WEBVTT - Bonus: Dani's Family Secret 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:08.840 Well, here's something special I promised you all a while 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:13.160 back in our final bonus episode before the eighth season 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:16.400 of Family Secrets launches in just a few weeks. The 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:21.160 tables are turned, and today I'm the guest. The wonderful 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:26.680 Kimmy Cope, writer, motivational speaker, former OPRAH producer and host 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:29.720 of the podcast All the Wiser is sitting in my 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:34.560 seat today and asking all the questions about my family Secrets. 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:41.080 I hope you enjoy our conversation. I'm Danny Shapiro and 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.320 this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:47.320 the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:48.880 keep from ourselves. 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:55.160 Hello Danny, Welcome to Family Secrets. 0:00:56.880 --> 0:00:59.360 Hi Kimmy, It's nice to be on Family Secrets. 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:05.120 Yes, yes, familiar territory for you. My intention for this 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:08.960 conversation is really for this beautiful community you have built, 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:14.000 your listening audience to know you a little deeper and yeah, 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:18.280 hopefully find some pieces of themselves in stories that perhaps 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:22.679 will here for the first time. And the origin story 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:28.319 of Family Secrets in this podcast was you as a secret. 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:31.720 And I know so many of your listeners are familiar, 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.200 but for anyone who's listening and does not know that 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:39.360 story of the life changing secret that you learned in 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:41.800 twenty sixteen, can you briefly share? 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:44.119 Yeah? Absolutely so. 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:49.400 In twenty sixteen, my husband Michael was sending away for 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.400 a DNA test, a home DNA test, and he asked 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:54.520 me if I wanted to do it too, and I just, 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:57.880 on a whim, said sure. It wasn't out of any 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:03.600 real curiosity or you know, I could easily have said no, 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:05.840 because I thought I knew everything that there was to 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:10.480 know about my family and its ancestry and my origins, 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:11.320 my ancestors. 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:13.520 But I went ahead and did it. 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:15.720 And when the results came back, I actually didn't even 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:18.400 remember that I had done it, That's how insignificant it 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:20.640 was to me. The results revealed to me that my 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:24.440 dad hadn't been my biological father, the dad who raised me, 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:26.480 and I. 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:27.079 Learned a lot. 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:31.480 I uncovered a great deal about secrets that my parents 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:37.200 kept all their lives that I feel certain they intended 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:39.640 to take to the grave with them, which they did 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:43.240 after a lifetime of writing a bad secrets, or writing 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:47.560 novels and memoirs of bad secrets, and always also feeling 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.680 like something didn't totally add up, just something I felt 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:57.800 slightly adjacent to myself. Somehow it all suddenly became. 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:02.040 Clear, and you described, you know, growing up having this 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:06.880 really easy love for your father and just this deep adoration, 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:12.000 where your mother was more distant at times, it was 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:17.000 much more contentious. And you had even pondered that question, 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:19.840 you know, is she my mom? Does she feel like 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:24.480 my mom? I'm curious sort of, you know, you've described 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:28.720 a sense of loneliness as a kid, wandering around the neighborhood, 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:33.559 peering in windows, looking at families, large families with siblings, 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:37.240 and so I know you were an only child, and 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:45.400 I'm curious about Danny in the outer world versus your 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.880 inner world and what that was like during that time. 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:56.960 So Danny in the outer world apparently looked like she belonged. 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:01.200 People who I've enco it over the years, who knew 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:04.120 me when I was a kid, are really shocked to 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:09.520 learn how out of step I felt. And you know 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:11.920 that I didn't feel that I belonged. You know, people 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:13.480 I went to middle school with, people I went to 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:17.520 high school with, all really professed shock about that, because 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.359 I guess I had a kind of contained nature and 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.040 I sort of looked to the part, but I felt 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:29.400 really like a creature visiting from outer space. A lot 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:33.960 of the time, I didn't feel like people really knew me, 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:37.480 or that I really knew myself in many ways, and 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:45.800 the environment of my home was so awkward and uncomfortable. 