Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Hi,
Speaker 1: Family Secrets listeners. It's me Danny here with part two
Speaker 1: of my conversation with Gretchen Ruben, which we recorded live
Speaker 1: back when live audiences were still a thing. This audience,
Speaker 1: in particular, came prepared with some really thought provoking questions
Speaker 1: about the ethics of secret keeping, informed by their own
Speaker 1: personal experiences. I can't wait for you to listen, and
Speaker 1: be sure to keep an eye out for more great
Speaker 1: bonus content as we work hard on the new season
Speaker 1: of Family Secrets coming in October. Hi, Gretchen and Danny,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. My name is Sherry Hoft Tostad.
Speaker 1: I'm a therapist and I spent One of my specialties
Speaker 1: is infertility and third party reproduction. So I work with
Speaker 1: individuals and couples who are pursuing UM using a donor
Speaker 1: egg donor sperm donor embryout, and a lot of them struggle.
Speaker 1: You know, I can tell them all of the research
Speaker 1: behind disclosure and the importance of telling their child their
Speaker 1: story from the beginning. What do you think it's the
Speaker 1: most important thing I can impart to these these you
Speaker 1: know individuals or couples about the importance of disclosing and
Speaker 1: disclosing early. Thank yeah, thank you for that question. Um well,
Speaker 1: I think the most motivating thing would be your child
Speaker 1: is going to find out. And that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I actually for myself when I received letters and you know,
Speaker 1: notes from people or people come up to me, I
Speaker 1: leave the like you know, disclosure good, non disclosure bad
Speaker 1: out of it and just say your child is going
Speaker 1: to find out, because that's to me very convincing. It's
Speaker 1: just do you want to be in a situation where
Speaker 1: at some point your child is going to turn to
Speaker 1: you and say, how could you have kept this information
Speaker 1: from me? We all have a right to know as
Speaker 1: much about our genetic identity as possible. And one other thing,
Speaker 1: I remember the moment where I suddenly realized I have
Speaker 1: been giving incorrect medical history all my life, confidently giving
Speaker 1: incorrect medical history, um, for myself and for my own child, um,
Speaker 1: in terms of family history, and it's just unacceptable. So
Speaker 1: I think on the very practical levels of just horses
Speaker 1: fled the barn, not going back. Hi, my name is
Speaker 1: hadar Um. I you touched on this a little bit,
Speaker 1: but what is if you're willing to share your personal
Speaker 1: opinion on these donors that are maybe unknowingly having several
Speaker 1: of these children out there. I mean, I've seen the
Speaker 1: stories of you know, up to these seven half siblings,
Speaker 1: and how do you feel like the medical community should
Speaker 1: be addressing that and should they be limiting because I
Speaker 1: feel like as far as I've seen, there has been
Speaker 1: many limitations. Thank you for that question. Are so we
Speaker 1: are in Canada are the only two countries in the
Speaker 1: developed world that do not have a registry UM that
Speaker 1: limits the number of offspring a donor can produce. In Europe,
Speaker 1: In Asia, there are there's accountability, there's a registry. There's
Speaker 1: a number in Taiwan. That number is one UM and
Speaker 1: I think it goes up to maybe about twenty five
Speaker 1: and like the Netherlands. But there's there's accountability, and there's
Speaker 1: there's what and there's monitoring exactly and the monitoring actually
Speaker 1: ends up accomplishing a lot. It means that donors have
Speaker 1: to be truthful about their medical histories. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of things that go that go into it. The agencies
Speaker 1: that are um you know, selling donor sperm and donor
Speaker 1: eggs are still promoting anonymity. There's still you can go
Speaker 1: on these sites and see that donors are being listed
Speaker 1: as anonymous when it's no longer possible for donors to
Speaker 1: be anonymous, and um, to me, that's a kind of malpractice.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's no pun intended. It is inconceivable to
Speaker 1: me that that people are falling for it, um and
Speaker 1: and that, and that it's being advertised and marketed in
Speaker 1: that way. So it's one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: will continue to be a voice about this, because it
Speaker 1: feels like it's part of the work of my life
Speaker 1: now to say, do you realize there's no regulation in
Speaker 1: this country about this? And combine no regulation with lack
Speaker 1: of disclosure, and you end up with situations where I
Speaker 1: mean a recent story that I heard a doctor who's
Speaker 1: I guess probably in his sixties fifties, maybe sat his
Speaker 1: teenage children down, um, because they were reaching an age
Speaker 1: where they were starting to date, and and he said
Speaker 1: to them, don't date anyone from Michigan. And he had
Speaker 1: been a medical student, you know, Michigan, and he donated
Speaker 1: his way through medical school as a young, poor medical student.
