Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that
Speaker 1: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. I've heard from
Speaker 1: so many about your own family secrets and realize that
Speaker 1: what we are creating for each other on this podcast
Speaker 1: is a community, a community for those who are looking
Speaker 1: for a safe and supportive space to unburden themselves. To
Speaker 1: that end, we've created a number for listeners to call
Speaker 1: in to record stories to share here in this space.
Speaker 1: This week, I'd like to share a few of those
Speaker 1: stories from our community. Thanks for listening. In May of
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, I got my d n A results
Speaker 1: back from ancestry dot com and I saw that I
Speaker 1: was Irish. Well, I couldn't understand how that could be,
Speaker 1: because my father was dark skinned, dark hair, and had
Speaker 1: kind of a mysterious background, deeply even serious. But nobody
Speaker 1: knew really what his his genetic background was, and he
Speaker 1: was the reason I wanted to get my d n
Speaker 1: A in the first place, to find out where he
Speaker 1: actually came from. We thought maybe he was Jewish, we
Speaker 1: weren't sure so when I saw Irish, I was completely shocked,
Speaker 1: and I looked at my husband and said, I went
Speaker 1: on Earth, how can this be? And I looked back
Speaker 1: through some of my relatives that I had never heard of,
Speaker 1: of course, you know the old story, and one of
Speaker 1: them had the same last name as my father's mentor
Speaker 1: in the fifties. I was sixty four at the time.
Speaker 1: I'm the youngest of four. I contacted some of these
Speaker 1: people after the shock war off and told them this,
Speaker 1: and I was told that there was a journal entry
Speaker 1: by the wife of my biological father that I found
Speaker 1: now that her biggest regret in her life was when
Speaker 1: she rented the upstairs or which she let her husband
Speaker 1: turn the upstairs into an apartment and rented it to
Speaker 1: that young woman, her husband and three children while I
Speaker 1: was number four, and so my father's mentor as my
Speaker 1: biological father, he was fifty to my mother's thirty at
Speaker 1: the time, and so he's long gone. My mother was
Speaker 1: nine before when she died in two thousand eighteen, so
Speaker 1: she was dead by the time I found out this information.
Speaker 1: My birth certificate father lived to seventy nine, had no
Speaker 1: heart problems, had cancer, and lived a very good life,
Speaker 1: and I had a wonderful relationship with him and my mom.
Speaker 1: I don't think he ever knew. But my biological father
Speaker 1: dropped dead of a massive heart attack of the age
Speaker 1: of sixty one when I was seven years old, and
Speaker 1: I did know him. We called him Papa. He came
Speaker 1: to the house and he hung around. He always brought
Speaker 1: me presents as a little kid. And we moved from
Speaker 1: that state to another state when I was five years old,
Speaker 1: and I never saw him again, and I just knew
Speaker 1: him as a family friend. Hi, Danny, I first just
Speaker 1: wanted to thank you. I owe you a great debt
Speaker 1: of gratitude, not only for inheritance, but for this community
Speaker 1: that you've created through family secrets. It's occurred to me
Speaker 1: often over this past year that the only thing worse
Speaker 1: than having to go through something like this and being
Speaker 1: isolated and traumatized is doing it alone. So I just
Speaker 1: wanted to thank you for giving voice and space to
Speaker 1: all of us. I found out last June, after thirty
Speaker 1: five years, that a father that raised me, my dad,
Speaker 1: whom I adore, was not my biological father, through a
Speaker 1: three in the test. My sister had taken one a
Speaker 1: year prior to me, and when the results came back,
Speaker 1: it identified us as half sisters, similar to how you
Speaker 1: expressed in Inheritance. I was very confident that there has
Speaker 1: been some sort of mistake, but of course there wasn't.
Speaker 1: I texted a screenshot of the ancestry that was broken
Speaker 1: down into European countries to my dad and he responded
Speaker 1: by saying, whose DNA is that, um, which sort of
Speaker 1: stemmed this crazy twenty four hour period. I've always had
Speaker 1: a really strained, tenuous relationship with my mom, and despite
Speaker 1: not having contact with her at the time, I called
Speaker 1: her and asked flat out if there was a possibility
Speaker 1: that this could be true. In her usual manner, she
Speaker 1: responded by asking how dare I accuse her of such
Speaker 1: a thing and how she could have possibly raised such
Speaker 1: an ungrateful child. As the months went on, I became
Speaker 1: more and more fixated on finding out who my biological
Speaker 1: father was UM, sort of getting to the bottom of
Speaker 1: that despite my mom not sharing the information with me.
