Breaking Free: My personal experiences with violence and why I teach self defense to survive

I included the above song, because the title was initially what I wanted to call this post "clean getaway". Almost every time I teach a self defense class I am asked the same question (phrased several different ways) by at least one participant: "Have you ever been attacked?", "Have you ever fought back?", "Have you ever been raped?" and "What are your experiences?" I always try my best to acknowledge the depth of the question and the longing for either reassurance or empathy from the asker. Most of the time, I am not the only person there who is a survivor, sometimes everyone in the room is. 
My energy is spent less on learning how to address the subject from a personal stand point and more on making sure I don't let the discussion take over the entire duration of the class. In truth, I have had too MANY first hand experiences with violence to recount, so I have decided that a simple "Yes, I am a survivor" will suffice, in the interest of saving everyone's time and sanity :)
To start at the beginning and end at why I teach self defense, I'll have to first preface this by stating that I am grateful for every opportunity I have to teach, learn and help people overcome. There is not a day that goes by that I am not fighting to maintain my own personal healing and reassure myself...that I am worthy of a life far away from the things I have experienced. So here we go. NOTE: At any point feel free to stop reading and take a nice deep cleansing breath...this is a technique I learned from another survivor ...and it works well.

My mother and I-1983

Like 3.3 million other children each year I grew up in a house where violence occurred daily. My uncle recently told me that for years he never knew what my voice sounded like. I told him, for years...I never knew I had one. By the time I started high school, my self-esteem had been severely damaged to the point where I began to isolate myself, withdraw and focus solely on survival. One of the things that got me through that time in my life was a poster I found in a magazine featuring this picture:

It was an article about  HomeAlive a group in Seattle that was teaching self defense in response to the murder of Mia Zapata. I remember thinking every day, that someday...I would be as strong and fierce as that woman on the poster...if I could only make it through one more day... 

Learning and adjusting were both difficult tasks. At the start of my freshman year of high school, I experienced a physical assault by another student and the following year an assault by a school faculty member. Many times, I hear people talk about the "normalcy" of abuse and violence. How if someone has experienced trauma for so long, they begin to become desensitized to it and it becomes their "normal". Let me tell you...abuse and violence NEVER become normal, for any person that experiences it. Trust me. This misconception is a disservice to survivors.
Throughout my teen years, I can recall countless situations where I was abused by others and unintentionally placed myself in harms way due to not recognizing how to establish appropriate boundaries for myself. It seemed no matter how hard I tried I could not escape being physically abused by other people.

*******
When I was 19 years old, I was waiting for a bus after work at around 2 in the afternoon. My bus stop was near a busy intersection that I assumed was safe. Sitting at my stop, I was writing a letter to a friend who had recently moved to Colorado. I can't fully explain this, but it seemed as if there was a momentary lapse in time, where I lost a few seconds when, all of a sudden I felt warmth near the right side of my face. I placed my hand to my ear where I noticed blood. Not aware of what was happening I looked up to feel the second punch, feeling as if I had left my body  I couldn't comprehend why this stranger was hitting me and was dragging me behind the stop and away from the street. I began screaming. I noticed a car with two men who were watching me being dragged but did nothing. I could only think that I was going to die and that I wanted to survive. I grabbed the pen that I was using to write my letter and stabbed my attacker in the hand, allowing myself to be freed. Before I could get away however, I was drug back around the bus stop, picked up and thrown directly into the on-coming traffic lanes. Luckily, I was not hit by a car but instead was able to make it across the street into a nearby fast food restaurant. As I stumbled in, out of breath and bleeding, I gave a sigh of relief to see two police officers eating lunch. I said "help me, I've been attacked by someone across the street" to my dismay one officer replied "what do you want us to do?" I was shocked. I always believed that not only were officers trained to notice crimes in progress but they responded to them diligently. This was not the case. They begrudgingly left their meal and arrested the perpetrator who sat calmly and explained that killing me would mean "living for free in prison." The officers on the scene showed no compassion and did nothing to help or comfort me. This incident was the first time I fully recognized that I could only rely on myself and my own capabilities for self protection. Bystanders and those trained "to protect and serve" both failed me. When recounting the incident to both people that I knew and strangers alike, I seemed to elicit the same response: "Somehow, you did something to provoke this." This was a thought process that I knew well, somehow I was always to blame for the abuse that I endured. But for some reason for the first time: I began to fight it. I knew that I was not to blame for my attack and oddly enough this finally opened a door for me...Just as I was not to blame for this incident I was not to blame for any of the violence that had previously occurred in my life.  I WAS FINALLY FREE.
I experienced the first year in my twenties with few incidents of direct violence. (Note: I am not including acts of public/street harassment, workplace violence or other forms of sexual harassment, which continued to occur on a regular basis throughout this time. I will address these subjects in a later blog post.) I began volunteering and later became employed with local non-profit agencies and strived to begin a career in social work.

