THE STRENGTH SHE FOUND ALONG THE WAY

by Shanon Weaver

Should Mary Peterson be at home knitting? She once asked her instructor at Master’s Path Karate exactly that. He looked at her and answered without hesitation: "Not you, Mary. Not you."

He was right.

At 64, Mary is an orange belt in Tang Soo Do, learning to use nunchucks and a staff, working toward her next belt and training to become a certified instructor. Just one year earlier, she stood outside the studio wondering whether she was too old to walk in.

Growing up on Long Island, New York, Mary loved movement. Her mother enrolled her in ballet and tap. Jazz was supposed to come next, but with six children, the family budget only stretched so far. Mary kept dancing anyway, teaching herself by watching performers on television. She painted, too. "I definitely have an artist's soul," she says.

But artistic expression couldn't provide something else she had long wanted. Bullied as a child, Mary remembered feeling vulnerable and helpless. "It has always been a dream of mine to learn self-defense," she says. She considered it in her 30s, but raising three children came first. The dream waited.

Then, at 63, while searching for a place to exercise, she spotted a sign for Master’s Path Karate. She called and asked the question that was already arguing with her confidence: Was she too old?

The answer was an emphatic no.

Mary began slowly with a stretching program called Healing Warriors. Still, she could hear the karate classes in the next room and wondered what she had gotten herself into. Even after joining, fear sometimes won. On one occasion, she nearly reached class, turned around and went home.

Her instructor, David Schroeder (first-degree black belt, co-owner and head instructor at Master’s Path) reminded her that it was her journey and she could grow at her own pace. So, she returned. "I kept telling him, 'Can I just go for two months? I just want to see if I like it.'" Two months became a year, and the woman who once turned the car around earned her orange belt. "I cried when I got it because I knew all the struggles I went through, but I never gave up."

In her program, the orange belt represents summer's heat and the sun warming the soil for new growth. It is a fitting image for someone discovering fresh possibilities in a season too often mistaken for our sunset years.

Along the way, Mary learned that her physical limits weren't always what she thought they were. She ran toward a Wavemaster training bag, struck it with a double jump kick and knocked it to the floor. She learned to cross the gym walking on her knees, an exercise that seemed impossible the first time and easier by the third. "I gained the unimaginable. I went beyond the personal limits I thought I had," she says. "It's been eye-opening and very empowering."

Tang Soo Do—a traditional Korean martial art emphasizing self-defense, physical fitness, discipline, and the development of mind, body, character and respect—also gave her a quieter kind of strength. Early on, simply standing still and focusing on one point for a minute felt nearly impossible. Now, she says, "My mind feels so much more disciplined. If I'm in a new situation, it isn't in 50 different places. It's focusing straight ahead…I think my focus is better than it was 20 years ago."

The community noticed her gifts, too. Schroeder saw her potential, and after only a year, Mary was invited into certified instructor training. She hopes eventually to help women and children learn to protect themselves. That calling is rooted in her own childhood. "It goes deeper than just, 'Oh, this is a fun hobby,'" she says. "Knowing that I can help other people grow in confidence and empower them to defend themselves is really important to me."

Martial Arts has supported her health goals, but Mary is glad she didn't make reaching them a prerequisite. "Start now and start where you are," she says. "Don't wait to be perfect before you start anything, because there will always be something you have to work on. I'm glad I started despite being overweight and having so many obstacles, because as a result, so many opportunities have opened up to me."

That is her message to our readers. This chapter isn't an epilogue. Try the class. Take the lesson. Make the thing you've talked about making. In Mary's case, it probably won't be a quiet afternoon of knitting.