MAMA: Adventures in Martial Arts and Motherhood

My karate instructor, the late, great Shihan William Oliver, used to joke about how everyone always wanted to tell him their troubles.  He would listen to these confessions daily as if he were a priest, or perhaps a free therapist, offering up snippets of advice that, if we are being honest, he was no more qualified to give than anyone else in the room. But he was a karate master, therefore it was assumed he knew everything about everything, had some magic key that could transform your miserable life into something glorious. "I need to install a couch," he would say. And then ultimately, "I just want to teach karate." I just want to do heel hooks. Listen, I get that this is complicated for you. I get that you need to fit me into a little martial arts box somewhere. Am I one of the super competitive ones? Am I just training for fun? Am I on the team that believes in one teacher for life or the one that feels the need to travel to a different open mat every weeken...

You know when you have been friends with someone for awhile and one day while you are just sitting around thinking about them you suddenly remember first meeting them? And then you have that weird moment where you realize that that person you met years ago and that person who is your good buddy now are actually the same? And your brain goes, whoa, really? That is Jim? But he is so different now! Jiu jitsu and I have had a very long, very rocky relationship. There was the first six months, where I really could only attend class once a week and did not learn a single thing other than how to not suffocate while someone was sitting on my chest. Then there were the months and months where all I did was tap. Stuck on the bottom again, tap. Whoops, got triangled, tap. What in the world is this guy doing with my lapel....oh, tap, tap, tap! And so on. All new BJJ students get very comfortable with slamming their hand against the mat over and over again in defeat, but I was particularly skille...