*******
One morning in 2001, I received a call from my mother who told me that our old family friend Robert Cromwell had been arrested for murdering a young girl. I couldn't believe it. I only recently read the account of his crime, which sickened me. You often hear people describing murderers in the media, but it is entirely different to hear of someone's brutality when you can reference the sound of their voice in your mind, the way they looked, walked and smelled. I had met him when I was around 11 years old, the same age of his victim. He worked with my father and while growing up, he was at our house on a weekly basis, having dinner and spending time with my 3 younger siblings and I. During a chance encounter Robert met his victim's mother and spent a day with her. That night, he was left alone with his victim and her two younger sisters at their residence while her mother went to retrieve a female friend. Robert raped 11 year old Stephanie Short, fractured her skull, broke her jaw and stabbed her 13 times in the back and left her to die. Upon their return, he assaulted her mother and the friend and fled. When the fragile safety net that you build in your mind in regards to who is safe, who is capable or incapable of unconscionable acts is fractured, your world is never the same.

*******
At the start of my career in social services, I began to see the impact of violence on communities through the eyes of the youth and families I worked with. I lived in an older neighborhood that was being gentrified as a local arts hub, it was close enough to be able to ride my bike to and from work. As with many social service jobs, I worked long hours so many times I would ride home alone at night. One morning I noticed police in front of my apartment, they found a woman's body in the alleyway behind my street. A few months later, they found another body and a few months after that it happened again. A local reporter called the agency I was working for and asked that the young women we served (who were living on the streets or at nearby shelters) be warned of the murders taking place. I told her it reminded me of the murders in Juarez where the authorities and the media seem to turn a blind eye to the killings of those they deem as "disposable" individuals. The media's characterization of the victims again seemed to de-humanize and blame them, forgetting that they were women with families, someone's daughter, sister, friend or mother.   
I made a safety plan to have someone wait for me or arrange a ride home on the nights I worked late...the murders continued and the bodies kept surfacing. All in the same area right around the corner from my apartment. Until spring of 2003 when police arrested Cory Morris a local DJ at a bar not far from where the murders took place. Many people knew him as a "nice guy" who frequently walked women to their cars at night after the bar closed. He was also linked to murders in Oklahoma, a state he fled when he believed authorities would link him to his crimes there.    

*******
A few years past, I was engaged to be married and was just starting a new chapter in my life...
Then the rapes and shootings started in Phoenix. The Baseline Killer was responsible for a series of sexual assaults and murders from August 2005-September 2006, which took place not only in the area where I grew up but close to where I currently reside.
I began experiencing panic attacks, every local media outlet was displaying information about the physical profile of the victims. Short, small framed women with dark hair and eyes. I fit that profile exactly and became fearful to even leave my house at night. Month after month, there was another murder or rape or robbery at a business I frequented or a neighborhood close to my home. I felt that same fear overcoming me that I had prior to breaking free from the stigma of abuse I had suffered as a girl. I didn't know what to do.
 I got married and became pregnant with my first child, I wanted so desperately to build a life free from suffering, anguish and helplessness for my child and myself. 

