Stroke Story: My Journey There and Back

by Mary Ellen Gambutti

This edition is out of print and no longer available

The life of an active, healthy, creative 57 years young woman is dramatically changed by a major hemorrhagic stroke while on a community bus trip into Western Pennsylvania highlands. Her foray into an unknown wilderness of brain trauma; her sudden powerlessness, and her fight against the odds of recovery, are an inspiration to survivors of stroke or other brain trauma, as well as to their caretakers. Mary Ellen's determination and courage in the face of adversity are portrayed in a narrative replete with descriptive imagery and emotion. Stroke Story traces a woman's transformational journey from landscape gardener, craftsperson and volunteer, into helplessness, but with hard work and expert care, a return to hope and renewal of a creative life.

54 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 6, 2016

About the author

Mary Ellen was born in post-WWII South Carolina and was adopted by an Air Force couple. The strength she earned in her landscape gardening and flower farming career served her during rehabilitation from a hemorrhagic stroke at age fifty-seven. No longer able to garden, she pursued her love of words, taking many online courses as her speech and memory returned. The essays and memoirs she wrote over the next decade brought her solace and self-discovery, as well as the satisfaction of publication in many online journals. She is still happiest outdoors, whether on a beach, in a woodland, or in a cottage garden. But her greatest joys are home, motherhood, and two grandsons.
She and her husband are retired in Lewes, DE with an apricot toy poodle puppy and an aging chihuahua.
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Mary Ellen's personal essays have been published in Borrowed Solace, Spillwords, Contemporary Haibun Online, Halcyon Days, BookEndsReview, mac(ro)mic, Portland Metrozine, Memoir Magazine, Visible, True Stories Well Told, and other literary journals.
She published in 2016. , is a memoir of survival in lyrical prose and poetry. was released in 2022.
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Mary Ellen says she admires the work of female memoirists, Brenda Miller, Vivian Gornick, Dani Shapiro, Sue William Silverman, Jeannette Walls, Mary Kerr, Natalie Goldberg, Jeannine Ouellette, and Annie Dillard, among many others.
Her updated version of will be released this summer.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story that is brimming with hope and inspiration. Once I had finished the first page, I knew I wouldn't be stopping until the last. Highly recommended.