COLUMBUS, Ohio — March is Women's History Month, so it's the perfect time to take a look at women making a difference around the world.

What You Need To Know

  • Laurah Hallock has been teaching a Women’s Self Defense class at Ohio State for two years

  • She started teaching it because of her childhood

  • Hallock also travels around the world to teach seminars, but teaching at the college level is especially important to her

It’s also a time for women to feel empowered, and Laurah Hallock is doing just that through the art of self-defense.

“I have been teaching women self-defense for a while now,” she said.

Hallock said she started teaching it because of her childhood. 

“When I was 15, I was groomed and manipulated into a very abusive relationship within the jujitsu community for several years, and I hit many lows during that period,” said Hallock. 

But while Hallock can’t change the past, she decided to build plenty of futures, and empower women while she’s at it.

“I decided that, you know what? This experience, this abuse that I’ve experienced, is not going to define me, is not going to define my life. This is not who I want to be known as,” she said.

Hallock travels around the world to teach women self-defense seminars. She even teaches a class at Ohio State, changing the lives of every one of them. 

It even inspires self-defense student Abigail Patterson.

“I feel super comfortable to mess up, which I think is a huge part of empowerment,” Patterson said. “In being able to mess up, I can become so much stronger in my skills and so much more confident in what I’m doing, because I’m not so worried about how I look all the time and how my skills are coming across because I just get to learn.”

The anti-sexual violence group RAINN reports 18- to 24 year olds who are college students are three times more likely than any other women to experience sexual violence. 

That’s why teaching at the college level is especially important to Hallock. 

“That is the ultimate goal, is to empower all of us,” Hallock explained. “If you’ve ever experienced abuse, you go through many different cycles and emotions. So, I use it to the best of my ability to make an impact into the community, into the U.S., to hopefully prevent other women from experiencing the same thing.”

While Hallock has been teaching women’s self-defense seminars for 10 years, she’s only been teaching at Ohio State for two years.