Speaker 1: Family Secrets as a production of I Heart Radio. By
Speaker 1: the time I was ten, street name signs had disintegrated
Speaker 1: into a blurry haze of green and white unless I
Speaker 1: was almost directly under them. I couldn't read colored words
Speaker 1: against the background unless there was enough of a contrast,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't read the aisle signs in the supermarket
Speaker 1: unless I squinted. Faces started to look the same to me,
Speaker 1: their features indistinguishable. I became anxious over my inability to
Speaker 1: recognize people as they approached, but I learned to use
Speaker 1: the idiosyncrasies of their gait and the particular way their
Speaker 1: bodies occupied space to identify them. And when that failed,
Speaker 1: I learned to look down at my feet while I
Speaker 1: walked to avoid accidental eye contact with anyone I couldn't recognize. Eventually,
Speaker 1: as my sight worsened and my squinting powers failed me,
Speaker 1: I developed a new technique. I would push the bottom
Speaker 1: lid of my eye inward and upward to narrow my
Speaker 1: field of vision until my eyes were almost closed, but
Speaker 1: not quite. This technique was more effective than the regular squint,
Speaker 1: and for a time it worked. It was almost like
Speaker 1: a super squint. Walking alongside my mother and father. One
Speaker 1: day in a right aid pharmacy, I decided to try
Speaker 1: out my new technique in order to read the signs
Speaker 1: hanging above the aisles. My father had walked ahead of us.
Speaker 1: I held on to my mother with my left hand
Speaker 1: and pushed in the bottom lids of my eyes with
Speaker 1: my right, using my thumb and index finger. Suddenly, my
Speaker 1: mother's face was close to mine, her eyes wide as
Speaker 1: she bent down towards me. Gale, what are you doing,
Speaker 1: she whispered, harshly, Oh this, I said, nothing, just trying
Speaker 1: to read the signs. Don't let your father see you,
Speaker 1: she said. She pulled my hand down and forced it
Speaker 1: against my side. Stop pretending you can't see, or you
Speaker 1: really will be blind. You know how your father feels
Speaker 1: about that. She glanced nervously towards my father. I'm not pretending, mom,
Speaker 1: I really can't. What is it? My father had started
Speaker 1: to walk back toward us. Nothing, my mother said, quickly,
Speaker 1: straining up. There was something in her eye and we
Speaker 1: were trying to get it out. It's out now, though
Speaker 1: she squeezed my hand, almost crushing it. That's Lee Tran,
Speaker 1: reading from her debut memoir House of Sticks. Le's is
Speaker 1: a story of loyalty, family, tenacity, and a secret she
Speaker 1: kept for a long time, so long it very nearly
Speaker 1: destroyed her. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets,
Speaker 1: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: What was the landscape of your childhood before you were
Speaker 1: three years old? And then after I was born in
Speaker 1: a small town in southern Vietnam. In nine my family
Speaker 1: and I were able to immigrate to the United States
Speaker 1: through a program known as the Humanitarian Operation, which helped
Speaker 1: resettle former prisoners of war here in the States. And
Speaker 1: my father was a former pow. He's spent almost ten
Speaker 1: years in the re education camps of Vietnam. And you know,
Speaker 1: that was our lucky ticket out. And so we we
Speaker 1: came to Ridgewood, Queens in the middle of a blizzard,
Speaker 1: no less, so it was neat, let's just say, very
Speaker 1: cold for us of Vietnmee people. And you know it
Speaker 1: was it was really difficult to navigate this foreign country.
Speaker 1: None of us spoke the language. I know. I was
Speaker 1: only three and I had three older brothers at the time,
Speaker 1: the oldest of which was just nine years old, and
Speaker 1: so finding a way to make ends meet it was
Speaker 1: really difficult. But a family friend introduced us to this
Speaker 1: sort of home sweatshop labor and so that's what we did.
Speaker 1: And it required us to borrow a sewing machine from
Speaker 1: the company and then we would sort of work to
Speaker 1: pay it off over the years. There will be a
Speaker 1: weekly quota and you know, maybe one thousand ties or
Speaker 1: two thousand commer buns, and we had to deliver it
Speaker 1: every week. So that was my first job as a toddler,
Speaker 1: which was to to help my family make these ties
Speaker 1: and commer buns. And I separated the materials, gave them
Speaker 1: to my father who would then sow the ties, and
Speaker 1: then my brothers and I would take it out from
Speaker 1: underneath the sewing machine and turn it inside out and
Speaker 1: it was just this little family assembly line. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: we did that all the way up until I was twelve.
