Root Force opened in a small rented space in the middle of the city. Eight women came to the first session. Some could barely look at each other. One kept tugging her sleeves down over deep purple bruises.

Another had handed her entire salary to her husband for fifteen years because he told her she couldn’t manage money. A teenager came because her boyfriend checked her phone and threatened to publish her private photos if she left.

We didn’t start on the heavy bags.

We started by naming out loud what was happening to them.

“Control is not love,” I told them, every day, sitting in a circle. “Jealousy is not protection. Humiliation is not discipline. And marriage does not make a human being someone else’s property.”

Only then did we work on posture, balance, voice, distance, exits. Hours of practice getting a hand off a wrist, calling for help in public, pulling the attention of bystanders, running without losing your footing.