Speaker 1: Family Secrets as a production of I Heart Radio. I
Speaker 1: grew up in Long Island, in Suburbia. My dad went
Speaker 1: to college at night on the g I bill. My
Speaker 1: mom was a housewife. They had five kids in eight years,
Speaker 1: you know, and I was the oldest. And we all
Speaker 1: went to Catholic grammar school, Catholic high school, Catholic college.
Speaker 1: We're very involved in our parish, very involved in our church.
Speaker 1: I played Little league baseball and I played football in college.
Speaker 1: My dad worked in commercial real estate in Manhattan, and
Speaker 1: uh for a guy you know who went to night
Speaker 1: school and got its bachelor's degree when I was like four.
Speaker 1: He did quite well, but I was anxious as a kid.
Speaker 1: I know what it's called now because of the field
Speaker 1: I work, and it's called trick at tillmania, where you
Speaker 1: pull your hair out. I can remember doing that when
Speaker 1: I was like four or five, and then I did
Speaker 1: some grunting noise with my throat that my parents sent
Speaker 1: me to see a doctor who said stop doing that.
Speaker 1: And then I did something with my jaw. So there
Speaker 1: was a lot of anxiety. Or I would be in
Speaker 1: second grade and have to urinate like twenty times a day.
Speaker 1: I remember the teacher yelling at me. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: where the anxiety came from. That's Mark Redmond, executive director
Speaker 1: of Spectrum Youth and Family Services, storyteller and author of
Speaker 1: the memoir called Mark's is a story about the stigma
Speaker 1: and shame surrounding depression and a temptation to keep silent
Speaker 1: about it, and the courage and liberation that comes from
Speaker 1: telling it. Like it is about something that affects so
Speaker 1: many of us. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets,
Speaker 1: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: I suffered from what we now call impostor syndrome. So
Speaker 1: I would do really well in school. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was a good student from my first grade on, but
Speaker 1: I can remember, you know, fifth grade would end and
Speaker 1: I'd be like at the top of the class, and
Speaker 1: then all that summer, I think is sixth grade the
Speaker 1: year when they finally find out I'm really not that smart,
Speaker 1: you know. And of course I do really well in
Speaker 1: sixth grade, and then the next year I'd be like
Speaker 1: is the next year where they were? You know? So
Speaker 1: we call that imposter syndrome now, so I definitely had
Speaker 1: that going on as well, but I pretty much had
Speaker 1: anxiety baked into my personality. I think early on, how
Speaker 1: did your parents handle it? The various ticks, and you know,
Speaker 1: this was not at a time where there was so
Speaker 1: much psychological awareness of the way that kids would, you know,
Speaker 1: go through various things. There wasn't nearly as much infrastructure
Speaker 1: of help available for that. There was definitely not. I
Speaker 1: mean they probably did what most parents then did. They
Speaker 1: would say, hey, stop doing that, stop pulling your hair out.
Speaker 1: You know. Tell me a little bit about your mom.
Speaker 1: My mom grew up in Brooklyn. Her mom died when
Speaker 1: she was three years old. Her mom died of a
Speaker 1: heart attack. Her own dad then died I think when
Speaker 1: he was like fifty five. My dad's died when he
Speaker 1: was eight. There was a lot of early death in
Speaker 1: our family. I think there was a lot of early
Speaker 1: death in that generation. My mom had cousins who fought
Speaker 1: in World War Two who never came back. I think
Speaker 1: the Great Depression made a big impression on both of
Speaker 1: my parents. I know that really scarred my dad. You know,
Speaker 1: just that after his dad died, they really weren't the
Speaker 1: security benefits you have now for families. I remember him
Speaker 1: taking me to like a Brooks Brothers store and making
Speaker 1: me trying all these suits, which I hated and I
Speaker 1: hate now. And uh. I turned to my mom and
Speaker 1: I said, why does Daddy make me put on all
Speaker 1: these outfits? And she said, because when he was your age,
Speaker 1: he got all of his close second hand from the church.
Speaker 1: So he wants you to have what he couldn't have then.
Speaker 1: So they knew what it was like to want, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think they would determine to give us, including
Speaker 1: a college education. It's one of my dad's proudest things
Speaker 1: to this day that he sent all five of his
Speaker 1: kids to private colleges without one dime of debt. When
Speaker 1: it comes time for Mark to go to college, he's
Speaker 1: still struggling with the same impostor syndrome he's experienced since
Speaker 1: grade school. He applies to a bunch of Ivy League
Speaker 1: universities but doesn't get in, so he decides to go
Speaker 1: to Villanova, a good school and familiar to him because
Speaker 1: his cousin goes there. But as he enters college, Mark
Speaker 1: is uncertain about his path. I remember the end of
Speaker 1: my senior high school you had to fill out some
Speaker 1: form and you had to pick a major. You couldn't
Speaker 1: go in undeclared back then. So there were four boxes.
