there's nothing wrong with having experienced it, or talking about it. I've been accused of feeding off of it for attention. I've had any number of accusations thrown my way, and they are all the symptoms of what is wrong. The moment someone stands up and openly discusses real events that are unpleasant, there are always people to tear them down for doing so and project intent onto them.  Many people have worked hard to shut me up, but the thing is, for every person I help, for every person I get through to, for every person who supports me, there are 10 fold who attack me for it. This does not earn me any extra privileges, only more scars. It's painful and goodness knows it would be a hell of a lot easier to be quiet and go back to biting my tongue. It wouldn't stop the people who already want to take me down though, it would only encourage them. The only way to fight is to end the silence, even if Honesty is the best way to get hurt... I still believe it's the best policy. 

What You Allow is What Will Continue.

Newborn Morgan Snuzzles

I was born in North Carolina and spent the first 3 years of my life in a small town. It was a nice little neighborhood, and my older brother by 3 years and I had friends in the neighborhood.  My father was a traveling salesman as he had been most of his life, and my mother was a home maker at that time. At some point she decided that she could make some extra money by watching the neighborhood children during the day.

My mother has always been good with children. I won the lottery on moms. She majored in sociology and had been a social worker. She was patient and good with children. However this taking on several neighborhood children at once presented new and unusual circumstances.

There were twin blonde girls who would instantly attempt to eat crumbs from underneath our table and there were rowdy boys who broke my toys that I was forced to share with them, knowing how it would end. They did the same to my brother's as well. This lesson carried with it 2 consequences to my brother and myself. My brother ended up with no respect for personal property, even when I was in college and he would mess up my stuff while I was away. I learned that I was supposed to let people destroy my stuff and that strangers mattered more than family. Neither of these were lessons that my mother would have taught us, it was the lesson of experience learned from the other children and parental reaction.

My mom eventually found that watching other people's kids cost more than it was worth. She tried to do what good she could before sending the kids home, feeding the poor twins who seemed to be always starving. Mom has the best heart of anyone I've ever known, but ultimately it was too much and she had to stop doing it and focus on her own kids.

Still there was damage done in that short time, damage my mother would not have wanted, damage that affected her children for years afterward. I learned quickly that I was last and had to tolerate even the destruction of my own property. Nothing really felt like mine and could be taken away at any moment for the whim of someone else, often  my brother who did things like "magic tricks" of sawing my barbie in half.

It's amazing what little things, allowed to continue, can escalate into over time.  Or how little inappropriate behaviors can grow into bigger ones. I'm no stranger to "boiling a frog" and when someone discovers that they can get away with something small without consequences, it emboldens them to try a little further, do a little more.

Now I find myself on the flip side, in my mother's shoes. It's so hard to know what is the seed of something worse to come if allowed to grow.  And it's so hard to make calls to protect your child in potential situations that may or may not develop. However I have experience that my mother did not, she herself who had an experience at a young age that effected her.  Sometimes things that seem small can leave an impact with unintended lessons that could affect someone's personality for a lifetime. And sometimes mom's have to make hard calls that are painful for the benefit of their children.

It was not so long ago that I was carrying Morgan down the stairs. She wriggled and I lost my balance. In a split second I had to decide which way to fall. If I fell forward, I could spare myself, but if I fell backward and broke my leg, I could spare Morgan. In an instant the choice was clear, and I chose to break my leg. Morgan was spared personal pain, other than watching her mother in pain as I slid down the stairs on my broken leg, breaking it worse with each step, and holding her to me to protect her.

If I thought that was the most painful decision that I would have to make, with the most lasting effects, I was probably wrong. Being a mother has come with significant sacrifice in many areas. It's always ongoing and there seems to be no end in sight.  It seems that protecting your child is easier when they are small, but preparing them to cope with other people on their own is so much harder. The pain of child bearing was short and intense (and almost killed me), but the growing pains are constant, and there's no painkiller to soothe a wounded heart when you have to make a painful and unpopular decision to protect your child. If what you allow is what will continue, and you know that it is harmful, it's still hard to put that foot down and no longer allow it. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and be the bad guy so nothing worse happens.

Archer vs Escher

"Life of an Artist" 1999

Over the years, I've used Zazzle to provide products with my artwork on them that I normally could not afford to do. In the past couple years, my best selling image became T-Shirts featuring my image "Life of an Artist"(right) depicting a hand drawing a snake that is biting the hand that draws it.  The description for the image was as follows ...

"This piece was inspired by M.C. Escher and depicts the conflict within an artist to create, which is an integral part of an artists life, but at the same time, the road of an artist is a difficult one. The snake represents the bite of all the obstacles that prevent an artist from being able to support oneself with their art, keeping an artist the cliché of a starving artist. To give up art for money would be death to the soul, yet without money the artists cannot create. The catch 22 of being an artist, doomed to continue creating and continue starving."

