Tag: Travel

Self-Defense Success in the Peace Corps: Kaytea’s Story

To welcome Kaytea Hendricks back to our organization as a self-defense instructor, we wanted to re-publish her self-defense success story from her time serving in the Peace Corps in Morocco. We’re so glad to have Kaytea teaching with us again!

I was on an afternoon walk when I was grabbed from behind. I thought it was a friend messing around. I said, “Come on, let me go.” Then his grip tightened, and I felt his erection. Then it hit me: “I’m being assaulted!”

He grabbed me just like Resolve instructors do during class. I took a deep breath and thought, “Oh no! He has no idea what he just got himself into!” I released a yell that was so powerful I surprised myself! I struck his groin and broke his grip. I turned to see him already sprinting away.

After this event, I felt strong and proud of myself.  Unfortunately, there were other women in my Peace Corps program who were assaulted in a similar fashion, but who had a very different overall experience. They experienced deep, life-altering trauma even though each of them was able to get away and avoid a full-on assault and were not physically hurt. 

One woman had to leave the program and return home; another started seeing a therapist; and a third woman, after therapy, still decided to return home. Although they were successful against their assailants –with no training! – they experienced trauma instead of empowerment.  

I saw how Resolve not only prepared me to defend myself, but prepared me to focus on my success – not my vulnerability. Instead of teaching me how powerful the assailant was, this experience taught me how powerful I am.

Intuition & Trust

This past week I fixed my first flat tire on my own. It felt like a tremendous success story, not just as a woman with a flat tire, but as an IMPACT success. Three men stopped and offered help, and I realized I trusted them, and trusted them for very good reasons!

Ironically, “broken down on the side of the freeway” is the scenario that I use most in teen and adult classes when demonstrating verbal and physical skills in context. When I introduce the scenario, I sometimes hear gasps or murmurs of agreement, especially from women, as that is a situation that truly worries them.

In classes, the Suited Instructors play characters that say all sorts of nasty things as they approach, being suggestive, lewd, and simply not going away when I say I’ve got help on the way.

In real life, that’s not what happened. The first man who stopped asked if I had help on the way, and when I said I was trying to remember how to do it, he gave me some pointers. Then he wished me luck and drove off. The two men who came after also asked if I needed help and each of them also went away once they saw I had it under control.

I thought about how I knew I could trust them: None of them got very close to me. They all were friendly and helpful, commiserating and making jokes, but none of them tried to bond with me through the experience or sought to gain my trust through a quick encounter. There was no presumption of a relationship because I was on the side of the highway with a problem and they were men with knowledge and experience.

Oftentimes when people think about intuition, they think of it as “How do you know when something’s not okay?” For some, though, we know quite well when things are not okay. It’s more of a question of how to know when things are okay and when to relax

I was elated after the experience, not just because I conquered a flat tire independently, but because I got to relate to these men from a place of trust and lightheartedness, instead of feeling suspicious or worried as I might have in the past. When I count the ways IMPACT has freed my life, this is one of the most valuable ways to me: I can truly be present with my entire community.

Powerful Words: Verbal Strategies for Prevention

I recently gained perspective on the importance of verbal skills while traveling internationally in areas where I did not speak the language.

I am used to answering my own, infrequent “what would I do if…?” questions.  My response is typically a variation of “Well, I’d talk with him, set a boundary, and it would be clear that I’m not an easy victim…  Or I’d go get help…”  Only after exhausting all of these options would I consider physical skills.

During the time I spent alone on my trip, however, I realized that I really wasn’t able to have that conversation to prove that I wasn’t the target assailants look for.  I realized, “Well, I could say “no” and yell a bunch, but I really wouldn’t be able to say much.”  If it kept escalating, I’d have to turn to physical skills.  Not having the necessary language skills, I’d have no other recourse but to use a strike.  Mind you, nothing untoward happened to me nor did I anticipate anything like that, but I returned home with a new awareness of what happens when a person lacks options.

It was amazing for me to see this, because we work regularly now with young people in the schools – many of whom actually do feel confident with  (and have used) physical skills.  But they have no verbal skills to speak of.  It is not unlike the absence of language entirely to not have the vocabulary to get out of a threatening situation.  And I felt for these young people who get in trouble for using physical violence when words would have been sufficient.  They just don’t have the words.

Teaching verbal strategies and a vocabulary of avoidance and de-escalation is much easier than learning a foreign language, let me tell you!  And we must provide it to them.  Because if we don’t, they will act like a cornered animal who either submits to violence or lashes out him/herself.  IMPACT helps people stand up for themselves.  Teaching students ways to do that before it gets physical may be the most important thing we do.

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