Speaker 1: One was nursing, one was Arts and Sciences, one was engineering,
Speaker 1: and one was business. So I turned to my dad
Speaker 1: and said, Hey, which box should I check? So he said, well,
Speaker 1: what do you want to do with your life? And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know. I'm seventeen. I don't have
Speaker 1: a clue. He said, well, put down business because that's
Speaker 1: what he was. It made sense. He was a businessman
Speaker 1: and had provided him of the very good life. So
Speaker 1: I said, okay, I'll be a business major. So that's
Speaker 1: what I did, and I went through four years. I
Speaker 1: didn't really enjoy it. I didn't like it, I wasn't
Speaker 1: interested in it, but I was good at it. I
Speaker 1: never really questions until my senior year of high school
Speaker 1: what I was gonna do. I really felt like I'm
Speaker 1: destined to, you know, probably work on Wall Street. But
Speaker 1: I read a cover story this Philadelphia native, a young
Speaker 1: guy who had been working in Guatemala after a terrible
Speaker 1: earthquake there, and he was now walking from Guatemala to
Speaker 1: his home city of Philadelphia to raise money to go
Speaker 1: back and help the people in Guatemala. And I read
Speaker 1: that and thought, wow, that's like amazing. So a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks later, I played in the rugby team in
Speaker 1: Villanova and our big rival was Georgetown, and we're down
Speaker 1: there in d C. We would all need in the
Speaker 1: in front of the statue of Georgetown. And I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there waiting for my teammates and I see this band
Speaker 1: there and it's got all these balloons and it's all
Speaker 1: these little kids and it's like a fun run or
Speaker 1: a fun walk. And then I see this young guy
Speaker 1: in his twenties. He's tan, and for some reason he
Speaker 1: comes over and he starts talking to us and he
Speaker 1: asks us who we are. We say, we're going over rugby,
Speaker 1: and he goes, oh, I went to Georgetown. I played rugby,
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this is the guy. This is the guy I read
Speaker 1: about a couple of months ago. I guess he's made
Speaker 1: it to d C. So anyway, a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 1: I always went to church on Sunday. Of Villanova. The
Speaker 1: most popular mass was the six pm Mass, and the
Speaker 1: priest gets to give the Homily and says, the guest
Speaker 1: Homilist today is a young man named Edward Fisher who
Speaker 1: has walked from Guatemala all the way here to Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, this is the same guy.
Speaker 1: So he gets up there and he shows slides of
Speaker 1: the devastation in Guatemala and what he's doing and how
Speaker 1: they're trying to rebuild, and he talks about his walk
Speaker 1: and how he says, I look out at you kids,
Speaker 1: and I see myself a couple of years ago when
Speaker 1: I was in college at Georgetown, and you know, I
Speaker 1: had money, and I had a car, and I had
Speaker 1: a career, and now I have nothing, and I'm as
Speaker 1: happy as I could be, and I can't wait to
Speaker 1: go back to Guatemala and help the people there. Well,
Speaker 1: at the end of that mass, I just stood there.
Speaker 1: I was like the last person staying there in the
Speaker 1: in the chapel, and I was just so moved by
Speaker 1: what he said. You know, in fact, I felt like
Speaker 1: screaming out to all the other students, where are you
Speaker 1: all going? How can you all just now go and
Speaker 1: leave and study and you know, whatever you're studying after
Speaker 1: what we just heard. Funny, I go back to Villanova
Speaker 1: every five years to my reunion. I know exactly where
Speaker 1: I was sated in that chapel that day, and I
Speaker 1: go back and I look there and I think that's
Speaker 1: where all this started. That was the first inkling I
Speaker 1: ever had that maybe I wasn't going to end up
Speaker 1: on Wall Street, maybe my career wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: in business. Emboldened by his encounter with Edward Fisher, after
Speaker 1: Mark graduates, he immediately joins the Peace Corps and he
Speaker 1: sent to Guatemala coincidence. Mark wants so badly to help
Speaker 1: to adapt to the landscape, not to feel like an impostor,
Speaker 1: but he struggles. I think I wasn't really realistic, and
Speaker 1: it just like hit me when I got down there.
Speaker 1: I just suddenly felt like what am I doing here?
Speaker 1: And they were like, you know, you'll start the first
Speaker 1: three months here with the other forty volunteers, but then
Speaker 1: we're all going to send you to different parts of
Speaker 1: the country alone, and you know, maybe you'll see another
Speaker 1: volunteer once every few months, because you know, the roads
Speaker 1: are really bad and they wash out and it's no transportation.
Speaker 1: I thought this was for me, This is not for me,
Speaker 1: and I was not the first one to go. There
Speaker 1: are a bunch of people who never made it to Guatemala.
Speaker 1: We had to go to Miami for an orientation first,
Speaker 1: and about four four people jumped out of that, and
Speaker 1: then I think out of the forty two of us,
Speaker 1: a good fourteen or fifteen would eventually leave. But I
Speaker 1: was one of the first ones. I was literally home
Speaker 1: in ten days, and I was embarrassed as heck. You know,
Speaker 1: I had told everybody, Oh, I'm going down to Guatemal.
