Valrie Sommerville

Waking Up Black Valrie Sommerville

Everyone is taking DNA tests! Including me. I woke up one morning a stranger in my skin. I was no longer the woman I had built for 30 years. I was a lost soul with only a hologram existence. My Birth Certificate was a flat out lie. I was not the little girl from Gulfport with just honey brown skin. I was not the little girl who tried to straighten her curls. I was Val with a biological change in my mental makeup all because I spit into a DNA test tube. I lost not only my fake false idenity. I lost my race. I was raised white. To think white. To see white. My mothers lie took me on a road of self discovery that I must share. In order to heal and move past my racial beginnings. I confront the truth about racial relations and how every family has a voice in who we have actually become. My story started prior to the racial debate on full display in 2020. My look on the inside is a window of opportunity to help enlighten both Americas to our truths in racial justice and equality. How did my family react to my new discoveries? Did I change as a human being? Was my white husband of 30 years shocked to find his wife is a half black woman and not the white girl her mother forced upon her? Is there a difference in our races? Or did I discover we really are all the same? Was I able to forgive my mother for causing such deep pain that still resides deep in my soul with every breathe I take?