@Iamkathleen I’m not a fan of purse carry - its the first thing a thief wants to take away from you, and if he succeeds in snatching, you’ve not only lost your weapon for defense, you’ve given him one for assault. That said, @Dawn will probably argue that purse carry is better than no-carry. I think its a personal decision that one has to look at very carefully, and train for appropriately. If you purse carry, then you probably need to make choices about how attached to your body that bag is… cross body? kevlar in the strap so it can’t be cut? do you train in how to keep hold of a purse, or to draw while struggling over it with a thief? I don’t, and that’s part of why I don’t purse carry.
All these things are part of both the “what’s convenient when nothing bad is going wrong” and the “what if its all going wrong and I have to handle an assault” thinking and training we need to do.
You may want to look at this thread on carrying in shorts - a lot of the guys have weighed in on what works for them in hot sticky climates, and some of it might work for you as well: