1 00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:12,680 Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. It 2 00:00:12,720 --> 00:00:16,280 Speaker 1: could have happened like this one winter night, just three 3 00:00:16,360 --> 00:00:19,279 Speaker 1: years ago, when my husband mentioned to me that he 4 00:00:19,360 --> 00:00:22,959 Speaker 1: was ordering one of those popular DNA testing kids, and 5 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:25,320 Speaker 1: he asked me whether I wanted to have my DNA 6 00:00:25,480 --> 00:00:30,600 Speaker 1: tested too. I might have said no, no, thanks, not interested. 7 00:00:32,640 --> 00:00:35,559 Speaker 1: Instead I sort of shrugged, at least this is how 8 00:00:35,600 --> 00:00:40,000 Speaker 1: I remember it, and said sure, why not. I wasn't 9 00:00:40,040 --> 00:00:44,080 Speaker 1: particularly curious. I had never considered doing something like this before. 10 00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:48,400 Speaker 1: I mean, I knew my relatives, I knew my ancestors, 11 00:00:48,960 --> 00:00:52,839 Speaker 1: I knew their stories. I knew exactly who I was 12 00:00:53,360 --> 00:00:58,040 Speaker 1: and where I came from. It could have happened like that. 13 00:00:58,600 --> 00:01:01,640 Speaker 1: I might have lived my entire your life without ever 14 00:01:01,760 --> 00:01:12,680 Speaker 1: knowing the truth of who I was. My name is 15 00:01:12,720 --> 00:01:16,840 Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets. Secrets that are 16 00:01:16,959 --> 00:01:20,480 Speaker 1: kept from us, secrets that we keep from others, and 17 00:01:20,600 --> 00:01:25,720 Speaker 1: secrets that we keep from ourselves. You're going to be 18 00:01:25,760 --> 00:01:28,720 Speaker 1: hearing a lot of different kinds of family secrets on 19 00:01:28,800 --> 00:01:37,200 Speaker 1: my new podcast, Secrets involving crime, race, sexuality, abuse, addiction, loss, 20 00:01:37,840 --> 00:01:47,360 Speaker 1: and identity. While these family secrets are as individual as snowflakes, 21 00:01:47,880 --> 00:01:51,320 Speaker 1: what each one of them, What every family secret has 22 00:01:51,360 --> 00:01:55,560 Speaker 1: in common, is the silence rooted in shame, trauma, and 23 00:01:55,600 --> 00:02:01,920 Speaker 1: the desire to protect what he doesn't know won't hurt him. 24 00:02:01,920 --> 00:02:04,200 Speaker 1: Why should we tell her when she'll never find out? 25 00:02:05,320 --> 00:02:09,200 Speaker 1: It's none of her business. I've been a student of 26 00:02:09,240 --> 00:02:13,160 Speaker 1: family secrets for my entire life. I've written novels that 27 00:02:13,320 --> 00:02:17,839 Speaker 1: center around secrets corrosive power. I've written memoirs in which 28 00:02:17,880 --> 00:02:22,880 Speaker 1: I dug deep into my own family's buried past. One 29 00:02:22,880 --> 00:02:25,560 Speaker 1: of the first big pieces of journalism I ever wrote 30 00:02:25,639 --> 00:02:28,160 Speaker 1: as a young writer was a story for The New 31 00:02:28,240 --> 00:02:33,000 Speaker 1: Yorker called The Secret Wife. My dad had been dead 32 00:02:33,040 --> 00:02:35,639 Speaker 1: for a few years, and I was trying to understand 33 00:02:35,680 --> 00:02:41,360 Speaker 1: him better. From a chance throwaway comment, I had learned 34 00:02:41,400 --> 00:02:43,919 Speaker 1: that before my dad met my mother, he had been 35 00:02:43,960 --> 00:02:47,560 Speaker 1: briefly married to a young woman named Dorothy. She died 36 