'I was homeless at 15 and comatose after drink-driving - now I empower women around the world'

'I was homeless at 15 and comatose after drink-driving - now I empower women around the world' Mel Carr was left feeling 'like a nuisance' when couch surfing as a teen, but, now 46, is helping highlight the stories of self-made women from around the world A woman who was homeless at 15 and once spent 30 days comatose following after drink-driving turned her life around and found a long-lost sister - and is now helping empower women around the world. Mel Carr, 46, from Scottsdale in Arizona, the US, had an ordinary upbringing in her native Oklahoma until she turned 15 and her parents divorced, with her mum carting her off to Hawaii after she fell in love with a scuba diver. Mel said she "tried that life, but it didn’t work", and decided to move back home to the Sooner State after going from a straight-A student to nearly failing school. But she returned only to find her dad, who wasn't her biological father, "didn’t want me", leaving her homeless and couch-surfing, and forcing her to take complete charge of her own life as a teen. Mel said the man who raised her was not her biological father, but the man who married her mother when she was five years old. The man was the only paternal figure in her life, however he decided she "reminded him too much of my mother". With nowhere to stay, she "couch-surfed and stayed with friends and relatives until they kicked me out”, worked part-time at chain restaurant the Red Lobster, and rented her own studio flat in a frightening part of town. Nobody noticed she was struggling. She said: “Everyone had their own lives, and I kind of felt like a nuisance." Mel struggled to scrape by, and forged her dad's signature to sign herself off school, choosing instead to find more work. But she struggled with living alone. The experience later spurred her on to create the nonprofit Her Write to Rise, a network that aims to help women through media and events. She said: "I felt that if someone had been there to talk to me, listen to me and give me guidance, my life might have turned out differently. "I’m so grateful for working hard to get where I am today, but I don’t want other women to have to struggle like I did. So I set up Her Write to Rise." At 16 and living alone, Mel struggled. She didn’t even know how to work the heating in her tiny studio. She remembers lying in bed, freezing, when she heard the sound of two men climbing through her kitchen window. The kitchen was separated from her bed only by a freestanding closet unit. She said: “They were right next to my bed, and I remember thinking, if I stay here and I don’t say anything, I don’t move, they won’t know I’m here. I didn’t have much, but they took all my clothes and kitchen gadgets and then left." “I had this one white jacket that I’d bought on finance. It was 100 bucks (£75.54), and I’d finally paid it off, and then it was gone. I felt so violated.” Things only got worse for Mel when, one night after work, she had three strong drinks before driving home to her apartment. She said: “I fell asleep at the wheel, and I drove right into a cement wall. They had to use the jaws of life to get me out of the car. “I spent the next 30 days in the children’s hospital. I was in a coma for a few days with a brain injury. When I regained consciousness, I couldn’t even remember the names of my family who had come to see me.” Mel had a brain injury and six broken bones, the effects of which she still struggles with today. Her mum flew back to be by her daughter’s side as she recovered and relearned how to walk and talk. Together, they returned to Hawaii, where they stayed for the next decade. It was there, when Mel was 17, that her mother told her she had an older sister who had been given up for adoption. She added: "She refused to tell me anymore. "She told me that our father, who was not the man I thought of as dad, was not a good man. She got pregnant with my sister, gave her up, and then got back with him, had me, and they were together for two years. She told me he was a mean man and she didn’t want me ever finding him. “If I asked any more, she just shut down and started crying. She would never tell me anything more. I was so blindsided, but also hurt that she wouldn’t tell me anything about my sister.” Mel began working in hotels, eventually working her way up to executive and management level. She never told anyone she left school without qualifications “in case they thought I was stupid”, and eventually earned her high school diploma in secret at the age of 30. She went on to travel the world, living in Australia and the Marshall Islands, and marrying twice. She also published multiple books and set up the Six Figure Chicks imprint, sharing success stories from female entrepreneurs globally. Finally, when she was 43 and desperate to find her sister, she pressed her mum for information and this time refused to take no for an answer. Armed with a name, she went on Ancestry and took a DNA test. Thirty days later, the results came back with a match. The profile belonged to a woman named Sarah, living on the East Coast of the US, who was searching for her mother. She had no idea she had a sister. “She had been adopted at six months old by a couple from Virginia, and she lived there all of her life and had the normal American dream life. I messaged her, and we immediately connected.” Sarah had been trying to find her biological family since she was 13, even visiting the convent where their mother had given birth to her. Mel said: “Three years ago, I flew to Oklahoma to meet her. I was so scared picking her up at the airport. I didn’t know how to act, if I should cry, laugh or hug her." "And she had the same feelings. But the minute we hugged and cried, it was like we’d known each other our entire lives. We are so similar, but so different. Mostly different because of our upbringing. She operates differently from me, but our personalities are so similar. We think alike, talk alike, we have the same smile. “She has really long blonde hair, and she’s fashionable. She’s beautiful and loud and opinionated. When she talks, she doesn’t hold back, whereas I’m a little bit more reserved. "The pair now meet three times a year, and Mel loves being an aunt to Sarah’s daughter 12-year-old daughter. It feels amazing to have a sister. It filled a gap in me. One of the reasons I created Six Figure Chicks was to find that sisterhood. "And then I found my sister, and there are no words to describe the amount of love I have for her because it was just automatic." Her dad has since died, and Sarah and Mel never found their biological father. Despite the distance between them, the sisters FaceTime regularly, and Mel, now single, plans to move to Virginia next year to be closer to Sarah and her daughter. “I’m not tied down. I can work from anywhere. I can’t wait to be near my family. I want people to know that you can build something amazing using pure resilience and a whole lot of persistence. "I want other people to see my story and realise, ‘Wow, if she did that, I can do it too’."