Speaker 1: Describe your mother for me, Well, my mother, she's a
Speaker 1: very fiercely independent woman, um, and she was sort of
Speaker 1: the main reason that we were able to keep it
Speaker 1: together as a family. My father was incredible as well.
Speaker 1: You know, he tried really hard to just get us
Speaker 1: through the system. We would spend a lot of days
Speaker 1: at the International Rescue Committee, and he would take down notes,
Speaker 1: you know, exactly where he needed to take us to
Speaker 1: get vaccinations, for instance, to get to go to the
Speaker 1: food stamp office, and to get my brothers enrolled in school.
Speaker 1: Whereas my mother, you know, she was more responsible for
Speaker 1: just calculating how much money we would need to put
Speaker 1: food on the table while also keeping us warm. And
Speaker 1: she was also part of the reason my father wasn't
Speaker 1: so abusive all the time. You know, she would find
Speaker 1: ways to calm him down whenever she saw his temper
Speaker 1: get out of hand because of the PTSD that he
Speaker 1: suffered from. So during that time, she would always ask
Speaker 1: us to learn Vietnamese. She would sit us down, tell us, okay,
Speaker 1: notebooks out, we're gonna learn Vietnamese, gonna speak only Vietnamese
Speaker 1: in the house. Because I don't want you to forget
Speaker 1: your roots. I don't want you to forget where you
Speaker 1: came from. So I was really diligent. I love language,
Speaker 1: and I think she's the reason I love language. Whereas
Speaker 1: you know, acentimes my brothers would get to go out
Speaker 1: and play in the park and say, oh yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: learn later. Mom, and she would say, okay, Lee, you stay,
Speaker 1: and I would ask, well, why why did they get
Speaker 1: to go off and play? But now I don't regret
Speaker 1: that I stayed because I can speak, read, and write
Speaker 1: in Vietnamese. And it was during that time that I
Speaker 1: heard a lot of stories from her. She told me
Speaker 1: all of these stories about herself in Vietnam, about the
Speaker 1: time that she ran away from a matchmaker because she
Speaker 1: did not want to get married um, and about how
Speaker 1: she took on her family's business in Vietnam and was
Speaker 1: a merchant and she would ride her motorcycle to all
Speaker 1: these different shops and deliver goods and everyone loved her.
Speaker 1: And it was just a really great time for me
Speaker 1: to spend with my mother. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: she was also really strict in terms of teaching me
Speaker 1: how to be a good at housewife, which was so
Speaker 1: sort of antithetical to who she is on the inside.
Speaker 1: But I think after marrying my father and seeing how
Speaker 1: difficult it was to be a wife, and especially in
Speaker 1: my father's household where yes five of older sisters who
Speaker 1: were very abusive towards my mother because they felt like
Speaker 1: she wasn't a good enough housewife, she didn't know how
Speaker 1: to cook when she first married into the family, and
Speaker 1: so they would keep her up at night. They would
Speaker 1: throw hot water on her just to sort of show her, Okay,
Speaker 1: you are now our servant, basically, and she didn't want
Speaker 1: that sort of fate for me, so she said, Okay,
Speaker 1: you need to learn how to cook, you need to
Speaker 1: learn how to sweep, how to full clothing properly, and
Speaker 1: you know, you need to learn all of these things
Speaker 1: so that you can have a better future and not
Speaker 1: like the future that I had. Buddhism is central to
Speaker 1: the Tran household. One of the first things Lee's father
Speaker 1: does when they settle into their new home and queens
Speaker 1: is to build an altar high up on their living
Speaker 1: room wall, one which will eventually cover the entire wall
Speaker 1: from end to end, to honor the Buddha and the bodhisattvas.
Speaker 1: There's a framed picture of the Great Shaki Yamuni Buddha,
Speaker 1: the awakened One, as well as a picture of kwan
Speaker 1: Ambo Tat, the Goddess of Compassion. Call out her name
Speaker 1: three times when you need help, Lee's father tells her
Speaker 1: she has a thousand arms. Her arms will reach you,
Speaker 1: So I was struck with the significance of the altar
Speaker 1: in your family's home, and the deities and the saints
Speaker 1: and the role that they play in daily life, and
Speaker 1: in the idea of protection and the idea of fulfillment
Speaker 1: of hopes and desires, and how deeply that was internalized
Speaker 1: in you as a child. Sure, yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: different for my father versus it's meaning for my mother.
