Welcome, I'm glad you're here!
I'm a writer and a forever flower child. I've just completed a coming-of-age memoir. Written in a hybrid style, it tells a story of loss and discovery through letters, vignettes, essays, fragments, and images of an adopted Air Force daughter, who was born in South Carolina and raised in many "elsewheres."
In my late thirties and forties, I was a horticulturist and professional gardener and operated a personal gardening service in the Delaware and Lehigh River valleys of Pennsylvania. In the years prior, I worked in marketing and health care. My only child is a biologist, and Mom to two talented young men.
A brain hemorrhage at fifty-seven affected my right side, my dominant hand, speech, and ability to walk. By all accounts, I'm lucky to have recovered as well as I have. Since the stroke, I don't garden, except in pots, and don't drive. But I do write--typing with my left hand.
An outcome of personal tragedy is my awareness of how vital connections are. Social media and online writing courses became my life link. In particular, I found memoir writing to have stirred cognition.
I self-published Stroke Story: My Journey There and Back, and the sequel, Coming to Terms: My Journey Continues. I've had many personal essays published in literary journals (a sampling can be found in my website portfolio). Permanent Home is a collection of my essays.
My new book, I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls, will be launched within a couple of months. It is a hybrid--an epistolary memoir--in which I reassemble my history in lyrical prose, letters, fragments, and images. I can't wait to share it with you!
I hope you'll visit again soon, as I get closer to my book launch!
Until next time,
Mary Ellen (Mel)
(c) Mary Ellen Gambutti all rights reserved 2022