Speaker 1: I turned down all these corporate jobs on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm doing this great thing. And I was
Speaker 1: just humiliated. I just wanted to tide in my basement
Speaker 1: for two years and then crawl out and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm back. Of course, Mark cannot stay hiding forever. He
Speaker 1: needs to buckle down and get a job. Still disappointed
Speaker 1: in himself for leaving the Peace Corps, he explores other opportunities,
Speaker 1: other paths. Altogether, he ends up with a great job,
Speaker 1: a management training program at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. It's
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine and Mark heads into this new career.
Speaker 1: He's finally putting those Brooks Brothers suits to us. Their
Speaker 1: office was in one Madison Square, and I showed up
Speaker 1: and I met the other nine, you know, trainees. Most
Speaker 1: of them had graduated from IVY League schools, some of
Speaker 1: them had their m b A. I was one of
Speaker 1: the few with just a bachelor's degree from a non
Speaker 1: IVY It was supposed to be a three year training
Speaker 1: program and we were gonna do different rotations throughout the company.
Speaker 1: You know, I t sales marketing, and then we were
Speaker 1: going to be the future leaders of Metropolitan Life, and
Speaker 1: a lot of ended up that way. First year, they
Speaker 1: put me in an office on Long Island, so I
Speaker 1: lived in my parents basement. And then the next year
Speaker 1: they moved me into the city. So I got a
Speaker 1: wonderful studio apartment on sixty two Street between Park Avenue
Speaker 1: and Lexington Avenue, and I would walk down Park Avenue
Speaker 1: every morning to my job at one Madison Avenue. At first,
Speaker 1: I was elated. This is Gray, My life's back on track.
Speaker 1: You know. I had my college girlfriend in Philadelphia. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of my Villanova friends were living in the city.
Speaker 1: We'd all go to the same bars, and we were
Speaker 1: always poor in college. You know, we have money in
Speaker 1: our pocket. We do go to restaurants I thought, this
Speaker 1: is it, but I hated the work. I hated the work.
Speaker 1: It didn't take me long to realize crunching numbers, learning
Speaker 1: about insurance policy. It just not that it was wrong
Speaker 1: or it just wasn't me. I knew I was just
Speaker 1: playing this role. It wasn't me, you know. So what
Speaker 1: was the turning point? I had a friend she started
Speaker 1: at ABC News after college and left. They had to
Speaker 1: start working at Covenant House, which was a shelter for
Speaker 1: homeless teenagers in Times Square, which is still there. She said,
Speaker 1: we need volunteers to come here at night. And then
Speaker 1: I went back to villan Nova to visit a friend
Speaker 1: and she said, Hey, there's an event on campus. It's
Speaker 1: about this. It's this volunteer fair. I want why don't
Speaker 1: you come with me? And I was like, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: And it was different nonprofit organizations and somebody from Covenant
Speaker 1: House was there and they showed this film about the
Speaker 1: work that we're doing with homeless teams. So I went
Speaker 1: up to this elderly woman, she looked like a suburban grandmother,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, I'm interested in volunteering. I'm
Speaker 1: living in New York City. I just moved in there
Speaker 1: and I don't know, maybe I can help out one
Speaker 1: night a week. So she we exchanged phone numbers and
Speaker 1: I went to visit her, and I'll never forget. She said,
Speaker 1: you know, we'd love to have you volunteer here. You know,
Speaker 1: whatever night a week you want to come. But you
Speaker 1: know there's a group of us who are full time volunteers.
Speaker 1: It's a one year program where you live here in
Speaker 1: Times Square and we give you twelve dollars a week
Speaker 1: and you work full time. But the kids, I think
Speaker 1: you should consider that. In fact, you have to come
Speaker 1: on an orientation and I've got an opening in May.
Speaker 1: I'll put you down for it. I thought, let the
Speaker 1: nice little lady put your name down for the week
Speaker 1: in May. It's so easy to get out of this,
Speaker 1: just one phone call. Just humor her. So that's what
Speaker 1: I did. I said, okay, yeah, yeah, put me down.
Speaker 1: And then I started going Every Tuesday night. I would
Speaker 1: instead of taking the Lexington Avenue line, I would take
Speaker 1: the R train and I'd get off the Times Square
Speaker 1: and Rolling Stone Magazine Cold. Times Square the sleaziest block
Speaker 1: in America. And it was, as my brother said recently, yeah,
Speaker 1: back then you ran through Times square, So I would
Speaker 1: kind of scurry over to Covenant House. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: I would have a gym bag and I would change
Speaker 1: into like sneakers and jeans and a T shirt and
Speaker 1: I would play basketball. I would hand out snacks, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And I would say doing that week
Speaker 1: after week after week, like I can't read, I can't
Speaker 1: remember one moment. It's just kind of doing to me,
Speaker 1: like this is what I should be doing. I remember
Speaker 1: going to some meeting at met Life, me and the
Speaker 1: other nine trainees, and we met with some senior vice president.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, we're now at eighty billion in assets.
