“I’m a Survivor”

Written by Michelle Marie

With input from Mandy and Melissa

I believe that once a person has read the amazing book that my mother, Leedee M., has written, the first word that comes to mind is “remarkable”.

A mother of four children, an ex-spouse of two, and a survivor of traumatic occurrences throughout her life, leaves a person in question of: “Who is this remarkable woman?” Well, this woman is my “mommy”, so to speak, and this is where I will begin to tell you the tale of Leedee….

French-born on the date of July 10, 1958, comes the being of a bountiful, baby girl to the parents of Josephina Maria Natalia van den Bruelle and her husband Jean Pierre Edmond Botty. So obvious in features, this baby girl has the decent of ¼ French, ¼ Walone, and ½ Flemish.

The baby of the family, my mom, has four older siblings, including a fourteen-year-older sister, Armanda. Following her gorgeous sister (my aunt), are the brothers, or as my mom likes to put it, “The lot of ‘fathers’ who raised her.” Jacky , who is twelve years older; Thierry, who is ten years older; and then her look-alike hilarious brother, Ruddy, who is eight years older than she. So there we have it…. A family of seven, who in written form, seems so perfect. Yet, there is a downfall.

In 1964, my grandmother defies her strict Catholic background and divorces her husband, due to severe alcoholism, and extreme physical abuse and battery issues, which he doled out to my grandmother and every one of his children. My mother may have been the youngest, but she was by no means his exception.

After this unfortunate turn of events, my grandmother, a supremely remarkable woman in her own right, found love again in 1965 with an American named, Yarber Lee Black, when my mom was only seven years old. That’s how she came to the United States, and became the true-blue American citizen that she is. Her heart has always held the deepest gratitude for what she feels was a precious twist-of-fate in her life. Ironically enough, this was not the first time these two sweethearts met…. My mother’s new step-dad was also her Godfather at her baptism in her infancy. Although she rarely uses it, like a lot of European-born people, my mother has three first names which precede her maiden last. You only know her by what she goes by as an author, followed by the letter “M”.

I know her as “Leedee Maddy Lee”. So does her Godfather, my grandpa!

From age seven throughout her entire teen life, both my grandparents’ love for travel, religious sites, and history would see to it that my mom’s feet became acquainted with many foreign, Middle-eastern, and European soils. From the Vatican in Rome, the Acropolis in Greece and as far as the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, to the creations of Rembrandt, Monet, Da Vinci, and forward, on to the American wonders of the natural world as the likes of the Grand Canyon, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, and, no less awesome, Yellowstone National Park before the year 1970 had even rolled around; she was not even 12-years-old yet! My mom experienced so many places that she could dedicate an entire book to that subject alone. It is all of these so many worldly places and the diverse cultures that she was exposed to, which makes her the intellectual and spiritual woman that she is. It’s what I would call her foundation.

In the summer of 1969, just weeks before her eleventh birthday, is when the first surgery of my mother’s 37 took place: Her appendix flared up nasty. This little girl had an odd interest in being awake while surgeons worked on her body…. Even at that young of an age, she absolutely insisted that her doctor only numb her body with a spinal agent, and allow her to watch her own appendectomy from the hanging mirror above the operating table. It happened. This is where her oddly, keen sense of anatomy came from…. Her curiosity just couldn’t be stopped.

Not me! I gross out at the sight of blood!

Spring of 1970: Here comes the phenomenon, and where that infamous bear in a Greek petting zoo, located just outside of Athens, had a lockdown battle with my mom’s right forearm, wrist, and hand. The experience caused her to go out-of-body for a significant period of time, due to loss of blood and shock. It also stopped her heart at least long enough (exact time unknown) to suffer some permanent damage from this ordeal, too. A very mild form of mitral valve prolapse (MVP) is hereditary in our family. It usually hits the women in our genetic background at about the age of 50 to 55 years old, whereas my mom was diagnosed with a significantly more severe case when only in her early thirties. She doesn’t let it bother her too much, though. Whenever she feels her heart jumping around in her chest like a little bunny rabbit and her eyes feel like they will explode right out their sockets, she just pops one of her little heart meds, takes a short break, then gets back up and keeps right on going without my sisters and me really being aware of it. But I think she does that on purpose, because she knows my sisters and I become scared and anxious about our mom’s stubborn, but frail grip on life. We’re all extremely close to one another. Family, to my mother, is tantamount.

The visions and enlightenments at the hands of death are the innate reasons for her “naturalistic approach” into the fundamentals of human behavior and physiology. Naturally, the experience also contributed heavily to her already existing, profound sense of spirituality. (All of those childhood churches, ancient ruins, mosques, temples, and cathedrals can do that to a child, you know.)