Speaker 1: But I know for my father when he was in
Speaker 1: the re education camps or even just before that, serving
Speaker 1: as a soldier in the war, and not knowing, you know,
Speaker 1: if he was going to live one day or die
Speaker 1: the next, having a faith to hold on too, and
Speaker 1: just believing that there is someone, some Buddhisatta or Buddha
Speaker 1: out there watching over him, which was so powerful. And
Speaker 1: at some point in the re education camp he sees
Speaker 1: that one of his fellow prisoners had had caught a
Speaker 1: turtle in his trap, and coming from a Buddhist background,
Speaker 1: he felt sorry for the turtle and couldn't bear to
Speaker 1: see his his fellow prisoner kill it. And he said
Speaker 1: he asked if he could trade scallions for the turtle,
Speaker 1: and the prisoner said, short, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do with this thing anyway, And my father
Speaker 1: put a splint on the turtle's broken leg and set
Speaker 1: it free. And this was a story that he would
Speaker 1: tell us when we were younger. Say, when I released
Speaker 1: this turtle, it took a few steps and turned around
Speaker 1: to look at me, and then it nodded at me
Speaker 1: three times, and three days later I was released from prison.
Speaker 1: And just this story is something that has stuck with
Speaker 1: me throughout my entire life. And it's such a a
Speaker 1: symbol of the faith that my father had in Buddhism
Speaker 1: and these spirits that protected him because he thought this
Speaker 1: turtle was some sort of incarnation of the Goddess of
Speaker 1: compassion and the turtle was sent to save him. You know,
Speaker 1: in those conditions, I wouldn't blame a person to hold
Speaker 1: on to something like that. And for my mother, you know,
Speaker 1: when we were in Vietnam, actually all of us, at
Speaker 1: one point or another, we would get severely ill, especially
Speaker 1: coming from such a rural place in Vietnam where there
Speaker 1: were shamans and witch doctors and not really medicine that
Speaker 1: was too modern at the time, and so she would
Speaker 1: often pray. But the power of prayer also gave her
Speaker 1: the strength to take her children from place to place
Speaker 1: and and just pray that, you know, some miracle would arrive.
Speaker 1: And oftentimes a miracle did somehow arrive, and we all
Speaker 1: endured through our illnesses and survived. Lee's father was one
Speaker 1: of almost two and a half million South Vietnamese soldiers
Speaker 1: who were captured and then forced into backbreaking and often
Speaker 1: dangerous labor sweeping mine fields, digging wells and trains, cutting
Speaker 1: down trees. He served a ten year sentence. He rarely
Speaker 1: spoke of his time in the camps, with the exception
Speaker 1: of the story of the turtle. Could you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about your father's both his temper and
Speaker 1: his strictness. It was difficult for me. I remember one
Speaker 1: time I was going home from somewhere and I was
Speaker 1: walking with my father, and he went into the store
Speaker 1: and bought me a possible which was such a surprise
Speaker 1: for me because at the time we were so poor
Speaker 1: that asking for treats, asking for snacks, which most of
Speaker 1: the time just out of the question, and the fact
Speaker 1: that he just went to the store and bought me
Speaker 1: a popsicle, I was so so happy and excited. No
Speaker 1: skipping um and I looked up at my father. I
Speaker 1: remember a moment of such deep love for this man
Speaker 1: who gave me this popsicle, and he remember him looking
Speaker 1: at me and considering me, and then just out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: smacking me. He says, don't look at me like that.
Speaker 1: And I was so shocked. I didn't I didn't know
Speaker 1: what had happened. My possicle fell out of my hand.
Speaker 1: And that moment was not a rare one. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just me, you know, my my three older brothers,
Speaker 1: we also sort of suffered through these tempests of my father's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really it was tough. It was tough to
Speaker 1: to navigate such a difficult relationship while at the same
Speaker 1: time loving him and fear him. You know that it
Speaker 1: was difficult to reconcile those two emotions. And there it
Speaker 1: seems like there was also an understanding that he had
Speaker 1: really been through something and that the ten years that
Speaker 1: he spent as a pow were at the root cause
Speaker 1: of his rage and his tyrannical behavior, That there was
Speaker 1: a reason for this that was embedded into the family
Speaker 1: culture as well. Yeah, I think this is something that
Speaker 1: would be uncovered as time went on, you know, because
Speaker 1: when I was a child, I didn't. I sort of
Speaker 1: just accepted it. I accepted his outbursts. But as I
Speaker 1: grew older, I began to question it. And I remember
Speaker 1: an episode in which he was yelling at my mother,
Speaker 1: and I thought, why, why is he doing that? At
Speaker 1: the time, I was split between my loyalty towards my father,
Speaker 1: my life. He towards my mother, and that's when I
Speaker 1: started to think, that's not okay. You know, he can't
Speaker 1: treat my mother that way. And out of that questioning,
Speaker 1: I started to think about his past, which he he
Speaker 1: doesn't really talk about much, you know, I would only
Speaker 1: see it through snippets of conversation, or once in a while,
Speaker 1: when he was in the mood, he would just offer
Speaker 1: up like a glimpse of what his past was like.
