Welcome to my writing world -
I'm so glad you're here!
Words and music are my earliest memories. Language and writing were my first loves in school. I've kept up some form of word-stringing most years--only in the most difficult times letting go of the jottings, notes, lists, letters, and poetry.
All of it came to a halt with a brain hemorrhage the summer of my fifty-eighth year. While home recovering after a lengthy rehab, I began to take online writing courses. I found memoirs. I was, once again, captured by the beauty of words and meaning, and began to record my experience in personal essays. Writing permitted me to take stock of life-changing events and has been therapeutic and life-affirming.
My husband, Phil, and I now live in Lewes, DE with our fourteen-year-old Chihuahua, Maxwell, rescued from a Miami shelter.

I write to find the truth in my experience. In my new book, I trace my life as an adoptive daughter in the 1950s and 1960s and my search and reunion with my natural family that began in 1990.
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Writing after Trauma
Stroke
as Therapy

Stroke Story
Twelve years ago my life was transformed in a most traumatic way by a massive brain hemorrhage.
My need for expression was strong from the moment I regained consciousness that horrible day. I suffered from apraxia, a motor-neuron defect of speech, which caused my words to come out jumbled., and aphasia, a word-finding defect. In the first months in rehabilitation, I could do little for myself; my dominant right side was paralyzed.
As soon as I could sit at the computer at home, I began to work on the gardening newsletter I designed, authored, and published for my 55-plus community. Sadly, I could no longer garden and, to my regret needed to give up my cheery, colorful, and informative newsletter.
I decided to take online writing courses and delved into the meaning and making of memoirs. With practice and wonderful teachers, in 2016 I self-published "Stroke Story: My Journey There and Back."

Bad MountainWeather
Tanka
Fog of voices
a cool white bed
"How do you feel?
you are lucky--delayed ambulance--helicopter--
bad mountain weather"
This summer of bad weather
all I can is be
loss of worth and choice
in this place of respite
Through long, lost weeks, weakened
I work brain and body
in summer of no birds and gardens
until sky and mind clear
When sunlight sparkles red and yellow
and slanted daylight breaches my haven's notches
I speak, walk, in new strength
and drink from a chilly stream of courage
*
Laurel Ridge, Fayette County, Pennsylvania
and
Sarasota, Florida
by Mary Ellen Gambutti
published Spring 2019 The Bamboo Hut



haiga of longing
If only I could gather
scattered rosebuds
again
