Buy her a high-quality personal alarm or pepper spray and show her how to use those instead.
But Karen was determined to help Susan build her confidence and learn some valuable self-defense skills. She decided to take a different approach.
She wasn't a fighter. She was a woman who hummed while she gardened and bought the wrong brand of cereal because she was still trying to learn my favorites. When I lunged, a standard drill to test her reflexes, she didn’t pivot. She froze. My palm caught her shoulder harder than planned, and she stumbled back into a stack of storage bins.
I wanted to help my stepmom feel safer — especially after she mentioned feeling uneasy walking the neighborhood at night. I figured a few basic self-defense moves and some confidence-building practice would be useful. I went in with good intentions, but the lesson didn’t go as planned. Here’s what happened and what I learned.
If the session ended with a bruise, a bruised ego, or an argument, the first step is to de-escalate.
"Oh no, I'm so sorry!" Susan exclaimed, as Karen quickly grabbed a nearby towel to clean up the mess.