Books by Mary Ellen
Mary Ellen Gambutti
About the Author
Mary Ellen is one of about four million adopted persons of the "Baby Scoop Era" (1950-'75) and an adoptee rights advocate. She was born in South Carolina and raised by an Air Force couple in a sealed adoption. When she was forty, before access to the internet and without her original birth certificate, she embarked on a successful search for her first mother, her half-siblings, and cousins. Years later, she discovered her paternal family through DNA testing. Now she has the family she has always longed for. At seventy-two, the S.C. law has finally allowed adult adoptees to apply for their birth records.
The strength she earned from gardening and senior care careers served her in rehabilitation from a hemorrhagic stroke at fifty-seven. Since retirement, she has pursued her love of words, focusing on writing personal essays and memoirs, many of which have been published in literary journals and books. She is a life partner, mom, nana. A tiny apricot toy poodle named Timmy is usually nearby. Follow Mary Ellen on Substack and Social Media.
Memoir
I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls
Travel across the years in this inspiring and lyrical collage memoir. In post-WWII South Carolina, chance and choice connected a childless Air Force couple with an abandoned baby girl. Seventy years on, she framed a deeply personal narrative in vignettes, poetic prose, and original correspondence, reflecting on maternal severance, the injustice of sealed birth records, and the ills of secrecy. Documenting her family transfers, she has connected her growing anxiety and vigilance in the turbulent 1960s to primal separation, and the encultured discipline of her father's Intelligence career. At forty, she realized the need to know her origins. With help from adoptee advocates, she launched the search for her natural mother. DNA testing set her on a parallel journey of self-discovery decades later, and she began to reconcile her adopted and biological identity and her true heritage.
This 2nd edition features a new cover, Epilogue, About the Author, and updated Notes, Books, Resources, and an expanded photo Gallery in the e-book, with a link to the Gallery in the paperback.
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Reviews​
"...A deeply heartfelt memoir about her adoption journey ... a road map to finding your family, with or without the help of the state where you were born ... It gives testament to never giving up, and even if what you find is not so pretty, it is still yours: "The euphoria of our fall reunion rose like a phoenix from years of pain and loss." -- Lorraine Dusky, Author, Hole In My Heart, Love and Loss in the Fault Lines of Adoption
"...true examples of the diverse ways people...handled adoption differentness; the various levels of acceptance Mary Ellen experiences after adoption into her new family...I highly recommend this book to adopted people and their parents, both birth/first and adoptive, as well as pre-adoptive parents, and child welfare professionals, for its authenticity, readability, and wealth of information."-- Joanne Wolf Small, Author, The Adoption Mystique - Adoptee, MSW, LCSW-C
"... We can all find pieces of our own struggles and joys reflected in Mary Ellen's story--especially those of us touched by adoption."-- Laureen Pittman, Adoptee; Author The Lies That Bind:
"... thoughts and feelings crystallized in another's words." — Brooke Randolph, LMHC,
"...The complexity of the adoptee's search for a place and self in this world is universal and powerful." -- Paige Adams-Strickland--Adoptee, Author; Akin to the Truth, and After the Truth
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2nd Edition
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Previous Work
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My writing has appeared in many literary journals, both online and in print.
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Permanent Home: A Memory Collection is a memoir in essays, first published as Permanent Home, a Memoir.
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I recorded the personal events and reflections around my brain trauma in Stroke Story: My Journey There and Back, and its sequel, Coming to Terms: My Journey Continues.
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Fortitude's Footing: Coming to Terms With Stroke is the new compilation
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The most recent publication is a hybrid memoir, I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter.
Stroke Story: My Journey There and Back is a middle-aged woman's compelling narrative in lyrical prose offering hope to brain injury survivors and their loved ones that healing can come with persistence and the brain's power of neuroplasticity. Gambutti's life was dramatically altered during a bus trip with family and friends in the Pennsylvania Highlands. In a flash, her foray into the wilderness begins. Her counterpunch to sudden powerlessness was her will to recover.​
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"Her poetry...guided through the prose, is extraordinary...it softens the blow of the terrifying experience of having to abandon life as she knew it and being thrown into a strange land where her body needs to be introduced to her...a body that also needs to find itself...as its identity changes from week to week...I didn't want the intimacy to end. You have me hooked." -- Wendy Bialek, poet
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"... a story brimming with hope and inspiration. Once I had finished the first page, I knew I wouldn't be stopping until the last. Highly recommended. -- Liz Crocket, poet, Author
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A prose and poetry compilation Fortitude's Footing: Coming to Terms with Stroke (Fortitude's Footing: My Journey Through Hemorrhagic Stroke) in Kindle and Paperback
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Stroke Story: My Journey There and Back and Coming to Terms: My Journey Continues (My Stroke Story Books 1 and 2) purchase separately or as a set.
Permanent Home: A Memory Collection
This charming collection of vignettes portrays the childhood of an adopted Air Force daughter in the 1950s and 1960s. Her stories of loss and privilege advance through the successful search for her biological mother.
She survives a brain trauma, enduring long rehabilitation, yet she is not deterred in her quest to solve the puzzle of her identity and obscured heritage.
Previously published as Permanent Home: A Memoir.
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Reviews
"An engaging memoir that captivates your imagination - The author has a lyrical writing style that blends early childhood memories into what reads like a vision or a dream. The stream of consciousness is moving and relatable. The segue into the trauma and loss as she learns of the circumstances surrounding her birth adds a touching and personal element that draws the reader in. The story moves effortlessly into her troubling experiences later in life that bring the experience for the reader full circle. I couldn't put it down." --Steve
"... a reflective and descriptive account of a desperate desire to discover herself and her ancestry. I loved her warm accounting and tell-all tales with Nana. Mary Ellen's honest yet loving picture of her adoptive parents was heart-wrenching. We all, whether adoptees or not, have real questions about our history but the author was able to place those uncertainties in a touching dialogue gracefully... This is an absolutely beautiful gift to give to anyone who finds life as precious as I do. -- Fran C.
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Mary Ellen Gambutti,
I Must Have Wandered Book Photo Gallery Complement to the 2nd edition.
