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. It starts to
Speaker 1: come together for my mother that he is literally forgetting
Speaker 1: to lie, and my father sort of realizes that his
Speaker 1: brain has betrayed him and he's admitted to this thing,
Speaker 1: and he says, oh, oh, I did a bad thing.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Sasha Rothschild. Sasha is a television
Speaker 1: writer based in Los Angeles who made the recent discovery
Speaker 1: that her father was not exactly the person she had
Speaker 1: always thought him to be. This is a story of
Speaker 1: a secret buried deep in a man's psyche. I grew
Speaker 1: up in Miami Beach in the eighties, and at that
Speaker 1: time it was sort of this forgotten place of old
Speaker 1: age homes and crack houses and sort of a lawless town.
Speaker 1: And my parents are incredibly I think of them as
Speaker 1: submarine parents. They were always there, but opposite to like
Speaker 1: a helicopter parent. They were never hovering. They were just
Speaker 1: deep below the surface of my life and if I
Speaker 1: needed something, I could go to them. But they weren't overbearing, UM,
Speaker 1: and I kind of discovered my self and my childhood
Speaker 1: and Miami on my own terms. Um. My mother was
Speaker 1: this total free spirit who had lived a life of
Speaker 1: a chameleon. She was a socialite in New York and
Speaker 1: then she became a hippie, and then she met my father, UM,
Speaker 1: who presented as this very upstanding journalists UM, and he
Speaker 1: seemed like the normal one in the family. And so
Speaker 1: growing up, my mother was sort of do whatever you
Speaker 1: want as long as you're interesting, and then tell us
Speaker 1: great stories at dinner. And my father didn't approve, but
Speaker 1: he never gave boundaries or rules. So I grew up
Speaker 1: running around Miami Beach, getting into trouble and doing drugs
Speaker 1: and sleeping with older boys and sort of felt like
Speaker 1: my parents were really interesting landlords, really interesting landlords. So
Speaker 1: like if there was a problem with the sink or
Speaker 1: the dishwashers, say, they would get somebody to come fix it.
Speaker 1: But there wasn't huge parmental oversight that said. Sasha describes
Speaker 1: her mom as one of her favorite people. She is
Speaker 1: so smart and fascinating and nothing shocks her because it's
Speaker 1: like she's done it all already, and so no matter
Speaker 1: what I did growing up, I couldn't quite top her experiences,
Speaker 1: and whatever I did, my father sort of was removed
Speaker 1: from it. So when I started doing drugs, for example,
Speaker 1: my mother said, you know, if you're going to do drugs,
Speaker 1: just make sure you can trust your dealer, and just
Speaker 1: make sure you never shoot up heroin. If you have to,
Speaker 1: you know, smoke it because it's safer. That was sort
Speaker 1: of her maternal advice, that that that definitely takes the
Speaker 1: all the fun out of rebellion. Yes it did. It's so.
Speaker 1: And my father's response was to put a lawyer on
Speaker 1: retainer um in case legal matters came up. But his
Speaker 1: response was never to like hug me or say are
Speaker 1: you okay? Or you know, can I help or is
Speaker 1: there anything I should be doing? So I felt alone
Speaker 1: really as a child, and I have an older brother
Speaker 1: and sister who were out of the house already for
Speaker 1: a lot of my teen years, and um, I just
Speaker 1: had this really strong sense of self preservation. So when
Speaker 1: I started to really act out, I kind of pulled
Speaker 1: myself back from the brink, and my parents were very like,
Speaker 1: you know, see, you're an individual and you can take
Speaker 1: care of yourself. And we raised you right. But one
Speaker 1: thing that Sasha was always really clear about growing up
Speaker 1: was how much her parents loved each other. It seemed
Speaker 1: like a magical marriage. They were open with each other,
Speaker 1: they laughed, they had intellectual debates, they traveled the world,
Speaker 1: they had friends and adventures. This was one of those
Speaker 1: marriages that wasn't primarily about the kids. It was about
Speaker 1: two people in love. The kids kind of were an afterthought.
Speaker 1: And as upsetting as that is, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: I felt good about the fact that they were so
Speaker 1: in love. And because I loved my mother so much,
Speaker 1: um I hated my father less because he loved her.
