Quitting Quitting

The elderly Mrs. Lewis stood in front of her high school honors English class with a withering piece of white chalk in her hand. This was not unusual. Neither was the finely ironed paisley dress she wore or her facial oil-smudged glasses that often rested at the tip of her nose. She had suddenly stopped writing on the blackboard, turning to face the class to say something important. At the time, I wondered why she stopped mid-sentence, mid-lesson to say what she did. It had nothing to do with the lesson on the literary significance of “Paradise Lost” by John Milton. It didn’t seem as important as the emphasis she gave. I was in the National Honor Society, though, so I paid attention. I just didn’t see what her words had to do with me.

“Ten percent of students in this class will be teachers,” she announced, looking right at me. Then she turned back to the blackboard to finish detailing our homework assignment in beautiful, whirling cursive.

Not me, I scoffed. I dreamed of being a writer like John Boy on “The Waltons”. I wanted to work for the New York Times and win a Pulitzer Prize. If that didn’t work out, I wanted to shave the oily hair from my head, become a monk, and live in some serene Shaolin temple. I could practice martial arts all day like Grasshopper, the character David Carradine played in my favorite TV series, “Kung Fu.”

Mrs. Lewis wasn’t talking about me. I was sure of it. But why was she looking at me? As if I was the only student in the room. As if she knew something that I didn’t. It was creepy and eerie. I was so certain she was wrong, yet her knowing look troubled me. I promptly pushed the memory of that day out of my mind.

I’ve been a Taekwondo teacher for 13 years now. I love teaching, and I can’t think of anything else (besides writing about teaching) I’d rather do. I feel the most at peace and powerful when mentoring a bunch or rowdy, self-centered, unfocused kids into mature, respectful, and responsible teens and adults who will likely become courteous, honest, and compassionate leaders in their careers and communities.

But boy, I dragged my feet kicking and screaming all the way here. Left bloody fingernail streaks on the walls of life the entire way. I didn’t want my destiny, but my destiny wanted me. And it was patient.

Would you blame me for having doubts, though? Who in their right mind would peg me as a youth martial arts instructor anyway? Early on, I was no mental, physical, or spiritual role model. I could barely stay in my own skin.

• I was a newly recovering alcoholic and hypochondriac who feared exercise because it raised my heart rate. I might have a seizure or heart attack. I could drop dead at any moment, and I wasn’t ready to die just yet.
• My bachelor’s degree was in journalism. I could correct grammar errors all day, but I didn’t know squat about teaching plans.
• I took one psychology course at the University of Texas at Austin. It wasn’t child psychology, either, and I don’t remember much. (Most likely, I slept through or was hung over for much of the class.)
• I loved infants—mostly because they couldn’t speak. But put me in a room with children ages two and up, who were developing the ancient art of saying “No,” and I became a terrified, whimpering idiot.

I don’t know what Mrs. Lewis saw in me. After all, for most of my life, I’ve been a big, fat quitter. Dreams, goals, and tasks I started with passion were repeatedly and unceremoniously dumped. I lacked heart. My soul was soft. If allowed, I’d give up on anything once it became a trial and a hardship—once I realized that I wouldn’t be perfect.

My lineage of quitting ran deep.

I wanted to quit Mrs. Stallkneck’s third-grade class, but Mamma wouldn’t let me. It was my first advanced-paced challenge, and I was terribly afraid of failing. I thought all my classmates were smarter than me. In my limited first- and second-grade experience, I was already used to being the smartest student in the room. Suddenly I wasn’t. I was in a class filled with kids who also were used to being the smartest ones in the room, but they didn’t seem to mind their lower status. I didn’t understand why I was in an advanced class for being smart; I felt so stupid.

