Our Newest Pillar: Self-Defense

Last weekend, we hosted our first Self-Defense Workshop with high schoolers from Polytechnic and Flintridge Prep. For 90 minutes, these girls learned how to recognize dangerous situations before they escalate, set physical boundaries, and create enough distance to get away safely.

Self-defense is exactly like every other skill we teach at Life Launch: completely learnable, genuinely important, and almost never taught explicitly. Nobody hands a teenage girl a roadmap for what to do if someone grabs her arm. You're just supposed to figure it out. Or hope you never need to.

Independence isn't just about knowing how to change a tire or read a paycheck. It's about moving through the world feeling safe, and knowing what to do when a situation isn't.

Same philosophy, different skill set. Life Launch is about filling the gaps school leaves behind — and this is one of the most important ones.