My father was in his 50’s when I was born, so I didn’t get a lot of time to spend with him before he passed. Yet, I am alway thankful for the father I had because he taught me how to stop an assault and not in the ways one might think.
First, let’s look at the situations I was in and how disastrous they could have gone. 1)It was early one morning in an elevator on my collage campus. I got in, the doors shutting behind me, only to have a wicked man staring me down. 2) I was jogging alone early one morning near my college campus. Two men stopped in a car and got out. 3) A nude man chasing me on an isolated beach in Santa Barbara. He kept hiding behind bushes, so I couldn’t get a good handle on the situation.
What my father did, which prepared for me these situations, was he allowed me to struggle as a kid. He monitored and watched for safety issues, but he didn’t step in and fix things for me. If I was struggling with getting the sheep on the stand to groom them, he let me do it. If I was to feed the cows and struggled with the hay bales, he let me do that. If I was struggling with math, he directed but let me figure it out. If I had to get the saddle on the horse, he suggest a stand might help, then walked away.
After 18 years of my father’s approach, I ended up with a bit of an attitude – I could do it. I encourage dads to let their daughters discover their strength. Watch for safety issues, correct those as needed, but let her know that she has power by letting her do lots of things.
It is in those lessons that help the grown woman to present a powerful front to would-be criminals. And sometime, that is all that is needed to give them cause to pause; to decide that this woman presents too much of an unknown and too much power.
Era Lewis 