*******
At 3 a.m on the morning of March 22nd, 2006 I was awoken by several calls and later a knock at the door. I didn't make it to the phone or door in time and only saw car lights driving away. I picked up my phone to see calls I had missed from my youngest sister. I called her back and asked her what was wrong. Having experienced the death of my older sister, Corina, a few years earlier, I could easily reference the inflections in a family members voice when they were about to deliver terrible news. She said she needed to come back and talk to me in person. When she arrived, she told me that my younger brother did not make it home from his job at the mall the previous night and that he was found robbed and murdered. She told me that the police detectives arrived at my mother's residence to notify her and that she was hysterical. She said my dad was on his way there and they needed me. My brother was only 20 years old at the time of his death, he had also just become a father with his little boy being born just a few months prior. The days, weeks and months that ensued were all a blur. I not only lost my brother, but mourned the loss of my parents and entire family as they were prior to my brother's death. I was also struggling to protect myself and my unborn baby. (NOTE: Due to a pending court trial I cannot elaborate on further details of my brother's murder, but can state that the individuals involved are currently in custody, awaiting trial.)  

*******  
During the spring and summer of 2006 the "Baseline" attacks continued and in June a final attack occurred at a carwash near my house. I remember being appalled when at a neighborhood meeting regarding the crimes, a woman stated that if the victim had not been washing her car she would not have been killed. Since when is the act of washing your car equal to "asking" to be murdered! I found these responses to the attacks ridiculous and wondered, if in the unfortunate event I was ever a victim of the Baseline Killer...would I be blamed for my own death? The thought scared me even more. I began to sink little by little into depression and worry. Would my baby be safe?
In early September 2006, just weeks before I gave birth to my daughter...the Baseline Killer was linked by DNA evidence to the rapes of two young sisters, one who was visibly pregnant. He was apprehended and linked to most of the 13 month crime spree.
But I still felt far from safe. To make matters worse, I began suffering from post-partum depression after the birth of my daughter and getting proper treatment seemed to be another fight that I was just too tired to wage. I wanted to give up on life.
As a method to decrease some of my constant fear and panic I began researching self defense methods...which only made me more fearful. Most self defense classes I encountered, were taught by men in martial arts settings focused on what women like me did wrong. Most of these instructors were much larger and stronger than me and made it sound so simple to just practice one technique or another throw someone on their head and be done with it...I knew that I would never learn to physically protect myself with these methods. I felt defeated. Then I looked at my baby daughter. I knew she needed me and I felt that since it was my duty as a mother to protect her, I needed to fight to learn to protect myself. I decided that I needed to challenge myself as a person and re-invent my life in order to find fulfillment again. What would be one of the least expected and challenging things I could do to pull myself out of the pit of depression I was in and recreate a new legacy for my daughter? I would become a self defense instructor. I was determined to study every method of self defense possible and map out the most positive and empowering forms to share with women and girls. I wanted to reach out to my community and beyond and speak to girls who grew up feeling powerless just like I felt and tell them: You don't have to be afraid anymore...you can protect yourself.
Mostly, I wanted to live a life of gratitude, grateful that I made it this far.    
I founded GIRL(em)POWER! Self Defense in May 2008 as a way to break free from the toll that violence had taken on my life. Later that same year, I went to Seattle and met some of my hero's at HomeAlive, we posed next to the poster that helped to save my life so many years ago :)

With Becka Tilsen, Program Director, HomeAlive 

I continue to work hard to teach women and girls, that a life apart from violence is possible and that everyone can protect themselves in some way. I am far from perfect and I firmly believe that empowerment is a life long process that does not always come easy

But I try hard to make a difference and in some way I feel I have

 "finally made it...I've made a clean getaway..."