I'm glad you're here!
My earliest memories were formed from words and music. My first five months are mostly unaccounted for, but the couple who would adopt me sang and smiled, talked, and read to me. I studied Webster's Dictionary at bedtime from age eight and wrote personal poems. Reading, vocabulary, grammar, and spelling sustained my interest in school when Air Force transfers disrupted my elementary education.
I let go of word-stringing: jottings, notes, lists, letters, essays, and poetry when at age fifty-eight I was stricken with a brain hemorrhage. While recovering at home, after months of hospital rehab, I was eager to return to writing.
I summed up my tenure as president of our 55+ community garden club, where I guided the pruning and planting, imparting my horticulture training. Retiring my desktop newsletter, "Gardener’s Quarterly", I began to take online writing courses to suss the "why" and "how" of my life, beginning with the story of my stroke. I absorbed the memoirs of Natalie Goldberg, Annie Dillard, Brenda Miller, and many others, captivated by the words and meaning that poured from their souls. I practiced on my new laptop, typing with my formerly unfavored left hand, as I still do, taking stock of what has happened to me, as well as what I have made happen. Thus, writing memoirs is therapeutic, and, for me, life-affirming. I hope my words resonate with you.
Thank you!
Follow me https://linktr.ee/SCMel
My work has been published in many literary journals. My self-published collection of essays and vignettes is available in e-book and softcover: Permanent Home: A Memory Collection
I recorded the personal events and experiences around my cerebral vascular accident in Stroke Story: My Journey There and Back, and its sequel, Coming to Terms: My Journey Continues. The set can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C3KCTJS3?
The e-book which is a creative compilation of both books is: Fortitude's Footing: Coming to Terms With Stroke
If you were drawn to this page for your interest or connection with the adoption community, you won’t be disappointed. I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls is a hybrid creative non-fiction memoir composed of epistolary, prose, fragments, and photos. The updated e-book is coming this summer.
