Speaker 1: Well, here's something special I promised you all a while
Speaker 1: back in our final bonus episode before the eighth season
Speaker 1: of Family Secrets launches in just a few weeks. The
Speaker 1: tables are turned, and today I'm the guest. The wonderful
Speaker 1: Kimmy Cope, writer, motivational speaker, former OPRAH producer and host
Speaker 1: of the podcast All the Wiser is sitting in my
Speaker 1: seat today and asking all the questions about my family Secrets.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy our conversation. I'm Danny Shapiro and
Speaker 1: this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
Speaker 1: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2: Hello Danny, Welcome to Family Secrets.
Speaker 3: Hi Kimmy, It's nice to be on Family Secrets.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, familiar territory for you. My intention for this
Speaker 2: conversation is really for this beautiful community you have built,
Speaker 2: your listening audience to know you a little deeper and yeah,
Speaker 2: hopefully find some pieces of themselves in stories that perhaps
Speaker 2: will here for the first time. And the origin story
Speaker 2: of Family Secrets in this podcast was you as a secret.
Speaker 2: And I know so many of your listeners are familiar,
Speaker 2: but for anyone who's listening and does not know that
Speaker 2: story of the life changing secret that you learned in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, can you briefly share?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely so.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, my husband Michael was sending away for
Speaker 1: a DNA test, a home DNA test, and he asked
Speaker 1: me if I wanted to do it too, and I just,
Speaker 1: on a whim, said sure. It wasn't out of any
Speaker 1: real curiosity or you know, I could easily have said no,
Speaker 1: because I thought I knew everything that there was to
Speaker 1: know about my family and its ancestry and my origins,
Speaker 1: my ancestors.
Speaker 3: But I went ahead and did it.
Speaker 1: And when the results came back, I actually didn't even
Speaker 1: remember that I had done it, That's how insignificant it
Speaker 1: was to me. The results revealed to me that my
Speaker 1: dad hadn't been my biological father, the dad who raised me,
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 3: Learned a lot.
Speaker 1: I uncovered a great deal about secrets that my parents
Speaker 1: kept all their lives that I feel certain they intended
Speaker 1: to take to the grave with them, which they did
Speaker 1: after a lifetime of writing a bad secrets, or writing
Speaker 1: novels and memoirs of bad secrets, and always also feeling
Speaker 1: like something didn't totally add up, just something I felt
Speaker 1: slightly adjacent to myself. Somehow it all suddenly became.
Speaker 2: Clear, and you described, you know, growing up having this
Speaker 2: really easy love for your father and just this deep adoration,
Speaker 2: where your mother was more distant at times, it was
Speaker 2: much more contentious. And you had even pondered that question,
Speaker 2: you know, is she my mom? Does she feel like
Speaker 2: my mom? I'm curious sort of, you know, you've described
Speaker 2: a sense of loneliness as a kid, wandering around the neighborhood,
Speaker 2: peering in windows, looking at families, large families with siblings,
Speaker 2: and so I know you were an only child, and
Speaker 2: I'm curious about Danny in the outer world versus your
Speaker 2: inner world and what that was like during that time.
Speaker 1: So Danny in the outer world apparently looked like she belonged.
Speaker 1: People who I've enco it over the years, who knew
Speaker 1: me when I was a kid, are really shocked to
Speaker 1: learn how out of step I felt. And you know
Speaker 1: that I didn't feel that I belonged. You know, people
Speaker 1: I went to middle school with, people I went to
Speaker 1: high school with, all really professed shock about that, because
Speaker 1: I guess I had a kind of contained nature and
Speaker 1: I sort of looked to the part, but I felt
Speaker 1: really like a creature visiting from outer space. A lot
Speaker 1: of the time, I didn't feel like people really knew me,
Speaker 1: or that I really knew myself in many ways, and
Speaker 1: the environment of my home was so awkward and uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: One of the things I've really learned on you know,
Speaker 1: hosting this podcast is that what we experience as children,
Speaker 1: whatever the environment is of our home, we just think
Speaker 1: that that's the way it is, and that's normal, and
Speaker 1: maybe that's the way everybody lives. At a certain point,
Speaker 1: when I was probably in high school, I started realizing
Speaker 1: that that wasn't the case, and that the atmosphere in
Speaker 1: our home was markedly different from you know, my friends
Speaker 1: whose homes I would visit. It felt to me, and
Speaker 1: I think this has to do with my own extreme sensitivity,
Speaker 1: you know, just too behavior and tone and actions of others.
Speaker 1: It felt to me like it was a tinder box.
Speaker 1: It felt like it was always ready to just sort
Speaker 1: of explode. My parents were miserable with each other, and
Speaker 1: there was something in the way that each of them
Speaker 1: was with me, very different in the way that they
Speaker 1: treated me, But there was something that just didn't feel
Speaker 1: easy or comfortable.
Speaker 2: You know, as we have this conversation, I've thought a
Speaker 2: lot about how your present work, this podcast included is
Speaker 2: deeply informed by your past. I think all of our
Speaker 2: work is. But I also from hearing you and how
Speaker 2: you talk about your son Jacob and your husband Michael,
Speaker 2: the deep love and connection that I hear in the
Speaker 2: family you've created. You know, I think so often in
Speaker 2: generational stories, we either repeat, or for lack of a
Speaker 2: better language, we write the wrong and create something very different.
Speaker 2: And that appears to me that you very much created that.
Speaker 1: It certainly feels to me like the greatest achievement of
Speaker 1: my life that I didn't repeat and that I did
Speaker 1: create something different. And I do think that probably from
Speaker 1: the time that I was a teenager, I was forming
Speaker 1: myself in counter identification to my mom. I understood that
Speaker 1: she was somebody who very often put people off, chronically
Speaker 1: felt misunderstood, was very angry a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: this kind of just simmering, low level, ready to be
Speaker 1: dissed at the slightest notice. You know, the world had
Speaker 1: something against her in her mind, and she sort of
Speaker 1: built the life that she saw in a way like
Speaker 1: she felt that way about the world, and so the
Speaker 1: world reflected that back at her. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to throw her under the bus. I have
Speaker 1: a lot more understanding of her now than I did
Speaker 1: when I was younger. But as a mother, she wanted
Speaker 1: me to be a certain way, and if I didn't
Speaker 1: conform to the way that she wanted me to be,
Speaker 1: which was essentially a reflection of her, then there was
Speaker 1: trouble if I couldn't do that.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure and then for you it then said
Speaker 2: not enough and not enough for her right.
Speaker 1: And something that's occurred to me recently, I've been thinking
Speaker 1: a lot about my father. The anniversary of his death
Speaker 1: was just last week, and always a time where he's
Speaker 1: very much on my mind. And because of his religiosity,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was really the defining characteristic of my
Speaker 1: father was that he was an Orthodox Jew. It's how
Speaker 1: he would have defined himself, I think, before any other
Speaker 1: way of defining himself. It was the landscape that he
Speaker 1: was brought up in, and you know, there were generations
Speaker 1: preceding him, you know, where that was the way they lived.
Speaker 1: And in order to please my father, I think my
Speaker 1: father would have loved me no matter what because he
Speaker 1: knew how to love, which was something that I think
Speaker 1: saved me in a lot of ways. But in terms
Speaker 1: of his approval, I had a really hard time being
Speaker 1: a good little Orthodox Jewish girl. If you had asked me,
Speaker 1: I think even when I was like a child, whether
Speaker 1: I thought that I would grow up and marry an
Speaker 1: Orthodox man and you know, have a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: Orthodox children and live that life, I think I would
Speaker 1: have known from a very early age that that wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be my path. And that was really problematic
Speaker 1: between my father and me, because that was the most
Speaker 1: important thing to him. So in a way I was
Speaker 1: sort of squeezed between both of my parents and failing
Speaker 1: them each with my mother because I was unable to
Speaker 1: be her perfect mirror, and with my father because I
Speaker 1: just wasn't that Orthodox Jewish girl.
