pepper spray, self-defense, and alter egos

I’ve been in dangerous and unpredictable situations before, but never faced death as a plausible outcome. This trauma took me there – a place I know others, maybe you, have visited.

 The line between life and death is a sliver of light – a shard that cuts away what you thought was possible and replaces it with a reality that steals the air straight from your lungs. Paralyzes your limbs. Causes you to stare at the wall for hours because that is the only thing you remember how to do.

Trauma, and being a victim of a violent crime, has a way of stealing your power and making you forget what it feels like to have power in the first place.

Yet, I survived. We survived.

So now I work to heal.

I’ve sought healing from trauma before, and come to know the journey as one with multiple starting lines and no end. To my surprise, this healing journey started with unusual suspects: pepper spray, self-defense classes, and a re-introduction to an alter ego I long abandoned.

Pepper Spray

I found the purple canister hiding in the back of the junk drawer in my kitchen. After the incident, I was struggling to walk outside alone for any length of time (even 10-20 steps) without succumbing to overwhelming panic and terror. I thought of what it would take for me to walk with less fear and remembered a friend had gifted me pepper spray the year before. I’ve never been an advocate for meeting violence with violence or carrying weapons that could escalate a situation, hence the unopened canister at the back of my drawer, but I was desperate. So, I held the pepper spray in the palm of my hand, hidden in the pocket of my North Face jacket, every time I walked outside. With my thumb on the button, that purple canister helped me walk a little taller – hell it helped me walk at all.

The fragility that is often left in trauma’s wake has a way of changing things, and it certainly changed my respect for pepper spray. I clutched that canister every day for a month and a half until the Oakland airport removed it from my purse and told me I couldn’t fly with a weapon. I laughed and placed it in the silver trash can full of plastic water bottles. As I released the cylinder from my palm, I thanked it for holding my hand without question and giving me power when I had none.

Sometimes healing means doing things differently.

Self-Defense

When I was in high school my dad hung a punching bag from the garage ceiling and showed me how to punch. I punched it so hard I popped three blood vessels between my knuckles (cue dad’s lecture on how to wrap my hands correctly…). Point being, I’ve had a love affair with boxing ever since we were introduced. I’ve also had a complicated relationship with the fiery red anger within, like most women I know, and spent more time denying this part of me than harnessing it.

The recent attack made it hard to deny the heat that was moving quickly through my nervous system. Victim energy had swallowed my confidence but also stoked a fire of rage within – a fire that wanted to fight. So when my dear friend, yogi, mentor, and brother Michael advertised his new Empowerment Self-Defense sessions I signed up right away.

Martial arts showed up as a way for me to release the anger I felt while simultaneously learning how to defend myself. And it has been MAGIC. I am taking back my power and clenching it with two fists. I am meeting violence with strength as I work to rebuild the physical safety that was stolen from me.

I never imagined I would enjoy fighting, and learning to fight, as much as I do. Each session reveals a hidden layer of strength, endurance, and coordination I never knew I had – one jab and one strike at a time.     

Alter Ego

The name J-Rose was given to me while living in Washington, D.C.

J-Rose is a spoken word poet who says yes more often than no, gets in cars with strangers, tells off the cops, smokes weed, and walks toward danger. She listens to underground rap, works in men’s prisons, and tags on the apartheid wall in the West Bank to show her support for Palestine. She learns how to shoot a handgun on the back porch and tag from gang members in LA. She moves to the neighborhood with the highest murder rate in the country a month before her 18th birthday and to a military conflict zone a few years later. She meets injustice with revolution and human connection with wide eyes, open ears, and a scribbling pen.

J-Rose was reckless, naïve, and consciously flirting with danger, but beneath that she was fearless. She truly believed that she would survive, and come out okay, no matter what situation she ended up in. She stood tall, fought back, yelled, partied, challenged authority, followed her curiosity, and never let fear stand in the way of her desire.

PTSD slowly buried J-Rose and replaced her with a timid, terrified, little girl. I’ve spent the past 3 years working to uncover the spirit within me that fights – the spirit that fights for justice, fights to be heard, fights to be seen, fights to create radical art and share it with the world. Not because I want to go back, but because I need her to fully recognize myself.

 This recent trauma, as terrible as it was, has given me the gift of integration with an identity I thought I’d lost. It has led me back to J-Rose, back to the fighter inside.

My nice, small, sorry-saying body left the building when death came to visit in the middle of the night. Although I will never say thank you for that visit, I will say thank you for the tools I’ve gathered, and been given, to help navigate this.  

As for the fierce spirit inside me that had been dormant?  

She has reawakened.

With power,

J-Rose

Reflection:

Where do you need to take back power in your life? What does that look like?

How do you find, and maintain, a feeling of safety in your own body and in the world?

Do you have an alter ego, or powerful part of you that needs to be called forth?