Speaker 1: It's the beginning of the decade, and our goal by
Speaker 1: the end of the decade is to get to billion
Speaker 1: in assets. And that's the goal. That's what you all
Speaker 1: have to work towards. And I remember sitting there thinking,
Speaker 1: that is not my goal. It's fine if that's somebody
Speaker 1: else's goal. That is not what I wanted to dedicate
Speaker 1: my life to to get in a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: billion in assets. I would rather be dedicating myself to
Speaker 1: the kids a Covenant House and helping homeless kids get
Speaker 1: off the street and find a better way to live.
Speaker 1: That's my goal. We'll be right back. In pursuit of
Speaker 1: his new goal, Mark switches gears, he leaves MetLife and
Speaker 1: goes to work full time for Covenant House. He's there
Speaker 1: for two and a half years, during which he's elected
Speaker 1: to be the leader of all the full time volunteers.
Speaker 1: He gets to travel too, back to Guatemala in fact,
Speaker 1: as Covenant House is expanding, opening up divisions globally. Also
Speaker 1: during his time at Covenant House, he falls in love
Speaker 1: with another volunteer. They get married. He gets his degree
Speaker 1: at n y U and ends up at another nonprofit
Speaker 1: organization to help homeless kids called Epiphany. Epiphany, however, is
Speaker 1: a difficult place with a difficult history. There's corruption, theft,
Speaker 1: Some staff members are even selling drugs to the kids.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's physical harm and danger. Eventually, though, Mark helps
Speaker 1: the organization to repair and creates a model program for
Speaker 1: homeless youth. He's following his credo, best illustrated by a
Speaker 1: quote from the psychologist Abraham Maslow. A musician must make music,
Speaker 1: an artist must paint, a poet must write. If he
Speaker 1: is to be ultimately at peace with himself, what a
Speaker 1: man can be, he must be. I ended up leaving
Speaker 1: there in April, which got me up to St. Christopher's.
Speaker 1: I saw an ant in the New York Times and
Speaker 1: for a director of residential treatment center for teenagers, and
Speaker 1: I applied and I got that job. And where was St.
Speaker 1: Christopher's Dobbs Ferry, New York, which is right on the
Speaker 1: Hudson It was beautiful, right on the Hudson River, very
Speaker 1: close right above Yonker. I mean, it was like a
Speaker 1: twenty five minute ride to Grand Central. By this point,
Speaker 1: Mark and his wife have a son. At first Mark
Speaker 1: commutes to and from Dobbs Ferry, but then St. Christopher's
Speaker 1: choires that Mark live on campus. If anything happens in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night with these kids, Mark needs
Speaker 1: to be right there on site. So they provide a
Speaker 1: house for Mark and his family, and they moved to
Speaker 1: Dobb's Ferry. Though Mark is advancing in his career, his
Speaker 1: marriage is floundering. They're just mismatched. Market seeing a therapist
Speaker 1: who helps him realize that he's not happy and won't
Speaker 1: be happy unless he and his wife break ties. So
Speaker 1: I that we got divorced at some day in July nine.
Speaker 1: And I remember I stopped seeing the therapist like three
Speaker 1: months earlier, April or May, and the last time I
Speaker 1: saw him, I said, thank you. You've been great to
Speaker 1: me of helping with his decision. You know, I'm going
Speaker 1: to end therapy now. And he said, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of men when the actual divorce goes through, they
Speaker 1: have an emotional reaction. And I said, well, that's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen with me. You know. I said, I am
Speaker 1: absolutely certain of this decision. And I said, besides, even
Speaker 1: if I did, what would you recommend And he said, well,
Speaker 1: I'd recommend you go on medication. We shook heads, said goodbye,
Speaker 1: and it's the day of the divorce. You know, my
Speaker 1: wife and I we found we kicked the lawyers out
Speaker 1: of the room because lawyers always want you to get
Speaker 1: more and I was finally like, what do you need?
Speaker 1: This is what I need. Great, we agreed on and
Speaker 1: we signed the papers. So I left the office in
Speaker 1: Manhattan where the lawyers were, and I stopped. I remember
Speaker 1: I stopped at some store. I bought a book and
Speaker 1: I bought one of those pre wrapped like egg salad
Speaker 1: sandwiches because I hadn't had lunch, and I thought, I'll
Speaker 1: leave this on the ride train ride up to Westchester,
Speaker 1: and I took like two bites and my all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, my stomach felt queasy, and I thought, ah,
Speaker 1: that stomach ache again. And I had been having these
Speaker 1: stomach issues for the last couple of years. They would
Speaker 1: come and go. I went and saw a doctor once
Speaker 1: and he said, there's nothing wrong with you. So I
Speaker 1: that that's weird. I feel nauseous. Went home. We had
Speaker 1: shared custody. Our sun was seven, so I got him
Speaker 1: from school, brought him home, made him dinner, and I
Speaker 1: went to bed and I couldn't sleep. I went through
Speaker 1: the whole night tossing it. Could not sleep. So I
Speaker 1: got up in the morning and I'm dragging, and I
Speaker 1: go down and I took my son to the bus
Speaker 1: stop and I couldn't eat. The next day, I was
Speaker 1: not hungry. I had no appetite at all for breakfast.