Speaker 1: And he was basically he was trying to do the
Speaker 1: right thing actually by letting his children know that he
Speaker 1: had been a sperm donor. That's a very helpful thing
Speaker 1: to know, um, as you make your way into the world.
Speaker 1: But it's also like and nobody leaves Michigan that room.
Speaker 1: I with interest lots of what you said, And you
Speaker 1: just mentioned the similarity, but difference between the similarity and
Speaker 1: difference between secrets and privacy in the same way i'm
Speaker 1: I guess I'm struck by the fact that identity and
Speaker 1: ancestry are not the same. And and so what you've
Speaker 1: got from your father is identity, the ancestry is different.
Speaker 1: That's right, and that's a very profound idea. UM. I
Speaker 1: realized when I told my son what I had discovered,
Speaker 1: and that it was actually not a big deal for him,
Speaker 1: that oh, he was very happy to realize that he
Speaker 1: might not be bald like my dad and my grandfather
Speaker 1: and my great but all the all the men, I guess,
Speaker 1: even staring at the portraits of my house and like
Speaker 1: picturing his future bald self. But he wasn't perturbed. And
Speaker 1: I what I realized was that my father, he had
Speaker 1: never known my dad, so my father to him was
Speaker 1: an ancestor. And I was very identified with my ancestors.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons why this was so world
Speaker 1: rocking for me. I come from a family on my
Speaker 1: father's side that was very conscious of its own posterity,
Speaker 1: and I had received many stories of the generations before me,
Speaker 1: and I had kind of incorporated them into my identity.
Speaker 1: We don't love our ancestors. We can't love our ancestors
Speaker 1: because we never knew them, that we didn't walk the
Speaker 1: world with them. We love the people that we walk
Speaker 1: the world with. Who we grapple with, and who we
Speaker 1: fight with, and we who we you know, engage with,
Speaker 1: and who and who and who we love. They're the people.
Speaker 1: Those are the people who form our identities. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've come to the realization that really it took three
Speaker 1: people to make me. You know, I am as formed
Speaker 1: by my mother and my dad who raised me, um
Speaker 1: and my biological father, with whom I have a great
Speaker 1: deal of familiarity. I inherited a lot of traits from
Speaker 1: him and a constitution from him in a certain way. Um.
Speaker 1: But so, but identity wise, I mean, people ask me,
Speaker 1: and as someone someone may have this question, so I'll
Speaker 1: just answer it. So, do you feel less Jewish now?
Speaker 1: Or more Jewish because I'm biologically half Jewish. Um, I
Speaker 1: actually feel more Jewish now because I now understand all
Speaker 1: the questions people were always asking that made me feel
Speaker 1: like such an outsider. Now now it just all makes
Speaker 1: sense to me. So my sense of self identity is
Speaker 1: actually stronger and way more powerful than it was before
Speaker 1: my discovery. We'll be back in a moment with more
Speaker 1: family secrets. I was a donor at Pennsylvania Hospital, not
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania Hospital, pensyl for in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: and it was anonymous. And then five years ago, because
Speaker 1: my father's DNA before he died was in a mix,
Speaker 1: they started contacting looking for their grandfather and discovered it
Speaker 1: was me, and I have since been in touch and
Speaker 1: met two of them. I am in writing touch with
Speaker 1: several others. The question I have for you, and this
Speaker 1: is a dilemma I'm having now, is UM, a woman
Speaker 1: put her d N A in and is looking for
Speaker 1: it is clearly me, and somehow I didn't her back.