00:02:47,639 --> 00:02:52,320 Speaker 1: shortly after they wed. As I researched and reported the story, 37 00:02:53,280 --> 00:02:55,440 Speaker 1: I felt I was uncovering the truth of my own 38 00:02:55,520 --> 00:02:59,320 Speaker 1: father's sorrow and oppression. I interviewed people who told me 39 00:02:59,360 --> 00:03:02,160 Speaker 1: that Dorothy had been the love of his life. I 40 00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:06,160 Speaker 1: began to understand, or so I thought, the reasons he 41 00:03:06,240 --> 00:03:10,680 Speaker 1: was so distant the source, ultimately of the pain killers 42 00:03:10,680 --> 00:03:15,600 Speaker 1: he swallowed by the dozen each day. When I finished 43 00:03:15,639 --> 00:03:19,560 Speaker 1: the Secret Wife, I thought I was done. Like a detective. 44 00:03:19,919 --> 00:03:22,359 Speaker 1: I had gotten to the bottom of things. I had 45 00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:29,280 Speaker 1: solved the case of my beloved, sad dead dad. It 46 00:03:29,320 --> 00:03:32,320 Speaker 1: could have happened like this. I could have skipped the 47 00:03:32,360 --> 00:03:36,680 Speaker 1: whole DNA testing thing because I had no curiosity about it. Really, 48 00:03:37,200 --> 00:03:39,760 Speaker 1: I didn't need to spit into the plastic vials sent 49 00:03:39,840 --> 00:03:43,280 Speaker 1: by ancestry dot Com. I wasn't going to discover new 50 00:03:43,320 --> 00:03:49,200 Speaker 1: branches on my family tree, So why didn't I? Why 51 00:03:49,280 --> 00:03:55,000 Speaker 1: didn't I skip it? I've learned something new about family 52 00:03:55,080 --> 00:03:57,880 Speaker 1: secrets in the three years that have elapsed between that 53 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:01,800 Speaker 1: moment in my kitchen in Connecticut, that cold winter evening, 54 00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:05,880 Speaker 1: Like so many other cold winter evenings, I've learned that 55 00:04:05,960 --> 00:04:09,920 Speaker 1: when we discover a family secret is as important as 56 00:04:09,960 --> 00:04:16,479 Speaker 1: the how and the why of what we discover. It 57 00:04:16,520 --> 00:04:20,400 Speaker 1: could have happened like this, that most subtle whisper, that 58 00:04:20,440 --> 00:04:23,159 Speaker 1: place in the deepest interior that we feel when we 59 00:04:23,200 --> 00:04:27,599 Speaker 1: know something isn't right. There's something we're missing, some piece 60 00:04:27,640 --> 00:04:31,080 Speaker 1: of elusive information that has been withheld from us, that 61 00:04:31,200 --> 00:04:35,080 Speaker 1: subtle whisper can become so subtle that we almost don't 62 00:04:35,080 --> 00:04:39,520 Speaker 1: hear it at all. We brushed by it as we 63 00:04:39,560 --> 00:04:42,760 Speaker 1: go about our lives. We're so busy. Our to do 64 00:04:42,880 --> 00:04:48,320 Speaker 1: lists are endless. There are jobs, bosses, spouses, kids, always 65 00:04:48,320 --> 00:04:53,960 Speaker 1: something louder clamoring for our attention. On the day that 66 00:04:54,040 --> 00:04:57,719 Speaker 1: my DNA results were returned to me by ancestry dot Com, 67 00:04:57,760 --> 00:05:00,559 Speaker 1: I was fifty four years old. I had been married 68 00:05:00,600 --> 00:05:03,200 Speaker 1: for nearly twenty years. I was the mother of a 69 00:05:03,200 --> 00:05:06,440 Speaker 1: teenage son. I lived with my family in a house 70 00:05:06,480 --> 00:05:09,480 Speaker 1: in the Connecticut countryside. I was a