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that one of the initial reasons I stuck with takedowns was for the pain, as sick as that sounds. Physical pain is nothing compared to emotional pain. If I was aching, then I was alive, right? I would be so sore I couldn’t roll over in bed, so sore the bottoms of my feet would hurt. Places I didn’t know could hurt would hurt. But I would just sort of smile as I limped and groaned along my merry way. In class, people are throwing you to the mat every which way from Sunday, and even though they taught me how to fall, I resembled Humpty Dumpty in falling ability. And I still went back. I didn’t realize it then, but I had turned a corner and faced my fears by taking on the challenge of that class. Maybe it was because it gave me a sense of accomplishment to go—even though I never really wanted to be there—to tell myself, “You did it again. You got through.” That class scared me. My husband would be shaking his head every time I left the house or showed him a new injury. Somehow he must have known that I thought I needed this. It’s that warrior-wife thing again.

17
The Choke
    B efore I started training at Jiu-Jitsu, my idea of choking was something you did on a hotdog, requiring the Heimlich maneuver. In Jiu-Jitsu, choking your opponent is one way to get him to submit. There are all kinds of chokes: baseball choke, collar choke, Ezekial choke, Darce choke, paper cutter choke; chokes using the lapel of the gi; chokes that use the gi skirt; and who knows, probably the belt too. There are blood chokes that make you pass out because they press on the carotid arteries, soft-tissue chokes, and airway chokes. Sometimes you don’t feel like you are being choked; it just hurts, so you tap.
    One of my vivid memories of choking took place early in my training. During one of the sparring sessions, I was partnered with T, a nice guy often referred to as “The Energizer Bunny” because he had the frightening ability to go at a wicked speed for a very long time. I don’t remember the speed as much as I remember him trying to choke me from behind for a very long time. I do remember trying to fend him off and hang on until the timer went off . . . probably two minutes, but it felt like twenty. When the timer beeped, he let go, said “Good job,” and moved on to find another victim. I, on the other hand, had been shaking so badly I went into the lobby to compose myself.
    At some point, Coach came out and sat beside me. “Are you okay?”
    In between breaths of hyperventilation, I replied, “He . . . was . . .trying to . . . choke . . . . me really . . . hard.” I’m sure that Coach was half-laughing, but I wouldn’t look him in the eye to find out. “Well,” he continued, “now when you compete, you will know how it really feels, and you’ll be ready. You are feeling all that adrenaline and the adrenaline dump.”
    I didn’t know what an adrenaline dump was, but I barely heard anything after he said, “Now when you compete . . .”
    What? I was thinking, Are you nuts? I’m not even sure I think this is fun. All that came out my mouth, however, was: “Yeah, sure.”
    I learned later that an adrenaline dump is the aftereffect of a big adrenaline rush. The adrenaline rushes in to prep you for “fight or flight.” Afterward, if you haven’t learned to control the rush, you will feel an overwhelming fatigue as the adrenaline leaves the bloodstream. It felt more like posttraumatic stress disorder to me.
    Besides being choked literally, a person can choke figuratively. In athletics, this can be described as a loss of confidence, an inability to move, an increase in anxiety, loss of emotional control, and waves of doubt. Interestingly, I was suffering all of those symptoms as I learned to cope with grief. I had lost my focus. I engaged in negative self-talk that led to surges of anxiety. My anxiety made it difficult to