This becomes rather ironic as earlier this week, Zazzle took down two of my best sellers, this one and "Fairy Fuzzy", which is a picture of my cat, Prince, with fairy wings, done in 2005 when he was still a young kitty and not the buddha bellied buddy that he is today.

"Fairy Fuzzy" 2005

Considering I have had multiple stalkers and harassers, that was my first inclination, to think that it was one of them when I received this message from Zazzle.

"Design contains an image or text that may infringe on intellectual property rights. We have been contacted by the intellectual property right holder and we will be removing your product from Zazzle’s Marketplace due to infringement claims."

Considering that both images are original creations of my own, I was perplexed. No one else held any copyright to these images, and I thought that it had to be one of harassers, because earlier that day I got more exposure than I have received in a long time. Jamie and Adam Posts on Facebook, shared my image that I did of them Steampunked. They are well aware of this image, because in 2010 I won the Superfan Sweepstakes that paid my way to Comic Con San Diego where I got to meet them in person. I steampunked the build team as well, and Grant shared that image. When I met them all in person, I gave them the originals, and later asked if they minded me making prints, to which I got an instant confirmation of yes from Grant and Kari. Also Jenna Busch bought my Athena necklace (which she loves) at Comic Con, and mentioned it in  her show the same day.

So the moment that I got noticed for my art, I also got attacked.  When I called Zazzle about it, I waited on the phone for 30 minutes to be told they couldn't do anything, and I should email them, which I had already done without response. When I finally got the reply, it was a vague form letter that showed that they never even considered the images in question.

"Unfortunately, it appears that your product did not meet Zazzle’s Acceptable Content Guidelines. Specifically, your product contained content which infringes upon the intellectual property rights of the M.C. Escher Foundation and The M.C. Escher Company.

Zazzle has been contacted by representatives from the M.C. Escher Foundation and The M.C. Escher Company, B.V., www.mcescher.com, and at their request, to remove products which infringe upon their rights from the Zazzle Marketplace.

In this instance, the product contained search tags or descriptions that references M.C. Escher."

That's right ... my original work was removed because of the SEARCH TAGS.

In a way, I was relieved that it was not one of my stalkers, but at the same time, it seemed that Zazzle was not used to people questioning things. While Zazzle's terms of service gives them the right to decide in these situations, even if they didn't even take a moment to realize that the tag on the second image was because of AUTOFILL! 

Zazzle only requested that I resubmit without those tags, which ate up a day of work that I needed for other projects that I was not able to work on, because of this issue, not to mention losing sales which I have a couple a day of that shirt, for the days that it was down. Not to mention that I had suddenly gotten for more promotion than I've had in a long time, ultimately cutting out several potential sales.

There are SEVERAL things wrong with the Escher Foundation doing this. 

1. The Ninth Circuit court, and the Supreme court have continually held that using Trademarks as a description is fair use. And specifically ruled that meta-tags are fair use.

2. M.C. Escher died in 1972. His heirs sold any rights to The M.C. Escher foundation long ago, so this is a business profiting on this with no association with Escher's actual bloodline.

3. This is the kicker. The M.C. Escher Foundation is based in the Netherlands. Their trademark was cancelled in the United States years ago, and his artwork actually falls under Public Domain.

4. You cannot copyright a STYLE! If you could, no one could even do stick figures. Apparently the Escher Foundation has also gone after other artists who have done original artwork with an oscillating pattern. While Escher made it popular, he did not invent it.

5. The artwork itself is completely original to me, and they have no right to impede my business for a search tag which in no way infringes on their Intellectual Property.

6. M.C. Escher is not Voldemort or "The-Artist-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named". Mentioning being inspired by Escher in a description is not an infringement. It is not illegal to be inspired by someone.

The Irony of the whole situation is that the image that started this was about how hard it is to make it as an artist, a sentiment that Escher himself would probably have appreciated. There are always people wanting to ride on the coat tails of others and profit off a talent they do not possess. These leaches have a habit of killing the golden goose when they get greedy, and make no mistake, this is exactly what has happened here. 

We are taking legal action in this case, and I hope that in the interest of artists everywhere, that we can raise the awareness that search tags are fair use and a common marketing practice. They are not an infringement, and to harass starving artists in such situations is nothing more than bullying smaller artists trying to make it.

Alive and Kicking... and Punching

Yellow Belt Testing in 1994.

It's a little fitting to be back in Martial Arts so close to the anniversary of when my ex swung at me directly. He charged, and muscle memory kicked in before any other thought. Although emotional abuse was harder to contend with, I was prepared for what to do in this situation, after earning a red belt in Tae Kwon Do and some experience with Wing Chun. Though I never tested at Francis Fong's school in Gwinnet, the lower belts and higher belts all learned the same moves, moves that became ingrained and were highly useful.

