Protect supporting Young Mum's program

Protect have been honoured to support Te Waipuna Puawai with their 'Young Mum's' program in Auckland this year providing services under our Community Support Program. It was awesome to receive this Christmas card from the team!

Women's Empowerment & Safety Seminar in RPE newsletter

'Self Defense vs Self Worth'...A Protect Team Member's Perspective

I've been coming along to Phil Thompson’s peace and harmony sessions (AKA "Protect Group Classes" - Phil) for about 3 years now and I’m finding its changing me in interesting ways. Let me explain….. It’s a bit of a journey but bear with me. The perspective might surprise you.

Recently my wife, my 18 month old boy and I were in our people-mover heading
down the southern motorway. I usually travel in the middle lane, today there
was someone in the middle lane doing about 70 kmph, I moved into the far right
lane (aka the fast lane, never made sense to me the limit is still 100 right?).
I moved into the right hand lane and could see a ute coming up behind me very
fast, a big shiny black V8 ute in a big hurry.

I must have been out in the fast lane for 10 seconds doing about 100 kmph, and the ute
was on me, I think maybe 2 meters off my rear bumper. It’s a strange reality,
it’s a bit like it’s all hardly moving, because you're all moving at the same
speed. But imagine if something goes wrong, imagine the tearing, ripping sound
as we all slow down to zero in an instant. So there I am, the guy in the ute
pulls into the middle lane and then passes me. When he’s gone past he pulls
hard right, so hard my wife actually yelped (not a term I'd normally
use!!). As he pulled back into the right hand lane he cut me off so hard that
his rear bumper was perhaps 50cm from my front bumper.

So, what now? This was really threatening; in fact it was life threatening for
my entire family. So what now?

Roll forward about 2 weeks, I'm sitting in a friends lounge recounting all
this. I make the point, “ what am I supposed to do, have some kind of suicidal
western style duel at 100kmph on the southern motorway”. Now my friend has heard
me spout the “hoiler than thou” doctrine for years” and he calls me out in the
best fashion.

“But you can’t keep doing that right? You can’t keep just letting people walk
over you with no comeback, you’ve got to stand up for yourself right?”. “So that
guy has forgotten about you as just another twat to shunt out of the way, but
it’s weeks later and your still thinking about it” so somehow he won, I mean,
your still dealing with it, he’s not”.

Well, those comments really made me think about this. But then I realized
something really important, it’s me talking about this to my friends, my
family, my close friends at Protect that is the positive outlet. When my friend
Jim asked, “So aren’t you just bottling this up”. My answer is “yes, kind of".
It all becomes part of the case study….. Part of the testimony that protects me,
my friends, my training partners.

Because I can tell them there is a way to express this without risking life and limb, there is a way to make this a positive outcome. It’s a way that certainly makes my world a lot safer, teaches my little boy how to behave (i.e not like a baboon). It's very cathartic, sure I will chew on these experiences, mull them over, but they are infact a positive, an opportunity to learn about myself. And finally I’m really at a point where I trust myself to make good decisions, that’s a
great outcome!