writer who had 71 00:05:09,520 --> 00:05:18,800 Speaker 1: just finished my ninth book, Woman, wife, mother, cousin, niece, granddaughter, 72 00:05:19,360 --> 00:05:26,040 Speaker 1: great granddaughter, daughter. I stared at the results of my 73 00:05:26,160 --> 00:05:30,360 Speaker 1: DNA test on my computer screen. The numbers, letters, words, 74 00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:35,520 Speaker 1: names were a nonsensical blur. They arranged and rearranged themselves 75 00:05:35,520 --> 00:05:38,799 Speaker 1: as I tried to make any kind of sense of them. 76 00:05:38,800 --> 00:05:42,240 Speaker 1: But I couldn't make sense of them. They made no 77 00:05:42,360 --> 00:05:46,320 Speaker 1: sense the results of the DNA test. I almost didn't 78 00:05:46,360 --> 00:05:51,119 Speaker 1: take Those results, spilled out in crystal clear, scientific black 79 00:05:51,160 --> 00:05:57,320 Speaker 1: and white, meant only one possible thing. My father was 80 00:05:57,360 --> 00:06:05,200 Speaker 1: not my father. What forms us? What shapes are identities. 81 00:06:05,240 --> 00:06:10,240 Speaker 1: When we're children, teenagers, young adults, there's nature, and there's nurture, 82 00:06:10,400 --> 00:06:13,800 Speaker 1: of course, and then there are the stories were told 83 00:06:14,080 --> 00:06:18,160 Speaker 1: and the stories we tell ourselves. The story I was 84 00:06:18,200 --> 00:06:21,360 Speaker 1: told and the story I told myself all my life 85 00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:23,919 Speaker 1: until I was fifty four, was that I was the 86 00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:27,720 Speaker 1: only child of my two older parents. My father was 87 00:06:27,760 --> 00:06:31,279 Speaker 1: from an Orthodox Jewish family, a family well known within 88 00:06:31,320 --> 00:06:39,039 Speaker 1: the confines of the Orthodox Jewish world. I spent my 89 00:06:39,120 --> 00:06:42,560 Speaker 1: childhood in suburban New Jersey, going to synagogue with my 90 00:06:42,680 --> 00:06:47,040 Speaker 1: dad on Saturday mornings. Our home was strictly kosher, dairy 91 00:06:47,120 --> 00:06:50,600 Speaker 1: and meat kept separate. I never tasted bacon or shell 92 00:06:50,640 --> 00:06:53,359 Speaker 1: fish until I rebelled as a teenager. And when I 93 00:06:53,360 --> 00:06:55,920 Speaker 1: first tried at cheeseburger, I was afraid that God would 94 00:06:55,960 --> 00:07:01,640 Speaker 1: strike me dead. Oh and one more sing I didn't 95 00:07:02,080 --> 00:07:05,360 Speaker 1: look at Jewish. I know this sounds like the punch 96 00:07:05,400 --> 00:07:07,720 Speaker 1: line of a joke, but it was a real thing, 97 00:07:08,120 --> 00:07:11,120 Speaker 1: A huge part of what formed my identity. This not 98 00:07:11,560 --> 00:07:15,440 Speaker 1: looking like who and what I was. I was very fair, 99 00:07:15,760 --> 00:07:20,120 Speaker 1: with blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin. I blushed easily. 100 00:07:20,920 --> 00:07:23,760 Speaker 1: People made comments every single day of my life about 101 00:07:23,760 --> 00:07:28,239 Speaker 1: how non Jewish. I looked your mother had an affair 102 00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:31,160 Speaker 1: with a Swedish milkman. Come on, I've never seen a 103 00:07:31,240 --> 00:07:35,280 Speaker 1: Jewish girl who looks like you. Sometimes people would even 104 00:07:35,280 --> 00:07:37,080 Speaker 1: get mad at me, as if I was trying to 105 00:07:37,120 --> 00:07:40,400 Speaker 1: pull one over on them, pretending to be something I wasn't. 106 00:07:42,040 --> 00:07:44,880 Speaker 1: The ethnic breakdown on my ancestry dot com d n 107 00:07:44,880 --> 00:07:49,440 Speaker 1: A was as follows, that was pretty much half Jewish, 108 00:07:51,560 --> 00:07:59,960 Speaker 1: to be precise. The other half was English, French, German, Swedish, Irish. 