The incident went down, because Liam had been doing petty things to keep me trapped at home. He had a habit of letting the air out of my tires, disabling the car battery, and this time, he had hidden my keys. After contending with one of his insane emotional attacks, I decided to leave, and my keys were not where I had left them.  When I confronted him about the possibility of hiding my keys, he laughed at me as he often did to make me feel like the crazy one. But whenever he lied, he had a facial tick that I'd come to notice (he hated that I was so perceptive) and I knew instantly that he had hidden my keys.

"You're lying," I said and I looked around where I had seen him last. There was a pile of laundry waiting to be cleaned next to the laundry room, and a few clothes under the surface, there were my keys, in a place I would have never left them.  He followed me making fun of me and still denying what he had done. I was headed toward the door when I turned to see him charging me, right arm raised in a punch.

Reflexively, I ducked under his arm, grabbing his now punch extended wrist, pulling it forward, and pulling him off balance, as I got him in a headlock that he could not get out of. It was meant to subdue him, restrict breathing till he passed out so I could get away, because I could not bring myself to break his neck. Even in physical danger, I just couldn't bring myself to hurt another, even in self defense... even with all the abuse I'd endured. So instead, I held on, hoping. He then ran backwards, slamming me into the walls again and again, until the hold took affect and then he threw himself onto me on the floor and started crying.  The keys were now long gone and out of sight in the struggle. If I stopped to get them in my escape, I would have been prone. So I just ran.

I ran out the door, and as Liam had insisted, we lived on a small street of houses in the middle of nowhere (he threw a fit that we had neighbors on one side - now I know why). Tears streaked my face as rain started to fall. We were 10 miles from my parents' house, but I was ready to walk there in my nightgown in the middle of the night in the rain. I didn't get there, when Liam drove up next to me, again smiling and laughing at me for walking away. I wasn't going to walk 10 miles with him driving next to me, so I got in the car. (I was kind of scared that he might try to hit me with the car if I didn't comply). We drove back to the house, where I promptly did not forgive him (which he depended on my Christian background to manipulate previously) nor did I let him get away with no consequences, much to his chagrin. I told him to leave. After all, it wasn't long ago, he'd threatened to kill me and drove toward the dead end of a road, because I mentioned the word divorce.

That night, he left and committed himself at the Coliseum where he immediately began manipulating well meaning psychologists into thinking I was the bad guy and that I needed to be there to support him. They were flummoxed when they called me at work on speaker with Liam, and I asked if he had mentioned trying to kill me, which of course Liam tried to blow off as me exaggerating. Then I said that it was hard to think it's exaggerating when he was shouting that he was going to kill me while driving 90 miles an hour toward a road that ended in the interstate. It's a mile marker on I-75 that I still can't pass without remember.  But for the first time, someone started to listen and see that maybe, just maybe he was the liar that I'd come to know.

While it was traumatic, I learned sadly that no one else would protect me, if I wasn't willing to do it for myself. I'd been isolated and abused, while simultaneously having all that abuse projected onto me, where I was completely debased from any support by the character assassination, blamed for all the evil he did to me. This is something that still haunts some older connections and estranged many relationships. People I thought I could trust believed the charming liar, a pattern I've witnessed my whole life with people around me. Heck I fell for it for a while too, but eventually I see through it, which tends to upset people who like to think I'm stupid because I give people a chance.

After the trauma, I have an inclination to hide, to not be seen, and have had other abusers, reinforcing my C-PTSD. So getting back into Martial Arts, I see as a victory. It's something I enjoyed and was good at. When I was a child, I was not allowed to take it, because "you're a girl". I was expected to act like a lady and apparently "take it like a man". After getting tired of being used for practice by my brother and not allowed to learn to defend myself, I took my graduation money and enrolled in Tae Kwon Do.  I had stopped at Red Belt, because at the time it was suggested that black belts would have to register their hands as deadly weapons and if you defended yourself, you would have a harder self defense stance. Eventually I switched to Wing Chun when I moved to Atlanta, which was harder work and more effective. But I found myself combining the two with grappling in actual situations.

I'm very thankful that I made that choice, and I believe that it is effective at warding off attacks. Now my daughter will be able to do what I could not, and it's already good for her. At the beginning of the class, the loudness of the instructor's voice upset her, as mine does when I ask her to do something, but by the end of the class she was having a blast, and many of the things I'd been trying to teach her were sinking in as a good thing.

I know that I cannot protect my daughter from the world, but I can prepare her for it, something I did not have with an archaic expectation of being protected by the men in my life, when ironically, they were the ones I needed the most protection from ... and had the least.  With the whole family doing it, I see many benefits for us in health, and Morgan watching her parents demonstrate respect will be beneficial as well. She's so smart, but being an only child, I worry. Already she's adorable, and I worry what she will have to contend with when she grows into the beautiful, smart woman that I know she will be. I just want to make sure that when that day comes, she will have the confidence, emotional strength, and physical capability to handle whatever comes her way.