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:49.120 One of the things I've really learned on you know, 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:54.440 hosting this podcast is that what we experience as children, 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:58.479 whatever the environment is of our home, we just think 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.200 that that's the way it is, and that's normal, and 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:04.760 maybe that's the way everybody lives. At a certain point, 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:08.839 when I was probably in high school, I started realizing 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.880 that that wasn't the case, and that the atmosphere in 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:16.960 our home was markedly different from you know, my friends 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:20.840 whose homes I would visit. It felt to me, and 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:24.880 I think this has to do with my own extreme sensitivity, 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:32.280 you know, just too behavior and tone and actions of others. 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:36.440 It felt to me like it was a tinder box. 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:39.920 It felt like it was always ready to just sort 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:43.520 of explode. My parents were miserable with each other, and 0:05:43.560 --> 0:05:46.440 there was something in the way that each of them 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.120 was with me, very different in the way that they 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:53.039 treated me, But there was something that just didn't feel 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:55.880 easy or comfortable. 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.760 You know, as we have this conversation, I've thought a 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:04.719 lot about how your present work, this podcast included is 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:07.840 deeply informed by your past. I think all of our 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:12.479 work is. But I also from hearing you and how 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:16.960 you talk about your son Jacob and your husband Michael, 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.599 the deep love and connection that I hear in the 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:23.600 family you've created. You know, I think so often in 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:28.000 generational stories, we either repeat, or for lack of a 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:31.640 better language, we write the wrong and create something very different. 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:34.520 And that appears to me that you very much created that. 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:37.400 It certainly feels to me like the greatest achievement of 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:41.520 my life that I didn't repeat and that I did 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:45.440 create something different. And I do think that probably from 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:49.600 the time that I was a teenager, I was forming 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:57.080 myself in counter identification to my mom. I understood that 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:02.400 she was somebody who very often put people off, chronically 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:07.279 felt misunderstood, was very angry a lot of the time, 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:12.160 this kind of just simmering, low level, ready to be 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:15.200 dissed at the slightest notice. You know, the world had 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.800 something against her in her mind, and she sort of 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:22.040 built the life that she saw in a way like 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:25.760 she felt that way about the world, and so the 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.280 world reflected that back at her. And you know, I'm 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:30.720 not trying to throw her under the bus. I have 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.040 a lot more understanding of her now than I did 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:36.800 when I was younger. But as a mother, she wanted 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:43.200 me to be a certain way, and if I didn't 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.160 conform to the way that she wanted me to be, 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:49.600 which was essentially a reflection of her, then there was 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:50.880 trouble if I couldn't do that. 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:54.040 And I'm sure and then for you it then said 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:56.480 not enough and not enough for her right. 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:00.040 And something that's occurred to me recently, I've been thinking 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.440 a lot about my father. The anniversary of his death 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:05.080 was just last week, and always a time where he's 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:08.480 very much on my mind. And because of his religiosity, 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:12.440 I mean, it was really the defining characteristic of my 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:15.200 father was that he was an Orthodox Jew. It's how 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:18.040 he would have defined himself, I think, before any other 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:22.080 way of defining himself. It was the landscape that he 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.200 was brought up in, and you know, there were generations 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:28.160 preceding him, you know, where that was the way they lived. 