My WHY

~ TRIGGER WARNING ~

I love to dance. So many different styles; salsa, hip hop, belling dancing, & so many more. It’s a time in my life that I have always felt free. Something about gliding through the air, spinning five times over, the rhythm, the music 🎶

It all has its charms. Then there are other moments I remember, the unsavory ones, the ones that used to keep me up at night.

2005

It was a night like any other. I remember going out salsa dancing that night, three years into teaching martial arts. I loved salsa. It was a way to step into my body and just be. That night, I hung out with people I had known for a year, professional salsa dancers, people I had danced with hundreds of times. These people also knew I practiced and taught martial arts, and they knew that I was uninterested in dating within the salsa community.

That night, I was roofied, taken, and had to fight for my life. I remember thinking on the drive home that none of the moves I learned at my martial arts school applied. I hit the guy in the face with a pair of keys using a haymaker. We never practiced a haymaker, as the move was less effective in a sparring match, and it was considered sloppy (Noted: I still don’t teach a haymaker. Yet, I have seen what works and what does not, putting what I find effective into my curriculum).

To escape, I ran as fast as leaded feet could take me. I fell down a flight of stairs, then had to drive myself home.

It was a horrible moment. I used to think, ‘they know me. They know I’m uninterested because I stated it.’ They knew I was uninterested because I flat-out said I would never date a salsero. Additionally, they all knew I was a martial arts instructor. I let them all know, thinking that would be a deterrent. I spent a year dancing with them all at that ballroom.

Parents will warn you about the dangers & strangers. The problem is that 85-90% of people who attack you are people who you know.

This was the case that night. I always said no to people buying me drinks & this time; I said okay. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. This was not, “Okay, you can drug me, carry me to my car and drive me to your house.” This was, “Okay,” to a drink by one person I had known for over a year. I remember being in the car & not being able to move. I kept staring at the lights passing me by going the wrong direction away from my house. I remember telling my limbs to move & they failed me. I remember the panic — the thoughts racing through my mind, which felt like it had been filled with fog.

We had driven an hour & I was carried to his bedroom. At that point, my hands were tingling & when he left, I looked at my keys. It felt like I moved through syrup. Weighted. It was like being in a nightmare where the bad guy is chasing you & all you can do is move in slow motion. Each movement had to count. I wrapped my hand around the keys & when he came in, I used a haymaker and hit him in the face, & ran, fell down a flight of stairs, stumbled out the door, got to my car & drove home at 3 am. This cautionary tale became one of my WHYs for this work & for creating my Empowerment Self-Defense curriculum.

I realized that night that I hadn’t used a single move I had learned from my dojo. So, I took it upon myself to meet up with my self-defense partner Lee Vilaysane. We went through over 800 self-defense moves, and I took the moves which would work for me while wearing 3-inch heels and a dress. That was the beginning of my Empowerment Self-Defense curriculum.

That is one part of my story. Mahalo for reading 🌺