Speaker 1: Dragged myself through the day and I figured, well, surely
Speaker 1: still not hungry. I said, well, surely I'll go to
Speaker 1: sleep tonight. Right, I've been up for like I don't
Speaker 1: know how many our straight couldn't sleep again. So then
Speaker 1: the next morning, still can't eat. And now it's starting
Speaker 1: to occur to me like this is not a stomach thing.
Speaker 1: This is not a stomach bug. This could be anxiety.
Speaker 1: So I called my old therapist stuff and I said, um,
Speaker 1: remember you said that to me a few months ago,
Speaker 1: that like, you know, some men have like an all shrewlry.
Speaker 1: I said, someth's going on with me? Can I come
Speaker 1: and see you? So he was like, yeah, sure, come
Speaker 1: and see me tomorrow at what three o'clock? I don't
Speaker 1: sleep another now I go want to see him the
Speaker 1: next day. And as soon as I walk in, he says,
Speaker 1: you look like hell. And I said, yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: slept in like days and I haven't eaten anything either.
Speaker 1: So he said, well, you're depressed. I said, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not depressed. I'm happy. You know, I'm out of
Speaker 1: this marriage. I have this new girlfriend I really like,
Speaker 1: and you know, I have shared custody with my son
Speaker 1: and a job I really loved, so I'm happy. He said, no,
Speaker 1: you're depressed. He said insomnia and lack of appetite or
Speaker 1: like the two principal symptoms of depression. So he said,
Speaker 1: I think he couldn't prescribe medication. He said, I think
Speaker 1: you should go see the psychiatrist who I work with
Speaker 1: he could prescribe medication, but Mark is apprehensive about medication.
Speaker 1: He's never taken anything for depression. And further, he doesn't
Speaker 1: believe he's depressed. Something else must be going on, he thinks,
Speaker 1: But he takes down the psychiatrist's name anyway, just in case.
Speaker 1: That night, I remember going for long walk. It's so
Speaker 1: funny how the human mind works. I'm going for long walk,
Speaker 1: and for some reason, I remembered that. In high school
Speaker 1: I read a book by Elizabeth coobla Ross called On
Speaker 1: Death and Dying, and I remember there were five stages
Speaker 1: on death and dying, and I remembered there was anger, denial, bargaining,
Speaker 1: and the last one was acceptance. But there was a
Speaker 1: fourth one. There was one. I couldn't remember what the
Speaker 1: fourth step was, and I knew it had the same
Speaker 1: first letter as one of those others. So there was
Speaker 1: either an, A, A D or D. Okay, and I'm
Speaker 1: walking what is it? What is there reason? I walked
Speaker 1: in the house and all of a sudden it popped
Speaker 1: in my mind. The fourth step is depression. And it
Speaker 1: was like my mind's way of telling me, no, that's
Speaker 1: what this is. You are depressed. So another night and
Speaker 1: not sleep, and I go the psychiatrist and I was lucky,
Speaker 1: today would take you months to see one. I think.
Speaker 1: I went in that afternoon to see him. So I
Speaker 1: described what I'm going through, and he said, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: prescribe three medications for you. Prozac, something calledbu spar for anxiety,
Speaker 1: and then something called restaurant to sleep. So I was
Speaker 1: like three medications. He was like, don't worry. I know
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. Other people who have been on this,
Speaker 1: you know. So I remember he went to hand me
Speaker 1: the script and before he handed it to me, he
Speaker 1: pulled it back and he said, this is not the cure.
Speaker 1: The cure is in that therapist office. This is just
Speaker 1: to get you functioning again. So I go into the
Speaker 1: pharmacy and I give the scripts to the pharmacist and
Speaker 1: the guy says, uh, okay, yeah, we close soon, so
Speaker 1: these come back tomorrow. And I almost like reached across
Speaker 1: the counter and I said to the guy, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you don't understand. I need that medication now. And here
Speaker 1: I was the guy who liked twenty four hours ago,
Speaker 1: was never gonna go on medication. So anyway, he was
Speaker 1: like okay, So he gave me the bills. But antidepressants,
Speaker 1: in these other medications, it's not magical. You know, they
Speaker 1: don't kick in right away. It takes time, and then
Speaker 1: you gotta find out if you're on the right one
Speaker 1: and if you're on the right dosage. So really that
Speaker 1: began like three or four months of a deep, deep depression,
Speaker 1: and my weight at my heaviest I was six pounds
Speaker 1: within a couple of months. I remember getting on the
Speaker 1: scale and it said one, and I remember thinking, holy
Speaker 1: sh it, like I have got to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to get food into me, you know. And I
Speaker 1: can remember holding a banana up and looking at it
Speaker 1: and thinking, if I try really, really hard, I can
Speaker 1: eat this banana. And then I went and bought some
Speaker 1: powder at a health food store that if you mixed
Speaker 1: it with milk, would put on wait. I was desperate
Speaker 1: to try and get food into my body, but my
Speaker 1: anxiety was like sky high. And you're also having panic attacks.
Speaker 1: During this time. I would have panic attacks that felt
Speaker 1: like a heart attack. I would have night sweats. I
Speaker 1: would wake up at the morning and you could wring
Speaker 1: my shirt out. I was a wreck. I was, I could,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't even day by day. It was hour
Speaker 1: by hour. Mark's therapist advises him to keep going to work,
Speaker 1: that work is good for him, even if he has
Speaker 1: sleepless night. After sleepless night, the work will keep him afloat.
