Melanie Gibson - Author, Kicking and Screaming: A Memoir of Madness and Martial Arts
Melanie Gibson
Melanie Gibson is the creator of the blog Little Black Belt. She began taekwondo training at age ten, took a twenty-two year hiatus, and began training again in her early thirties. She is a second degree black belt and is a third degree black belt candidate.
Melanie has a few college degrees, a corporate job that mostly lets her work in peace and quiet, and lives in Texas.
Her memoir Kicking and Screaming: a Memoir of Madness and Martial Arts is coming to your bookseller from She Writes Press April 20, 2021. Funny and frank, Kicking and Screaming: A Memoir of Madness and Marital Arts is the story of Melanie’s life-changing journey from troubled, lost soul to confident taekwondo black belt.
I’m so excited for you to connect with Melanie, check out her work, and follow along as she continues to share her inspiring journey struggling with mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse and relationship issues who returned to the childhood practice of taekwondo to take back her life.
I'd love it if you'd introduce yourself, what you do, and what you're working on.
My name is Melanie Gibson, and I am a writer and martial arts practitioner living in Texas. I’m currently working on promoting my upcoming book Kicking and Screaming: a Memoir of Madness and Martial Arts, which will be published April 20, 2021. The book tells the story of how I overcame my most difficult struggles with mental illness by taking up taekwondo in my early thirties. I’d studied taekwondo as a child and always liked it, but life got in the way of continuing my training for many years. Around 2013 I was at a very low point with anxiety and depression and desperately needed something positive in my life to focus on. Taekwondo served that purpose and much more.
How did you get started?
Writing has always been a natural skill for me, and one I honed in high school and college, as well as in my corporate job…but it’s never been something I necessarily wanted to do for a living. It just happened. About a year into my taekwondo training, which I’d started around age thirty-three, I was overcome with insights and ideas.
Martial arts teach a lot of great life lessons and helped me have some epiphanies that I wanted to share with others. That’s how my blog Little Black Belt started, and eventually, that’s what led me to tell my story in my memoir. I learned about memoir writing and the publishing industry from experts and was fortunate to be accepted by She Writes Press in 2019.
What inspired the work that you're doing?
Dealing with mental illness is frustrating and lonely. Practicing taekwondo gave me an outlet to reduce stress, learn something new, and break a lot of damaging emotional habits. I’m not trying to convert people to take up taekwondo or any martial art. Rather, I want to let people who are struggling know that they are not alone, and they may be able to find comfort and growth in something new that gives them peace. Perhaps knowing that other people understand what they’re going through can be its own type of comfort. Being vulnerable and sharing my fears with the world is scary, but I know there are others like me who may feel inspired to speak out as well.
What is your biggest passion? Do you feel like you're living your passion and purpose?
My biggest passion may not seem very exciting, but it truly makes me happy—enjoying my life and everything in it from big to small. I like laughing, having fun, and making and enjoying art. (I also love to eat!) Am I living my passion and purpose? Honestly, yes and no. I’m lucky to have a job that pays well and allows me to do what I like the most, which is writing, but I’d love to get out of the corporate rat race someday. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the heck out of my hobbies and my free time and do the best that I can with the writing I do on the clock. I know I’m helping people, and that in and of itself is very satisfying.
What is your joy blueprint? What lights you up, brings you joy, and makes you feel the most alive?
My joy blueprint would read, “If it’s not fun, don’t do it.” I really love my hobbies—writing, sports, classical guitar, reading, watching movies, and playing pool (badly, but who cares). As adults we have so much pressure to be serious and on top of everything all the time. We need activities and relationships that keep us grounded and help us lighten up and enjoy the time we have.
I understand most of us need to make a living, and working is not always “fun.” That’s fine; I don’t ascribe to the belief that we need to love our jobs. But find what you do enjoy about it and see what can make it fun; a positive attitude is as contagious and a negative one. Keep that mantra in your personal life—that helps you prioritize what you want to do while minimizing all the other things that are less pleasant but necessary.
How do you live intentionally? Are there tools/resources/practices that you rely on to help you stay mindful and grounded?
The term “self-care” started to come to the collective forefront during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 quarantine. All of a sudden, we were talking about mental health, but those of us with mental health conditions have been practicing self-care for years. Everyone, regardless of health conditions or anything else, should care for themselves, body, mind, and spirit.
I practice self-care in meditation, journaling, writing, and practicing my martial art. I slow down and take time out when I need to. I haven’t been great about doing that in the past.
As for living intentionally, I’m very organized and love to plan, so “intentionally” is a literal term for me. I plan as much as I can knowing things can and often do change in the future. Having a safety net helps me get things done and roll with those changes that happen.
What would your younger self think about what you're doing now?
I think my younger self would be satisfied that I ended up doing creative work, even though it took a winding path to get there. My first artistic love was drawing. That’s how I expressed myself, and I eventually focused on cartoons as a teenager. I wanted to be an animator for Disney or an artist and writer for MAD Magazine.
In college I was seriously stressed over wanting to do creative things but be able to support myself financially. I was a dance major for a while and then panicked and finished as quickly as I could with an English degree, and off to grad school I went for a master’s in library science and eventually an MBA.
Twenty years later I work in learning design, which relies on both my visual creativity and writing skills, and of course, I wrote a book. The creativity is still strong, just expressed in a different way than its original form, and I can support myself. My artistic and pragmatic sides are both happy. The English degree paid off.
Do you have a go-to mantra or affirmation?
Someone wise once told me, “It will all work out, one day at a time.” And for the most part, “it” does. I have a busy, fast-paced mind and am prone to worry, so this mantra slows me down and assures me that things will indeed play out in time. Usually the big “what ifs” that I fret about turn out better than I could have imagined.
What is your biggest dream?
My biggest dream is to be a retired housewife, ha! In all seriousness, I do have a pretty nice life, and I want to have the time and resources to fully engage in things I love to do. As for writing, I’m interested in writing novels, particularly comedy or horror. Both genres make me feel deeply and burrow into my psyche, and learning how to do that interests me. I want to keep creating articles and books that are well-crafted and more importantly, enjoyed by readers.
To learn more and connect with Melanie http://littleblackbelt.com Instagram @melaniegibsonauthor, Facebook Melanie Gibson Author, and Twitter @TaekwondoLBB
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