After my first IMPACT class that was so life-changing, I talked everyone’s ear off about it, including my sister’s. I talked about what was taught, revelations about how my relationships were changing, and how I was coming to see myself differently. By the time I started working for IMPACT, my sister was very familiar with everything from the mundane details of fax machine grief to my glowing excitement as I learned to instruct.
Midway through that process she decided she wanted to take the class herself. I think it had more to do with my reports of instructor training than details about office equipment… But regardless, she signed up for the next class. We were chatting a couple weeks before the class started and she said, “You know, I think the class will make me nicer to people.” I asked her to explain what she meant. She talked about how she lives in an area where homeless people frequently ask for money on the street and she was intimidated by them. She did not treat them the way she wanted to because of her fear about her physical safety. Perhaps if she knew she could defend herself physically, then she could let herself be nicer to others and relate to them more compassionately.
I am still impressed with this observation. We do not learn self-defense skills to go around kneeing people in the groins or yelling “No!” all the time. And we don’t take it simply in anticipation of an attempted rape or murder. So why do it? One reason is that knowing you can defend yourself and trust your own intuition can help you feel safe – allowing others to get closer to you. It can be as simple as being willing to look a homeless man in the eye as you say hello and acknowledging that you can or can’t help him. Or it can relate to letting love into your life. Feeling safe and feeling empowered do more for us than prevent violence; feeling this way can help us become the people we want to be in relation to others.
-Alena Schaim is IMPACT’s Executive Director and an IMPACT Instructor