Speaker 1: And of course the irony is not lost on Mark
Speaker 1: that he works with others who are suffering from similar
Speaker 1: afflictions depression, anxiety, and though he might feel solace in
Speaker 1: this common ground, he tries to hide his depression. At first,
Speaker 1: tries to keep it a secret, but since he's so
Speaker 1: physically altered, since he's lost so much weight, the secret
Speaker 1: is to contain. Thankfully, my boss, the executive director, was
Speaker 1: a trained clinician, mental health clinician. I confided in him.
Speaker 1: I found out there was one staff member working there.
Speaker 1: I was close to a year later, when I was better,
Speaker 1: he said to me, Redmond, everybody in this place thought
Speaker 1: you were a crack addict, because crack was the drug
Speaker 1: of choice. Then taken down and he goes and people
Speaker 1: lose weight super fast. It's because of crack. So that
Speaker 1: was what the entire staff here thought, that you were
Speaker 1: on crack. Can you imagine? I said, I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: was depressed. It was depression. But I had a psychologist
Speaker 1: on staff. I had to confide. She could see how
Speaker 1: miserable I looked, you know, I confided in her. But
Speaker 1: I tried as best as I could just get into
Speaker 1: work and try to do my job. But it was
Speaker 1: it was as hard as hell because even on medication,
Speaker 1: I would still only get three or four hours of sleep.
Speaker 1: It's hard to concentrate. I would have a conversation with somebody.
Speaker 1: I remember talking to my brother on the phone and
Speaker 1: he said, you know, you just told me the same
Speaker 1: thing three times in a ten minute period. So it
Speaker 1: was just trying to get because I was like, if
Speaker 1: I lose this job, I lose my house, I might
Speaker 1: lose shared custody of my son. You know this this
Speaker 1: is I could lose everything. So it was just struggling.
Speaker 1: I was going to therapy twice a week. I was.
Speaker 1: I had read that exercise is key in terms of
Speaker 1: overcoming depressions. So I would get on this bicycle and
Speaker 1: bike for as tired as I was, I would make
Speaker 1: myself ride this bike for like an hour or two
Speaker 1: every night. The thing that would help more than anything
Speaker 1: else was somebody would come up to me and whisper
Speaker 1: to me. I got divorced two years ago, and this
Speaker 1: happened to me, and I would look at them and
Speaker 1: they would look good, and I remember thinking, like that
Speaker 1: person looks okay, and like, maybe I'll be okay again too, someday.
Speaker 1: So I was just hanging on the hope that the
Speaker 1: therapy and the medication I began meditating every day, the bicycling,
Speaker 1: that it would somehow pay off. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment with more family secrets. Mark's depression, he realizes,
Speaker 1: is a culmination of myriad troubles, subconscious troubles that his
Speaker 1: body has been storing trying to signal to him for
Speaker 1: quite some time. Those lifelong stomachaches have been trying to
Speaker 1: tell him something, the trick of tellomania too. And then
Speaker 1: there was a dangerous and instability he'd been repeatedly exposed
Speaker 1: to at his places of work. And there was the
Speaker 1: unhappiness at the core of his marriage, largely unspoken about
Speaker 1: until it could no longer be subdued. And while the
Speaker 1: divorce was necessary, mutually decided upon between he and his
Speaker 1: ex wife, it broke something open and Mark. It catalyzed
Speaker 1: his depression, but ultimately his healing too. The divorce was
Speaker 1: the absolute trigger. Even though we were a mismatch. I
Speaker 1: really love this person, and you get so angry in
Speaker 1: the divorce you forget you once did love. And you
Speaker 1: know I'm Catholic. Nobody in my family ever got divorced.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe one cousin, Like if somebody had told
Speaker 1: me the day I'm getting married, hey, you're gonna that
Speaker 1: was the furthest thing that was never gonna happen. We
Speaker 1: weren't good for each other, but I loved there, but
Speaker 1: we just weren't good for each other. And I don't
Speaker 1: think either of us was happy, but I was really
Speaker 1: in a way, I was broken hearted. In addition to
Speaker 1: the heartbreak of the divorce, Mark also struggles with shame.
Speaker 1: He feels as a Catholic, he shouldn't be divorced, he
Speaker 1: shouldn't be depressed, he shouldn't be on medication, and as
Speaker 1: we know, shame begets secrecy and secrecy begets shame. My
Speaker 1: therapist he was like, listen, Redmond, you are marinated and
Speaker 1: guilt and you know I grew up in like this
Speaker 1: pre Vatican to Catholic church where like you were born bad,
Speaker 1: you were born with original sin and God's mad at you.
Speaker 1: And you know that was the kind of and I
Speaker 1: bought at hook Lion sinker. You know it's I was
Speaker 1: an aldo boy. I bored into that whole thing, and
Speaker 1: that was in there too. I mean that all had
Speaker 1: to through therapy, that all had to be washed out,
Speaker 1: brought out in the wash. I'm weak. I shouldn't be,
Speaker 1: especially as a man, right. I was ashamed of it.
