One of my most popular pieces of all time was called “Teach Your Daughters to Hit People Who Touch Them,” but I have to confess that I no longer actually tell her to hit people. I tell her to put them on the ground. Hard. That’s why I enrolled her in a Brazilian jiu jitsu studio focused on self defense over competition and dedicated to the giant killer tradition of the Gracie family. She just got her first stripe on her belt.
Back in 2017 when I wrote the original piece I was in a bad place, still reeling from the election of a man to the highest office in the land who had been credibly accused of sexual assault by multiple women and who bragged about it on tape. I feared for my little eight-year-old to enter a world where people thought that was an acceptable way to act. I still do.
I started to teach her to fight, but my own training is… undisciplined. It’s mostly Greco-Roman wrestling mixed with the sort of shoot wrestling tricks and dirty fighting you learn when your Lucha Libre teacher is the sort of dude who would wrestle in the boondocks of Mexico where they try to stab you in the ring. It works great in a bar fight against drunks, but it’s not the sort of thing you can teach a third grader to use.
Professor Mikal Abdullah is a 2nd Degree BJJ Black Belt, veteran, father, philanthropist, and founder of Aces Jiu Jitsu Club. You can find her personal Instagram account with the handle @cerebralbjj or just stop by one of our locations and get a session in!