By Movieguide® Staff
Author Melanie Shankle opened up about how her complicated relationship with her mother influenced her latest book, Here Be Dragons: Treading the Deep Waters of Motherhood, Mean Girls, and Generational Trauma.
“My mom was my first mean girl,” she said during an appearance on “The Matthew West Podcast.”
In an interview with Jesus Calling, Shankle explained that her mother’s behavior towards her would later be explained with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. However, as a child, she didn’t realize her relationship with her mother wasn’t normal.
“There just always felt like there was this ongoing dance of just jealousy and bitterness and competition between us that I didn’t realize wasn’t a normal dynamic until really when I got to college,” Shankle said.
During her conversation with West, Shankle shared that she had cut off contact with her mother for 14 years and didn’t plan to write about their relationship until her mother had died.
“My mom ended up passing away about two months after we signed the contract for that book, so the timing of it was so unexpected and so incredible that I just knew this is only God that is giving me this story to write this time because now I’m free to write it,” she said.
The pair even spent some time together before Shankle’s mother’s death, which the author called “one of the most grace-filled, holy moments of my life. I just felt like the Holy Spirit was in the room. I felt like God gave us a moment of just healing and feeling seen.”
In Here Be Dragons, Melanie Shankle aims to explore “the generational cycle that I was trying to break and what I dealt with with my own mother, in the ways that I had to allow God to heal what’s broken because I think when we don’t do that, we just continue to perpetuate the same brokenness.”
She wrote about the book in greater detail in an Instagram post, explaining, “Writing this book nearly killed me. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It brought up feelings and memories that I really preferred to stay buried way down deep because digging up all your painful childhood memories is a one star experience. Do not recommend.”
“This is not the book I planned to write when I signed the contract for it way back in 2023. But life comes at you fast and God did what God often does and changed my plans. Now that it’s finished, I’m so thankful that he did,” Shankle continued. “However, while I was actually writing it, I cried a lot of tears and argued with him several times about it. It’s the story I always knew I’d tell one day but didn’t know when that day would come. As it turns out, it’s now.”
She concluded, “This is my story of leaving behind the dysfunction I was born into to become who God created me to be. It’s about the strength God will give you to break the generational cycles you don’t want to repeat and to fight every dragon you will face. The ultimate message of this book is that nothing is so broken that God can’t heal and redeem it.”
Melanie Shankle’s story is an inspiration to others who might be struggling with the same types of relationships and a reminder that God heals all.
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