Speaker 1: So I found the mother and wrote to the mother
Speaker 1: and to ask, and the mother wrote back, please don't
Speaker 1: tell my daughter. It would ruin the family. Although the
Speaker 1: daughter must see something already, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: I should do do what it is my responsibility to
Speaker 1: the mother who says it would wreck her family, or
Speaker 1: to the daughter who wants to know. That's you see
Speaker 1: the kinds of stories that are coming. I mean, it's extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing that, and thank you for asking that. Um,
Speaker 1: it would seem to me that the daughter is searching
Speaker 1: and your information is available, so she will find you
Speaker 1: if she wants to. She will find you because she's
Speaker 1: looking right. She she she took a DNA test, right,
Speaker 1: So it would seem to me that making yourself discoverable
Speaker 1: is your best, you know sort of action in a
Speaker 1: way like I. I was approached by a man in
Speaker 1: his eighties after a talk I did recently, who just
Speaker 1: randomly was at the talk, knew nothing about what I
Speaker 1: was going to be talking about, and it turned out
Speaker 1: he had been a donor at the institute in Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: where I was conceived at around the same time. And
Speaker 1: after we talked, he said, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do a DNA test so that my biological children, if
Speaker 1: I have any, can discover me, which I thought was,
Speaker 1: you know, as the opposite of what some responses are right.
Speaker 1: So you've made yourself, You've made yourself available, and that's
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. UM. And now I think it's like
Speaker 1: up to the fullness of time to let it play out.
Speaker 1: That's what I would say, Hi, Danny, I'm My name's Rina.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of writings. UM. I have a question.
Speaker 1: Dr Van rccle says that when you have a traumatizing event,
Speaker 1: that that trauma can become cellular UM and that shame carries.
Speaker 1: My question is, have you carried any of the shame
Speaker 1: that you speak of that your parents had, and if so,
Speaker 1: what do you do to combat in That's a great question,
Speaker 1: and I think the answer is yes. I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that I really had to contend
Speaker 1: with is I had to rethink and reimagine my history,
Speaker 1: my history with my parents, UM, how they I found
Speaker 1: it very painful to read The Body keeps the Score
Speaker 1: reread it. I had read it once before. I, before
Speaker 1: I had made this discovery. I didn't find it nearly
Speaker 1: as painful to know that they were UM. My parents
Speaker 1: themselves were in a dissociated state. UM. I think from
Speaker 1: most of our shared lives together, because they were keeping
Speaker 1: a secret. You know. The tagline for Family Secrets the
Speaker 1: podcast is um to keep the secrets that are kept
Speaker 1: from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the
Speaker 1: secrets we keep from ourselves, and the secrets we keep
Speaker 1: from ourselves are in many ways, the most toxic of secrets. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: Gretchen is mentioning my my Christmas card. When I was
Speaker 1: a little girl, I was the Kodak Christmas poster child.
Speaker 1: And there was a whole story when when you read
Speaker 1: my book, you'll I write about it in Inheritance. There
Speaker 1: was a whole story that went along with how an
Speaker 1: Orthodox Jewish girl wound up wishing the entire world to
Speaker 1: merry Christmas. Um. But when you actually look at the poster,
Speaker 1: look at it with cold eyes, it's so clear that
Speaker 1: it was set up, that I was set up to
Speaker 1: be the Kodak Christmas poster child, which is not the
Speaker 1: story that I ever understood. But if you just look
Speaker 1: at it, I mean the confirmation bias, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's so clear that that's what it was. So my
Speaker 1: parents when when my son was born, my mother walked
Speaker 1: into the hospital room he was you know, hours old,
Speaker 1: and she said he looks just like a Shapiro, and
Speaker 1: she meant it. I believe she could have passed a
Speaker 1: polygraph test. So we were in this world of the
Speaker 1: unthought known. We existed in this world of the unsaid,
Speaker 1: and I think I was really formed by that in
Speaker 1: so many ways and in terms of how what I
Speaker 1: do with it? Um, I do this with it, um.
Speaker 1: I think I've written from that place for a long time.
Speaker 1: I try to be as I try to take the
Speaker 1: material that life has presented me with and shape it
Speaker 1: into art, shape it into something that will touch other lives,
Speaker 1: to connect, um, to to do it in as authentic
Speaker 1: a way as I possibly can, so that I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm using it. It's not using me. Danny,
Speaker 1: This is dan Um. Thank you not only for your books,
Speaker 1: but for reading some of them for audible. My question
Speaker 1: is about the cross section of secrets, lies, and privacy. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's a certain energy that seems to be involved
Speaker 1: with maintaining a lie or keeping a secret, and wondering,
Speaker 1: as a memorist, when you are protecting someone's privacy, is
Speaker 1: there any fear of, like not keeping your facts or
Speaker 1: your identities straight? Which one you're gonna protect? Me which
Speaker 1: one you're gonna make public? UM? Does it take a
Speaker 1: similar kind of energy as keeping a secret other secrets?
