Before I became a mom, I had a false sense of safety. I had experienced close calls, but they never scared me. It wasn’t until danger started creeping closer to my daughter that I finally took the initiative to prepare for threats to our safety.
When she was very little, we lived on a stretch of road where the address numbers didn’t make much sense. On one end, they were five digits. On the other end, three digits. To a person, it was confusing, and when it was plugged into a GPS, it became even more muddled.
Our address was constantly getting mixed up with another house down the road, which unfortunately, was a house where people made their living selling drugs. So every now and then, someone would show up pounding on the door, angry and unpredictable.
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My husband worked out of town, which meant I was alone with my daughter more than I wasn’t. You learn to live with a low-level tension in situations like that. In December of that year, my mindset shifted.
Close to Home
I got a call that there had been a violent home invasion just a few houses up the road. Two men forced their way inside at gunpoint, tied people up, pistol-whipped them, and demanded money. Then they ran, disappearing into the wooded area that is connected behind all the homes on the street.
As the details came in, the reality hit harder. They hadn’t meant to hit that house. They were looking for the drug dealers, those same ones whose address kept getting confused with mine. In that moment, sitting in my house with my baby asleep in her crib, I realized something I hadn’t fully faced before. We were vulnerable.
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Not just in theory. Not in some distant, abstract way. Right there, in real time, with two violent men somewhere in the woods near my backyard.
Prior Incidents
That made me think about all the other moments I had brushed off over the years. During my childhood, my mom had a stalker. Not the kind you hear about in passing, but the kind that terrorizes your life. He would sit in our driveway and watch us through the windows. He followed us around town, he tapped into our landline, he would routinely call and threaten to kill us. We lived with that for years, until he went to prison for stalking another woman.
My grandmother once fought off an intruder with a woodstove poker. My aunt defended herself from an ex-husband with a block of wood. My mom carried pepper spray.
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Strong and capable women, all of them, and yet limited in what they had to work with.
Plan For Protection
For most of my life, firearms were part of the hunting world. We used them to get venison in the freezer. They were tools for sustenance, not protection. I didn’t know many (any) women who shot guns, so by default, I didn’t know any women who saw them as a means for self-defense.
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Something changes when you become a mother, or at least it did for me. I stopped thinking in terms of reaction and started thinking in terms of preparation.
It was no longer about me, because let’s be honest, I was careless in protecting myself. It was now about the small, sleeping child who depended on me for everything. Her life was too precious to depend on hope as a plan. Delegating her safety to someone else wasn’t an option either. As much as we trust the men in our lives, they aren’t always there. They can’t be. And they shouldn’t have to be the sole line of defense.
Concealed Carry
Not long after the home invasion incident, I started the process to get my New York State concealed carry permit. I took the course, filed the paperwork, got fingerprinted, and paid the fees.
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It wasn’t about fear. It was about responsibility. Mothers already build safety systems into everyday life. We turn pan handles inward so little hands don’t grab them. We lock up medicine cabinets. We scan rooms for potential hazards without even thinking about it. Protection is a mother’s instinct.
The Rise of Women Who Carry
Over the past couple of decades, female gun ownership has risen significantly. What used to be a small minority has grown into a substantial and steadily increasing group. That shift isn’t random.
For a long time, women owning firearms was the exception. There were barriers, financial, cultural, and educational, that kept it that way, but those barriers have faded significantly.
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Women are building careers, supporting themselves, and stepping into spaces that were once closed off. Training programs, mentorship opportunities, and communities focused on education and safety are more available than ever.
Women have always been protectors. The difference now is that more women are choosing to equip themselves with the tools to match that role. The truth is, we don’t get to choose when danger shows up, but we do get to choose whether we’re prepared for it.