Speaker 1: Or other times, whenever he would beat us, my mother
Speaker 1: would say, you know, stop that crying, don't be mad.
Speaker 1: One day, you'll understand. Sometimes she would explain a little bit,
Speaker 1: but nothing too in depth, perhaps because she didn't think
Speaker 1: that we would be able to understand at such young ages.
Speaker 1: But definitely when I got older, I wasn't quite able
Speaker 1: to forgive him yet, but understanding where he was coming
Speaker 1: from that he was this prisoner of war and that
Speaker 1: re education camps really dealt a blow to his is
Speaker 1: psyche and just traumatized him in such a horrendous way
Speaker 1: that you know, he's still to this day has nightmares
Speaker 1: about it. And those nightmares were a part of your
Speaker 1: childhood hearing him, you know, having nightmares, right, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I would, you know, wake up in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, you know, this man is this screaming and
Speaker 1: my mother is struggling to hold him down and to
Speaker 1: wake him up. Sometimes you would walk in his sleep
Speaker 1: and run from one corner of the house to the other,
Speaker 1: telling her we have to go. You have to grab
Speaker 1: the children there after us, and she's saying, what hoo
Speaker 1: are you talking about? Calmed down? You know, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: she she really had to be strong for us as
Speaker 1: well in terms of getting him to calm down while
Speaker 1: trying to shield us from what he was going through.
Speaker 1: And that was that was hard. You know, as children,
Speaker 1: we didn't we didn't let on that we knew what
Speaker 1: was going on, probably because we were really just afraid
Speaker 1: to see our father like this. But we knew that
Speaker 1: come morning time everything would be okay again. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back when we starts school. She has very little
Speaker 1: grasp of the English language, unlike her brothers, who went
Speaker 1: straight into the school system when they emigrated. She's been
Speaker 1: home with her mother for a couple of years, speaking
Speaker 1: Vietnamese and listening to her mother's stories. So Lee is
Speaker 1: placed at first in English as a second language. She's
Speaker 1: socially awkward, kind of doesn't know how to be. She
Speaker 1: hasn't learned any social cues, so she's a bit of
Speaker 1: a loner and academically challenged. But it isn't until the
Speaker 1: third grade that a teacher notices that Lee is having
Speaker 1: trouble seeing blackboard, and she sends Lee home with a
Speaker 1: note to her parents letting them know that Lee needs eyeglasses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the third grade, you know, they had like kids
Speaker 1: line up to take the Snell and I chart, which
Speaker 1: you know everyone knows is the one with the big
Speaker 1: E on it. And I got a letter then to
Speaker 1: him that said, hey, your daughter has a stigmatism and
Speaker 1: she might need glasses. And my father just completely freaked out.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what was happening. He took the note,
Speaker 1: ripped it up, and told me never to speak of
Speaker 1: it again. And he was cursing at me, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to do the wrong thing. To me. It
Speaker 1: was a homework assignment that I had to do, you know.
Speaker 1: So I was like, oh, my goodness, but I need
Speaker 1: to sign. I don't know what to do. So I
Speaker 1: tried again to ask him, and he smacked me, and
Speaker 1: I was just so furious. He told me that the
Speaker 1: government was after me and how could I be so
Speaker 1: stupid as to give in to the government wanting to
Speaker 1: take away my eye sight? Because he thought that eyeglasses
Speaker 1: were a government conspiracy and if I ever wore glasses,
Speaker 1: my sight would worsen, and it was just deployed by
Speaker 1: the government to get me to be dependent on eyeglasses. Um,
Speaker 1: so the more my eyes I would worsen, I would
Speaker 1: have to buy more glasses. And he explained the whole
Speaker 1: thing and so and that was the end of the discussion,
Speaker 1: and I thought, Okay, I guess he has a point.
