Melissa Giberson

Melissa is the author of Late Bloomer: Finding My Authentic Self At Midlife (She Writes Press). She has published articles in numerous online and in-print publications, including The Boston Globe, Salon, Kveller, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, and Writer’s Digest. Her essay, “Art is the Antidote” appears in the anthology: Art In The Time of Unbearable Crisis (June 2022). Melissa and her partner, along with their two cats; now split their time between New Jersey and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

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Late Bloomer: Finding My Authentic Self at Midlife

Memoir

Melissa Giberson is a middle-aged wife and mother, solidly planted in the life she’s always wanted. She longs for something more but can’t quite put her finger on it until she finds herself mesmerized by the sight of a naked woman and asks herself for the first time: Am I gay?

This revelation sends Melissa on a head-spinning journey of self-discovery, challenging everything she thinks she knows about herself, forcing her to decide how much she’s willing to risk for authenticity, and shaking the foundations of the family she’s determined to shield from the kinds of wounds she sustained during her own childhood.

Adrift in uncharted waters, Melissa finds fragments of understanding and peace in unexpected places—in a conference room in Israel, a small fishing village in Cape Cod, and at a yoga retreat center—that help her deconstruct her preconceptions about faith and identity and begin to construct a new framework for her life. Over the course of her ten-year journey, she finds hope, love, and more courage than she ever knew she was capable of, and she gradually assembles the puzzle that is her—the real her.

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