Speaker 2: That makes so much sense to me. And yeah, this
Speaker 2: idea of just the radical acceptance for you exactly as
Speaker 2: who you are and who you came into this world.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned being the anniversary of your father's death,
Speaker 2: and you know, as I research and as I told you,
Speaker 2: it's been such a joy and privilege to learn about
Speaker 2: you through your work. I see these sort of tempole
Speaker 2: moments in your life, and some of them are of
Speaker 2: deep suffering and trauma, and certainly the loss of your father.
Speaker 2: Your parents were in a car crash that killed your dad,
Speaker 2: and your mom survived. So for what you're comfortable sharing,
Speaker 2: what do you remember about that period, about that day
Speaker 2: and sort of how it shaped you.
Speaker 1: That day I've described in my writing as the moment
Speaker 1: that divided my life into before and after. And when
Speaker 1: I wrote those words, I was probably in my thirties
Speaker 1: and I was writing about my twenties. I was writing about,
Speaker 1: you know, February nineteen eighty six, and I was young
Speaker 1: enough to not understand that lives contain more than one
Speaker 1: of these before and after moments if we live long enough.
Speaker 1: But for me, that was the first, and a huge one.
Speaker 1: I just want to preface what I'm about to say
Speaker 1: with I've been very aware lately that I recently had
Speaker 1: a big birthday and I turned sixty, which is still
Speaker 1: a complete shock to me. It was, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a big milestone birthday, and I entered the decade
Speaker 1: that my father died in. He was sixty four years
Speaker 1: old when he died, and My mother was sixty two
Speaker 1: when she was widowed, and my son is twenty three,
Speaker 1: which is the age I was when all of this happened,
Speaker 1: and I suddenly realized all of that recently that.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, of all the ages and the pieces and.
Speaker 1: Exactly like the perfect storm of that. And on family
Speaker 1: secrets it comes up often the whole idea of anniversaries
Speaker 1: and the anniversary of a loss through the anniversary of
Speaker 1: a shock. And you know, it's easy, I think to
Speaker 1: dismiss what that is, but the body remembers always, you know.
Speaker 1: So I might not remember on February twenty third of
Speaker 1: any given year that it's February twenty third, but my
Speaker 1: body remembers. I mean, I'll be out of sorts all
Speaker 1: day and then suddenly I'll realize what the date is
Speaker 1: and understand, you know, or I'll remember what the weather
Speaker 1: was like on that particular February day. So the main
Speaker 1: thing about that day and that time is that I
Speaker 1: was such a mess in my life. And also looking
Speaker 1: at my twenty three year old son now and seeing
Speaker 1: that he is not a mess, you know that he
Speaker 1: knows who he is, and he has courage of his
Speaker 1: own convictions and he's his own person. I wasn't that yet.
Speaker 1: I was really kind of unformed.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: When I started teaching university, when I was around twenty
Speaker 1: nine or thirty years old, I remember looking around the
Speaker 1: workshop table I was teaching at Columbia University, and I
Speaker 1: looked around the table at these young women, these young
Speaker 1: Barnard and Columbia women, and I could identify. It was
Speaker 1: like this little game I played in my head, you know,
Speaker 1: the ones who never have let themselves get into so
Speaker 1: much trouble or never would have sort of like followed
Speaker 1: the path that I followed, and then the ones who
Speaker 1: would I could feel and see and pick them out,
Speaker 1: you know, and tried to mentor the ones I thought
Speaker 1: I could help.
Speaker 3: But I had dropped out of college.
Speaker 1: I was modeling and acting and doing TV commercials, or
Speaker 1: at least that's what I told myself I was doing.
Speaker 1: I did that for a while, but I was terrible
Speaker 1: at it.
Speaker 2: If I was going to cast you for anything in life,
Speaker 2: knowing your deep soul and commercials, I love that.
Speaker 1: Commercials like you know, for Coca Cola, you know, for
Speaker 1: York peppermint patties. I actually had to like jump up
Speaker 1: and down on a beach and say California loved New
Speaker 1: York with more chocolate. I mean, I was terrible and
Speaker 1: uncomfortable in my own skin and awkward. But because again
Speaker 1: going back to sort of mirroring my mother, a big
Speaker 1: part of the fuss that was made over me when
Speaker 1: I was growing up was the way that I looked
Speaker 1: and that I was a pretty little girl and I
Speaker 1: was a pretty teenager, and I kind of just went
Speaker 1: with that. I thought, well, I guess that's what I
Speaker 1: have to offer. I don't want to sound like I'm
Speaker 1: blaming anybody, because I'm not. Like I had a lot
Speaker 1: of longing for other things, but I didn't know.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe that's the disconnect I just felt, because I
Speaker 2: know you right for your brilliant mind, and so much
Speaker 2: of that work is on the physical appearance, especially when
Speaker 2: you're young and youthful, and yeah, that's so interesting. You know,
Speaker 2: this expectation that you were beautiful and that people identified
Speaker 2: you with that, and it's perhaps there was some unconscious
Speaker 2: expectation around that to do something with that physical beauty.
Speaker 1: Mm hm. Well, and that was complicated by the fact
Speaker 1: that that focus on my looks had a lot to
Speaker 1: do with my not looking to Iwish quote unquote, you
Speaker 1: know that that's what people were constantly, constantly saying, And
Speaker 1: so really what they were saying was that I didn't
Speaker 1: look like who I thought I was, or like my
Speaker 1: physical appearance was some sort of crazy, weird gift, like
Speaker 1: some sort of nutty fluke, that I looked the way
Speaker 1: that I looked, and I didn't look like my family,
Speaker 1: and instead I was, you know, very fair and had
Speaker 1: blue eyes and features. It just didn't look like, you know,
Speaker 1: anybody that I was surrounded by. So I think somewhere
Speaker 1: within that there was this hard kernel of confusion.
Speaker 2: You've described as inner knowing, which I think when I
Speaker 2: hear you talk about it, it feels so relevant and
Speaker 2: real to me as I look back on my life,
Speaker 2: and you know, part of it, as you share, is
Speaker 2: was your physical appearance almost this whisper of your heart. Right,
Speaker 2: something's off and that subconscious knowing, and you've described with
Speaker 2: the discovery that your father was not your biological father,
Speaker 2: that it was almost as if the puzzle piece it
Speaker 2: all came into focus, all that little subconju the whisper
Speaker 2: of the heart and the mind. So yeah, I'm deeply
Speaker 2: curious about that and what your heart was saying to
Speaker 2: your mind.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's where that disconnect that didn't enable
Speaker 1: me to really come to know myself when I was younger.
Speaker 1: I think that that's where it resided, because there was
Speaker 1: this feeling that I didn't belong and I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Why in the world would I feel that way? Why
Speaker 1: would I feel that way? I mean, I was the
Speaker 1: ultimate insider in terms of, you know, the Jewish world.
Speaker 1: My family had a lot of prestige in that world.
Speaker 1: My ancestors on my dad's side were just storied, legendary people. Well,
Speaker 1: why in the world would I feel like I didn't belong?
Speaker 1: Why would I go to a wedding or a bar
Speaker 1: mitzvah in my family and feel that I did not belong?
Speaker 1: Why were people constantly commenting in some sort of what
Speaker 1: was meant to be flattering way about my not looking Jewish,
Speaker 1: my not looking like where I come from. I mean,
Speaker 1: underneath that, I must have been hearing you're not one
Speaker 1: of us. What would happen is I would double down.