Speaker 1: You know. I mean, I was eight, So you proceed
Speaker 1: through elementary school and middle school and you need glasses
Speaker 1: and you don't have them, And what's that like, Like,
Speaker 1: what was your experience actually of the world around you
Speaker 1: that you could see or that you couldn't see. What
Speaker 1: was it actually like sort of being you during those years.
Speaker 1: It's so funny because I don't even remember the moment
Speaker 1: in which I realized that I needed glasses. It was
Speaker 1: such a gradual process. Even during the snow and chart
Speaker 1: I thought, Oh, I can't see those letters, but they're
Speaker 1: so far away. Why would I need to see those letters?
Speaker 1: You know? I just remember, Yeah, around the fifth grade
Speaker 1: is when I'm walking in the street and I realized
Speaker 1: I can't even see the street signs anymore. And it
Speaker 1: felt like just my perception of the world was just
Speaker 1: getting narrower and narrower, and it felt like I was
Speaker 1: looking at the world to this foggy window. But no
Speaker 1: matter how much I tried to rub this window, it
Speaker 1: just wouldn't unfuged. And so it was hard. But I
Speaker 1: think my father was very successful in sort of convincing
Speaker 1: me that, no, this is how everybody's eyes work, and
Speaker 1: you know, you're it'll be fine. You also had an
Speaker 1: older brother who had eyesight that wasn't excellent, and it
Speaker 1: had managed to excel academically even with his poor eyesight,
Speaker 1: and even with no glasses, so you should be able
Speaker 1: to do the same thing, right exactly. Yeah, my brother
Speaker 1: Long I think he also had the same note sent
Speaker 1: home in the third grade. I don't know if he
Speaker 1: went through the same exact experience in terms of my
Speaker 1: father ripping up his note, but I don't even know
Speaker 1: if he even gave the note to my father. But
Speaker 1: he was able to do well in school because his
Speaker 1: prescription just wasn't as high as mine, and so even
Speaker 1: if he sat at the back of the class whom
Speaker 1: he was still able to see the board, whereas my
Speaker 1: vision just deteriorated as the years went on, and the
Speaker 1: more that I wasn't able to see, the more headaches
Speaker 1: I got and the more stressed I became. And so
Speaker 1: for my father it was so clear it was just, well,
Speaker 1: you're a girl. That's why you're not doing well in school.
Speaker 1: That it was as easy as that. For him, it
Speaker 1: was just a simple matter of gender differences in terms
Speaker 1: of intelligence. He felt like, well, boys are just smarter
Speaker 1: than girls, and then that's why my brother was able
Speaker 1: to do well. And he said, you know, it's okay,
Speaker 1: you don't have to do well if you you don't
Speaker 1: get it. I mean, he just chalked it up to
Speaker 1: a lack of intelligence as opposed to just seeing that
Speaker 1: his daughter needed glasses dearly. When Lee's in the eighth grade,
Speaker 1: she takes the standardized test that will determine where she'll
Speaker 1: go to high school. The best public high school in
Speaker 1: New York City is the Bronx High School of Science.
Speaker 1: This is one of those tests where you fill in
Speaker 1: little bubbles, but Lee runs out of time. Her inability
Speaker 1: to see has greatly affected her ability to master advanced math,
Speaker 1: so she quickly and randomly fills in the remaining bubbles
Speaker 1: just to be clear. This is a test that many
Speaker 1: more privileged students spend years preparing for with hired tutors
Speaker 1: and special courses, but perhaps the Goddess of Compassion is
Speaker 1: looking out for her. Lee is admitted to Bronx Science.
Speaker 1: At this point, her parents sweatshop labor has come to
Speaker 1: an end, and Lee's mother takes a course to learn
Speaker 1: how to be a manicurist. She teaches Lee as well,
Speaker 1: the two of them practicing on orange peels and fake nails.
Speaker 1: Her mom works at a series of nail salons until
Speaker 1: she ends up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, at a salon she
Speaker 1: eventually buys. Lee's parents dream of being business owners in
Speaker 1: America comes true. So now Lee's in ninth grade, attending
Speaker 1: Bronx Science and working part time in her parents salon,
Speaker 1: where she often witnesses clients being rude berating her mother
Speaker 1: for her limited English. Lee swallows her anger and keeps
Speaker 1: her head down. At school, she keeps her head down
Speaker 1: for a different reason. She doesn't want anyone to notice
Speaker 1: how much she's struggling. It's a lot to endure. So
Speaker 1: now you're at Bronx High School Science, and you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that strikes me in your story, Lee,
Speaker 1: is the the appearance from time to time, at really
Speaker 1: important times of angels, you know, of of just people
Speaker 1: who I mean, it's the thing I found most moving
Speaker 1: really about your story is that there were these people,
Speaker 1: these adults who responded to you, who saw something in you,
Speaker 1: who went above and beyond, and there was this kind
Speaker 1: of ongoing compassionate intervention even as there was so much
Speaker 1: else that was so incredibly difficult. And one of the
Speaker 1: first of those was this very kind professor when you're
Speaker 1: in ninth grade who offers to get you a pair
Speaker 1: of glasses. Yeah. Yeah, this is in the ninth grade,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't had the courage to really tell anybody
Speaker 1: yet that I was really suffering and couldn't see. I
Speaker 1: just kept asking to choose if I could sit in
Speaker 1: the front of the classroom. I did tell him that
Speaker 1: I couldn't see, but that I was waiting for medicaid.
