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A Tricoastal Woman: Karate Love Song
When I was living in Wichita Falls, Texas, I decided to take karate. I went over to the YMCA and signed up for a twice-a-week class, never having watched a class. The first night I got there a little...
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Fighting and Not Fighting
I’ve spent more than half my life training in martial arts, but I’m not all that interested in fighting these days. What really grabs me right now is learning to use internal power — being able to take...
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Women and Power
StoryCenter, the Berkeley-based organization that teaches people to use new media to tell their stories, set up a session to record women talking about Women and Power using their newly developed...
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Why Empowerment Self Defense Matters
My fellow students at empowerment self defense teachers’ camp, after we all broke boards. I hear three different arguments against women studying self defense or martial arts. The first is the typical...
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Not a Boy
I sucked at being a girl back in the day. I never did figure out how to dress, how to flirt, or when to scream at concerts. About the only thing I did right was read Nancy Drew books. Most of the...
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On Life Changing Experiences and Fear
In May of 1979, I went to the YMCA in Wichita Falls, Texas, and signed up for karate. The same evening I went to my first class. It changed my life. That might make you think my life at the time was...
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Tradition!
Over my years of training, I’ve always been a traditional martial artist. Before I began training in Aikido under a master instructor who had been a live-in student of the founder, I trained in...
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What You Do Does
“You know what you do. You don’t know what you do does.” I first heard that at an event with Rebecca Solnit and Joan Halifax, Roshi. Solnit said it, but she was referring to something she had learned...
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BVC Announces Fledglings by Sherwood Smith
Fledglings The Phoenix Feather Book 1 by Sherwood Smith This started out as a sanity-saver novelette when the pandemic began. Sherwood remembers thinking, this pandemic will last a couple months, just...
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BVC Announces Redbark by Sherwood Smith
Redbark The Phoenix Feather II by Sherwood Smith Twenty-five years ago, a sworn bodyguard and a reluctant bride fled an angry prince, married in secret, and vanished. That prince is now the emperor,...
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