I have been teaching people to protect themselves for seventeen years.

For six years I owned and ran my own school. That is where I learned that being good at this and being good at teaching it are two completely different skills, and that the second one is harder. During that time I built out three divisions inside the company — one for tactical medicine, one for firearms, and one exclusively for law enforcement personnel — because I kept running into the same problem: the moment something real happens, those subjects stop being separate.

My students have ranged about as widely as it is possible to range. Civilians who had never thrown a punch. Law enforcement and military. Private government officials. I have gone into schools, public and private, to teach active shooter awareness and response, and conducted physical security assessments for the organisations I was training. I have worked personal protection for people whose safety was somebody's professional responsibility, from government officials through to public figures.

A meaningful part of that work is not something I discuss in detail, and I would rather tell you that plainly than dress it up or invent a version of it that sounds better. I currently work as a canine handler in a government role. When people ask me for specifics I usually cannot give them, and I have found that the people who most need to know are also the people who understand why.

What I can tell you is what it left me with. Seventeen years of watching what actually works when someone is frightened, and what quietly falls apart. A very low tolerance for training that looks impressive and does nothing. And a conviction that the person most worth teaching is almost never the one who already thinks they can handle it.

I am now studying to become a Christian trauma therapist. That was not a career change — it was the missing piece. So much of what keeps people from defending themselves is not physical, and I had spent years working on one half of a problem. Learning the other half has changed how I teach more than anything else I have ever done.

I live in Spicewood with my husband, our two kids, and three very good dogs. This is my community. The people I am hoping to train are the ones I already stand next to in line at the grocery store, and I take that personally.