Speaker 1: Anytime somebody would say something like that to me, I
Speaker 1: would nicely bite back and I would say, oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: raised Orthodox, you know, went to a yeshiva, a Jewish
Speaker 1: day school, you know, kept a kosher home, never tasted
Speaker 1: bacon until I was a senior in high school. Had
Speaker 1: two sinks and two dishwashers. I mean really seriously kosher home,
Speaker 1: fluent in Hebrew. I would say all these things, like
Speaker 1: list them like a litany, which was my way of
Speaker 1: saying stop it, you know, stop it. Stop saying that.
Speaker 1: And after my discovery about my dad, a couple of
Speaker 1: years later, I was at a dinner, a big awards
Speaker 1: dinner that was honoring a friend of mine, and it
Speaker 1: was in the Jewish world. It was like sponsored by
Speaker 1: one of the Jewish newspapers, and I was there to
Speaker 1: you know, congratulate and cheer on my friend. My husband
Speaker 1: and I got there. It was a you know, fancy
Speaker 1: cocktail party attire, and it was in one of those
Speaker 1: old New York City hotels that has kind of cloudy
Speaker 1: glass behind the bar and like sort of modeled glass mirror.
Speaker 1: And I went over to the bar to get a drink,
Speaker 1: and I caught a glimpse of myself, you know, unexpectedly,
Speaker 1: and I was wearing a little black dress and had
Speaker 1: long blonde hair, and I looked the way I looked,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I thought, oh, that this
Speaker 1: is what they were seeing. I mean, in this room,
Speaker 1: everyone would assume that I'm the wife of a Jewish
Speaker 1: man who's here, or they would have a story. It
Speaker 1: was plain as day.
Speaker 2: But I.
Speaker 1: Didn't see it, couldn't see it. It was too dangerous
Speaker 1: to see it. We believe what our parents tell us.
Speaker 1: We believe the stories that were told about ourselves from
Speaker 1: the time that were tiny, and those become our identities.
Speaker 1: And that was my identity, you know, when Inheritance came out,
Speaker 1: you know, which is the books that I wrote about
Speaker 1: this discovery and the secret. One of the first comments
Speaker 1: I saw was on my Facebook page, and it was
Speaker 1: from the wife of my seventh grade English teacher who
Speaker 1: I was friends with. Them. They were like one of
Speaker 1: those young, cool, young English teacher couples in high school.
Speaker 1: And I was always looking for my mentors. I was
Speaker 1: always looking for like somebody to take me in like
Speaker 1: a stray dog and just you know, make me part
Speaker 1: of their family. And this couple, Peter and Nancy Cowan,
Speaker 1: they were like that for me. And Nancy wrote on
Speaker 1: my Facebook page hashtag always wondered, you know, only child,
Speaker 1: older parents, physically so different from what I was supposed
Speaker 1: to look like and what my ethnicy he was supposed
Speaker 1: to be, so hashtag always wondered. So there was a
Speaker 1: part of me that was working, over time, always to
Speaker 1: try to figure out to belong. Yeah, I think there
Speaker 1: was a kind of profound anxiety that I couldn't recognize
Speaker 1: or label. I mean, I was well into my twenties
Speaker 1: before I even could define the word anxiety. But it
Speaker 1: ruled me, and it shaped that feeling of not belonging,
Speaker 1: not fitting in, not adding up being other. When that's
Speaker 1: the case and we can't supply a reason for it,
Speaker 1: then we turn it against ourselves. And that was the
Speaker 1: story of you know, I would call those sort of
Speaker 1: almost lost decades of my life. I mean, from the
Speaker 1: time that I was a child, through my adolescence and
Speaker 1: into my early twenties and culminated with a thunderclap and
Speaker 1: ended for all intents and purposes when my parents were
Speaker 1: in their car crash and my dad died, and it
Speaker 1: was a shock to my system that actually rebooted my system,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of reshaped my system, and was the
Speaker 1: very very beginning of my figuring out who I had
Speaker 1: always been but had never allowed myself to be.
Speaker 2: Well, Yeah, and I the deep wounds and the reconciliation
Speaker 2: of your identity of belonging with the discovery that your
Speaker 2: father was not your biological father, It makes so so
Speaker 2: much sense, How much when you can textualize it with
Speaker 2: the decades before and the knowing, It just really to
Speaker 2: me just almost highlights how powerful and layered the wave
Speaker 2: of emotions must have been with the discovery. And you know,
Speaker 2: there's something that in the wake of that discovery about
Speaker 2: your family and your identity. You talk about you had
Speaker 2: a flight the next day that you're on the plane
Speaker 2: and you're sort of looking around and people are eating
Speaker 2: pretzels and peanuts and going about their business, and in
Speaker 2: your body, you were in crisis, almost looking around, How
Speaker 2: is how is everyone just going about their business. I
Speaker 2: had lunch with my mother in law days after her
Speaker 2: husband died, and I remember her having that experience. She
Speaker 2: turned to me and she said, it's just so bizarre.
Speaker 2: You know, people were going about having and meanwhile she
Speaker 2: is sitting there experienced this wave of disbelief and grief
Speaker 2: and heartbreak that is unbearable in the world is just
Speaker 2: moving by. So that scene was really powerful for me.
Speaker 2: But what you spoke to, which I think is really
Speaker 2: important to this community, is that the specific discovery about
Speaker 2: your father was unrelatable and unrecognizable to people. Whereas the
Speaker 2: death of your father, the car crash, some of these
Speaker 2: other moments you've had in life. When Jacob was sick
Speaker 2: are immediately there's the sense of empathy and understanding. But
Speaker 2: this certain piece discovery that was heartbreaking to you was
Speaker 2: harder for people to grasp, to empathize with, to identify
Speaker 2: or understand. And you know, for a podcast that is
Speaker 2: about secrets of all shapes and forms, and you know,
Speaker 2: the nuance of what a secret can be. I just
Speaker 2: thought it would be great to hear what was helpful
Speaker 2: and what was not, so as we moved through the
Speaker 2: world and people share their secrets, we can show up
Speaker 2: better for them.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's so much I've learned along the
Speaker 1: way in this regard that feeling of you know, happen
Speaker 1: to be your peanuts And watching the in Flight movie,
Speaker 1: the thought that went through my mind is that is
Speaker 1: the experience of grief, of immediate grief is you know,
Speaker 1: how can the world still be turning? And there are
Speaker 1: so many ways in which I think we as human beings,
Speaker 1: we want to make it better for someone who's going
Speaker 1: through something, and if it makes us uncomfortable, we tend
Speaker 1: to fall prey to platitudes. I mean, we do that
Speaker 1: even with things that are relatable, like grief, like the
Speaker 1: loss of somebody like you know, death, will you know
Speaker 1: say things like you know she's in a better place,
Speaker 1: or we tend to often say something that's easy, that
Speaker 1: doesn't cost us very much, just to actually deal with
Speaker 1: our own discomfort that somebody else is suffering. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that happened with my discovery and
Speaker 1: I thought about it even really early on too, because
Speaker 1: I know, I knew that I was going to write
Speaker 1: about it. I was aware that it was not instantly relatable,
Speaker 1: as you say, to feel sympathy or compassion for somebody
Speaker 1: who's lost someone very close to them is not a stretch.