Speaker 1: You know, I was waiting to get a pair of glasses.
Speaker 1: And obviously that was alive because I knew that I
Speaker 1: could have gotten glasses at any point except that my
Speaker 1: parents would disown me. And you know, I told one
Speaker 1: student who had attended the middle school with me, and
Speaker 1: he also got into Brock Science. And when he heard,
Speaker 1: he was just so shocked and he said, this stuck's ridiculously.
Speaker 1: You need to tell somebody. And I said, no, no no, no, please,
Speaker 1: don't tell anybody. I'm going to get in trouble. Thank goodness.
Speaker 1: He did not listen to me, and he told an
Speaker 1: eighth grade teacher. And this eighth grade teacher was actually
Speaker 1: not even a teacher of mine. He just headed the
Speaker 1: chess club, which I was a part of in the
Speaker 1: eighth grade. And so, you know, one day I get
Speaker 1: a message and email from Mr de Chanct. He's a teacher,
Speaker 1: and he says highly. I heard from Michael that you're
Speaker 1: you're not doing so well, and I would really love
Speaker 1: to help you out. And so we meet in my
Speaker 1: neighborhood in Ridgewood and he says, you know, I need
Speaker 1: you to be able to see. You really need to
Speaker 1: be able to see to do well in school, to
Speaker 1: have a good and bright future. And he says, this
Speaker 1: will be our little secret. Don't tell anybody, don't tell
Speaker 1: your parents, and and just keep these glasses in your
Speaker 1: locker at school. What's the worst that can happen? Nothing,
Speaker 1: You know, as long as you don't tell anybody, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to see, and you'll be able to get
Speaker 1: better grades. And it was just such an incredibly compassionate
Speaker 1: and kind gesture. And also, you know, putting on glasses
Speaker 1: for the first time and being able to see and realizing, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, this is how I'm supposed to see the world.
Speaker 1: Is this how everybody sees the world? You know? I
Speaker 1: looked at a tree right outside of the glasses place
Speaker 1: and saw the veins on the leaves and it was
Speaker 1: so shocking. But at the same time, as much as
Speaker 1: I wanted to be able to see as a guilt
Speaker 1: was so overwhelming too, because I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I betrayed my parents. They're gonna just only they're going
Speaker 1: to find out somehow. Even if they don't find out,
Speaker 1: I'm doing something wrong, I'm doing something that they don't
Speaker 1: want me to do. So I took off the glasses
Speaker 1: right away. You know, I tried to use the glasses
Speaker 1: as little as possible during school, and before I knew it,
Speaker 1: I started not to be able to see again. You
Speaker 1: know that the board started becoming blurry, and I just
Speaker 1: didn't understand what was going on. I thought, oh, oh
Speaker 1: my god, wait, why is my vision plummeting again? And
Speaker 1: then I sort of recalled my father's words, saying that
Speaker 1: the government was after me and that glasses are designed
Speaker 1: to keep you dependent on them, and second you put
Speaker 1: them on, your eyesight was going to deteriorate. And that's
Speaker 1: that's exactly what was happening to me. And so I
Speaker 1: confide it in a friend and she said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's normal, that's just that's just your body growing and
Speaker 1: everybody's eyes change, especially those with my opia. She said,
Speaker 1: one year, I had to get my glasses changed three times.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's all you need. You just need to
Speaker 1: get a different pair of glasses with a higher prescription.
