If you do not follow The Cornered Cat on FaceBook then YOU SHOULD.
She posts the most thought provoking ideas, articles, and questions of anyone I have ever read.
She posted this article today and I thought it was so profound.
It goes back to every thing I have been taught since the very first day of my Conceal Carry class: it starts with THE MIND.
If you are a gun person or a man then that is most likely very obvious to you, I am sure, but if you are a woman, especially one that was not fortunate enough to be raised by parents who taught her to fight, then, it just isn’t that obvious. In fact, for me, it’s always been the opposite.
The obvious thing for me to do was nothing, was not to fight. Not fighting was the most natural thing the world to do.
It was so ingrained in who I was. If someone came at me, I never even flinched.
I may have shared this before, I used to be a youth leader at a local church and one day we all went to another leaders house for a party. He had a pool and everyone was swimming except for me. I was dressed, as I usually was back then, in dress pants, dress shoes and a very nice top. I was standing by the pool with my back turned to the crowd and a lady came up behind me and intentionally pushed me in.
I don’t remember thinking anything. I wasn’t afraid and I wasn’t concerned, I just fell right in. I didn’t try to grab for anything. I didn’t, by instinct, reach out and try to pull her in. I just fell exactly where I was pushed.
Even after I realized what had happened I did not get upset or complain that my new shoes were ruined, I just smiled and made a joke.
At the time, I actually thought what a nice person I was. I cared more about people and their feelings than to get upset about something that didn’t matter anyway, like shoes.
But, today I see it much different. Not so much the reaction afterwards, but the lack of instinct to fight in the first place.
What happened to this woman in the article Betrayed by the Angel is much worse than anything that has happened to me, but I think we share a mindset, a mindset that, has not served either of us well.
After I read this article I posted this comment on The Corned Cat’s page…