Speaker 1: But this felt and I realized very quickly because I
Speaker 1: started almost immediately, I sprang into action, which is it
Speaker 1: tends to be my way when something's really hard, is
Speaker 1: I kind of go into fix it mode or research mode,
Speaker 1: or what can I do. And in that case, as
Speaker 1: we were moving through airports, and because of where we live,
Speaker 1: we had to make connecting flights, so you know, there
Speaker 1: were planes, there were airports, there were terminals, there was Starbucks,
Speaker 1: there was you know, there are hours to sort of
Speaker 1: observe people and also to talk to people. And I
Speaker 1: remember calling one of my aunts, my mother's older brother's wife,
Speaker 1: and I was calling them because I was trying to
Speaker 1: figure out whether anybody had ever known anything, you know,
Speaker 1: had my parents told anyone? How big a secret was this?
Speaker 1: Was this a secret that everybody was keeping and I
Speaker 1: was the only person who didn't know or did everybody
Speaker 1: not know? And did they not have that you know
Speaker 1: hashtag always wondered experience. And on the phone this happened
Speaker 1: as well with my mother's best friend, who I called,
Speaker 1: said you know, well, you know, whatever happened, Danny, your
Speaker 1: father still your father. And that was profoundly not helpful.
Speaker 1: I ultimately, over the course of years and a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of thought and work and questioning and living with
Speaker 1: it and metabolizing and processing, absolutely feel that my father
Speaker 1: is still my father. But on the day, you know,
Speaker 1: within twenty four hours of discovering that in fact he
Speaker 1: was not. In point of fact, there was somebody else
Speaker 1: out there in the world who was my biological father
Speaker 1: that was a total stranger to me, and I had
Speaker 1: no idea that that had been the case until that day.
Speaker 1: That's not a helpful thing to hear. It made me enraged.
Speaker 1: I felt just absolute rage at the don't try to
Speaker 1: fix this for me right now. I'm trying to understand
Speaker 1: everything that I can possibly come to understand.
Speaker 2: Well, what you say which is so powerful is this
Speaker 2: idea that we're sure about the past, or at least
Speaker 2: reasonably sure, and uncertain about the future, and that when
Speaker 2: you're past became completely uncertain, how disabling and wobbly, that
Speaker 2: nothingness almost on both sides, And again the reckoning and
Speaker 2: the knowing that in a whisper becoming real and proof.
Speaker 2: Then you're absolutely right. It's people's own discomfort with pain
Speaker 2: and suffering that we so often can't just sit with
Speaker 2: someone in it. But the idea of acceptance, you know,
Speaker 2: I see how hard this is. This is painful versus
Speaker 2: oh you're still you know, you're still part of the family,
Speaker 2: or everything worked out fine, right, This missive of that
Speaker 2: extraordinary grief and confusion and uncertainty and trauma that you
Speaker 2: were experiencing. It's minimizing something that was really significant.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I learned so much about human nature through that experience,
Speaker 1: and then through the writing of Inheritance and then the
Speaker 1: publishing of Inheritance, which meant that I was having many,
Speaker 1: many conversations with people, and you know, and everybody had
Speaker 1: different opinions, and the world really divided between people. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: most people who sat back and thought, huh, what would
Speaker 1: that be like? Let me see if I can imagine
Speaker 1: what it would be like to wake up one day
Speaker 1: and discover that everything that I had believed, my entire history,
Speaker 1: my memories, all need to be reordered now, and there's
Speaker 1: no one to ask about it. There's no one My
Speaker 1: parents were both gone. There was no one to sit
Speaker 1: down and say what happened? And why didn't you tell me?
Speaker 1: And how did you feel about it? And did it
Speaker 1: matter to you? And was this always hard or did
Speaker 1: you forget it ever happened, just you know, to have
Speaker 1: that conversation. I think that in writing Inheritance, which was
Speaker 1: the hardest books that I've ever written, I had to
Speaker 1: stay conscious as a writer about the universality. I had
Speaker 1: to constantly ask myself the question, what is universal about
Speaker 1: my experience? How can I invite the reader into my
Speaker 1: experience in a way that the reader's going to understand?
Speaker 1: And as a writer, and as somebody who had written
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of books prior, I was able to
Speaker 1: really focus on doing that as a writer.
Speaker 2: How painful was the dismissal When it was.
Speaker 3: This, Oh, it still happens.
Speaker 1: People will say something like, you know, what's the big deal?
Speaker 1: Or you know, they'll somehow turn the volume up on
Speaker 1: the privilege argument, which is like, look at everything that
Speaker 1: you have. You know, you got great genes, you know,
Speaker 1: you're so fortunate. Are you glad you're here? That sort
Speaker 1: of thing. I what I experienced that as is very
Speaker 1: wounding because what it boils down to is not being seen,
Speaker 1: not being seen, not being understood.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I always begin my Family Secrets episodes with asking my
Speaker 1: guests to tell me about the landscape of their childhood.
Speaker 1: That was the landscape of my childhood. My hair could
Speaker 1: have been on fire, and I could have been, you know,
Speaker 1: walking on my hands, and nobody would have noticed. And
Speaker 1: so I think when those moments come up or someone
Speaker 1: will say to me as happened recently, someone told me
Speaker 1: that they have a grown child who was conceived using
Speaker 1: a donor and that they have never told that child
Speaker 1: and asked me what I.
Speaker 3: Thought they should do. And it gets very tricky.
Speaker 1: For me because I almost feel like I'm having a
Speaker 1: conversation with my own mother when somebody says something like
Speaker 1: that to me. And I do have very strong opinions
Speaker 1: about the corrosive power of secrets. And look, I understand
Speaker 1: why my parents didn't tell me, and I am very
Speaker 1: happy to be here.
Speaker 3: I really love my life.
Speaker 1: And even when I didn't love my life and was
Speaker 1: feeling sort of like a just like an alien, as
Speaker 1: a result of this discovery, I would look at my son,
Speaker 1: who's just this magnificent person, and I would think, without
Speaker 1: any of this, you wouldn't be here. You change one
Speaker 1: single thing about any of this, you would not exist.
Speaker 1: So I'm very happy that everything happened exactly the way
Speaker 1: it happened. I understand that my parents couldn't tell me
Speaker 1: because no one in that generation did.
Speaker 3: No one.
Speaker 1: You know, we live in a culture and in a
Speaker 1: society that so badly wants to put everything into its
Speaker 1: basket and have everything like remain in its lane. And
Speaker 1: once that is the ground that you spring from. Once
Speaker 1: there is that wound, there always is that wound. Closure
Speaker 1: is a myth, healing is incomplete. There are always scars.
Speaker 1: When my son was little, we used to play this
Speaker 1: game Shoots and Ladders, and you know, you're kind of
Speaker 1: moving your little piece along on the on the board
Speaker 1: and then you know, you roll the dice and you
Speaker 1: you hit a certain square and it's a shoot, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you were on that square. Youre
Speaker 1: in the you were in the present, you were making
Speaker 1: progress on the path, and boom, you're back down to
Speaker 1: like where you began. And sometimes there's a ladder and
Speaker 1: you get to climb up. I feel like that's a
Speaker 1: metaphor for what we commonly, you know, and probably over
Speaker 1: use the term triggering, Like something will trigger that feeling,
Speaker 1: that very solitary, lonely, not being seen, not being understood feeling.
Speaker 1: And even though I'm sixty years old and even though
Speaker 1: I have this big, rich, wonderful life, I can be
Speaker 1: brought right back there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the intensity of it, because as you said,
Speaker 2: your body remembers, so it's so amplified because of that,
Speaker 2: the intensity and the amplification because of the history and
Speaker 2: the wiring of the story in your body.
Speaker 1: Right, and it remains as alive as it's ever been.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know Besil vander Kulk, who was a
Speaker 1: guest in a bonus episode of Family Secrets a while back.