Speaker 1: And I never felt close to my father. I felt
Speaker 1: like he was kind of an asshole. He had a temper,
Speaker 1: not physically violent, but just sort of would fly into
Speaker 1: a rage, you know, because there was bad traffic, or
Speaker 1: you know, because I have all so many memories of
Speaker 1: there's too many catchup bottles from Costco and why do
Speaker 1: we need so much catchup? And he would just start
Speaker 1: yelling about the catchup. Sort of all of his anger
Speaker 1: was put into meaningless things. And I thought he was
Speaker 1: a jerk, and I didn't feel close to him. And
Speaker 1: because I didn't feel close to him. I wanted so
Speaker 1: much for him to love me and to be proud
Speaker 1: of me. So I followed in his footsteps, and I
Speaker 1: desperately wanted to go to Yale, which is where he
Speaker 1: went to college, and I ended up not getting in,
Speaker 1: and it was the biggest tragedy of my life. At
Speaker 1: that point, I learned that you can try and do
Speaker 1: everything you can and still fail. And he's a writer,
Speaker 1: and I grew up watching him sit in his office
Speaker 1: off the garage writing and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: a book or an article would appear, and I thought
Speaker 1: it was the most romantic like life and just uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sitting there all day, seems not fun
Speaker 1: at all, but like then this thing is in the world.
Speaker 1: And I was mesmerized by that. And he really taught
Speaker 1: me how to write. And so it's very complicated for
Speaker 1: me because I never liked him, but I desperately wanted
Speaker 1: to be just like him. When you say that he
Speaker 1: taught you how to write, what do you mean by that,
Speaker 1: aside from sort of by emulation. I remember, in like
Speaker 1: seventh grade, we had to write a short story and
Speaker 1: I wrote about um surfing, and I Umm, basically allergic
Speaker 1: to the sun. I'm very pale. Growing up in Miami
Speaker 1: was you know, I always wear hats and long sleeve
Speaker 1: shirts and absolutely have never surfed a day in my life.
Speaker 1: But surfing was cool and it was the cute boys
Speaker 1: were surfers. So I wrote the story about surfing, and um,
Speaker 1: he's He read it and he said, you know, this
Speaker 1: is a false story. This isn't you. You don't know
Speaker 1: about surfing. It doesn't come off as anything real and compelling,
Speaker 1: and I think you should rewrite it. And I was
Speaker 1: really angry because I knew that I would get in
Speaker 1: a It was fine, the teacher would like it, who cares.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't let that go. And so I thought about,
Speaker 1: all right, what's a real story that I can tell?
Speaker 1: And I ended up writing a story about a turtle
Speaker 1: who really wanted to be a superhero and no one
Speaker 1: would take him seriously because he was so slow. And
Speaker 1: that story my father loved. He's like, there's meaning in
Speaker 1: this and there's something personal, and he was right and
Speaker 1: that in that way, he taught me how to be
Speaker 1: a good writer, to not ever sort of take the
Speaker 1: easy way out, and to really investigate why I'm writing something,
Speaker 1: and I remember when I was in AP English in
Speaker 1: high school and you're taught the very structured, you know,
Speaker 1: five paragraph essays. My father really sat down with me
Speaker 1: and told me, yes, it's important that you have a
Speaker 1: statement saying what the article will be about, and you
Speaker 1: back that up. But you don't want to feed your
Speaker 1: reader everything up front. You want to sort of slowly
Speaker 1: build tension and then have a twist or reveal or
Speaker 1: an emotional something emotionally powerful. And those are the kind
Speaker 1: of things that you don't necessarily learn in school when
Speaker 1: you learn to write. Um, but I was sort of
Speaker 1: taught every single day because he read what I wrote,
Speaker 1: and my mother always encouraged me to write everything down.