I cried almost every day. Cried over my Lucky Charms in the morning. Cried while tying my shoes before heading out the door for my half-a-block walk to school. Cried at the kitchen table later that afternoon while doing homework. I tried not to cry in school, but sometimes tears would uncontrollably spurt out the corners of my eyes. I didn’t understand anything anymore, and was confused and miserable. But when I asked Mamma if I could move to another class—one that wasn’t so hard—she refused. Adamant, in fact. I didn’t know until years later that she dropped out of school in the sixth grade. She had been a quitter, too, and she wasn’t about to let me repeat her mistake.

No matter how I cried, Mamma wouldn’t budge. She was a stubborn woman. Even at nine years old, I knew I wouldn’t win this fight. So I quit: I quit bothering her. I don’t know what the tipping point was or when it happened, but I stopped crying one day and just went to school. (When I graduated from high school, I won a four-year, all-expenses-paid scholarship to the Texas public university of my choice, and I have Mamma to thank for that.)

Despite some successes, doubt and fear dictated many of my early life decisions and detours. As an adult, without Mamma around to right my course, I quit striving for dreams and didn’t even attempt other curiosities. I didn’t want to look any more stupid than I already felt. More important, I didn’t want to fail.

In public.

Where everyone and their grandmothers could see my imperfections.

In college, I quit a women’s co-op house manager’s job at the halfway point of a one-year term. I never wanted the job to begin with. My best friend and some of my housemates convinced me that my diplomatic nature would be an asset. They thought I’d make a good, level-headed leader. Truthfully, they didn’t want to be led by the more outspoken, wild-mustang-personality housemate vying for the position. Of course, I was elected, and was immediately miserable and insecure. I quit after one semester, and the housemate whom everyone feared would get the position finally did. She worked her butt off to do a fantastic job.

During my first newspaper job in East Texas, the publisher of the Marshall News Messenger gave me the opportunity to run a one-person show for the weekly Hallsville Herald. I did it all: reporting, editing, layout, hot wax paste-up, accidental finger slicing. I quit that job after about six months. Heck, I left East Texas completely.

I ended up in West Texas, where the reporters in the Lifestyle section of the daily Lubbock Avalanche-Journal called me “Sneakers” because of how I was dressed for an unintentional job interview. I came to the newspaper that day to visit one of my former Marshall News Messenger colleagues, who showed me around the Avalanche-Journal newsroom and introduced me to the newspaper’s managing editor. By the time I left, that managing editor offered me the open medical reporter position. I lasted six months, and the Avalanche-Journal’s PBX operator won the “How long do you think she’ll last?” pool. Even my colleagues saw something odd in me.

On the Gulf of Mexico, I finally broke the six-month pattern: I stayed at the daily Corpus Christi Caller-Times for three whopping years. I worked with some great reporters and editors and we won many awards for our hard work. Still, irritability, restlessness, and discontent remained, and though I stayed at the job for three years, I started and stopped other things in life. I had a six-month window of happiness with apartments. I moved so often that Mamma refused to take down my new phone number.

“What’s the use,” she said one day. “You’re just gonna move in six months anyway. You call me from now on.”

At the Caller-Times, I helped lead one of the best small-market newspapers in the state as assistant news editor and then news editor. But leadership positions never lasted long. I was a worried and unhappy boss. I hired people I didn’t want to hire, fired people I didn’t want to fire, and drank more and more at bars and at home to quell an ever-growing anxiety. It was apparent to most colleagues that I was a stressed mess. (In a co-worker’s cartoon of the copy desk staff, I appeared as a fist-clinched caricature who screamed, “Doesn’t anyone care about our deadline?!”)

After about—yes, six months—I asked to be reassigned as assistant news editor again. Newspaper executives shook their heads in confusion, but finally, albeit reluctantly, obliged. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. Neither could I.

Finally, I quit something that eventually helped me quit quitting: I stopped drinking alcohol. I went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and found a sponsor, someone who mentored me through the Twelve Steps and helped calm my crazy thoughts and impulses. It was as a recovering alcoholic that I learned to mentor others. Hilda C., my sponsor, gave me no choice.

