4th stripe gripe
I’m one of the only women in my gym. It‘s fine with me, the guys are great and I‘m not a petite or shy female so it’s competitive. I’m a 3-stripe white belt, been training 4x/week for a year now. Good rapport with head coach. I’m also pregnant (just entering second trimester). Have been transparent with coach and training partners about it, made proper modifications, but still training on my regular schedule and doing the work.
Today was a surprise promotion day. It always happens at the end of the regular class and before open mat, and all during regular class coach had been sneaking me belts to hide in my gi like a clown car to surprise people when we sat down to it. It was funny and I was happy to help.
Promotions going, me helping distribute belts, people getting stripes, hooray. And then… it’s over, and I didn’t get my stripe despite many people being surprised (me included). Whatever, bummer, but stripes are stripes and it’s fine.
Later, while sitting on the side with coach and a few other people, someone commented about me not getting a stripe. Coach said, “you have 4 stripes don’t you?” I said no, only three, and he said “oh well you’re about to be out of commission for a while so you’ll have to earn that when you get back.” I’m 99% sure he was trying to make a (bad) joke and actually forgot to give me a stripe because I was busy helping with belts and somehow he thought I already had 4 (he’s a little scatterbrained, separate conversation), but WHATEVER THE REASON, the whole *no stripe for pregnancy* insinuation really hurt my feelings.
It‘s one of those situations where I wish I could go back and say something in the moment but at the time I was so shocked I was mute and then he moved on to the next thing. The two upper belts sitting next to me at the time had genuine “what the fucks” after he left.
Anyway. No real point to this except my feelings are hurt and I’m trying to just shrug it off and focus on training instead of stripes. But it sure stings.