Speaker 1: And I think that was the one way that I
Speaker 1: was able to really bond with him, because there were
Speaker 1: no other ways that he and I had a real
Speaker 1: conversation about anything. Let's take a quick break here. So
Speaker 1: Sasha and her dad have this one shared language, the
Speaker 1: language of writing. This was the way they communicated. Sasha
Speaker 1: goes off to college determined to become a writer. She
Speaker 1: goes to Boston College, where she majors in theater and
Speaker 1: playwriting and graduates Phi Beta Kappa. At graduation, she's awarded
Speaker 1: the highest honor in the theater program. Only one person
Speaker 1: in each major gets an award. So there is this beautiful,
Speaker 1: very small ceremony for like thirty five students, and I decided,
Speaker 1: instead of going to graduation, my family should come and
Speaker 1: watch that ceremony because it's really personal and I'm really
Speaker 1: proud and I've accomplished all this stuff. And my name
Speaker 1: is called, and I walk up on the stage and
Speaker 1: I just so want my father to be proud. And
Speaker 1: I look out and my entire family is sitting in
Speaker 1: a row doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, looking
Speaker 1: down with their little pens in their papers, and they
Speaker 1: each have their own paper. I just feel like, nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing I do, is going to get the attention that
Speaker 1: i'd like desperately want. And that sort of feeling stayed
Speaker 1: with me. I moved right to l A to start
Speaker 1: my writing career, and I stopped sending my father things
Speaker 1: that I had written, also because he was not someone
Speaker 1: who understood scripts. He was definitely understood like sort of
Speaker 1: you know, long form writing, but he didn't he wasn't
Speaker 1: good at reading scripts or movie scripts or TV scripts,
Speaker 1: which is what I was focusing on. And when I
Speaker 1: started to become an adult, UM, I still talked to
Speaker 1: my mother on the phone like every day because I
Speaker 1: have so much fun talking to her. We gossip. She
Speaker 1: knows everything about my life. My father and I. You know,
Speaker 1: he'll sort of yell in the background, like how she
Speaker 1: doing or put her on, and I'll talk to him,
Speaker 1: but it's like small talk. It's it's just meaningless. And
Speaker 1: I think for most of my adult life I felt
Speaker 1: very disconnected from him, and yet still knowing that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make a living doing this thing that he
Speaker 1: inspired me to do to a great extent. So when
Speaker 1: she's writing her first book, Sasha calls her father for
Speaker 1: advice and he offers it. He tells her, the minute
Speaker 1: you don't want to write a thing, you have to
Speaker 1: write it because that's where the good stuff is so true.
Speaker 1: She takes his advice and writes a memoir about her
Speaker 1: first marriage that's real and raw and scary. During that
Speaker 1: year of her books publication, the two of them grow closer.
Speaker 1: I felt really connected with him, and then it again
Speaker 1: sort of slipped away. And then it wasn't until several
Speaker 1: years later that we started to notice that his memory
Speaker 1: was going and he was no longer writing. He said
Speaker 1: he was retired, but we had realized he had been
Speaker 1: trying to write a new article about something he was
Speaker 1: interested in and couldn't quite get it done, which is
Speaker 1: something that had never happened him before. What were the
Speaker 1: signs of his memory going. One of the first things
Speaker 1: I remember being very concerned about him is he didn't
Speaker 1: know which side the espresso pod went into the machine.
Speaker 1: And he had been using this machine, you know, every
Speaker 1: day for years, and all of a sudden, this pod
Speaker 1: in his hand seemed foreign to him. Um, that was
Speaker 1: the first time I thought, oh my god, there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with his brain. And then actually another thing happened
Speaker 1: with the espresso machine, which it was broken. The thing
Speaker 1: about me being out of town and my brother and
Speaker 1: sister were all out of town. We would come visit
Speaker 1: every few months and see my parents, and because we
Speaker 1: had three or four months in between every visits, we
Speaker 1: could really see him declining, whereas my mother, who was
Speaker 1: with him every day, didn't see it as clearly. And
Speaker 1: also there's a great deal of denial when your spouse
Speaker 1: has Alzheimers. It's a horrible slow thing, and and she
Speaker 1: really didn't see it for a long time. Another thing
Speaker 1: happened where he started to confuse my husband with my
Speaker 1: sister's partner. Um just sort of not quite sure who
Speaker 1: was with who. And that's you know, was completely not
Speaker 1: like him as distant did as he was in our lives.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he absolutely, like you know, knew who are husbands were.
Speaker 1: How old was he at this point? And how old
Speaker 1: is your mom? He was sixty nine when we really
Speaker 1: started to notice things happened, and my mother is seven
Speaker 1: years older than him, so she was seventy six. We're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break when we get back.
Speaker 1: Sasha talks about how her father's failing memory at first
Speaker 1: changes him into a nicer, kinder guy, and then inadvertently
Speaker 1: opens the door to a lifetime's worth of massive secrets.