“You want to stay sober?” she asked one day. “Then seek God. Clean house. Help others.” I wanted to stay sober, so I did what she told me. Hilda helped with many timely reminders such as “keep it simple.” I didn’t need to be an expert in neuroscience or astrophysics to mentor another drunk. I only had to humbly remember how I got screwed up, detail the steps I took to change, and share the gratitude I had for the life I now lived.

“See how your experience can benefit others,” she reminded me.

I willingly accepted her guidance, and that’s when I felt an internal click. Although I still hadn’t remembered Mrs. Lewis’s words, her prophesy began to manifest itself. Working with others—helping people—made me feel alive. Like I mattered. Like I made a difference. And for a naturally depressed person, those feelings are crucial.

As a one-year sobriety gift to myself—a self-amends, as Hilda called it—I joined a martial arts school in San Antonio led by a man who had a bald head and wore a kung fu uniform, just like Grasshopper.

Within every martial art, there is a tradition of teaching others—of senior students taking juniors to the side and showing them a punch, kick, pattern, or self-defense technique. So eventually, there I was: Teaching.

Though no more perfect than before, I was finally willing to learn the art of vulnerability and perseverance. Like Hilda encouraged, I was seeing how my experience could benefit others. I didn’t have to be perfect. I wasn’t supposed to be perfect. The point was to teach through the mistakes I had made myself so that those who followed wouldn’t have to suffer. For the better part of my life, I had been afraid of people. It was a fear that I was surprisingly willing to overcome simply because teaching in the martial arts is expected.

I grew mentally, physically, and spiritually—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, most times painfully, but always thankfully.

The time spent teaching has been some of the best years of my life. Though 13 years later I feel drawn away from Taekwondo—itching to be a student again in another art—I’m still, and will always be, a teacher.

Thanks, Mrs. Lewis.

Students Break for Breakthroughs

There are four things that you should know about me:

1. I love to break things.
2. I love rituals, customs, and ceremonial rites of passage.
3. I love to help others.
4. I love to break things.

On Saturday night, all four things came together in a unique fund-raising event that will help East Austin youth gain self-confidence, physical strength, and spiritual peace.

My mother always frowned upon me breaking things when I was a child (big surprise). But now that I’m an adult, and a Taekwondo practitioner, I’m encouraged to break wood, tile, and brick—stacks of it, if possible—and I always gleefully oblige.

Some martial artists are known for fancy flying kicks, fierce sparring ability, impeccable balance, or the ability to knock an opponent into next week with a powerful punch or kick. I’m known for my breaking ability, but in order to feel complete, I had to find a way to turn my gift into a ritual that would help others.

“Breaking for a Breakthrough” was born in 2005, and it’s been a powerful source of fund-raising and transformation ever since.

“Breaking for a Breakthrough” is a physical, mental, and spiritual exercise that emphasizes board breaking skills as a way to break through problems and obstacles, and symbolizes how oftentimes we need the support of others to move through life’s toughest challenges.

Participants select a whitewood pine board (12 inches long, ¾-inch deep, various widths) and write on it a problem or obstacle they have in their life. Something that really eats their lunch. When they are ready to let that problem go, they hand the board to a nearby martial artist to break for them. Participants take the two halves of pine home and put it in a place where they will see it every day. The day they walk by it and realize the breakthrough is complete, they set it aside to burn at their next campout or on the next cool, fall evening—returning it to the earth.

Saturday’s “Breaking for a Breakthrough” Break-a-Thon benefitted the East Communities YMCA’s Partner of Youth fund, which ensures that every kid who wants to take a class at the YMCA can—regardless of the ability to pay. The Break-a-Thon was phenomenal in many ways. Financially, we raised $225 ($25 more than our goal). At $5 per board, that’s 45 white pines to smash through. It may not sound like a lot, but for our humble little martial arts group, it was a tremendous feat of feet and hands. Here’s why: Thanks to our breakers, there now is a spiritual crack—a ray of hope—at the center of some very stubborn obstacles that have kept many people from living in peace and freedom.

