Why Warrior?

This is my Interrobang (CLU Writing Group) blog, and it’s specifically intended to help me work through my writing challenges. Since the members of our writing group come from a variety of different departments, let me take a moment to introduce myself….

I’m Dru, finished as of Spring 2019 as chair of the Communication Department and my 21st year as a faculty member at CLU. I decided to call this blog “Warrior Writing” because I’ve wanted to be a warrior since I was little … but all the warriors in the fantasy novels were boys, and, I was assured by everyone around me, I was a girl. I decided very young that the situation sucked, and I’ve been gender-nonconforming ever since.

And when I said I wanted to be a warrior, I meant it literally. As a kid I practiced archery and took judo up to brown belt, then had to drop out because we moved; I’m also an Air Force brat. I jumped around a few years doing a little jiu-jitsu and a little aikido and ended up stopping in college. I go out shooting with my father and have taken several tactical shooting courses. I thought about joining the military, but I don’t do conformity and unquestioning obedience well. I decided to base my career on my writing and reading strengths, instead. But I stayed interested in warrior philosophies and mindsets. Some time ago I started martial arts again. When we’re not in a pandemic, I go three times a week, and every Saturday morning I show up to the dojo at 8 a.m. for what I call “Fight Club” — round-robin sparring and grappling for an hour. My kempo school is pretty tough and focused on practical self-defense. I’ve taken a lot of rank tests over the years. The tests took a grueling number of hours, and the goal was to utterly exhaust you. Sparring was always the very last part of the test, after you were wobbly-legged and have forgotten everything you learned and think there’s no way you can keep going. But if you can muster up enough energy to keep going through it all and fight that last match — even if you don’t win it — you’ve earned your new rank. You’ve shown you’ve got the warrior spirit they’re looking for.

In the summer of 2015 I was diagnosed with cancer. There was no way I could continue kempo as I got a transfusion port implanted in my chest and went through chemo and radiation. But kempo’s lessons stuck with me: a warrior keeps getting back up again; a warrior stays in the fight. Soon after my diagnosis I bought a bracelet that says “warrior” on it as a reminder to keep fighting. Some days, I really needed that reminder. But with the help of a great doctor and medical team, good friends who kept me fed and exercised and emotionally supported, and a university that worked around my appointments and supported me whenever I asked for help, I got through it. I was able to rejoin my dojo in the summer of 2016, and in the summer of 2017 I went to China and earned my black belt in a temple in the Wudang Mountains.

Since then I’ve broadened my definition of ‘warrior.’ Yes, it’s still important to me to stay “fighting fit.” But there are a lot of kinds of fights. Quite often we have to fight to earn degrees, to get jobs, to overcome prejudices, to support our families, to live with a disease, to find ourselves, to be heard. Writing a poem, a short story, a novel, a research article, an academic book … those are fights, too: we’re struggling to express ourselves and to share something that we think is important with the world. I find writing a lot like sparring practice. On a good day, the words flow smoothly and I end my writing session drained but with a satisfying sense of accomplishment. On a bad day, I’m tripping and flailing and getting hit, wondering why in the world I’m putting myself through so much effort and misery when I could just pour myself a drink and binge-watch the latest awesome Netflix series just like the rest of the world.

So this is what we have to remember — we put ourselves through this effort and misery because we’re warriors. And to win this fight, we simply need to not stop writing.