Speaker 1: Something that started happening for me was my father while
Speaker 1: his memory started to go, he became a really different person.
Speaker 1: He was so patient and calm, and if there was traffic,
Speaker 1: he said, that's okay, you know, we'll get there. When
Speaker 1: we get there, his entire demeanor changed and he really
Speaker 1: became like this loving, kind person. And I felt like
Speaker 1: I have a few years now with him where I
Speaker 1: can change our dynamic and call him and talk to
Speaker 1: him and visit. I tried to visit every month. Um.
Speaker 1: And at one point he said he was proud of me,
Speaker 1: and it was the first time he had said that
Speaker 1: in my entire life. And he was also physical for
Speaker 1: the first time in my life. My family are not
Speaker 1: a physical family. We barely hug each other like I
Speaker 1: don't think we maybe kissed each other on the cheek
Speaker 1: three times in my entire life. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: my father was like hugging me and sort of putting
Speaker 1: his hand on my shoulder, and um, and I struggled
Speaker 1: with is this the real him? And all these years
Speaker 1: he was just an asshole because of stress and career
Speaker 1: in life and who knows or is it not the
Speaker 1: real him? And it's just you know, brain damage. But
Speaker 1: in a way I didn't care because I was getting this,
Speaker 1: like this nurturing in these nice moments with him. And
Speaker 1: when I would go to visit, I would make sure
Speaker 1: that we always had his favorite playlists from the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties playing on Spotify, and I would want to make
Speaker 1: sure to do things that he would enjoy, and I
Speaker 1: would get annoyed that my mother seemed a little bit callous,
Speaker 1: and she wanted to listen to NPR, but I could
Speaker 1: see that it was confusing to him and jarring, and
Speaker 1: he didn't it wasn't good for him, and I wanted
Speaker 1: my mother to be more patient. So Sasha lets her
Speaker 1: guard down. She enjoys her father and feels loved and
Speaker 1: nurtured by him, admired by him, possibly for the first
Speaker 1: time in her life. No matter how successful she is
Speaker 1: as a television writer, she has longed for this kind
Speaker 1: of connection with her dad. But then she gets a
Speaker 1: call from her mother. Something huge has happened. So my
Speaker 1: father and mother are walking. And one thing about my father,
Speaker 1: um is he was always very jealous. He was very
Speaker 1: conservative in certain ways. He didn't want to talk about sex,
Speaker 1: he didn't want to know about sex. He thought pornography
Speaker 1: was disgusting. Really sort of antiquated possessive behavior from my father.
Speaker 1: So they were taking a walk in this little old
Speaker 1: man on the side of the road says hi to
Speaker 1: my mother, he's probably you know, ninety, and my mother
Speaker 1: says hi back, and my mother sort of says, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think Bob might have a little crush
Speaker 1: on me, and all of a sudden, my father says, really, well,
Speaker 1: then I'm going to get back together with Karen. Karen
Speaker 1: was an friend of my mother's um, a friend of
Speaker 1: the families for a long time, someone my father spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time with. And my other whipped around
Speaker 1: and said, what do you mean you're going to get
Speaker 1: back together with Karen. You were with Karen? And my
Speaker 1: father says, yes, I was with Karen for years. We were,
Speaker 1: you know, madly in love or something like that, and
Speaker 1: then it was gone. Whether it was gone because his brain,
Speaker 1: you know, it falls through like Swiss cheese, which is
Speaker 1: what happens when you have Alzheimer's, or he just pretended
Speaker 1: in the moment because he didn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 1: But my mother realized he had had an affair with
Speaker 1: her friend. Your mother knew that this was I mean,
Speaker 1: she knew in her bones that this was true, That
Speaker 1: it wasn't yes, a fantasy that you know, some Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: fueled fantasy that that actually Alzheimer's was opening the door
Speaker 1: to a piece of truth. Yes, she knew it was true.
Speaker 1: And we had always sort of joked to like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, my father's in Karen, what are they up to? Like?
Speaker 1: But it was so my parents were so open about
Speaker 1: their past that I didn't realize they had private lives
Speaker 1: because they were so open about everything that I was
Speaker 1: so shocked to find out that my father had this
Speaker 1: private life, even from my mother. But once he said
Speaker 1: it out loud, it completely made sense to all of us.
