Kicking Butts

She Looks Like an Angel. Then She’s Kicking Butts

There’s this moment, every time my daughter steps onto the mat, where someone new looks at her and smiles politely.

She’s very thin. All blond hair, sweet green eyes, and this lightness in the way she moves—like someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly. She could pass for a ballerina. Or a fairy. Or a girl who says “excuse me” when walking through a crowd. (Which she does.)

And then the match starts.

And the fairy princess absolutely wrecks someone.

It’s not aggressive. It’s precise. Calm. Controlled. She doesn’t roar. She doesn’t even glare. She just moves like she knows exactly what she’s doing—because she does. And watching it? Honestly? It gave me chills. She has a second nature, very well hidden.

And then, as it tends to happen in my life lately, it gave me a scene.

I didn’t have my laptop, of course. Just a school notebook swiped from her backpack and a half-eaten pencil. But I didn’t care. When you get it, you write it down.

Because something about that moment—the contrast between how the world sees her and who she really is—cracked open something in the story I’m writing. A character I thought I understood suddenly showed me another layer. Like she’d been waiting for me to notice.

It’s funny how that works. You think you’re just taking your kid to class. But then she shows you what grace and power really look like. And somehow, that shows up in the book, too.

So no, I didn’t plan to write that night.
But when a scene walks across the mat in a gray belt and flips someone twice her size, you don’t wait.

You write. With whatever you’ve got.