Speaker 1: I was shamed to be a med's I was ashamed.
Speaker 1: I was going through this. What's wrong with me? I
Speaker 1: should do it? And I kept what's I kept trying
Speaker 1: to figure The more I tried to figure it out,
Speaker 1: the more I tried to make it go away, the
Speaker 1: more it's stuck. It's stuck like glow. And it was funny.
Speaker 1: My I had a spiritual director, was a nun. She
Speaker 1: gave me a Zen book about the pressurement by Zen Teacher,
Speaker 1: and one of the lines in the book was that
Speaker 1: which we accept is healed. And the more I accepted
Speaker 1: I'm depressed, and that's just the way it is, it
Speaker 1: would almost magically lift for a time. The book is
Speaker 1: called aptly the Depression Book, and the author is Sherry Huber.
Speaker 1: At first, Mark doesn't read it, he doesn't even open it.
Speaker 1: It seems too whimsical to him, a silly book of
Speaker 1: aphorisms with little drawings of people meditating. But when he
Speaker 1: finally does open it, he realizes he's been wrong, very wrong.
Speaker 1: This book is not silly, in fact, is life saving.
Speaker 1: So what was it that was so healing about the
Speaker 1: depression book? That whole idea of acceptance was huge to me?
Speaker 1: She has a drawing there like hills. We want to
Speaker 1: go from one hill to the next, you know. So
Speaker 1: this divorce ended, now I have this new girlfriend, and wow,
Speaker 1: she's great and I can just go to that. Everything's
Speaker 1: great now. And her thing is like, no, in life,
Speaker 1: we need to go through these hills and then these downslides,
Speaker 1: to these valleys whatever you want to call them. And
Speaker 1: she had this whole thing about like any time we're
Speaker 1: saying I shouldn't feel this, I shouldn't be doing this,
Speaker 1: any of those should that's poison. That's self hatred. That's
Speaker 1: where you're hating yourself. And I realized, like, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: be feeling this way, I shouldn't be going through this.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with me? And that was all self hatred
Speaker 1: and all that had to come out to all the
Speaker 1: pressure I had always put on myself from childhood, but
Speaker 1: the imposter syndrome. I quit the Peace Corps. There's something
Speaker 1: wrong with the all the times, all the pressure I
Speaker 1: had always put up myself. It was so good. I
Speaker 1: went through the depression, as horrible as it was, because
Speaker 1: like all that came out through therapy and it changed
Speaker 1: me as a person. I remember reading a book because
Speaker 1: I started studying up on all that. I read start Williams.
Speaker 1: Styron's book on depression and they call like sort too.
Speaker 1: Was like you think you start to feel better and
Speaker 1: you're like, great, it's over, and then bam, your back
Speaker 1: down again, and they're like what. And it's funny. I
Speaker 1: remember some woman came to me to work, she was leaving,
Speaker 1: and she said, you look like it again. I was like,
Speaker 1: I know, and last week I felt so good. I
Speaker 1: don't get it. I feel terrible again. And I remember
Speaker 1: she grabbed me by the lapels and she yelled at
Speaker 1: me and she said, my father died in his fifties
Speaker 1: and my mother was heartbroken and she went through this
Speaker 1: and she was in the depression, and you just have
Speaker 1: to go through it. And I remember it. I was like,
Speaker 1: She's right. It was about acceptance and learn learning and
Speaker 1: learning about myself. It's not a linear path. Maybe it
Speaker 1: is for some people, but most of the literature will
Speaker 1: tell you it's a zig zag pattern. In fact, the
Speaker 1: guy who'd been through it at work, he said, mand
Speaker 1: this too, divorced and you feel shitty, then you feel good,
Speaker 1: then you feel shitty. I said, what finally happens? He
Speaker 1: goes one day, you feel good, and you just keep
Speaker 1: feeling good, and you're out of it. And I said,
Speaker 1: how did you feel then? And he said, you feel
Speaker 1: like the luckiest man on the face of the planet,
Speaker 1: which is true. It's really true. Though Mark's mental health
Speaker 1: has improved, things after all, are not linear. His work
Speaker 1: is intense and challenging. One winter night at St. Christopher's,
Speaker 1: some girls break loose in the freezing cold, and he
Speaker 1: goes to find them. He's worried for their lives. He
Speaker 1: ends up pushing his way through a chain link fence
Speaker 1: to get to them, and though he doesn't realize it
Speaker 1: in the moment, he's cut. His face is really badly.
Speaker 1: He's gushing blood and ends up needing plastic surgery. So St.
Speaker 1: Christopher's it was seventy two kids. Many of them had
Speaker 1: been abused, neglected. Some of them were former drug dealers,
Speaker 1: former gang members, They have been in prison, they were
Speaker 1: in fifteen or sixteen, and almost every girl there, it's said,
Speaker 1: had been sexually abused at some point, you know. So
Speaker 1: there was tremendous trauma among these kids. And I had
Speaker 1: to live on the grounds. I live right there. That
Speaker 1: was the idea, and I think for four years I
Speaker 1: was fine, and I was very proud. It just warmed
Speaker 1: me down to the point where that was finally having
Speaker 1: my nose almost sliced off my face was the final
Speaker 1: Like that was like the final straw, like I can't
Speaker 1: do this anymore. I just can't do this. I can't.