Speaker 1: Shortly after Sasha's father's bombshell about Karen, she's with her
Speaker 1: mother and sister in Aspen at their parents summer home,
Speaker 1: and there there is Sasha's father's laptop just sitting there,
Speaker 1: begging to be accessed. He hasn't been able to use
Speaker 1: it for a few years because he no longer understands computers.
Speaker 1: Sasha's sister goes into his laptop and searches for the
Speaker 1: name Karen. What ended coming up was sort of a
Speaker 1: lifetime of lies. He had kept a journal, and I
Speaker 1: definitely have mixed feelings because it's an invasion of privacy
Speaker 1: that we read this, or I read part of it
Speaker 1: and then decided I don't need to read anymore. He
Speaker 1: wrote in great detail about all of his sexual exploits,
Speaker 1: and it was almost like a teenage boy was writing it.
Speaker 1: It was really in his he's he's a wonderful writer, um.
Speaker 1: But this this was almost like a different side of him,
Speaker 1: of sort of a teenage boy bragging, um. And he
Speaker 1: went way back into his past, and it was sort
Speaker 1: of writing about all of his times he lied to
Speaker 1: my mother and cheated on her and the friends of
Speaker 1: hers that he had hit on, and that he had
Speaker 1: cheated on his first wife as well, and he had
Speaker 1: made up some business trips. He was a mountain climber,
Speaker 1: that was one of his hobbies, and he would talk
Speaker 1: about mountain climbing so often that my mother used to joke,
Speaker 1: I almost wish he was having an affair because then
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have to hear about it. And he even
Speaker 1: referenced that joke while saying, ha ha, I am having
Speaker 1: an affair right under her nose with her friend. And
Speaker 1: there was a moment in his journal that he wrote
Speaker 1: about having sex in my bed with this woman and
Speaker 1: not changing the sheets. And that was when I decided
Speaker 1: I didn't need to read anymore of his journal, because
Speaker 1: I knew that I didn't know who he was ever,
Speaker 1: and um, that was enough information for me to know
Speaker 1: that I needed to just now work on reframing my
Speaker 1: own childhood and looking back and figuring some things out
Speaker 1: for myself, but that this was a man who was
Speaker 1: beyond for me anything that I could even try and comprehend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's as if you it's almost like there's three acts
Speaker 1: here in your relationship with your father, and it's the
Speaker 1: emulating him, wanting his approval, his his distance, and then
Speaker 1: having this brief period of time of his becoming this
Speaker 1: other person, this loving, kind, thoughtful person who would hug
Speaker 1: you and say I love you, and then losing that
Speaker 1: person to what had been the truth all along. It's
Speaker 1: like all of these layers, how do you? How do
Speaker 1: you untangle that? One one of my first thoughts was, I, like,
Speaker 1: I want my three years of compassion back. I was
Speaker 1: loving and and kind to him, and yelled at my
Speaker 1: mother for not, you know, turning off the NPR and
Speaker 1: I should have. You know, I wanted my I wanted
Speaker 1: my compassion back. And then I you know, worked through
Speaker 1: that and realized it's always healthy and wonderful to be compassionate.
Speaker 1: It's never going to hurt you to be compassionate, and
Speaker 1: wanting that back isn't the way to go. Um. But
Speaker 1: then I thought my instincts growing up were actually correct,
Speaker 1: that he was unreachable, that he was guarded, and I
Speaker 1: didn't really ever know him. A discovery and adulthood that
Speaker 1: forces us to reckon with our childhood memories and re
Speaker 1: understand them is often one of the legacies of a
Speaker 1: family secret. In Sasha's case, she looks back and certain
Speaker 1: memories now means something altogether different. She recalled the time
Speaker 1: in her childhood when she was seven or eight and
Speaker 1: she was alone with her father. He woke her up
Speaker 1: late at night to say that he had to leave.