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:34.120 And in order to please my father, I think my 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:36.840 father would have loved me no matter what because he 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:40.000 knew how to love, which was something that I think 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:42.200 saved me in a lot of ways. But in terms 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:44.920 of his approval, I had a really hard time being 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:47.600 a good little Orthodox Jewish girl. If you had asked me, 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:51.160 I think even when I was like a child, whether 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:53.880 I thought that I would grow up and marry an 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:57.680 Orthodox man and you know, have a whole bunch of 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:01.480 Orthodox children and live that life, I think I would 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:03.680 have known from a very early age that that wasn't 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:08.480 going to be my path. And that was really problematic 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:11.880 between my father and me, because that was the most 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:14.640 important thing to him. So in a way I was 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:17.720 sort of squeezed between both of my parents and failing 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:21.040 them each with my mother because I was unable to 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:24.720 be her perfect mirror, and with my father because I 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.720 just wasn't that Orthodox Jewish girl. 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:32.080 That makes so much sense to me. And yeah, this 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:38.360 idea of just the radical acceptance for you exactly as 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:40.720 who you are and who you came into this world. 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:45.600 So you mentioned being the anniversary of your father's death, 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.720 and you know, as I research and as I told you, 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.839 it's been such a joy and privilege to learn about 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:57.480 you through your work. I see these sort of tempole 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.840 moments in your life, and some of them are of 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:05.960 deep suffering and trauma, and certainly the loss of your father. 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.199 Your parents were in a car crash that killed your dad, 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:15.600 and your mom survived. So for what you're comfortable sharing, 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:22.400 what do you remember about that period, about that day 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:24.080 and sort of how it shaped you. 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:28.880 That day I've described in my writing as the moment 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:32.760 that divided my life into before and after. And when 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.280 I wrote those words, I was probably in my thirties 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:38.040 and I was writing about my twenties. I was writing about, 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:41.400 you know, February nineteen eighty six, and I was young 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:45.240 enough to not understand that lives contain more than one 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:47.560 of these before and after moments if we live long enough. 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:51.520 But for me, that was the first, and a huge one. 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:53.520 I just want to preface what I'm about to say 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:58.880 with I've been very aware lately that I recently had 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:01.959 a big birthday and I turned sixty, which is still 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.360 a complete shock to me. It was, you know, it 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:10.760 was a big milestone birthday, and I entered the decade 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:14.640 that my father died in. He was sixty four years 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:17.320 old when he died, and My mother was sixty two 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:22.400 when she was widowed, and my son is twenty three, 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:25.920 which is the age I was when all of this happened, 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:29.280 and I suddenly realized all of that recently that. 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.400 Wow, yeah, of all the ages and the pieces and. 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:36.640 Exactly like the perfect storm of that. And on family 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:40.520 secrets it comes up often the whole idea of anniversaries 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:43.400 and the anniversary of a loss through the anniversary of 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:46.320 a shock. And you know, it's easy, I think to 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:50.840 dismiss what that is, but the body remembers always, you know. 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:55.560 So I might not remember on February twenty third of 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:59.160 any given year that it's February twenty third, but my 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:01.720 body remembers. I mean, I'll be out of sorts all 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:03.760 day and then suddenly I'll realize what the date is 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:07.559 and understand, you know, or I'll remember what the weather 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:12.360 was like on that particular February day. So the main 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:15.640 thing about that day and that time is that I 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:21.760 was such a mess in my life. And also looking 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:24.280 at my twenty three year old son now and seeing 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:27.120 that he is not a mess, you know that he 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:30.440 knows who he is, and he has courage of his 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:35.479 own convictions and he's his own person. I wasn't that yet. 