109 00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:03,200 Speaker 1: It turns out that all those people were right. They 110 00:08:03,240 --> 00:08:07,400 Speaker 1: saw something that I couldn't allow myself to see, and 111 00:08:07,520 --> 00:08:11,120 Speaker 1: so at the age of fifty four, I was left 112 00:08:11,160 --> 00:08:15,600 Speaker 1: holding a massive mystery. My dad was dead, my mom 113 00:08:15,680 --> 00:08:21,360 Speaker 1: was dead. Who was my father? Where had I come from? 114 00:08:21,400 --> 00:08:27,559 Speaker 1: I mean literally who and what had made me? Here's 115 00:08:27,560 --> 00:08:30,160 Speaker 1: another thing I've learned during my recent crash course and 116 00:08:30,240 --> 00:08:35,920 Speaker 1: family secrets. If the secret keepers believe, really, truly believe 117 00:08:36,320 --> 00:08:39,559 Speaker 1: that their secret will never come to light, they can 118 00:08:39,600 --> 00:08:43,840 Speaker 1: pretend that it doesn't exist. And if they pretend long 119 00:08:43,960 --> 00:08:48,360 Speaker 1: enough and hard enough that the secret doesn't exist, it's 120 00:08:48,400 --> 00:08:50,800 Speaker 1: possible for them to come to believe this with their 121 00:08:50,840 --> 00:08:56,160 Speaker 1: whole selves. In a sea of confusion. I did have 122 00:08:56,240 --> 00:08:58,840 Speaker 1: a few clues to go on, and I clung to 123 00:08:58,880 --> 00:09:08,360 Speaker 1: them like life raft. If a secret has been kept 124 00:09:08,400 --> 00:09:10,760 Speaker 1: from you for your whole life, there's a part of 125 00:09:10,760 --> 00:09:14,240 Speaker 1: you that knows it, not consciously, but in a deep 126 00:09:14,360 --> 00:09:18,920 Speaker 1: place of knowing what the psychoanalyst Christopher Bolas calls the 127 00:09:19,080 --> 00:09:23,959 Speaker 1: unthought known, something you know but can never allow yourself 128 00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:29,360 Speaker 1: to think. Here's what I knew. My parents had been older, 129 00:09:30,200 --> 00:09:33,240 Speaker 1: they'd have trouble conceiving me. My mother had had a 130 00:09:33,320 --> 00:09:36,880 Speaker 1: number of miscarriages. She was nearly forty when I was born. 131 00:09:39,440 --> 00:09:41,800 Speaker 1: Many years earlier, my mother had once let it slip 132 00:09:42,040 --> 00:09:46,560 Speaker 1: that they had visited an institute in Philadelphia where they 133 00:09:46,559 --> 00:09:51,320 Speaker 1: had undergone the process of artificial insemination. But there was 134 00:09:51,400 --> 00:09:53,920 Speaker 1: no question that my dad was my dad. That was 135 00:09:53,960 --> 00:09:57,760 Speaker 1: a given, that was a fact, his sperm, her egg, 136 00:09:58,600 --> 00:10:04,600 Speaker 1: my parents. Do you know that expression the rug was 137 00:10:04,640 --> 00:10:07,679 Speaker 1: pulled out from under me? We use that expression so 138 00:10:07,800 --> 00:10:10,600 Speaker 1: often that it's pretty much a cliche. But stop for 139 00:10:10,640 --> 00:10:14,680 Speaker 1: a second and think about what it really means. On 140 00:10:14,720 --> 00:10:17,000 Speaker 