Speaker 1: You know, the body keeps the score. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: one of the great titles of all time. I mean,
Speaker 1: the body does keep the score. And no amount of
Speaker 1: knowledge or intellectualizing.
Speaker 2: Or meditating or lemon juice at.
Speaker 1: All, meditation, lemon juice, yoga therapy, talk therapy, you know,
Speaker 1: cognitive behavioral therapy, e MDR. You know, it all helps,
Speaker 1: but it's never going to make it go away.
Speaker 3: And and that's okay.
Speaker 1: I really feel like to have that go away would
Speaker 1: actually be what would what would that even mean? It
Speaker 1: would be like I'd be like sort of amputating a
Speaker 1: part of myself that that lived, you know, that lived
Speaker 1: that story.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the work is the softening of it, right,
Speaker 2: not the eradication exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: I love that word soften and I think about it
Speaker 1: a lot and try to sort of model it in
Speaker 1: my life, that that feeling of yoga teacher friend of mine,
Speaker 1: Elena Brower, once said to me as I was getting
Speaker 1: ready to go on book tour, and I pulled my back,
Speaker 1: you know, like picking my suitcase off my bed. And
Speaker 1: I called her, because she travels all the time, and said,
Speaker 1: how do you do it? And she said, move softly
Speaker 1: through the world. And I constantly it's like a mantra.
Speaker 1: I think about that when I'm moving through the world,
Speaker 1: when I'm having an off day, just move softly, just
Speaker 1: you know, be gentle with yourself.
Speaker 3: We'll be right.
Speaker 2: Back in thinking about the discovery of you, you being
Speaker 2: the secret, as you have said, and eventually that you
Speaker 2: would meet your biological father, and that as a result,
Speaker 2: you would create a podcast called Family Secrets, which would
Speaker 2: reach millions of people around the world. And I can
Speaker 2: only imagine the ripple effect of the families and the
Speaker 2: conversations and the healing and that have occurred. And I
Speaker 2: couldn't not think deeply about for all of the realities
Speaker 2: of technology and the world, and the good and the bad,
Speaker 2: the intersection of technology and humanity and technology and human story,
Speaker 2: and particular arc that at this time and place, the
Speaker 2: identity would have never been exposed because the technology didn't
Speaker 2: exist to understand your genes in the way that we
Speaker 2: can now by simply your husband telling you in the kitchen, hey,
Speaker 2: spodness vile, that you meeting your biological father, and you
Speaker 2: paint in the book you peering into each other's world.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's really getting to know you through your
Speaker 2: writing and seeing pictures and almost I think this sense
Speaker 2: of safety and security and looking at that you and
Speaker 2: your the pictures and your words, that this is a
Speaker 2: safe person to meet in person and connect or at
Speaker 2: least that was my experience. And then you turn to
Speaker 2: podcasting and had this been twenty years ago, none of
Speaker 2: that would have existed or been available in a way
Speaker 2: that it is now and the reach that it is now.
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, and it would have been you know, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite quotes from sort of Buddhist literature has
Speaker 1: to do with dharma, and it's you know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to dharma or your life's calling, if you're off
Speaker 1: by a centimeter, you might as well be off by
Speaker 1: a mile. And if I had lived my whole life,
Speaker 1: especially given what I've done in my life and the
Speaker 1: excavating that I've done and the writing book after book
Speaker 1: about you know, family and identity and different kinds of
Speaker 1: you know, novels and memoirs that all really kind of
Speaker 1: dealt with secrets in one way or another. And if
Speaker 1: I had never known, I think there always would have
Speaker 1: been something that was off by a centimeter. It's what
Speaker 1: it felt like, even though I had reached a point
Speaker 1: in my life where I had a you know, tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of stability and love and family and work that
Speaker 1: I love and you know, felt and feel very blessed
Speaker 1: in that way, but that centimeter would have been there.
Speaker 1: And the thing about the podcast and also about publishing Inheritance,
Speaker 1: it is one of the things I realized. And this
Speaker 1: actually goes back to Besil vander Kolk again. In The
Speaker 1: Body Keeps the Score, he talks about trauma and the
Speaker 1: different ways that people recover from or have trouble recovering
Speaker 1: from traumatic events. Is that if it's a traumatic event
Speaker 1: that has trapped you, say, you know, something where you
Speaker 1: were powerless. You know, you're in a car watching someone
Speaker 1: you know and someone in another car not make it,
Speaker 1: or you know, a crash. You know, there are many
Speaker 1: examples that I don't want to trigger my listeners with,
Speaker 1: but you know, if you're in a state of powerlessness
Speaker 1: when you are traumatized, there tends to be a more difficult,
Speaker 1: challenging outcome in terms of dealing with that trauma as
Speaker 1: opposed to the kind of trauma that allows for a
Speaker 1: kind of agency. And when I was reading that, I
Speaker 1: was rereading The Body Keeps the Score before Bessel came
Speaker 1: on my show, and I thought, Oh, that's what I've done.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about this experience that has helped
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people and has actually had an impact.
Speaker 1: You know, parents have told their children when they never planned.
Speaker 2: On time, you wrote it the book you needed on
Speaker 2: the shelf at that very moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that a lot of other people
Speaker 1: did too, And I started hearing about that, and so
Speaker 1: there was this tremendousness of purpose to what had been
Speaker 1: extremely painful and hard and traumatic and shocking. And then
Speaker 1: Family Secrets, which has been like really one of the
Speaker 1: great gifts in my life. I started this podcast by accident.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what I was doing. I was
Speaker 1: on the phone with my friend Sylvia Borstein, who whose
Speaker 1: episode is in the first season of Family Secrets. She
Speaker 1: is an early reader of mine. She read a draft
Speaker 1: of Inheritance, and she proceeded to tell me a story
Speaker 1: about it family secret, and I just thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I wish everyone could hear this. This is a really moving,
Speaker 1: beautiful story, and she's an amazing storyteller. And the next
Speaker 1: thought that went through my mind as I was sitting
Speaker 1: on the phone was, Huh, I wonder if there's a
Speaker 1: podcast about family secrets. And there wasn't you know, there
Speaker 1: are times in our lives where the dominoes just all
Speaker 1: fall in a certain direction, you know, in a good
Speaker 1: way or in a not good way. That was in
Speaker 1: an extremely good way. And then there was this coincidence,
Speaker 1: which is that she was coming to visit me. She
Speaker 1: lives in the Bay Area. She was coming to New
Speaker 1: England to visit me in a few weeks. And so
Speaker 1: the podcast company that I was connected to said, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll send a sound engineer. Let's just give it a
Speaker 1: let's give it a whirl. Why don't you have a conversation.
Speaker 1: We'll see what we've got. And we did that, and
Speaker 1: then everybody got really excited. I never had a dream
Speaker 1: that it would be a huge successful podcast. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know what that meant when it hit the iTunes
Speaker 1: top ten the week it came out, I thought maybe
Speaker 1: all podcasts did that.
Speaker 3: I truly had.
Speaker 2: No idea, because we all have secrets, right, so I
Speaker 2: would think, because it's so deeply universal, and to focus
Speaker 2: in and zoom in on a beautiful, inspiring and uplifting
Speaker 2: aspect of your work and secrets, so often there is liberation,
Speaker 2: and certainly in your work and inheritance, you write a
Speaker 2: lot about the liberation in the sense it sort of
Speaker 2: created this blank page for you to be and explore
Speaker 2: who you want to be, including changing your name, a tattoo,
Speaker 2: all of these these things because you weren't as tethered
Speaker 2: to your story of origin or your generational story. And
Speaker 2: certainly we know obviously in this community that that secrets
Speaker 2: can be deeply freeing in a sense and healing, as
Speaker 2: difficult as the process is to move through them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, the knowledge is a kind of
Speaker 1: its own kind of superpower, no matter how hard it is,
Speaker 1: the knowledge, after a long time of being shoved under
Speaker 1: the rug, being in some way compartmentalized, because I really
Speaker 1: do think that most of the time the secret's being
Speaker 1: kept from us on some level, we do know that?
