MY WALK ON THE AIKIDO PATH

A debut memoir focuses on mental illness and martial arts.

In this book, Kling writes about discovering aikido during a difficult time in her life and how embracing the practice both physically and mentally allowed her to overcome personal and professional challenges. The author opens the narrative at her lowest point. After a childhood that included neglect and physical abuse, she made it through college without a clear direction, followed a professor’s recommendation into an MFA program, and ended up in a psychiatric hospital after a breakdown. When Kling was released from the hospital, she recuperated at her father’s home in upstate New York, where a second attempt at graduate school was almost as disastrous until a professor invited her to try aikido. In the dojo, the author discovered an educational environment that adapted to her learning needs and developed a new sense of self-confidence along with her skills. Aikido, with its emphasis on protection instead of conflict, provided Kling with a new way of looking at the world that she eventually learned to use outside the dojo. The author does an excellent job of drawing lessons from her aikido training and applying them to her life without overstretching metaphors or making excessive leaps of logic. The prose is occasionally unwieldy (“A seemingly simple external decision, but a bitter inner struggle with the fear of abandoning that which was most important to me, that which defined me, and most of all was safe for me”). But the tendency toward emotional excess also allows Kling to give readers a thorough and intimate portrayal of what went through her mind as she learned a new technique, faced bullying in graduate school, and moved to a new home. In addition, the narrative is well structured. Although the introduction makes it clear that Kling is telling her story from a place of triumph, there is enough tension in each challenge and setback in the memoir to keep readers anxious about—and engaged in—the outcome.

An inspiring account of personal growth driven by aikido training.