Mel Thomas is the founder of The KYUP! Project.

You can find her on twitter @kyupproject

Mel Thomas is a writer, speaker, media commentator and mother of two girls.

She has more than 15 years martial arts experience in Hapkido, the Korean art of self-defence.

Mel created KYUP! Project, a self-worth and self-protection program to break the cycle of violence against women and children.

You see Mel was born into the cycle of violence, and that cycle continued within her as she grew up and became a young woman.

In fact it was only a fortunate turn of events that broke that cycle which I will leave her to tell you about.

Here’s the big trigger warning:

We talk about domestic violence a lot in this conversation.

If that’s tough for you to hear, I understand - maybe skip this week and we’ll see you next week.

If you need help, in Australia please call 1800 RESPECT 1800 737 732.

If this conversation reframes an incident in your past as something more sinister than you’d initially labelled it, don’t hesitate to reach out and get help.

We go deep on this one, it gets gritty for a while there’s a few tears, but we do turn the corner to leave you uplifted I promise.

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