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:39.480 I was really kind of unformed. 0:12:39.800 --> 0:12:39.960 You know. 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:43.640 When I started teaching university, when I was around twenty 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.360 nine or thirty years old, I remember looking around the 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:48.840 workshop table I was teaching at Columbia University, and I 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:51.400 looked around the table at these young women, these young 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:56.400 Barnard and Columbia women, and I could identify. It was 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:58.360 like this little game I played in my head, you know, 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:04.000 the ones who never have let themselves get into so 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:08.520 much trouble or never would have sort of like followed 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:10.800 the path that I followed, and then the ones who 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:14.040 would I could feel and see and pick them out, 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:16.160 you know, and tried to mentor the ones I thought 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:16.720 I could help. 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:18.440 But I had dropped out of college. 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:24.360 I was modeling and acting and doing TV commercials, or 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:26.240 at least that's what I told myself I was doing. 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:29.280 I did that for a while, but I was terrible 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:29.679 at it. 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.480 If I was going to cast you for anything in life, 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:40.640 knowing your deep soul and commercials, I love that. 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:43.760 Commercials like you know, for Coca Cola, you know, for 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:46.680 York peppermint patties. I actually had to like jump up 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:49.240 and down on a beach and say California loved New 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:54.400 York with more chocolate. I mean, I was terrible and 0:13:55.160 --> 0:14:00.960 uncomfortable in my own skin and awkward. But because again 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:04.959 going back to sort of mirroring my mother, a big 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:07.319 part of the fuss that was made over me when 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:09.160 I was growing up was the way that I looked 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:11.400 and that I was a pretty little girl and I 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:16.040 was a pretty teenager, and I kind of just went 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:18.160 with that. I thought, well, I guess that's what I 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:20.160 have to offer. I don't want to sound like I'm 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:22.240 blaming anybody, because I'm not. Like I had a lot 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:24.760 of longing for other things, but I didn't know. 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:28.880 Well, maybe that's the disconnect I just felt, because I 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:33.080 know you right for your brilliant mind, and so much 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.640 of that work is on the physical appearance, especially when 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:40.400 you're young and youthful, and yeah, that's so interesting. You know, 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:45.080 this expectation that you were beautiful and that people identified 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:48.280 you with that, and it's perhaps there was some unconscious 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.920 expectation around that to do something with that physical beauty. 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:55.080 Mm hm. Well, and that was complicated by the fact 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:58.880 that that focus on my looks had a lot to 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.560 do with my not looking to Iwish quote unquote, you 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:05.280 know that that's what people were constantly, constantly saying, And 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:07.360 so really what they were saying was that I didn't 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:11.520 look like who I thought I was, or like my 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:15.920 physical appearance was some sort of crazy, weird gift, like 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:19.440 some sort of nutty fluke, that I looked the way 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:21.400 that I looked, and I didn't look like my family, 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:24.040 and instead I was, you know, very fair and had 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:27.320 blue eyes and features. It just didn't look like, you know, 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:31.760 anybody that I was surrounded by. So I think somewhere 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:35.360 within that there was this hard kernel of confusion. 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:39.960 You've described as inner knowing, which I think when I 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:45.280 hear you talk about it, it feels so relevant and 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:48.200 real to me as I look back on my life, 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.960 and you know, part of it, as you share, is 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:55.720 was your physical appearance almost this whisper of your heart. Right, 0:15:55.880 --> 0:16:02.040 something's off and that subconscious knowing, and you've described with 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:06.000 the discovery that your father was not your biological father, 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.320 that it was almost as if the puzzle piece it 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:12.440 all came into focus, all that little subconju the whisper 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:17.000 of the heart and the mind. So yeah, I'm deeply 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.760 curious about that and what your heart was saying to 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:21.360 your mind. 