1: the day that I found out that my dad hadn't 141 00:10:17,040 --> 00:10:22,720 Speaker 1: been biologically speaking, my dad beneath me, all was suddenly empty, 142 00:10:23,440 --> 00:10:27,680 Speaker 1: all was air, all was nothingness. The rug of my 143 00:10:27,920 --> 00:10:31,439 Speaker 1: entire foundation had been, in fact pulled out from under me. 144 00:10:33,040 --> 00:10:36,080 Speaker 1: The ancestors whose photographs and portraits hung on the walls 145 00:10:36,120 --> 00:10:38,720 Speaker 1: of my home, the men and women I believed I 146 00:10:38,760 --> 00:10:43,400 Speaker 1: came from, were transformed in a single instant into people 147 00:10:43,480 --> 00:10:47,680 Speaker 1: with whom I had no connection. I had never known them, 148 00:10:47,679 --> 00:10:51,600 Speaker 1: so now who were they to me? It felt almost 149 00:10:51,720 --> 00:10:56,120 Speaker 1: as if they were all floating away, perfect strangers, waving 150 00:10:56,120 --> 00:11:00,320 Speaker 1: at me solemnly. As the distance between us grew and grew. 151 00:11:08,280 --> 00:11:11,920 Speaker 1: I had never felt so alone. Somewhere out there was 152 00:11:11,960 --> 00:11:17,520 Speaker 1: my biological father, a huge question mark. I quickly understood 153 00:11:17,640 --> 00:11:20,640 Speaker 1: that he must have been a sperm downer. I walked 154 00:11:20,679 --> 00:11:23,520 Speaker 1: through the world for days, looking at every man of 155 00:11:23,520 --> 00:11:28,440 Speaker 1: a certain age, wondering, are you my father? But the 156 00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:33,520 Speaker 1: deeper mystery was this, What had my parents known when 157 00:11:33,559 --> 00:11:37,360 Speaker 1: they went to that institute in Philadelphia? What was their mission? 158 00:11:38,559 --> 00:11:41,880 Speaker 1: This was in the early days of reproductive science. What 159 00:11:41,960 --> 00:11:46,160 Speaker 1: did my parents understand about what they were doing? One 160 00:11:46,200 --> 00:11:49,360 Speaker 1: thing became quickly clear. They would have been told that 161 00:11:49,400 --> 00:11:52,880 Speaker 1: they must never speak of this again. They would have 162 00:11:52,880 --> 00:11:56,200 Speaker 1: been told that the child would never know. They would 163 00:11:56,240 --> 00:12:01,760 Speaker 1: have been given express permission, no more than permission, a mandate, 164 00:12:02,320 --> 00:12:05,840 Speaker 1: to keep a secret forever, to take that secret to 165 00:12:05,880 --> 00:12:10,360 Speaker 1: the grave with them, to die with it. I was 166 00:12:10,440 --> 00:12:18,680 Speaker 1: that secret. Their secret was me. Somewhere out there in 167 00:12:18,760 --> 00:12:22,200 Speaker 1: a vast world was an elderly man with white hair 168 00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:27,120 Speaker 1: and blue eyes who blushes easily, A man whose background 169 00:12:27,200 --> 00:12:32,960 Speaker 1: is French, English, German, Swedish, Irish, a man who lived 170 00:12:33,240 --> 00:12:37,920 Speaker 1: in Philadelphia during the year I was conceived. Somewhere out 171 00:12:37,960 --> 00:12:41,040 Speaker 1: there was an elderly man who had been told long ago, 172 00:12:41,600 --> 00:12:44,640 Speaker 1: when he was a young medical student, that no one 173 00:12:44,640 --> 00:12:48,520 Speaker 1: would ever know, that records would be destroyed, that he 174 00:12:48,520 --> 00:12:51,000 Speaker 1: would help a couple have a baby, make a family. 