in this week’s episode of “Time to Head North,” Vince Vargas and Natasha Ryan talk to author Kelly Sayre about situational awareness. Her new book Sharp Women focuses on teaching women to be aware of their settings to protect themselves. Her goal is to ensure women never end up in a situation that is potentially violent.
Self-defense classes are great but Kelly says a lot of the time they don’t offer the skillset on how to avoid having to use those skills. That’s what gave her the idea to start training women and writing this book. “The threats against women look different because usually it’s someone we know.” She says it’s much easier to brush off behavior when we know the people. Kelly reminds women because of nature, are given instinct and intuition that helps them read a room.
Setting boundaries (unapologetically) is also part of staying safe. Kelly tells a story of a man walking up to her and a friend on the street, joking around about how young they looked. She says so many times women think they have to be polite, engage with strangers but that urge to be nice shouldn’t be the case. “He walked up to two women he didn’t know, insisted we should talk to him. It’s 9am and he’s got a brown bag from the liquor store in his hand.” Kelly simply said one word and refused to engage, while staring at him. The man got upset but walked away. Kelly uses this example because her friend admitted she wouldn’t have been able to have the confidence to put that boundary in place. She gives many more examples to wake women up from what society has traditionally taught and how to reshape that to keep women safe.
Violence towards women usually comes from people they know. Sayre says so many times women think, “How did I not know, how did I get to this point?”. Sayre points out once you can sense what’s off in the environment, you can start to protect yourself. Once again, this is when boundaries come into play. The episode is a perfect snippet of stories and tips. Check out the full episode below and continue to visit our site for more episodes of “Time to Head North.” Kelly’s book is Sharp Women and comes out this month on Amazon.
