Not My Family: When Ties Should Not Bind Fiction

By Felicia M. Baxter MD

What if you can choose your family? In a search to find herself and to find connections to other family members, a healthcare executive will uncover lies and explanations for generational dysfunction. She begins research of family ties only to uncover lies that estranged her from her real family, the destructive nature of generational dysfunction, and the conquering nature of love. She will discover once you find your real home, you really can go home again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728310428

Felicia M. Baxter MD

Felicia Baxter is a physician, she and her truck live and write in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

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© 2019 Felicia M. Baxter MD. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  05/10/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-1043-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-1041-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-1042-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019906715

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Square Peg In A Box Of Round Nuts

Expectations Can Be Overwhelming, Especially The Negative

My Stepfather: The Ass-Crank Ronald Butler

How Tony Purcell Met My Mother

Tony’s Kids

Big Sam And Grandma Emma

The New Social Construct: Relearning Family

Holidays

My Time As Angela’s Sister

Darlene Marilyn Butler, My Mother

The Other Shoe Drops

Cleave To Your Husband—Excise Your Family

These People Are Freakin’ Crazy: The Prolonged, The Bizarre, The Black Funeral

Two Birth Certificates

The Second Johnny Cochran: My Big Brother Brice Purcell!

From South Padre With Love

Meeting Three Exes After Meeting Your Superhero Birth Father And Family

Abc (Always Be Cute)

The Only Black Dude On The Mayflower

I Learned How To Fight From My Father

Brice To The Rescue Of My Name

Hurricane And Me

Papers Of Depravity

Responsible For The Pathology By Its Recognition

Understanding Differences

Forgive And Then Build

I Hit The Psychological Megamillion Lotto

Family: The Need To Redefine

My Paternal Family Legacy

Life Versus Death

San Padre Becomes The In-Spot To Get Married

Sour Mash And The Legal Still

Denouement As An Adult

To everyone who has a story to tell but is too afraid to start writing or who doesn’t think they can write. Sometimes the best way to deal with difficult circumstances is to write it out. This is a work of fiction. If you recognize yourself in any of the characters, you may want to get checked out—and you will not receive any of the royalties.

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SQUARE PEG IN A BOX OF ROUND NUTS

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I CAN’T REMEMBER IF it was an author or some other scholar who once related that the use of expletives is unimaginative and denotes a limited vocabulary. Still, 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 his or her own reality. The following is an account of my journey through rediscovery of self, the true meaning of family, and the realization that we all deserve to be loved. I cannot and will not guarantee that you will ask yourself before the end, What the hell? 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 correctional 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, Georgia, for an insurance company that had offices in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Charlotte, North Carolina. I continued to move around a lot and began to rely more and more on social media to stay connected to everyone—but from a safe distance. During this transitional time, I went home for what I thought was my great-aunt’s funeral. I did a fast head count at the funeral and realized there were fewer than twenty members of a vast family who were living, and the few who were left were on their last leg.

In a few short years, my family would die out—or so I thought. A distant cousin had been reaching out to several family members through Facebook. He discussed his experience on Ancestry.com and even published a few of the connections on his page. I simply piggybacked on the work 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. I thought, How am I going to survive this lineage? 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, hurt, and suspicion. Recovery from the enemy from within your own family’s complex dynamics to manage mismanaged relationships.

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EXPECTATIONS CAN BE OVERWHELMING, ESPECIALLY THE NEGATIVE

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I T IS DIFFICULT to 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 from everyone I had grown up with—and definitely different from what I was actually starting to see on the computer screen.

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

As part of completing the process of tracing my lineage, I wanted to know just how black or African I really was. Also, my mother, Darlene, died at forty-eight from metastatic breast cancer, and I wanted the data to see if I had linked to those genes associated with this disease—another one-two punch from this genetic pool. I submitted my DNA to 23andMe, an organization that helps trace genetic family in building genealogies. Most African Americans claim we all have some aspect of Native American, so when the results returned a mixture of Berbers from the mountains of Algeria (which will make sense later) and several other sub-Saharan tribes, there was also a surprising amount of Western European and Plains Native American tribes.

What happened next was simply a strange occurrence with all the drama of 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 five half brothers and half sisters from a variety of affairs he’d had throughout my parents’ marriage. There were four older children, two brothers and a sister, who I was paternally related to but not through Ronald Butler. Wait, what?

I refreshed the page, and there were two birth certificates for Baby Girl Darlene Marilyn Purcell. Darlene Purcell? In the words of a New Orleans Saints football fan, Who dat? When I researched the public records of my mother, I also found her marriage certificate to Ronald Butler, four years after I was born. I found an amended birth certificate; it was my birth certificate, but the space where it said father had been redacted and changed to Ronald Butler, who I thought of as my father. The surname had also been redacted and amended to Butler. This revision took place and was stamped when I was thirty-four months old. There were also two 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 for as long as I can remember. Who was Francis Marie Purcell?

I needed answers, but I really wasn’t on speaking terms with Ronald Butler. I hadn’t spoken to him directly in eight years. It was way too much, and I dropped it for almost eight months.

I got busy with life and didn’t navigate back to the heritage site for several months. What I found was another unexpected connection between my mother and another male. I clicked on the union, and there were two links, one to a marriage certificate in Cameron County, Texas, between my mother, Darlene Marilyn Sampson, and a man named Samuel Purcell, dated January 1970. Hmm, 1970? Samuel Purcell Jr.’s occupation was listed as staff sergeant, US Army. None of this made any sense. I went further then to find a declaration of divorce, again in Cameron County, Texas, dated September 1974. I immediately noticed these dates aligned with the changes to my own birth certificate. Something was bothering me, and a thought started to take shape: I might not be related to the Butlers. Holy crap! Their destiny may not be mine! I don’t owe them anything, and they don’t owe me anything. The genetic curses and the psychiatric curses may not be my destiny.

I started to wonder who this Samuel Anthony Tony Purcell was. I found out that he served a couple of tours in Vietnam and went on to serve another twenty-three years in the army, retiring as a command sergeant major. He was decorated with the Bronze Star twice, Medal of Honor, Purple Heart for Valor, and other commendations, including the Silver Star for bravery and accolades for his job