175 00:12:52,120 --> 00:13:00,120 Speaker 1: Somewhere that man existed, and I would find him. I 176 00:13:00,160 --> 00:13:03,760 Speaker 1: did find him, and also learned a great deal about 177 00:13:03,760 --> 00:13:06,720 Speaker 1: the journey my parents took on their path to making 178 00:13:06,720 --> 00:13:15,480 Speaker 1: a family to making me. We're living in an extraordinary 179 00:13:15,520 --> 00:13:19,200 Speaker 1: moment in time, one in which the potent combination of 180 00:13:19,280 --> 00:13:23,000 Speaker 1: easy and popular DNA testing and the power of the 181 00:13:23,040 --> 00:13:28,200 Speaker 1: Internet have made many kinds of family secrets no longer possible. 182 00:13:29,600 --> 00:13:33,640 Speaker 1: Every day, people are making discoveries. They're finding out that 183 00:13:33,679 --> 00:13:37,440 Speaker 1: they were adopted, or donor conceived or have siblings they 184 00:13:37,480 --> 00:13:41,040 Speaker 1: hadn't known about. They're discovering that their ethnicity is other 185 00:13:41,080 --> 00:13:45,000 Speaker 1: than what they've always known, and often the keepers of 186 00:13:45,040 --> 00:13:48,520 Speaker 1: those secrets are still alive, the ones who thought their 187 00:13:48,520 --> 00:13:52,080 Speaker 1: secrets were safe. These kinds of secrets have been around 188 00:13:52,080 --> 00:13:56,440 Speaker 1: since the dawn of humanity, but now that era is over. 189 00:13:57,960 --> 00:14:01,000 Speaker 1: In the not too distant future, the very idea that 190 00:14:01,080 --> 00:14:03,880 Speaker 1: family has kept these kinds of secrets out of self 191 00:14:03,880 --> 00:14:07,200 Speaker 1: protectiveness or shame or in the name of love will 192 00:14:07,240 --> 00:14:12,559 Speaker 1: be considered ludicrous and just playing wrong. But here we are, 193 00:14:13,320 --> 00:14:19,240 Speaker 1: with secrets tumbling out at a staggering rate. Join me 194 00:14:19,320 --> 00:14:22,000 Speaker 1: and my guests on Family Secrets as we shine a 195 00:14:22,080 --> 00:14:25,520 Speaker 1: bright light into the dark hidden corners of the unspoken 196 00:14:26,080 --> 00:14:29,800 Speaker 1: and discovered together the power and beauty that comes with 197 00:14:29,920 --> 00:14:45,680 Speaker 1: finally knowing the truth. Family Secrets is an I Heart 198 00:14:45,720 --> 00:14:50,960 Speaker 1: Media production. Dylan Fagin is the supervising producer, Andrew Howard 199 00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:54,840 Speaker 1: and Tristan McNeil are the audio engineers, and Julie Douglas 200 00:14:54,960 --> 00:14:58,960 Speaker 1: is the executive producer. A special shout out thank you 201 00:14:59,080 --> 00:15:02,520 Speaker 1: to my husband Michael Marin and my son Jacob Marin 202 00:15:02,840 --> 00:15:05,680 Speaker 1: who have been on this journey with me If you 203 00:15:05,720 --> 00:15:08,080 Speaker 1: have a family secret you'd like to share, you can 204 00:15:08,080 --> 00:15:10,920 Speaker 1: get in touch with us at listener mail at Family 205 00:15:10,960 --> 00:15:14,320 Speaker 1: Secrets Podcast dot com, and you can also find us 206 00:15:14,320 --> 00:15:19,480 Speaker 1: on Instagram at Danny Ryder, and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod, 207 00:15:19,920 --> 00:15:23,480 Speaker 1: and Twitter at fam secrets Pot. That's fam secrets Pot. 208 00:15:24,160 --> 00:15:27,840 Speaker 1: For more about my book, Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot 209 00:15:27,840 --> 00:15:41,840 Speaker 1: com