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:28.360 I think that's that's where that disconnect that didn't enable 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:35.560 me to really come to know myself when I was younger. 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:41.240 I think that that's where it resided, because there was 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:45.640 this feeling that I didn't belong and I didn't know. 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:47.440 Why in the world would I feel that way? Why 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:48.920 would I feel that way? I mean, I was the 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:52.960 ultimate insider in terms of, you know, the Jewish world. 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:55.640 My family had a lot of prestige in that world. 0:16:55.680 --> 0:17:00.240 My ancestors on my dad's side were just storied, legendary people. Well, 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:02.400 why in the world would I feel like I didn't belong? 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:05.440 Why would I go to a wedding or a bar 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:08.560 mitzvah in my family and feel that I did not belong? 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:13.439 Why were people constantly commenting in some sort of what 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:17.480 was meant to be flattering way about my not looking Jewish, 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:19.200 my not looking like where I come from. I mean, 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:23.400 underneath that, I must have been hearing you're not one 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:26.000 of us. What would happen is I would double down. 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:28.439 Anytime somebody would say something like that to me, I 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:32.080 would nicely bite back and I would say, oh, yeah, no, 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:35.399 raised Orthodox, you know, went to a yeshiva, a Jewish 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:38.400 day school, you know, kept a kosher home, never tasted 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:41.400 bacon until I was a senior in high school. Had 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:44.840 two sinks and two dishwashers. I mean really seriously kosher home, 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:47.679 fluent in Hebrew. I would say all these things, like 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:50.879 list them like a litany, which was my way of 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.480 saying stop it, you know, stop it. Stop saying that. 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:58.680 And after my discovery about my dad, a couple of 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:03.440 years later, I was at a dinner, a big awards 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:06.439 dinner that was honoring a friend of mine, and it 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:09.719 was in the Jewish world. It was like sponsored by 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.119 one of the Jewish newspapers, and I was there to 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:16.159 you know, congratulate and cheer on my friend. My husband 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:17.880 and I got there. It was a you know, fancy 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.240 cocktail party attire, and it was in one of those 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:22.760 old New York City hotels that has kind of cloudy 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:27.120 glass behind the bar and like sort of modeled glass mirror. 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:30.000 And I went over to the bar to get a drink, 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:33.760 and I caught a glimpse of myself, you know, unexpectedly, 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:35.800 and I was wearing a little black dress and had 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.159 long blonde hair, and I looked the way I looked, 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:44.840 and all of a sudden, I thought, oh, that this 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:48.520 is what they were seeing. I mean, in this room, 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:53.679 everyone would assume that I'm the wife of a Jewish 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:56.720 man who's here, or they would have a story. It 0:18:56.880 --> 0:18:58.400 was plain as day. 0:18:59.600 --> 0:18:59.960 But I. 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:04.520 Didn't see it, couldn't see it. It was too dangerous 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:07.480 to see it. We believe what our parents tell us. 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:10.040 We believe the stories that were told about ourselves from 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:13.320 the time that were tiny, and those become our identities. 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:18.240 And that was my identity, you know, when Inheritance came out, 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.200 you know, which is the books that I wrote about 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.760 this discovery and the secret. One of the first comments 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.760 I saw was on my Facebook page, and it was 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:31.439 from the wife of my seventh grade English teacher who 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:32.960 I was friends with. Them. They were like one of 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:36.760 those young, cool, young English teacher couples in high school. 