Speaker 1: You know. I love working with these kids. I going
Speaker 1: through the depression made me much more compassionate towards them
Speaker 1: because I finally learned what it felt like to feel
Speaker 1: like crap, and they feel like crap most of the
Speaker 1: time their whole life. Mark wants to continue working with kids,
Speaker 1: but he knows he needs to be in another environment.
Speaker 1: He resigns and starts the first charter school for low
Speaker 1: income children in a new town in a new state,
Speaker 1: and in starting a new he can keep the truth
Speaker 1: of his depression under wraps. No one will know him
Speaker 1: or what he's been through. He takes this opportunity to
Speaker 1: keep quiet, start fresh, as if all that had never happened.
Speaker 1: Nobody needed to know that I went through this, you know,
Speaker 1: when I started working in Connecticut, all the new coworkers
Speaker 1: there and friends. Eventually I started dating somebody a couple
Speaker 1: of years later, and we got serious, and I told
Speaker 1: her because I could tell we were heading towards engagement,
Speaker 1: and I said, I need to tell you this. I
Speaker 1: went through this whole episode. So we ended up getting married.
Speaker 1: She accepted that. But then when I moved to Vermont,
Speaker 1: when they interviewed me for the job here in Vermont,
Speaker 1: which was five years after Connecticut, I remember the final interview,
Speaker 1: the board said to me, so, is there anything about
Speaker 1: you we should know? And another board member said, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you have any secrets you're not telling us? And
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, Yeah, I got a secret I'm not
Speaker 1: telling you, and I'm not telling you. I'm thinking because
Speaker 1: I really want to get this job, so all the
Speaker 1: people I know appear, all the dozens and hundreds of people.
Speaker 1: Now I've been working in nineteen years and Vermont as
Speaker 1: director of this program for homeless kids. Nobody knows about this.
Speaker 1: Even my son, my son who was seven when I
Speaker 1: went through this, he's thirty five. He's a psychiatric nurse.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know I went through this. My new son,
Speaker 1: who's nineteen now, he doesn't know about any of this.
Speaker 1: So this has been the thing that I've kept locked
Speaker 1: in a box since nineteen The story of his depression
Speaker 1: is not when he shares. Mark does begin to tell stories.
Speaker 1: In fact, he begins to tell stories publicly. He leaves
Speaker 1: a two minute pitch on the Moths Storytelling Number. Next
Speaker 1: thing he knows, he's on stage in Burlington, in Montreal,
Speaker 1: in Boston telling stories. But for the most part, these
Speaker 1: are other stories. They are not stories about. Soon after
Speaker 1: these performances, he decides to chronicle his life in writing too.
Speaker 1: He decides to write a memoir. He's writing it chronologically,
Speaker 1: and eventually, inevitably, he gets to the nineteen nineties. When
Speaker 1: I got to the nineteen nineties, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: do I put this in the book? Okay? Do I
Speaker 1: put this whole episode of depression and what I went
Speaker 1: through and going on that? Do I put that in
Speaker 1: the book, because so many people have no idea about this,
Speaker 1: my relatives, you know. And I decided I was gonna
Speaker 1: put it in. I was just sided. I'm not like
Speaker 1: Frederick Douglas, who wrote three memoirs. I'm going to write
Speaker 1: one memoir. I get one bite at this apple, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to write that story, and I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: that in. So that was a key decision. And I
Speaker 1: remember I gave an early draft of the book to
Speaker 1: my wife, my present wife, and I said, what did
Speaker 1: you think about that chapter about depression? And she said
Speaker 1: one word harrowing, And I think that's a good adjective
Speaker 1: to use for that chapter. Sometimes the very act of
Speaker 1: writing gives you permission to tell the whole story. That's
Speaker 1: what happened here. Mark's secret about his depression was like
Speaker 1: a pilot blight within him, always there, always burning. And
Speaker 1: when he eventually does tell his whole story, including the
Speaker 1: most shameful parts, he realizes so many people are also
Speaker 1: struggling with aim, with depression, with resistance to getting help,
Speaker 1: resistance to even giving it a name. Mark realizes that
Speaker 1: the divulging of his secret is not only helpful to him,
Speaker 1: but it can also help liberate others, which is ultimately
Speaker 1: the most meaningful thing of all. The truth helps make
Speaker 1: us whole. There was a piece of me that wanted
Speaker 1: to get this out. I decided pretty early if I'm
Speaker 1: writing a memoir, this was a key, key piece of
Speaker 1: my life. Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Molly's Acre is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is
Speaker 1: the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd
Speaker 1: like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your
Speaker 1: story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
Speaker 1: one eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You
Speaker 1: can also find me on Instagram at Danny writer. And
Speaker 1: if you'd like to know more about the story that
Speaker 1: inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.