Speaker 1: S right exactly, yeah, you know. To her it was
Speaker 1: a very simple matter. But to me, I thought, oh God, um,
Speaker 1: should I reach out to mister chunk It. And then
Speaker 1: again that sense of guilt, that sense of having let
Speaker 1: somebody down. Not only did I let my parents down,
Speaker 1: but I let mister chunk It down, because all you
Speaker 1: wanted was for me to do well in school. And
Speaker 1: now my vision was slummitting again, and my grades were
Speaker 1: also slummitting, and there it just seemed to be an
Speaker 1: endless cycle, and I thought, oh God, maybe I'm cursed,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. It sort of goes back to this
Speaker 1: theme of mismaking or meaning making. You know, every time
Speaker 1: something good happens, I think, oh it's an angel. Every
Speaker 1: time something that happens, I think, oh, I'm just cursed.
Speaker 1: Or Buddhism, there's this idea of reincarnation and if you
Speaker 1: had done something bad in a past life, then you
Speaker 1: would be reincarnated in this life with a lot of trouble,
Speaker 1: or you would have to suffer more in this life.
Speaker 1: And so I thought, oh God, I must have been
Speaker 1: a horrible, horrible person in the past life. I never
Speaker 1: reached out to missitor Chunket again. I was so ashamed
Speaker 1: of myself and little, my, little, my grades just I
Speaker 1: went from being an A student to just barely a
Speaker 1: see student. Any number of stories we've told on this
Speaker 1: podcast have had to do with the failure of adults
Speaker 1: to intervene when a child is at risk, whether parents
Speaker 1: or teachers or heads of institutions. But then there are angels,
Speaker 1: adults who see what needs doing and by becoming involved,
Speaker 1: can change the trajectory of a life. Mrs Walsh, Lee's
Speaker 1: high school guidance counselor, is one of those grown ups.
Speaker 1: At one point, she even calls child Services to intervene
Speaker 1: a situation Lee and immediately diffuses by downplaying the severity
Speaker 1: of her situation. She doesn't want anyone going after her parents.
Speaker 1: But throughout Mrs Walsh is an unwavering source of support
Speaker 1: and make sure these teachers know why she's having a
Speaker 1: hard time in the classroom. So during this time, it's
Speaker 1: my senior year and I have to apply for colleges,
Speaker 1: and Mrs Walsh, she just went above and beyond. She
Speaker 1: spoke to all of my teachers and told them what
Speaker 1: I had been going through in. My teachers were really
Speaker 1: kind and understanding, and so they didn't give me such
Speaker 1: terrible grades. Are really generous with their grading, and she
Speaker 1: wrote a really extensive letter of recommendation. She asked other
Speaker 1: teachers to write letters of recommendation. And I think my
Speaker 1: grades from my freshman year, when I sort of had
Speaker 1: the glasses and when I was trying really really hard
Speaker 1: and I wasn't sort of bogged down with depression. I
Speaker 1: was able to get by freshman year, was able to
Speaker 1: balance out my grades towards the end of my four years,
Speaker 1: and that's how I was able to get into the
Speaker 1: mcaulay Honors College at Hunter. We'll be back in a
Speaker 1: moment with more family secrets. Things finally seem to be
Speaker 1: going rightfully. She's been accepted in this big deal, prestigious
Speaker 1: honors college. She's regularly seeing a therapist, a silver lining
Speaker 1: from the incident with child services, and her brother offers
Speaker 1: her a life changing present. Before you begin the McCauley
Speaker 1: Honors program at Hunter, You're oldest brother, who had just
Speaker 1: finished college himself, gives you a gift. Yes, it was
Speaker 1: a graduation gift. And I had asked my parents to
Speaker 1: go to my graduation and they said, oh, we can't
Speaker 1: miss work, which I understood at the time, and so
Speaker 1: my oldest brother and my youngest older brother, Tin and
Speaker 1: Long they both agreed to go. And afterwards, my oldest
Speaker 1: brother said, hey, I want to take you somewhere. It's
Speaker 1: a surprise. And when he takes me to contact or
Speaker 1: lends the shop that sells contacts and he buys me
Speaker 1: a box of contact so that my parents would never
Speaker 1: be able to find out, it was a life changer.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a way for me to see
Speaker 1: always and without my parents knowing that being helped in
Speaker 1: some way, or without my father thinking that the government
Speaker 1: was after me. So I start the Macaulay Honors College
Speaker 1: fully armed. You know, I was finally able to see
Speaker 1: and it's a fresh start. I can leave the path behind.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing the psychiatrist and I just feel like the
Speaker 1: tides are finally turning. Maybe I'm not cursed after all.
Speaker 1: You know, this is I'm going to make it work.
Speaker 1: You're living away from your parents for the first time.
Speaker 1: You have a full scholarship, you have a stipend, you
Speaker 1: have a dorm room, you have a laptop. You're all set.