Speaker 1: That's interesting. It's in all of my memoirs I've had
Speaker 1: different relationships to the question of UM, protecting or changing,
Speaker 1: you know, the the identity, the the identifying details of
Speaker 1: of people that I have written about I and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's again as individual as this, the circumstances and
Speaker 1: the book. For example, UM, in my first memoir, Slow Motion,
Speaker 1: my mother was still living and UM and by the way,
Speaker 1: it's going to be on audible two more I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean it's going to be an audiobook. I have
Speaker 1: two more UM of my backlist that are turning into audiobooks,
Speaker 1: which is so pleasing to me, both Slow Motion and
Speaker 1: still Writing. But in Slowmotion my mother was still living.
Speaker 1: I was very conscious I did not want to hurt
Speaker 1: my mother. You know, if any of you are writing memoirs, UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things that like a really good tool
Speaker 1: with which to think about this is the question of
Speaker 1: motivation writing out of revenge. Gretchen was just saying, doesn't
Speaker 1: this come up with wedding toasts too? It's like a
Speaker 1: chance I've seen wedding toasts go very awry, right, and
Speaker 1: it's like why why why are you choosing now to
Speaker 1: recount the entire romantic history of the bride like that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Um. But the question of motivation, I
Speaker 1: think if the writer is sitting there and thinking, I
Speaker 1: can't wait until so and so read this, then it's
Speaker 1: a really good indication that, um, you're writing like to
Speaker 1: someone against someone. UM. When I mean I protected my
Speaker 1: biological father's identity because it felt like that was completely
Speaker 1: the right thing to do. It's one thing to be
Speaker 1: contacted by a biological child, is another thing to have
Speaker 1: that biological child, you know, plaster your name all over creation.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was and there was no reason for it.
Speaker 1: There was nothing, nothing to be gained by anybody in
Speaker 1: terms of doing that. But when I've written about my parents,
Speaker 1: my half sister who I grew up with, I mean
Speaker 1: much older half sister, UM, I've felt that what I've
Speaker 1: attempted to do is tell my story as UM, conscientiously
Speaker 1: and in the most crafted way that I possibly can,
Speaker 1: not to tell their story, but to tell my story
Speaker 1: that also has them within my story. We don't live
Speaker 1: in isolation, UM, My friend Andrea debuse Uh the third,
Speaker 1: the wonderful writer. He I once heard him say when
Speaker 1: somebody was saying, how could you have written about your
Speaker 1: younger brother, his younger brother had been abused by a
Speaker 1: high school teacher. How could you have written about him?
Speaker 1: That you had no right to do that? And Andrea said,
Speaker 1: you know, when I would come home after school to
Speaker 1: our parentless empty house, and I would walk down the
Speaker 1: hall and my brother's bedroom door was closed, and I
Speaker 1: would hear what was going on on the other side
Speaker 1: of that door. What was going on the other side
Speaker 1: of the door is my brother's story to tell. But
Speaker 1: what happened to me on my side of the door,
Speaker 1: and my feelings about not being able to protect my
Speaker 1: brother and my own sense of helplessness, that's my story
Speaker 1: to tell. And I love that as a example because
Speaker 1: it's actually a door and a knob and a hallway.
