MAMA: Adventures in Martial Arts and Motherhood

To the girl at the open mat who thought my body was a grappling dummy, I get it. You probably train at one of those giant schools in the city where everyone is constantly struggling to catch up to the two guys at the top who the instructor actually pays attention to. One of those gyms where everyone goes hard all the time, unless you are injured of course (which happens often) or you have ringworm (also a regular occurrence since guys are constantly taking off their shirts and rolling in sweat puddles). I get that we are both purple belts, and that I met you like thirty seconds ago, so of course there has to be some kind of pecking order established. I mean if you care about that. The other option would be to say "Hello new friend, nice to meet another woman who shares this crazy thing called jiu-jitsu. Lets work on some techniques together." But no, you wouldn't know about that. To you, every match is a challenge, every roll is the ADCC finals. So whatever, you establish...

(For the "squad". #unicornseveryone) Yesterday, while I was in Starbucks waiting for my coffee, I had the pleasure of observing a group of tween girls doing what tween girls are now required to do in Starbucks, which is take selfies with their unicorn frappachinos.  Now to be fair, I have not tasted this thing. (I like coffee. Sweet, caffeinated, brown coffee.) But as far as I can tell it was created by Starbucks for the sole purpose of getting people to post pics of it on Instagram. I am not sure if anyone who buys it actually drinks it, or if they just walk around Brooklyn until it melts, stopping in front of various landmarks to make duck faces into their Iphones. Those tweens LOVE their social media. You know who else loves it? Martial artists. My news feed is full of posts from people who train. Sometimes it is because something exciting has happened, like a tournament win or a brand new belt. Other times it is just a pic of them in their gi with the captio...

Thursday 12:00 noon Brooklyn As we are lining up for class, our instructor always asks us to "set our intention" for the hour, what do we hope to get out of it, what is our goal. Because I expect this comment, I often give some thought to this concept when I wake up Thursday morning. This class is my hardest. There is a lot of rolling. It is full of advanced students, many of them martial arts teachers themselves. Most of the top brown belts in the organization are there, as well as a few black belts. It is taught by an impressive (and somewhat intimidating) man who has been around the martial arts even longer than I have. He is the perfect balance of kind and tough, encouraging and terrifying. The energy in the room is always high, always positive. Everyone is super nice and helpful. It is a great environment to learn jiu-jitsu. It is also somewhat outside my comfort zone.  Going outside my comfort zone is very good for me. You know how the rest of that speech goes. ...