Speaker 1: He had food poisoning brought on from bad cevich, as
Speaker 1: he put it, and was going to the hospital. And
Speaker 1: I remember this so clearly because cevich was a word
Speaker 1: that I had just learned, and it sounded really fancy
Speaker 1: to me. And he said he had to go to
Speaker 1: the hospital because he had this food poisoning, but he
Speaker 1: would be back in the morning and just to stay
Speaker 1: inside and I'll be fine. And so he left me
Speaker 1: home alone overnight. And now looking back on that, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm he didn't have food poisoning. No grown man leaves
Speaker 1: their child alone in the middle of the night because
Speaker 1: they have food poisoning, they throw up, or they bring
Speaker 1: their child to the to the e R with them
Speaker 1: if there's really a problem. But he I'm sure went
Speaker 1: off and met some woman or some hooker, God only
Speaker 1: knows um and its memories like that that make a
Speaker 1: lot more sense to me that he was an addict, Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is my like a sex addict, or
Speaker 1: he lived this other life that sort of sort of
Speaker 1: adds up and in a way that's helpful now for
Speaker 1: me to sort of heal. That makes sense. I think
Speaker 1: that there's something, you know, in all of this exploration
Speaker 1: that I've been doing a family secrets, there's a kind
Speaker 1: of liberation and finally understanding what was sort of hiding
Speaker 1: in plain sight, that there was always something that didn't
Speaker 1: add up. And then no matter how painful or awful
Speaker 1: it is to find out what that thing is, there's
Speaker 1: something that is also, ultimately I think, pretty grounding and
Speaker 1: freeing about that. Yeah, and this idea that I wanted
Speaker 1: to be just like him, and I realized in so
Speaker 1: many ways I am such a better person than he is,
Speaker 1: and I don't need to be like him, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to be like him, And that's sort of
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to take and move forward for my
Speaker 1: own life. Are you glad? You know? I am glad
Speaker 1: I know, mostly because I do think it has released
Speaker 1: my mother from spending the rest of her days caring
Speaker 1: for him, and she's now having some fun and she's
Speaker 1: spending time with family and friends, and she's taking care
Speaker 1: of herself and she's having adventures. And he is in
Speaker 1: a really nice home where you know, we check on
Speaker 1: him and he's being cared for. But I'm really glad
Speaker 1: I know so she can have a nice life. And
Speaker 1: I'm also glad I know because I it makes me
Speaker 1: feel less crazy to know that he actually was so damaged.
Speaker 1: It was not my fault that I couldn't find a
Speaker 1: connection with him. So yes, I am glad, I know, right.
Speaker 1: And I suppose there's a lesson in that too, in
Speaker 1: that it is in the inner work, in in the
Speaker 1: work that you're doing on yourself, that we all do
Speaker 1: on ourselves where we where we do find that sense
Speaker 1: of peace or of closure, as you say, or of freedom.
Speaker 1: No one can give that to us. Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: still feel that he helped to give you the gift
Speaker 1: of writing? Is that like one gift that you still
Speaker 1: feel connects to him, or does it all feel like
Speaker 1: you've had to kind of unhook entirely. I do feel
Speaker 1: that writing is the one gift he gave to me,
Speaker 1: and I think that when he would write, UM, that
Speaker 1: was him at his most authentic, and that is why
Speaker 1: we could connect. I think the advice he gave me
Speaker 1: about writing the hard stuff is the most honest thing
Speaker 1: he's ever said to me, and I think it has
Speaker 1: served me incredibly well. And I think the great irony
Speaker 1: of the bigger picture is now I'm writing about him
Speaker 1: and the things he's done, which I'm sure, if he understood,
Speaker 1: would probably be very ashamed to know that everyone knew.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, maybe part of him would
Speaker 1: be proud that I'm doing the exact thing he taught
Speaker 1: me to do. So I'm not letting this turn of
Speaker 1: events of his sort of double life effect my love
Speaker 1: for writing, and have been able to separate that that
Speaker 1: is the one amazing thing that he gave to me,
Speaker 1: and he's my father. Half of me comes from him.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank Sasha Rothchild for sharing her story.
Speaker 1: You can find Sasha at her Twitter handle Sasha Rothschild
Speaker 1: and on Sasha Rothchild dot com. Family Secrets is an
Speaker 1: I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagin is the supervising producer,
Speaker 1: Lowell Roulante is the audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is
Speaker 1: the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd
Speaker 1: like to share, you can get in touch with us
Speaker 1: at listener mail at Family Secrets podcast dot com, and
Speaker 1: you can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer,
Speaker 1: and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at fami
Speaker 1: Secrets Pod. For more about my book Inheritance, visit Danny
Speaker 1: Shapiro dot com. 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,