Our group gathered in a half-circle, sitting side-by-side on gray folding chairs, to root on individual breakers in the center. I explained how “Breaking for a Breakthrough” worked, and we got down to spiritual business.

Little 4-year-old Lev handed me a board that read, “I can’t break a board.”

“Is this your board or someone else’s?” I asked.

“It’s my board,” he said, almost hesitantly.

“Well, how about this: I’ll break your board if you break mine.”

I showed him a 3-inch-wide board that had “Uncertainty” written on it in red marker.

“O.K.,” Lev said, smiling wide.

Lev chose to break with a stomp kick.

He only had to hit my “uncertain” board twice before it snapped.

Crack!

The roomful of spectators cheered.

“You CAN break a board, Lev!” I said, holding up the two board pieces, one in each hand.

He grinned from eardrum to eardrum as I handed him the broken pieces, and then he ran to his parents for a big bear hug.

My students were not only challenged with bigger boards than they were used to breaking, but also tried by the oftentimes intense emotional/spiritual factor. This makes the boards even harder to break. Some obstacles are tougher to overcome than others, and when you participate in this kind of exercise, you quickly realize that some boards—though they may be identical in size and sap—are harder to break than others because of what has been written on them. We humans are capable of carrying around a lifetime of painful worries and fears in our souls. When dark energy has been in our cellular structure that long, it’s not that easy to free.

Still, many people were willing to let go of a lot of longstanding and heartbreaking obstacles on Saturday, and each breaker never quit. I was very proud of both parties.

One student in particular—a persistent, 7 year-old green belt—hit the mega-obstacle jackpot. He was breaking for someone who had written in black ink, “Fear of people, fear of failure, fear of economic insecurity.”

Poor kid must have hit that 5-inch-wide board with a side kick a dozen times before I stopped him. I could tell he was getting tired, but he never lost composure and wasn’t about to give up.

“Listen, this is a huge problem,” I told him. “It has nothing to do with whether you’re doing the kick right or not. It’s just a really big obstacle for this person. Lots of fear, and that’s real scary. So think about the person, about how much you want to help them overcome their fears, and then hit it hard and fast right in the center. It’ll break.

“Try again,” I said, holding the board with a good grip. I locked my elbows. As I turned my head away, I gave him the command to begin.

“Shijak!”

He hit the board with a powerful side kick. It still didn’t break—but everyone heard a little crack.

“That’s it!” I said. “One more time.”

He hit it again just as hard. It still didn’t break.

“O.K. guys,” I told the spectators. “It’s time to send good, healing chi to this person. Let’s help this young man break this board.”

Everyone nodded and leaned forward in their chairs. Some clasped their hands in prayer.

We set up again, and this time he hit that board with the hardest kick ever—accompanied by a loud, thunderous kihap.

Crack!

The room erupted in applause—for him and for the person who now had hope that many lifelong fears would soon vanish.

“That was hard-fought,” I whispered to him as I shook his hand. “Good job.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said humbly, then returned to his seat.

All evening, the energy in the room was intense. Even East Communities’ executive director became teary-eyed.

“I found myself getting emotional—over a board,” she said later, looking a bit baffled.

I could tell she didn’t understand why she had such strong feelings.

“In this kind of breaking exercise, that’s what happens,” I said. “You’re feeling all that energy moving—from dark to light, from sadness to joy. Some of the people we broke for tonight have been stuck in hell for a long time, and tonight they’re on the road to freedom.

“That’s huge.”

She gave an understanding nod.

I am continually amazed at how easily our Tao of Texas Martial Arts Institute’s group is willing to help others in need. I have to send out a Herculean electronic hug and thank you to all our breakers: Calvin Redman, Ziyah Parramore, Elijah Kleinman, Lev Kleinman, Jonathan Kleinman, Danielle Hamilton, Karen Rivera, and Waylon “Way-Way” Redman. They were selfless in service to others and bold in spirit.