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:38.960 And I was always looking for my mentors. I was 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:42.000 always looking for like somebody to take me in like 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:44.160 a stray dog and just you know, make me part 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:47.080 of their family. And this couple, Peter and Nancy Cowan, 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:48.879 they were like that for me. And Nancy wrote on 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:54.080 my Facebook page hashtag always wondered, you know, only child, 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.760 older parents, physically so different from what I was supposed 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:00.520 to look like and what my ethnicy he was supposed 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:03.320 to be, so hashtag always wondered. So there was a 0:20:03.359 --> 0:20:07.639 part of me that was working, over time, always to 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:11.840 try to figure out to belong. Yeah, I think there 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:17.560 was a kind of profound anxiety that I couldn't recognize 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:20.320 or label. I mean, I was well into my twenties 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:24.400 before I even could define the word anxiety. But it 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.640 ruled me, and it shaped that feeling of not belonging, 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:33.040 not fitting in, not adding up being other. When that's 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:35.760 the case and we can't supply a reason for it, 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:38.840 then we turn it against ourselves. And that was the 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.119 story of you know, I would call those sort of 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:44.639 almost lost decades of my life. I mean, from the 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:49.840 time that I was a child, through my adolescence and 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:55.480 into my early twenties and culminated with a thunderclap and 0:20:56.040 --> 0:21:00.840 ended for all intents and purposes when my parents were 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:03.960 in their car crash and my dad died, and it 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:10.040 was a shock to my system that actually rebooted my system, 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:14.840 you know, sort of reshaped my system, and was the 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:20.080 very very beginning of my figuring out who I had 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:22.679 always been but had never allowed myself to be. 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:26.760 Well, Yeah, and I the deep wounds and the reconciliation 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:32.760 of your identity of belonging with the discovery that your 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:39.840 father was not your biological father, It makes so so 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:43.159 much sense, How much when you can textualize it with 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:48.439 the decades before and the knowing, It just really to 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:54.720 me just almost highlights how powerful and layered the wave 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:59.040 of emotions must have been with the discovery. And you know, 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:04.040 there's something that in the wake of that discovery about 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:08.960 your family and your identity. You talk about you had 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:11.280 a flight the next day that you're on the plane 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:14.159 and you're sort of looking around and people are eating 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:20.040 pretzels and peanuts and going about their business, and in 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:25.080 your body, you were in crisis, almost looking around, How 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:28.679 is how is everyone just going about their business. I 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:32.040 had lunch with my mother in law days after her 0:22:32.119 --> 0:22:35.760 husband died, and I remember her having that experience. She 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:38.800 turned to me and she said, it's just so bizarre. 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:42.760 You know, people were going about having and meanwhile she 0:22:42.920 --> 0:22:48.199 is sitting there experienced this wave of disbelief and grief 0:22:48.280 --> 0:22:51.159 and heartbreak that is unbearable in the world is just 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:54.439 moving by. So that scene was really powerful for me. 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:56.680 But what you spoke to, which I think is really 0:22:56.720 --> 0:23:01.720 important to this community, is that the specific discovery about 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:07.560 your father was unrelatable and unrecognizable to people. Whereas the 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:10.160 death of your father, the car crash, some of these 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:12.800 other moments you've had in life. When Jacob was sick 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:18.280 are immediately there's the sense of empathy and understanding. But 0:23:18.440 --> 0:23:24.080 this certain piece discovery that was heartbreaking to you was 0:23:24.280 --> 0:23:29.359 harder for people to grasp, to empathize with, to identify 0:23:29.520 --> 0:23:33.359 or understand. And you know, for a podcast that is 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:37.560 about secrets of all shapes and forms, and you know, 0:23:37.920 --> 0:23:40.320 the nuance of what a secret can be. I just 0:23:40.359 --> 0:23:45.040 thought it would be great to hear what was helpful 0:23:45.040 --> 0:23:48.760 and what was not, so as we moved through the 0:23:48.800 --> 0:23:51.840 world and people share their secrets, we can show up 0:23:52.359 --> 0:23:53.240 better for them. 0:23:53.480 --> 0:23:54.080 I love that. 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:57.000 Yeah, I mean, there's so much I've learned along the 0:23:57.040 --> 0:23:59.760 way in this regard that feeling of you know, happen 0:23:59.800 --> 0:24:02.320 to be your peanuts And watching the in Flight movie, 0:24:03.240 --> 0:24:05.080 the thought that went through my mind is that is 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:08.359 the experience of grief, of immediate grief is you know, 0:24:08.359 --> 0:24:11.440 how can the world still be turning? And there are 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:15.680 so many ways in which I think we as human beings, 0:24:16.600 --> 0:24:20.280 we want to make it better for someone who's going 0:24:20.320 --> 0:24:26.119 through something, and if it makes us uncomfortable, we tend 0:24:26.160 --> 0:24:30.000 to fall prey to platitudes. I mean, we do that 0:24:30.080 --> 0:24:33.240 even with things that are relatable, like grief, like the 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:35.800 loss of somebody like you know, death, will you know 0:24:35.840 --> 0:24:38.240 say things like you know she's in a better place, 0:24:38.520 --> 0:24:44.840 or we tend to often say something that's easy, that 0:24:44.880 --> 0:24:48.280