Sister Linda Sim gave up taekwondo when she joined a convent. Years later, she’s dusted off her black belt at a Singaporean hospice to teach children recovering from cancer.
When she was much younger, Linda Sim wanted to join the army, but was told she was too small.
“Next I thought I could be a policewoman – to protect people,” she says, but she didn’t make the weight requirements for the police force, either.
Instead, she discovered taekwondo in 1971, and it seemed to fulfil her need to help other people. “If I had a black belt I thought I could be a bodyguard and protect somebody.” Within a few years, she achieved just that.
Though the sport gave her great mental strength, she didn’t find a practical use for her martial art for more than three decades. . .