Does reading this make you crave a breakthrough of your own over something that’s really troubling you? If you didn’t get the chance to participate in Saturday's breakthrough event, contact me via email.

I’ll never turn down an opportunity to break something.

Then again, you already knew that about me, didn’t you?

Memories of Being Bullied

[Part 3 in a series]

Every morning when I was in the second grade, I begged my mom to let me stay home from school.

When I was 8 years old, I was bullied.

Tears flowed from my eyes every day as I sobbed, “Mamma, I don’t wanna go to school!” My mother ignored me, diligently helping tie the shoelaces on my black and white track shoes. I had run out of stomachaches, headaches, and fake fevers. I had to go to school, and I dreaded it because I just didn’t want to face what kids would say to me another day.

From first grade until about ninth grade, I was teased for a variety of reasons. My peers said:
• I was gross. (Truth: I had a gum disease that caused my gums to spontaneously bleed. This drew the disgusted “Eews!” jeers of my classmates.)
• I wore ugly dresses. (Truth: The dresses were discount-store-bought cheap, but pretty. I wore them with black and white track shoes and knee-high white socks—a big fashion no-no, but, come on, I was just a kid.)
• I was a nerd. (Truth: I was book-smart, and I loved learning.)
• I was a teacher’s pet. (Truth: I thrived on pleasing authority figures—and still do.)

Students also mocked my last name with a similarly sounding Spanish slang phrase that was a gay slur.

I played the part of a super-stealth ninja for most of my time in school. I tried not to cry when kids said hurtful things because I learned that if they didn’t think they hurt my feelings, they lost interest and went on to bully someone else.

That worked until the sixth grade, when an older classmate threatened to beat me up after school—for no reason. Again, I was scared and didn’t want to go to school. But while I didn’t breathe a word about the bullies before, I did tell my mom about this girl. Mamma’s solution? Wear jeans and loop on my sister’s thick leather western belt.

"If that girl lays a hand on you," Mamma insisted, "you pull that belt off and whip her with it!"

I snuck around school, changing my routes to avoid the bully, and eventually she forgot about me. For the rest of the year, though, I had a whole new group of kids making fun of me and that big leather belt, calling me “Hee Haw Cathy.”

Eventually, around 10th grade, my peers stopped picking on me. I still excelled in academics, except by the time of my induction into the National Honor Society, being smart was considered an asset. My classmates could call me “nerd” all day long and it didn't matter: I knew I was bound for college. (Stick tongue out here.)

Today I’m a grown woman who still loves to read and has made a career out of working with words as a writer and editor. I also have much higher self-esteem and inner strength. Studying martial arts has been a true gift. It saddens me and makes me angry when I hear what comes out of the mouths of today's bullies. But today through martial arts, I have a chance to help youths build self-confidence as a way to combat the bullies I know they run into at school. I get to give them the words I never knew to speak and the courage I didn't yet have to stand up for themselves.

Surviving bullying IS NOT a rite of passage. Bullying is WRONG. No kid should have to grow thicker skin or toughen up so that they can weather classmates’ taunts and torture. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Until our judgmental and violent-prone culture changes, though, the best I can do is to pass on the following wisdom to those who still suffer the wrath of bullies:
• Don’t listen to or believe your classmates’ hurtful words. The mean things a bully might say to you and about you aren’t true anyway. Imagine you’re Teflon cookware: Let nothing stick to you.
• Stand up for yourself—and others. Repeat this simple mantra: “Bullying is not O.K.—not now, not ever!” Then walk away.
• Stick with the winners. Find a good, solid group of peeps and stay close. Avoid those fair-weather friends who abandon you when the bully comes around or who join in on the bashing because they themselves are afraid of what the bully might do or say if they don’t.
• Talk to someone. Don’t suffer in silence. Adults can and will help if you ask—even parents.
• Give it time. Remember that school life doesn’t last forever. This, too, shall pass, so please hang in there.
• Avoid taking bully-prevention fashion tips from your mother at all costs.