Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that
Speaker 1: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. I've heard from
Speaker 1: so many about your own family secrets and realize that
Speaker 1: what we are creating for each other on this podcast
Speaker 1: is a community, a community for those who are looking
Speaker 1: for a safe and supportive space to unburden themselves. To
Speaker 1: that end, we've created a number for listeners to call
Speaker 1: in to record stories to share here in this space.
Speaker 1: This week, I'd like to share a few of those
Speaker 1: stories from our community. Thanks for listening. Hi there, Um
Speaker 1: I'd like to share my secret. I found out last year,
Speaker 1: when I was fifty two, that my biological father was
Speaker 1: not who I thought it was. My mom had always
Speaker 1: told me that her first husband was my sister's dad,
Speaker 1: and then my father also, and when she was pregnant
Speaker 1: with me, he passed away at the age of six.
Speaker 1: Then she married her second husband and they had my brother,
Speaker 1: and they then went on to get divorced. When I
Speaker 1: was in high school, her second husband started saying that
Speaker 1: he was my biological father. Um. It made a lot
Speaker 1: of sense to me because I physically resembled him more,
Speaker 1: I did not look like who she said my father
Speaker 1: was UM, and when I questioned her, she said that
Speaker 1: that's this was not accurate. So I kind of dropped
Speaker 1: it and just went on with life and death. Forward
Speaker 1: to gosh, when I was in mid thirties, me and
Speaker 1: her second husband, my stepdad, talked about it more. He
Speaker 1: really felt like he was my biological father. So we
Speaker 1: did a DNA test and it was negative, which was
Speaker 1: really surprising and kind of appointing. I think I really
Speaker 1: wanted him to be my father biologically. So then you know,
Speaker 1: time went on. I had children, and two years ago
Speaker 1: my oldest child decided to get his DNA tested and
Speaker 1: it came back that he was thirty percent Irish. UM
Speaker 1: just kind of made all of us shrugger eyebrows, like, okay,
Speaker 1: where did that come from? None on my side, supposedly,
Speaker 1: and none on my husband's side. So I did mine
Speaker 1: UM last year and sure enough, it came back that
Speaker 1: I was half Irish. At that time, I had about
Speaker 1: six second cousins pop up on the twenty three and
Speaker 1: me About a month later, I got a message from
Speaker 1: a lady who said that she was my aunt. UM.
Speaker 1: I reached out to her. Long story short, she and
Speaker 1: my mom, who was since deceased, had been best friends
Speaker 1: in high school and college, and we're actually in each
Speaker 1: other's weddings. UM. She had two brothers, and we we
Speaker 1: concluded that older brother Tom was my biological father. They
Speaker 1: are Irish, and unfortunately I won't be able to ever
Speaker 1: meet him, but I do have my aunt, a cousin,
Speaker 1: and two more half siblings that I'm excited to meet. Hi.
Speaker 1: I just want to thank you for the podcast. UM.
Speaker 1: Listening to your podcast is giving me the courage to
Speaker 1: pick up and tell my secret. UM. Yesterday I told
Speaker 1: my teenage children about my childhood, how I was sexually
Speaker 1: abused for eleven years, and how when I was eleven
Speaker 1: I told my secret and by the time I was twelve,
Speaker 1: I would be able to testify in court against my abuser. UM.
Speaker 1: I had not had the courage to tell my children.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how I would tell them. Yesterday, I
Speaker 1: did it, and they were so understanding and said they
Speaker 1: actually kind of knew something had happened to me. And
Speaker 1: it just felt so good and I feel so free
Speaker 1: telling my children my past and it is no longer
Speaker 1: a family secret, so thank you. Hi there. Uh So,
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, my husband gelt phone calls that
Speaker 1: we needed to head back to New York because my
Speaker 1: husband's grandmother was ill and that she didn't have much fight.
Speaker 1: So we went back to New York. She stayed with
Speaker 1: some family and uh, while we were visiting, we ended
Speaker 1: up having to take his grandmother to the hospital, UM
Speaker 1: the emergency room to care for while she was there. Amazingly,
Speaker 1: during all of this COVID stuff, she was allowed to
Speaker 1: have visitors in her room. I was the first on
Speaker 1: her list. Uh. During this four hours that I got
Speaker 1: to done with her, she told me of her first
Speaker 1: child that she had when she was fourteen. She had
Speaker 1: been living in Brooklyn and her family made her um
Speaker 1: moved out of the house, so she was living with
Speaker 1: her sister and shortly after having a baby, she it's
Speaker 1: gone out for a walk and the baby had actually
Speaker 1: been restaurant over in a carriage. Thankfully, the baby survived,
Speaker 1: but she realized that at that point, given her life situation,
Speaker 1: that she she gived the baby up for adoptions, and
Speaker 1: that's what she did. When she got older, she told
Speaker 1: her husband about it, and she told her children, and
Speaker 1: everyone treated it as she had done something wrong, so
Speaker 1: she more or less like even though she told them,
Speaker 1: she kept a lot of promotions about it to herself.
Speaker 1: And it's really something that unless she had told me,
Speaker 1: it's really not talked about with the family. So I
Speaker 1: kind of feel I now have this like mission. So
Speaker 1: she told me her story while she was on her
Speaker 1: death sad like, I now have this mission I feel
Speaker 1: to find out who this person says to this person
Speaker 1: that I have been, and just try and connect that
Speaker 1: family to the family that they don't realize that they have.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to share your story, call one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight Secret zero and record your story. We won't
Speaker 1: be able to run all the stories, but we do
Speaker 1: want to shine a light on as many as we can.
Speaker 1: The number again is one eight eight Secret and then
Speaker 1: the numeral zero. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.