Speaker 1: And if we are the secret keeper, were haunted by
Speaker 1: the burden of carrying that secret, And then you know
Speaker 1: the secrets that we keep from ourselves, you know. That
Speaker 1: was the story of my life. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: having a secret keft from me, but I was also
Speaker 1: keeping a secret from myself because it was impossible and
Speaker 1: too dangerous to know. So I used to ask my
Speaker 1: guests in every episode, I would ask them in the interview,
Speaker 1: do you wish you hadn't found out? And not one
Speaker 1: single one of my guests said, yeah, I wish I
Speaker 1: hadn't found out.
Speaker 2: I kept a secret for twenty four years and I
Speaker 2: shared it on my podcast three years ago that I
Speaker 2: have bipolar disorder, and the amount of the weight, the
Speaker 2: shame and the secrecy and the work of covering it
Speaker 2: up I was. I mean, I would go on a
Speaker 2: girl's trip and leave my little makeup bag that had
Speaker 2: all my meds in it and leave it unzipped. And
Speaker 2: when I thought my hand would shake, that somebody had,
Speaker 2: you know, as if they would spend their time googling
Speaker 2: with all the medications. But that was my level of
Speaker 2: fear of being seen, of being known for who I
Speaker 2: really am, and the brain I was given in this world.
Speaker 2: And you know, on the outside, I was working for Oprah,
Speaker 2: I had three kids, happily married. Obviously my three kids
Speaker 2: and my love of my husband is very real, but
Speaker 2: there were pieces of my mental health that were really
Speaker 2: hard to manage, and so stepping out of that shame.
Speaker 2: I cannot tell you the freedom, the liberation, the healing
Speaker 2: and what I think about your work on this podcast,
Speaker 2: and it certainly was not my intention when I shared,
Speaker 2: but the message it sends generationally, I believe to my
Speaker 2: kids is that not that there's no place for it,
Speaker 2: but shame and secrecy will not win stepping into your truth.
Speaker 2: I just think, you know, my daughter even said to
Speaker 2: me she was talking about a friend talking about her
Speaker 2: mom's mental health, and she was curious, like, I'm confused
Speaker 2: why everyone keeps it a secret and you talk about
Speaker 2: it so openly. So I think the work that you
Speaker 2: are doing, the impact will live on as people share
Speaker 2: their secrets and heal from them and are move into
Speaker 2: this place of freedom, which I deeply sensed that you've experienced.
Speaker 2: And for me, it's been perhaps one of the greatest
Speaker 2: gifts I've given myself in my life. Was no longer
Speaker 2: keeping it a secret.
Speaker 1: I love hearing that, and it makes me think really
Speaker 1: like it's all of a piece, right, Because if you
Speaker 1: keep a secret like the one that you kept out
Speaker 1: of shame, out of fear that you won't be perfect,
Speaker 1: if you won't see you as the perfect shiny exterior
Speaker 1: with the amazing career and the amazing.
Speaker 2: Family acted, you'll be judge to see us rights.
Speaker 3: And that's not what happens.
Speaker 2: Is it. Oh, it is the opposite. People are drawn
Speaker 2: to you in a way that is unexplainable. I mean,
Speaker 2: within weeks of hitting published and you know, tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of people hearing the thing, I'd hit my whole life.
Speaker 2: I mean, people in the grocery store I would run
Speaker 2: into in town would lean in a little closer. I
Speaker 2: mean I thought people would run, and instead they were
Speaker 2: drawn in. It was fascinating.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit of what I was describing in
Speaker 1: terms of the superpower. There's something that feels there's like
Speaker 1: radiates a kind of humanity, humility, transparency that makes other
Speaker 1: people feel more comfortable with whatever their own stuff is,
Speaker 1: because everybody has stuff.
Speaker 2: Brene Brown says, you know, when in her work around vulnerability.
Speaker 2: You share it with the people who earn the right
Speaker 2: to try. And I always am careful to say not
Speaker 2: everyone has to shout it on a podcast or from
Speaker 2: the mountain. It may just be your family, your friend,
Speaker 2: you know. But but the liberation and having it no
Speaker 2: longer be a secret, moving it into the light is
Speaker 2: where the magic hap exactly. So I listened to your
Speaker 2: interview with Jamie Lee Curtis, and you talked about faith,
Speaker 2: and faith is a huge part of your story of
Speaker 2: your discovery and you being a secret because of your
Speaker 2: family's deep lineage and story of their faith, devout faith.
Speaker 2: So your book Devotion, you had said in the interview
Speaker 2: that that changed you the most, So I'm curious why
Speaker 2: and how did it change you.
Speaker 1: Devotion was a book that I really did not want
Speaker 1: to write. It wanted to be written. I think that's
Speaker 1: true with all of my books, but with Devotion. When
Speaker 1: I realized what I was embarking on, the title came
Speaker 1: to me first, and I realized that I wanted to grapple,
Speaker 1: or needed to grapple with my own history.
Speaker 3: You know, my son was very young.
Speaker 1: He was asking me questions about what I believed, and
Speaker 1: I realized I had absolutely nothing to say, because I
Speaker 1: had pushed back so hard word against that complicated childhood
Speaker 1: of my own that you know, I hadn't replaced it
Speaker 1: with anything. I had just rebelled against it. And so
Speaker 1: I was raising my son with no rituals. And you know,
Speaker 1: certainly I had a spiritual life, and I'm a longtime
Speaker 1: practicer of yoga, and I meditate every day. But there
Speaker 1: was something I felt like I was not fully doing
Speaker 1: for him as his mother that I wanted to be.
Speaker 1: And so I started writing this book and it came
Speaker 1: out in these little pieces, like little breadcrumbs through a forest.
Speaker 1: My mandate to myself was that I was trying to
Speaker 1: look at every single passage, every single scene or incident,
Speaker 1: as does this pose a spiritual question that I can
Speaker 1: grapple with?
Speaker 3: And if it does, it doesn't belong in this book.
Speaker 1: And along the way, as I was writing it, I thought,
Speaker 1: I am I really think I'm writing a book that
Speaker 1: no one will read. It's so deeply idiosyncratically me and
Speaker 1: I felt and feel a little bit like a unicorn.
Speaker 1: So unless you're a unicorn with the same exact unicorn
Speaker 1: properties as me, you're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: relate to this book. That's what I thought, And then
Speaker 1: devotion came out. And what started happening pretty much immediately
Speaker 1: was that I started hearing from people readers of every
Speaker 1: different stripe, of every different age, gender, you know, nationality, background,
Speaker 1: and they all said the same thing, which was, you've
Speaker 1: told my story. And that was what was life changing
Speaker 1: because it was the first time, and it happened many
Speaker 1: times since, but it was the first time that I
Speaker 1: understood just how alike we are all are on the inside,
Speaker 1: that we carry the same anxieties and fears and burdens
Speaker 1: and longings, and the content of them may be different,
Speaker 1: but the you know, the human experience is not as
Speaker 1: distinct or different from each other as as we think
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: And and what that did. I had been.
Speaker 1: Terrified of public speaking before that, couldn't stand getting up
Speaker 1: in front of crowds, which is not great. If you
Speaker 1: do what I do, you need to be able to
Speaker 1: do that. And it cured that for me. And the
Speaker 1: reason why it cured that for me was because I
Speaker 1: would look out into an audience and just think we
Speaker 1: are connected.
