So I decided to blog because simply The Today Show and News 3 WVa are soooo not interesting this morning. I’m probably going to also post on my Podcast, to get the word out also.

Marie Butler is a 46 year old African American, Physician, Administrator, name was to be Francis Purcell Hard worker, and would love to be around others but always difficulty connecting. Connecting with family fraught with guilt and anxiety. Success, was something to be derided and hidden. Family of shadows and secrets where the boogey man was real, and slapped and pinched.

SQUARE PEG IN A BOX OF ROUND NUTS

I can’t remember if it was an author or some other learned scholar that once related that the use of expletives is unimaginative and denotes a limited vocabulary, but I never even had words to describe this experience, and I went through all of it.  I apologize for the expletives in the upcoming pages, but I hope to relate my own incredulity and then healing, and I hope the reader will come to terms with their own reality. The following is an account of my journey through rediscovery of self, true meaning family, and how we all deserve to be loved. I cannot and will not guarantee that you will ask yourself before the end, ”What the hell? And why hasn’t she gone postal?” No, I haven’t gone postal , and I am still living my life out loud and not in a state or federal correction facility.

I never quite fit anywhere.  I grew up on the East Coast and then moved to the West Coast for work and school and felt completely disconnected from everyone. A way to stay connected was through Facebook. I took a position in Savannah GA for an insurance company who had offices in Chattanooga and Charlotte NC so I continued to move around a lot and began to rely more and more on social media to stay connected to everyone but at a safe distance. During this transitional time, I went back home for who I thought was my great aunt’s funeral. I did a fast head count at the funeral and realized that there were fewer than 20 members of a vast family that we’re living, and the few that were left for on their last leg. I realized in a few short years my family would die out or so I thought. As I state previously, a distant cousin had been reaching out to several family members through Facebook and discussed his experience on ancestry.com and had even published a few of the connections on his page. So I simply piggybacked on the work that he had started.  

As I added connections and checked leaves, I discovered early deaths from heart disease homicide and suicide. I was introduced to female and male philanderers, murderers, schizophrenics, and pedophiles. The first thought was how was I going to survive this lineage? I also thought what kind of family is this? I come from pretty messed up stock.  Was I always destined to fail or struggle, could a sister get a break? I started to explore the meaning of family. My family was a family of secrets even if the truth was liberating. There is a propagation of the unbelievable where love is met with jealousy and hurt and suspicion. Recovery from the enemy from within your own family complex dynamics to manager mismanaged relationships.

Expectations Can Be Overwhelming Especially the Negative

     When you know adults can’t trust you and you never measure up. I really feel I have so much within me so where did I get it from? My hope was that  history would not repeat itself. I wanted to be different than everyone I had grown up with, and definitely different than what I was actually starting to see on the computer screen.

I traced what I thought was paternal a lot of my family back three great grandfathers to a small farm in North Carolina. It makes sense because besides Texas and the gulf region, I was always felt that I was drawn to the state and it was kind of cool to have a connection to the state. But I would also discover on the Butler paternal side,   a series of police reports on and death certificates filled with homicides and long prison sentences. 

As part of a completion of the process of tracing my lineage, I wanted to know just how Black or African I really was. Also, my mother, Darlene, died at 48 from metastatic breast cancer and I also wanted the data if I had linked to those genes associated with this disease, another one-two punch from this genetic pool. I submitted my DNA to 23 and Me and organization used to help to trace genetic family in building and building genealogies. As most African American claim we all have some aspect of Native American, so when the results returned a mixture of Berbers from mountains of Algeria (which will come back to make sense later) and several other West Sub Saharan tribes, there was also a surprising amount of western European, and plains Native American tribes.

What happens next is just simply a strange occurrence with the drama from a reality show. It led to a hit outside of the Butler/Sampson family line. Of all things there was a close sibling match, which didn’t surprise me since I knew Ronald Butler was a bit of a rolling stone. I have at least 5 half brothers and sisters from a variety of affairs he had throughout my parent’s marriage. There were 3 older children, 2 males and a sister, who I was paternally related but not through Ronald Butler. Wait, What?!? I refresh the page, and there are 2 birth certificates for Baby Girl Darlene Marilyn Purcell. Darlene Purcell? In the words of a New Orleans Saints football fan, “Who dat?” Then when I research the public records of my mother, I find also her marriage certificate to Ronald Butler 4 years after I was born. Then I find an amended birth certificate, it was my birth certificate but where the space it says “father” had been redacted and changed to Ronald Butler who I thought of as my father, and the surname had also been redacted and amended to Butler. This revision took place and stamped when I was 34 months old. There were also 2 applications for social security cards, the first for a Francis Marie Purcell and another for Maria Butler tied to the social security number I had used since memory. Who was Francis Marie Purcell?

I needed answers, but I really wasn’t on speaking terms with my Ronald Butler, and I hadn’t spoken to him directly in 8 years. This was way team too much, so I drop it for almost 8 months. I get busy with life and don’t navigate back to the heritage site for several months. What I find is another unexpected connection, between my mother and other male. I click on the union and there are 2 links, 1 to a marriage certificate in Cameron County Texas between my mother, Darlene Marilyn Sampson, and a man name Samuel Purcell dated January 1970. 1970?

The Plot Thickens…I invite you to comment or if you want more!