My mom can speak on the issues of death, the subconscious, our reptilian brains, our instincts, the higher consciousness, and our inner-selves, because she did die and consequently traveled much further out in the universe than what any boat, plane, or car can take a person to. Although, she was already born with a high degree of intuitiveness, that same out-of-body experience left her unusually clairvoyant. Her right hand may have been left almost lifeless and unable to meet most of life’s daily physical challenges, but suffering from severe difficulties has yet to stop my mom from doing anything and everything that comes her way. She’s even managed to prove every single one of her orthopedic (hand) doctor’s wrong. Proof of this would be her artwork. She sometimes winces at the pain of holding a pencil for so long and awkwardly but it is, at the same time, what she feels is her biggest triumph over adversity.

I disagree. I think my mom’s biggest triumph in life has been her ability to survive and withstand all of the terrors she has had to face since the day she was born. Did you know that she was born two months premature, was completely jaundiced, and weighed barely four pounds at birth? “She won’t make it,” the doctors said. Ha! What did they know?

My mom has even had to face a terrorist threat against my grandpa’s life in Greece, when someone decided to target his car as a Foreign Service member attached to the local American Embassy. All four of his car tires had been rigged to explode as soon as he got to a certain speed. I can’t imagine what my mom and grandmother felt like…. Well, actually I can. I saw my mom lying unconscious after our apartment was ransacked in San Diego when I was only five years old. When you get to that part of my mom’s book, it is my picture that you see holding a little gray cat. His name was “Drifter”, because of the funny way he just drifted into our lives one day and decided to stay. He’s gone now. Someone killed him in order to stop my mom from publishing a book about an actor that she wished she had never heard of.

Somebody tried to stop her from doing what she felt was the right thing to do, way back in 1993. You can read how she has dug inside herself deep enough to overcome that scary challenge of speaking out against what happened to us all back then. If there’s one thing about our mother that my sisters and I can always count on, it is her unshakable faith and belief in a Higher Good that strengthens all of her determination and will.

Maybe that’s why God didn’t take my mom away when she was so young. Maybe even He was amazed at her will and depth of character. My mom laughs and says it’s because of a different reason…. She winks an eye and states that it is because God is stalling from having to deal with a note she plans to put into His “suggestion box”, whenever she gets back there again. “What’s that, Mom?” I once asked. “That He add one more commandment to our list of ten,” she answered me. I’ll tell you what it is at the end of this bio. Pay close attention when you get to it; it’s the reason why my sisters and I wanted to be the ones to tell you about this woman.

Meanwhile, I’ll share with you what I else I think is one of my mom’s biggest triumphs in life. When my mom was only twenty-two years old, she was kidnapped and raped horribly for over three and half days by someone that both she and my dad trusted. My mom will tell you that it was a miracle she was able to survive and escape to safety with my oldest brother inside of her. As you and I well know, these are high odds to beat. No, they weren’t! The highest odds she beat was how she rejoiced in giving birth to my older brother, Kenny, instead of aborting him the way a lot of rape victims like her are pushed into doing by the people around them, when Kenny was her abductor’s son! My mom’s heart loved him so much, anyway, that she even found enough love to let him go from her arms, after it became apparent to her that my dad would always resent my brother’s place in his wife’s arms. My dad was victimized and destroyed, too, but eventually hurt my mom just about as badly as a husband can hurt the mother of his children. But he wasn’t the only one to make my mother cry and try to crush her trust in mankind and love.

There was one more man after that. You can read about how he attempted to break my mom down with about as much ferocity as a child-beating drunken father; a grizzly bear’s locked-in-place jaw; an abductor; a child molester; a hired burglar and the media actor that crime is connected to; and what two husbands could not tear down and steal away from her. Her faith…. Her sense of humor.... Her dignity…. I believe that the beauty of my mom’s poetry is all anyone needs to read to be given proof of that. But most of all it is her depths-of-love and her willingness to look any wrong, deception, misinterpretation, or omission of goodness (or justice) right in the eye. And yes, even those omissions she feels God needs to really hear, and that she feels needs to be placed right under the biblical commandment that reads “Honor thy mother and thy father” as the “clairvoyant mommy” that she is:

“Honor thy children”

My name is Michelle Marie. I am the youngest of Leedee M.’s daughters, and the last one slated to leave the nest of my mom’s Florida home. My sisters, Mandy and Melissa, were not sitting next to me as I wrote this biography about our mom, but have shared their thoughts and feelings with me over the phone…. Oho…. I hope my mom doesn’t get too mad when she gets her phone bill this month! So as my once stepfather, Pat, used to put it, I think my sisters and I had better close this bio with these last words to remember us by:

Gottagoloveyoubye!

Michelle Marie,

Melissa Anne,

And Mandy Lee