Speaker 1: It's like, that's yours and this is mine. But again,
Speaker 1: we don't live in isolation, so our stories touch each other.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. HI,
Speaker 1: how are you. My name is Sophia UM. I am
Speaker 1: very interested in the idea that um when your father
Speaker 1: discovered your success. I can imagine he was proud and
Speaker 1: he wanted to get to know you. But your father,
Speaker 1: biological father, is not a simple man. He's also very
Speaker 1: accomplished person. So from your angle, how did your relation ship,
Speaker 1: um flourish considering that he's not an average individual? And UM,
Speaker 1: also where are you holding in your relationship now? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know that my biological father initially felt proud
Speaker 1: or anything like that. I think he initially just felt like, oh, um,
Speaker 1: this is just it's it's very hard to to make
Speaker 1: that kind of leap with someone who's a stranger, even
Speaker 1: though there's all of this you know, genetic you know, commonality,
Speaker 1: and a sense of again the familiar. Um. I feel
Speaker 1: that we were lucky in a lot of ways because
Speaker 1: we both tried to do the right thing. Ultimately, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of a sense of compassion and kindness
Speaker 1: UM that flowed in both directions. And to go back
Speaker 1: to privacy, I talk very openly about and I right,
Speaker 1: very openly and inheritance about what that experience was of
Speaker 1: finding him and eventually meeting him. But I'm never going
Speaker 1: to talk or write about our relationship as it moves forward. Um.
Speaker 1: Because that feels like we get to have that relationship
Speaker 1: now and that he doesn't have to be the biological
Speaker 1: father of a writer. He just gets to be the
Speaker 1: biological father of Danny and I get to have him
Speaker 1: as my you know, whatever that relationship is, it's not
Speaker 1: he doesn't feel like my father, feels like we have
Speaker 1: a special, unusual friendship for which there's no playbook. Hello,
Speaker 1: So my name is Sarah and I have a question
Speaker 1: on behalf of my family and my father who um
Speaker 1: was most likely conceived at the with Star Institute, him
Speaker 1: and his two siblings and found out that they were
Speaker 1: to well not all of them, but he was, even
Speaker 1: though he never knew it was part of his family history. UM.
Speaker 1: So my question is, um, if you have any research ideas.
Speaker 1: He's sort of hit a wall and UM he's been
Speaker 1: down to the wes Star Institute and they deny any
Speaker 1: sort of history. Um. He's been now multiple times and
Speaker 1: even walked off the premises by security and just would
Speaker 1: like to know where he can continue the research and
Speaker 1: how he can figure out, UM, if my grandparents actually
Speaker 1: did go down there for you know, infertility treatment. What
Speaker 1: your was your father born? Um? He was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty and um my his siblings were born I
Speaker 1: think nineteen fifty three and fifty five. It's so interesting
Speaker 1: to me that Wister would um deny any knowledge of this,
Speaker 1: because there are many newspaper articles about Um Edmund Farris.
Speaker 1: I'll just give you a brief overview of this. You
Speaker 1: understand the question. Um, I forgot how near Philadelphia we are,
Speaker 1: so I was able to find out where I was conceived.
Speaker 1: And it was an institute too, called the Faris Institute
Speaker 1: for Parenthood, and it was um run by a man
Speaker 1: named Edmund Ferris Um who had originally been at the
Speaker 1: Whister Institute. This is all on the campus of penn Um.
Speaker 1: Faris was the director of the Whister Institute. He was
Speaker 1: performing regularly um donor inseminations there. He had an entire
Speaker 1: lab set up there where he was This is what
Speaker 1: he was doing. And when the church caught wind of
Speaker 1: what he was doing, they put a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: on him to shut down. And also, one of the
Speaker 1: stranger things that I discovered that I write about an
Speaker 1: inheritance is that Faris was not an m D. Which
Speaker 1: means that he was practicing medicine without a license. He
Speaker 1: was a scientist. He was a brilliant scientist that actually
Speaker 1: never got his proper do um, largely because he was
Speaker 1: disliked and he was also doing it was It's very
Speaker 1: likely that it would would have been Edmund Farris who
Speaker 1: your grandparents, your grandparents would have gone to. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's undeniable. I mean it's in newspaper articles. I'm sure
Speaker 1: your father has found those newspaper articles. The institutional lack
Speaker 1: of culpability, I'm not even sure what to say about
Speaker 1: that's it's because it's not there's no denying it. It
Speaker 1: would seem to me in terms of learning more that
Speaker 1: the answers are all going to be in the d
Speaker 1: na um, that that if there's If that was the case,
Speaker 1: then family tree wise, there ought to be someone, you know,
Speaker 1: a really good genealogist to help your your your father
Speaker 1: kind of sort that sort that out. Um. That's the
Speaker 1: best I can offer. Thank you so much, Stretched and Danny.
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