Situational Awareness for Women and Girls: Staying sharp, confident and safe in an ever-changing world

Situational Awareness is the broad idea of understanding your surroundings and how you will respond to them. For many of us, especially women, we are taught about situational awareness through self-defense behaviors- venture out in pairs, hide our keys in our hands, carry pepper spray or a whistle, or take a personal self-defense course. But there is more to the idea of situational awareness than simply protecting oneself. Each of us is equipped with an internal mechanism we might call intuition or our “gut”, that alerts us when something is different, or possibly dangerous. Getting in tune with our own instincts is paramount to preparing for different scenarios and reacting to circumstances. Kelly Sayre, author and training expert, shares her experience with developing situational awareness training, how it supports survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, and how each of us can use the skills and senses we are born with to stay sharp, confident and safe.