Fit4Defense - Kelowna

National Truth and Reconciliation Day.
Please challenge yourself past the orange shirt, use your mind and your heart to learn something new. There is so much information available now describing the ongoing colonial strategies used to marginalize Indigenous people. Theft of their land, their ways, and their children.
The Residential school system and all those involved were guilty of genocide, Our Pope still refuses to apologize for the atrocities committed.
Truth first!
Something to bring your hearts into alignment with the reason for this day.

Residential school survivors on the scars of abuse WARNING: This story contains distressing details. Three former students of residential schools, including the one in Kamloops, B.C., talk about the violent a...

In honor of National Indigenous Peoples Day, I thought it might be fitting to offer a map of First Peoples traditional lands, here on what we have come to call Canada.

In 2014, the RCMP released a finding of 1,181 reported missing & murdered Indigenous women and girls between 1980 and 2012, with further records dating back to 1951' culminating in the National Enquiry into Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Nationwide, families shared their grief, loss, anger-tearing open their wounds in the telling, in hope that justice will be served, that change will be born from so much pain.
The Native Women’s Association of Canada believes the statistics provided by the RCMP to be much higher as “six out of 10 incidents of violent crime against Aboriginal people are thought to go unreported”.
Reports by family and community members around the lack of police attention reflects a historic lack of worth for these women and continues to perpetuate the perception of them as easy targets. “NWAC and Amnesty note that many times acts of violence against Aboriginal women may be carried out in the expectation that societal indifference to the welfare and safety of women will allow the perpetrators to escape justice”.(Kubik, Bourassa, and Hampton, 2009, p.29)
We must consider the multiplicity of roles a woman plays in the lives of those close to her, to start to grasp the depth of loss experienced by family and community members.
When you contemplate the sheer number of mothers, aunties, daughters, sisters, wives, nieces taken from Indigenous families across Canada, it should sicken something inside of all of us to imagine the level of grief that must be experienced throughout these communities.
This is genocide- nothing else and it would not continue with such deafening silence if it was white women.

Performance for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women In October, Canada’s unions staged a unique and powerful performance with music by A Tribe Called Red, video, holograms and dance to honour Canada’s missing ...

No intro necessary!

Why Women Fear Men | The Advocate The epidemic of violence against women also has real effects on how women are socialized and raised. Women are taught to be afraid of being alone, as well as...

This quote speaks loudly to me when I consider today. International Women's Day and The UN's theme of gender equality. While women continue to experience many injustices, men do as well. There is no true healing if it is not for All

When The Foundry Penticton approached me to develop content that could be delivered online my first response was that it couldn't be done. However, anyone who knows me, knows I love a good challenge so I agreed to try. It is not the same, I like to be with people I teach, to connect face to face. Part of my initial reticence was my own fear of not being able to do so in an online format. It was also about not being able to deliver high quality experience-something I strive for no matter what I do.
I just completed two different groups, both very different, and yet wonderful, tolerant of my technological limitations, and engaged.
I have very much missed teaching, and I am feeling so grateful I was given this opportunity to do so in a new way!
Brave New World!

The UN has chosen "I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights” as the theme of International Women's Day. We will not recognize equality without a thorough cleansing of patriarchal ideas that have shaped our perceptions of strictly defined gender roles. So much change, and yet the shadows remain.
As a firm believer that men must come to understand the benefit of, and support the agenda of change, I share this quote from a self-professed male feminist for deep consideration. We are in this together!

"“Many men will object to the very idea that male privilege exists, but their objection also insists on a kind of invisibility that patriarchy depends on. Few men realize how much their lives would change if women weren’t treated as subordinate. Instead, men take credit for their hard work and achievements without taking into account how much harder it would have been if they had to compete with women on a level playing field or do without the supportive (and unpaid) domestic labor that so many wives and mothers perform. Because patriarchy defines women as subordinate and “other,” men can take women’s exclusion from serious competition for granted. As a result, many men have been rudely awakened by women’s entry into hitherto male-only workplaces. When men complain about the advantage some women gain from affirmative action, they ignore centuries of pro-male affirmative action that, in spite of the women’s movement, continues as the largely unexceptional default condition under patriarchy.”
—Allan G. Johnson, The Gender Knot

I want to acknowledge another group of incredible women from the Karis Support Society and their graduation from Fit4Defense classes. This Fall session we had eight get full completions!
I prepare them mentally from the first class that they will be expected to teach each move in front of their peers and myself on our sixth class as part of their graduation. As the time gets near, they start demonstrating anxiety.
Yet, upon our last class up they get and with small prompts (and sometimes large-you know who you are:) they take the show.
In the end, I get to applaud them and let them in on a little secret-it's not about perfection. It's about showing up, time after time, especially when we don't feel like it. Each one of us has a gift to share with the others, as well as something to learn, we are necessary to the well-being of the group.
It's about taking risks and trusting we'll be okay even when we make mistakes-we are worthy. It's about learning to laugh at ourselves and with each other.
One of the most powerful sessions with this group was when we sat in circle and shared about our individual experiences with anger as children and how that has influenced our own relationship with anger and our choices in partners. We did no floor work at all. In the end, many reflected on how little they knew of each other and some shared that they gained a much softer understanding.
This program is far more than your typical self-defense class-intentionally!
I always feel such regret that I can't share their pictures but I will share a few of the participant surveys they complete-completely anonymous so they can be safe to give whatever feedback they deem is important given the power differential.
I share this to demonstrate some of what they learn, how they feel, and to highlight what is always said-they want more classes, more time. Funding is always an issue for non-profits.
This is important work, trauma-focused work, mind, body, and Spirit work; and these women deserve the time and attention they lost so much of in their pasts towards rebuilding healthier futures for themselves and their children.
I am not business minded-I'm about people. I know I must learn more. If you hold any knowledge about how or where there may be funding available- please contact me.