Welcome to On Her Own
A place for the woman who has herself together and is just messy around the edges AND the woman who aspires to be that woman
- Jane Smith
Personal Coach
Losing on your own terms
All of us come to the personal safety and self-defense world for different reasons. Some of us have been targeted by violence, or know someone who has. Some of us have seen it first-hand or in the news. Some of us came to be interested more academically, knowing it exists in theory but perhaps not
Talking with strangers: public transportation edition
Public transportation is one of the odd places we spend time with strangers. On the surface, the only thing we know we have in common is that we are going from one place to another. We might not have started at the same origin point, and we might not be ending up at the same
Why it’s good to be a news junkie
As I have some things going on in OHO-land, we’re rerunning today. If you’ve been with me long enough to remember this post from two years ago, thank you! And if not, I’m glad you joined me in the meantime 🙂—How many of you check in on your local news on a regular basis? I’m
The Alpinist
Mountain climbers fascinate me, especially solo climbers, who pit themselves against nature with minimal equipment and support. When I watch them climb, I see individuals who face brutal conditions and survive, even thrive and feed off the triumph of overcoming them. They pursue goals that may seem meaningless to many of us, by working their
How your self-defense strategy will fail
On Monday, I encouraged you to challenge yourself when you train for self-defense. The general idea of learning how to solve problems under pressure so that you are resilient against an attacker is an important one, but sometimes it can be difficult to imagine exactly what kinds of issues might come up. Today, we’ll explore
Why you need to prepare to fail
For most of us, preparing for self-defense starts with imagining a particular type of bad guy and attack, and continues with visualizing a specific outcome that we want. It can be as simple as anticipating a nasty remark our nemesis might toss our way one morning and planning the witty and cutting reply we’ll spit