Speaker 3: There. There really isn't this, Yeah, yeah, this is safe.
Speaker 3: There isn't You're not sitting there.
Speaker 1: Judging me. You're sitting there ready to feel something. And
Speaker 1: I'm here wanting to offer you that, wanting to give
Speaker 1: you that. And so that's what I meant in that
Speaker 1: conversation with Jamie about the way it changed me. But
Speaker 1: it was really the beginning of that has been true
Speaker 1: now throughout these years, since twenty ten when that book
Speaker 1: came out, that feeling of if you really tell your story,
Speaker 1: and if you tell it true, then what the listener
Speaker 1: is going to hear is, oh, that's my story too.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: I found a piece of myself in Inheritance, And the
Speaker 2: interesting thing is it was such kind of subplot in
Speaker 2: your story, but it was these few sentences and I
Speaker 2: highlighted and it literally changed the way I view myself
Speaker 2: as a mother. It didn't change, it gave me language
Speaker 2: to it. And you were talking about meeting your biological
Speaker 2: half sister, and you said something along the lines of
Speaker 2: your illustrating kind of your immediate bond and some of
Speaker 2: the things you had in common. And you said serious
Speaker 2: about our work and fierce about our children. And I have,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, is somebody who has loved working, who
Speaker 2: has been really deeply passionate and ambitious in her work.
Speaker 2: I had this deep guilt because I live in a
Speaker 2: community where most moms are stay at home moms, that
Speaker 2: there was a choice I was making and I had
Speaker 2: to be one or the other. And you saying that
Speaker 2: it was okay to be serious about your work and
Speaker 2: fierce about your kids. I literally went on a walk
Speaker 2: that night and said, that is me. I'm both. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was unbelievable, Danny, But I think when you look
Speaker 2: out into that sea of people, they're looking for little
Speaker 2: pieces of themselves, their little answers or clarity, and it
Speaker 2: is something as little as a few sentences gave me
Speaker 2: such peace.
Speaker 3: Oh I love hearing that.
Speaker 1: And it's been my experience that either in teaching or
Speaker 1: speaking or writing, you never know exactly what's going to
Speaker 1: land or who is going to land with. And in
Speaker 1: a way, it's kind of none of your business as
Speaker 1: the writer. You said something too about like finding yourself
Speaker 1: in a description or in the language, and you know,
Speaker 1: I just want to say one thing because I feel
Speaker 1: like it might be helpful, which is that when it
Speaker 1: comes to the secrets that we keep from ourselves. I
Speaker 1: know no better tool, you know, I mean, listeners will
Speaker 1: know that so many of my guests on Family Secrets
Speaker 1: are writers.
Speaker 3: And that is not.
Speaker 1: Because if I wanted to create a literary podcast. It's
Speaker 1: not a literary podcast. It's a podcast about family secrets.
Speaker 1: But it's often writers because writers, and in this case,
Speaker 1: have written books. But the very act of setting words
Speaker 1: down on the page, the very act of just trying
Speaker 1: to write it out, the very act of attempting to
Speaker 1: write it out, actually unlocks things. I think, probably you know,
Speaker 1: in the in the top few gifts in my life,
Speaker 1: the fact that I became a writer, and that I
Speaker 1: got to spend my days and my months and my
Speaker 1: years actually following the line of words and not even
Speaker 1: knowing where the line of words was going to lead
Speaker 1: me has a lot to do with my having been
Speaker 1: able to unlock. Of course, I would never have unlocked
Speaker 1: it without a DNA test. But you know, when I
Speaker 1: look back at my early work, it's actually there on
Speaker 1: the page. You know, if I look at my first novel,
Speaker 1: it takes my breath away. On some level I knew.
Speaker 1: And if I look at my little book on writing
Speaker 1: still writing, there are lines in there, like there's there's
Speaker 1: there's a line in there where I'm snow being through
Speaker 1: my parents' things, and I write, what was I looking
Speaker 1: for a clue? A reason? And the word reason is italicized,
Speaker 1: and it's like, what I didn't I didn't know anything?
Speaker 1: What did I even mean by that when I wrote
Speaker 1: that book that I wrote years before the discovery about
Speaker 1: my dad? So there's something about the you know, the
Speaker 1: act of the act of writing, and the act of
Speaker 1: reading and sort of finding yourself, and the act of
Speaker 1: listening to podcasts and this sort of the intimacy of
Speaker 1: what that is of you're doing it by yourself. When
Speaker 1: you're listening to a podcast, you're listening to it by yourself.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing as as far as I know,
Speaker 1: as like podcast listening parties, you know, or podcast groups,
Speaker 1: like there are book groups. It's intimate and the act
Speaker 1: of reading. When you're reading a book, you're doing it
Speaker 1: by yourself. Nobody can do that for you. And when
Speaker 1: you're writing something, you're writing it by yourself and for yourself.
Speaker 1: So I think all of these things are ways in
Speaker 1: which things get unlocked.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you brought up the intimacy of podcasting,
Speaker 2: because I wanted to ask you about this community and
Speaker 2: what it's meant to you and how it's contributed to
Speaker 2: your healing. But what I've learned as a podcaster is
Speaker 2: I love the work of sharing, being a conduit and
Speaker 2: sharing other people's stories. And when you think of the
Speaker 2: intimacy of being in someone's ear on a walk as
Speaker 2: they fold their laundry as they drive to work, and
Speaker 2: having these really deeply intimate conversations, and the connection and
Speaker 2: the opportunity right in a world that's moving so fast,
Speaker 2: with so many distractions, to be able to connect that way.
Speaker 2: It's a really really powerful medium, and I think it
Speaker 2: is really impactful when done with intention, as you do
Speaker 2: on this And on that note, I'm really curious. You know,
Speaker 2: we've talked about a lot of tent pole moments in
Speaker 2: your life, but I know your husband, your great love,
Speaker 2: had cancer recently.
Speaker 1: Is he in remission, he's considered cured. It was three
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 2: Three years ago, so I know your husband had cancer.
Speaker 2: There was a global pandemic. As much as you're showing
Speaker 2: up for this podcast, you are dealing with a real
Speaker 2: life and difficulties and pain, and in creating this community
Speaker 2: and that connection and intimacy. What has this community meant
Speaker 2: to you? How has it changed you? And how has
Speaker 2: it healed you.
Speaker 1: When I'm doing one of these interviews for episodes, time
Speaker 1: stops for me. I go so deep inside story. I'm
Speaker 1: like my entire being is an instrument that is in
Speaker 1: the service of the story that my guest is sharing
Speaker 1: with me. And so the actual act of doing the
Speaker 1: interview itself feels like a sacred act to me, and
Speaker 1: it's it's very intentional. I don't use zoom. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of podcasters do, and I don't because it
Speaker 1: feels to me more intimate in each other's ears. I mean,
Speaker 1: like my eyes are closed right now as I'm talking
Speaker 1: to you. I want to be able to go as
Speaker 1: deep as I can into the story of my guest.
Speaker 1: And I feel honored that my guest trusts me with
Speaker 1: their story. And I think a big part of why
Speaker 1: they do is because I'm not approaching it as a journalist,
Speaker 1: and I'm not approaching it. You know, people who have
Speaker 1: never listened to the podcast think, ooh, family secrets. You know,
Speaker 1: like it must be a kind.
Speaker 2: Of sensational elation.