Speaker 1: So my husband was kind enough to offer to hire
Speaker 1: a private investigator to try and find out who that
Speaker 1: man was. I have three kids, and one day at
Speaker 1: the pediatrician's office, building out for hims. I realized that
Speaker 1: all of their life and all of my life, I
Speaker 1: had been giving an inaccurate biological history for all of us.
Speaker 1: Though that sort of stemmed my interest in finding out
Speaker 1: who the person was. One night, when my husband and
Speaker 1: I went out for a date night, people are in
Speaker 1: the car and our neighborhood and told me that the
Speaker 1: private investigator had found my biological father. He started by
Speaker 1: telling me that the man was deceased, which devastated me.
Speaker 1: I was just totally distraught, knowing that I was never
Speaker 1: going to get to see his face. But then my
Speaker 1: husband asked if I remember telling him about the lake
Speaker 1: I used to go to as a young child, and
Speaker 1: I instantly knew the name that was about to come
Speaker 1: out of my husband's mouth before he said it. It
Speaker 1: turned out that it was the name I thought, and
Speaker 1: my biological father was what my mom always told us
Speaker 1: was a family friend. I spent time with him until
Speaker 1: I was about seven years old and we moved to
Speaker 1: a different state. So the memories I have of him
Speaker 1: are very murky, which saddened me because I knew him.
Speaker 1: But I can't pull up the memories that I have
Speaker 1: of him. I do remember by the way that he smells,
Speaker 1: and I also remember as a child loving him, so
Speaker 1: I do find some comfort in that. About a month
Speaker 1: or two ago, my sister gave me a huge box
Speaker 1: that she had taken from my mom's garage. Going through
Speaker 1: it slowly and meticulously, in my basement, I found a
Speaker 1: bunch of old slides, and as I held a couple
Speaker 1: of strips up to the light coming through the window,
Speaker 1: I thought that it might be photographs of my biological father,
Speaker 1: at least what I thought I remembered him to look like.
Speaker 1: I know it is starting to sound crazy and like
Speaker 1: some sort of movie, but I live with the fact
Speaker 1: every day that this saga is actually my real life.
Speaker 1: I took the slides to a local photo store, and
Speaker 1: because of the pandemic, they told me that it was
Speaker 1: going to be a while. They were very backed up.
Speaker 1: So for about a month, I opened my email every
Speaker 1: morning anxious about what I might find. Until one afternoon
Speaker 1: I opened up my email and the photos were there.
Speaker 1: I and I found myself looking into the eyes of
Speaker 1: my biological father. So in the same flies that I
Speaker 1: had digitized and found the pictures of my biological father,
Speaker 1: there was a photograph of my five year old six
Speaker 1: year old self sitting on the lap of a teenage
Speaker 1: girl and standing next to us with another teenage girl
Speaker 1: whose profile I recognized instantly because it looked so much
Speaker 1: like my own. Since then, I've found the contact information
Speaker 1: for one of my half sisters. It turns out I
Speaker 1: have three other half siblings other than the two that
Speaker 1: I've grown up with. I've written her an email over
Speaker 1: and over and over again, and I'm sitting on it.
Speaker 1: Mostly I think out of fear because I feel like
Speaker 1: sixteen and seventeen and eighteen. When I look back into
Speaker 1: those photos, I just feel like teenagers have an awareness
Speaker 1: about their parents behavior that a toddler or an elementary
Speaker 1: school child wouldn't have, and I'm nervous and afraid about
Speaker 1: what I might find out when I contact them. Um
Speaker 1: fourteen months into this, I'm keenly aware that I just
Speaker 1: have only begun this journey. It breaks my heart every
Speaker 1: day when I look at my kids and I know
Speaker 1: that my dad is not biologically carried in them. But
Speaker 1: I am hopeful that some good will come out of this.
Speaker 1: And I just thank you again for giving me a
Speaker 1: community and the place to voice my story. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to share your story, call one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: Secret zero and record your story. We won't be able
Speaker 1: to run all the stories, but we do want to
Speaker 1: shine a light on as many as we can. The
Speaker 1: number again is one eight eight Secret and then the
Speaker 1: numeral zero. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.