Welcome! I invite you to subscribe to Roots & Branches where I write reflective essays on adoption, identity, and belonging, often touching on heritage, memory, and renewal.

Seasons newsletter gathers image poetry inspired by Japanese haiga, shahai, haiku, haibun, and vignettes and nostalgia. The turning of the year and the seasons of a lifetime, in gardens, nature, and memory.
Beyond the Hedge you’ll find offerings about the novella, currently in serial here, Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic. In this section, you’ll find adoptees’ voices, and those of allies in the Adoption community. I invite conversation! Join me on this journey between myth and memory.

Mary Ellen is the author of Permanent Home: A Memory Collection, and three memoirs on recovery: Stroke Story, Coming to Terms, and Fortitude’s Footing, and the adoption memoir, I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls.
Her debut novella, Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic is published in digital form, soon to be in softcover. A sequel is forthcoming.