Speaker 1: Sensational salacious purient, you know, rubbernecking, watching other people's tragedies,
Speaker 1: you know, go by, and that is the very very
Speaker 1: last thing that I'm interested in. And so I'm with
Speaker 1: my guests very much, with the feeling of me too.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, you know, over the course
Speaker 1: of the seven thus far, it's about to be eight
Speaker 1: seasons of family Secrets, I've realized that I actually recede
Speaker 1: into the background more and more, and my guests stories
Speaker 1: become more and more. I mean, they've always been front
Speaker 1: and center, but I think in the beginning I would
Speaker 1: insert myself more, and I've done that less and less.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure there's vo but it's about the
Speaker 1: story itself, and that's been just really interesting for me
Speaker 1: to notice. I just feel like I'm so completely in
Speaker 1: the service of the stories, and the person who I
Speaker 1: most want to reach and to love the episode when
Speaker 1: it comes out is my guest. If I've done my job,
Speaker 1: my guest. You know, often somebody who's been interviewed many
Speaker 1: many times before will say I never thought that before,
Speaker 1: I never made that connection, I never said that, or
Speaker 1: I've never cried before while I'm being interviewed. Whatever, it
Speaker 1: is just a feeling of like, I want you to
Speaker 1: see your story in a new way. I want you
Speaker 1: to see your story maybe with a different dimension or
Speaker 1: a little bit more illuminated for you. Then before we
Speaker 1: had this conversation and then, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: amazing things to me about having a podcast that has
Speaker 1: millions of listeners is that it's kind of abstract. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that there are all these listeners, but as
Speaker 1: I said, like, I could be walking down the street
Speaker 1: and somebody could be walking up the street passing me
Speaker 1: with their AirPods in their ears, and they could be
Speaker 1: listening to me and I wouldn't know it.
Speaker 2: I've never thought about that, and so there's.
Speaker 1: There's no you know, if if you write a book,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody took a picture the other day of
Speaker 1: somebody on the subway reading my most recent novel, is like, okay,
Speaker 1: somebody's reading my novel on the subway. If they were
Speaker 1: listening to my podcast, there would be no picture and
Speaker 1: no one would know that. And so there have been
Speaker 1: these moments and they are so meaningful to me. But
Speaker 1: I was at a wedding last summer when a young
Speaker 1: woman came up to me and she said, you're Danny
Speaker 1: Shapiro right said yeah, and she said, my entire family,
Speaker 1: like you've changed our lives. We've all listened to Family
Speaker 1: Secrets and it enabled us to talk about things that
Speaker 1: we had never been able to talk about before.
Speaker 3: And what an immense.
Speaker 1: Privilege to have anything to do with helping people to
Speaker 1: feel less alone in there, you know, whatever it is
Speaker 1: that is making them feel a part or alone, and
Speaker 1: that's just amazing to me and wonderful, and it does
Speaker 1: feel you know, sometimes I record bonus episodes and I'll
Speaker 1: refer to my world of listeners as the Family Secrets family,
Speaker 1: because that's what it feels like to me.
Speaker 2: And the privilege on both ends, I mean, I often think,
Speaker 2: and you just express this, the privilege and the honor
Speaker 2: for someone in our case, the guest, to trust you
Speaker 2: with their hearts. I mean, the bravery and courage it
Speaker 2: takes to not only share the most vulnerable pieces of yourself,
Speaker 2: but to share it knowing it'll be broadcast, you know,
Speaker 2: around the world, and who you choose to trust that
Speaker 2: story with. So I think, you know the privilege of
Speaker 2: being the conduit between the family that was changed and
Speaker 2: the person, the guest, who chose you right, who trusted
Speaker 2: you with their heart, And it really is like when
Speaker 2: you think about it deeply, the work is it makes
Speaker 2: you hurtful.
Speaker 3: It's really true. It's really true.
Speaker 1: And it's the way that I think of myself when
Speaker 1: I'm putting together episodes and when I'm pairing for them
Speaker 1: and when I'm doing the interview, is I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do my best to hold the story, like to hold
Speaker 1: it in my arms, to be the container for it,
Speaker 1: to make the container for it. And you know, to
Speaker 1: be trusted with doing that is just a really wonderful thing.
Speaker 2: So my last question. You write so lovingly about your aunt,
Speaker 2: who has played, you know, such a exquisite role in
Speaker 2: your life, and I heard you on the podcast that
Speaker 2: she says, go where it's warm, So my last question
Speaker 2: is what does that mean to you? And where do
Speaker 2: you go to be warm?
Speaker 1: I think that there are people and places for all
Speaker 1: of us where we feel our safest, where we feel
Speaker 1: seen and known, where we feel the absence of certain things,
Speaker 1: like the absence of competitiveness, the absence of envy, the
Speaker 1: absence of comparison, where we are with people that we
Speaker 1: know are rooting for us and want the best for us.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes when we don't come from when
Speaker 1: the initial landscape of our childhoods isn't that it's a
Speaker 1: learning experience along the way, because we can be drawn
Speaker 1: to places where it isn't warm because it's familiar. And
Speaker 1: one of the benefits of living long enough and learning
Speaker 1: enough and getting older is that I really don't have
Speaker 1: the patience for that anymore in my life. To the
Speaker 1: degree that I can choose who I want to, but
Speaker 1: we can't always choose who are going to be around.
Speaker 1: But to the degree that I can, I want to
Speaker 1: choose to be with people who who love me and
Speaker 1: who I love and really to have time with them,
Speaker 1: to not be racing, to not be always onto the next.
Speaker 1: And we live in a world that you know, that
Speaker 1: doesn't reward depths or quiet. I think increasingly there is
Speaker 1: a I think there's there's a bit of a move
Speaker 1: toward understanding how important depths and quiet, And you know,
Speaker 1: sitting with the Danish have this beautiful word that I
Speaker 1: never pronounced right. It's spelled hygge, and I think it's
Speaker 1: yuga yuga, and it's the meaning is a kind of
Speaker 1: like a relaxed, open, warm, inviting environment, and that's that's
Speaker 1: what I want to create for the people around me,
Speaker 1: and that's how I want to live my life and
Speaker 1: spend my time in whatever way I can.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful. I just interviewed a depth Dula and she,
Speaker 2: you know, walks with the dying in the last weeks
Speaker 2: and months of their lives, and she referred to them
Speaker 2: as the wisdom keepers. And I asked her, you know,
Speaker 2: if there was one piece of advice and wisdom, and
Speaker 2: that was exactly what she said. She said, just to
Speaker 2: slow down and make space to just be with your people.
Speaker 1: Because really time is all we have. And you learn that,
Speaker 1: I mean, you mentioned my husband's illness. If I didn't
Speaker 1: know that already, it was completely brought home to me
Speaker 1: that when you're facing something terrifying like that, all you
Speaker 1: really want is time.
Speaker 2: Well, Danny, you have made such beautiful meaning out of
Speaker 2: your discovery of your secret and the work of Family
Speaker 2: Secrets and the community you have built which feels very
Speaker 2: warm to me, a very warm place to go. So
Speaker 2: thank you for that, and thank you for trusting me
Speaker 2: to have this conversation and yeah, hopefully share some new
Speaker 2: pieces of yourself with your Family Secrets Family.
Speaker 3: Oh, Kimmy, thank you so much. It was really interesting
Speaker 3: to have the tables turned. Phew.
Speaker 1: Well, that was meaningful and intense. I'm reminded of the
Speaker 1: courage it takes to share oneself fully, openly, with vulnerability
Speaker 1: and heart. My thanks to Kimmy Kulp as well as
Speaker 1: to my amazing team. Family Secrets is an iHeartMedia production.
Speaker 1: Mollie's a Core is story editor and Dylan Fagan is
Speaker 1: executive producer. We'll be back in your ears on May
Speaker 1: fourth with our all new season. I couldn't be more
Speaker 1: excited to share it with you.