From Bullying Victim To Inspiration: Keta Meggett
Meet Keta (key-ta) Meggett, her name means “pretty flower” in Swahili, but she is certainly not a fragile flower in women’s wrestling. Coming from a difficult past, she was bullied and assaulted in high school, and her entire life could have been put on hold. But Keta pushed past all that, learned how to defend herself, and now teaches women and children how to be strong. People say everything happens for a reason, and Keta’s life has proven that. Meet Keta: actress, hero, survivor, inspiration, and above all a powerful woman.
Beaten Down Again and Again
My first year in high school was tough, and that's kind of when things started to take a turn. I got bullied by 8 girls for being light-skinned and having long hair. They beat me to a pulp and I had zero clue how to defend myself. They broke my jaw, my shoulder blade, four of my ribs, my pancreas and my liver. I mean, I was obliterated. I was on enzymes and medication for years.
Right about that time, my parents also went through an ugly divorce and my mom was hit by a car and had to be hospitalized for two years. That was a big set-back in my life for sure, and I had no clue how on earth anything positive could come from all of that. So I just kept going.
I Could Barely Leave My Home
I suffered from P.T.S.D. in such a big way that I couldn't enjoy normal things anymore. I couldn't go to basketball games, track meets, or anywhere with an audience yelling. I couldn't go to church or to the movies. Everything gave me really bad anxiety. I would immediately have a panic attack and an asthma attack. So generally, it was safer for me to stay home.
I would look at girls who fought in movies, athletic girls and girls who would punch the bag and I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be cool, I wanted to be tough, I wanted to empower. So I decided and worked to make myself be all those things.
Now, I am those things and I represent them in my everyday life. It became my goal in life to be a positive role model and to let people know that they do not have to be a victim of their circumstances. I easily could have let that bullying break me and been broken forever. But I chose not to be broken and I chose to rebuild everything about myself. And now I’m everything that I ever wanted to be.
“I feel like I met this girl, met her strong spirit, and discovered that I am strong. And that's who I am today.”
I went on an audition that I thought was for the television show Heroes, but when I showed up, I realized I was not at the right audition. There was a wrestling ring in the room and there were girls throwing each other around in the ring. I said to myself “Oh absolutely not. This is not for me.” But when they asked me to stay…I did.
I was intrigued because the last woman to enter the ring was smaller than me. She probably weighed 107 pounds. She jumped in the ring, picked up a girl that was probably 170 pounds and threw her across ring. Then she picked her up again and I thought “Wow, that was so badass. How did she do that?”
I wanted to learn how to do that. And I also knew that--as uncomfortable as it would be for me to have someone trying to kill me in a ring--it would be very therapeutic. So I used it as my therapy to overcome my P.T.S.D.
I remember when I was a little girl, my older brother would take my wrist and pin me down and mount me the same way every brother does to his little sister or his little brother. And I remember how helpless I felt.
A few years ago, I had a conversation with one of my girlfriends, I asked her, “If you were in a situation where a guy was going to possibly rape you or take advantage of you, and he had you pinned down and was between your legs about to hurt you--what would you do?” She said, “I would, of course, fight and scream. But if he was bigger than me and holding my wrist down, I guess I would just close my eyes and hope that it ended fast.”
Keta Meggett is a Blue Belt in Jiu Jitsu under the training of Eddie Bravo.
That literally broke my heart because this girl had no clue how powerful and how strong and what a great position she was in, on her back laying on the floor. I started showing her the move in my living room. I actually showed her how to do a triangle and an arm bar and she was blown away and she inspired me to teach other people. She said “you need to teach this to kids.”
10th Planet Women’s Self Defense Course
Interested in learning more about Keta’s Six Week Women's Self Defense Program?
Visit 10thplanetwomen.com or Teambullybuster.org
So I started thinking, what I could offer somebody who was in my situation when I was younger and getting beaten up? That's how I started Team Bully Buster where we teach kids leadership skills, confidence, and self-defense. Once that got started, mothers became very interested. So we started a women's self-defense program as well. That's going amazingly well as a six week course. And man, the look on these women's faces when we show them the things that they are capable of doing if they are ever in a vulnerable position is most rewarding feeling in the world.
I’ve recently been cast as Keta Rush - the bully buster in the show, WOW Superheroes. It's a family show with an all female cast, and we're all super heroes. It's the good against the bad and it's an empowering entertaining show for sure. We're going into our third season, which is super exciting. I’m not sure which network it's going to be on (that part hasn't been disclosed), but our first show is in September, here in Los Angeles.
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Image Sources: wowe.com, instagram.com/theprettyflower, teambullybuster.org