Speaker 1: Macaulay is one of these. This such an amazing program
Speaker 1: in that if you're accepted then it's a full ride
Speaker 1: and you get all of these perks. It really was
Speaker 1: a chance for me to start over and to see
Speaker 1: the world too. At that point, I had never even
Speaker 1: been to a dinner. I'd never really been to restaurants
Speaker 1: because my my family was too poor, and even going
Speaker 1: over to other people's houses was such a rare occurrence
Speaker 1: for me that now that I was living in a
Speaker 1: dorm room and with other students and seeing like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what life is supposed to be, like, this
Speaker 1: is how other people live, and it was really such
Speaker 1: a great experience for me. It's such an eye opener
Speaker 1: and so speak no pun intended, you know. I was
Speaker 1: very ambitious. I took six courses my first semester, and
Speaker 1: more than anything else, I wanted to prove to myself
Speaker 1: and to my parents that I did belong in such
Speaker 1: a prestigious program. My brother Long was also accepted two
Speaker 1: years before, and he was doing very well, so I
Speaker 1: also wanted to prove to him, like, hey, your little
Speaker 1: sister can can make it here too. And so for
Speaker 1: the first semester I had an a average I had
Speaker 1: a four point oh, which was incredible. I felt like, okay,
Speaker 1: I did it finally, but that all sort of backfired
Speaker 1: on me somehow, And you know, the mind works in
Speaker 1: such such funny ways. And after receiving that a, that
Speaker 1: four point, now I thought, okay, I set this bar.
Speaker 1: I cannot go below this are at any cost. So
Speaker 1: for my second semester, again, six courses and all really
Speaker 1: difficult somewhere, even senior level courses that I had applied to.
Speaker 1: At that point, I just thought I was really hard
Speaker 1: on myself. I was really ambitious, and I joined several
Speaker 1: different clubs, I had two different jobs. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to prove it, proved to everyone that I could do it,
Speaker 1: and I just shut down at some point, I think
Speaker 1: the first difficult assignment I had, or the first even
Speaker 1: a minus I received, I couldn't handle it, and so
Speaker 1: I stopped going to classes. I started getting nightmares about,
Speaker 1: you know, betraying my parents or like my my eyesight
Speaker 1: worsening or being blind. Even Lee starts buckling under the
Speaker 1: pressure to do all the things she feels she has
Speaker 1: to be perfect, otherwise she's a complete failure. Faced with
Speaker 1: the impossibility of perfection, she finds herself falling apart. I
Speaker 1: would stop eating, I stopped waking up on time. I
Speaker 1: just stopped showing up to classes. During that time, you know,
Speaker 1: friends started to get concerned. I told Dr Hayes, my
Speaker 1: psychiatrist at the time, I said, I think I'm not
Speaker 1: doing well, and he said, well, you know, it's okay,
Speaker 1: You're you're going to get through this. You've got a
Speaker 1: four point of from the first semester. We can just
Speaker 1: get you a medical withdrawal. It seems like you're really depressed,
Speaker 1: and you've been depressed all this time. It's it's okay,
Speaker 1: you've got high functioning depressions, but you're going to get
Speaker 1: through this, and there are ways to get around the
Speaker 1: grade situation. When he spoke to me, I assumed that
Speaker 1: he would just write me a medical note to get
Speaker 1: me excuse my classes, because that's sort of what he
Speaker 1: told me. But that's not what happens. What happens next
Speaker 1: is something that Lee or anyone who newly could never
Speaker 1: have seemed coming. A few days later, I received a
Speaker 1: knock on my door in the dorms, and you know,
Speaker 1: to security guards with the direct or of the dorms
Speaker 1: behind them, and they said, are you Lee Tran And
Speaker 1: I said yes, and they said, we have reason to
Speaker 1: believe that you're a danger to yourself, so grab all
Speaker 1: your things. Don't take too much because it will be
Speaker 1: confiscated anyway, but just grab essentials and we're going to
Speaker 1: escort you to the Mount Sinai psyche Ward. And I
Speaker 1: was so shocked, totally taken off guard, but I just
Speaker 1: followed them. And I was in that psyche ward for
Speaker 1: about I think a week or two weeks and just
Speaker 1: feeling so incredibly alone. The doctors and the nurses and
Speaker 1: therapists and they all kept asking me, are you suicidal?
Speaker 1: How are you feeling? And I don't know. I didn't
Speaker 1: understand why they were asking me that, because the thought
Speaker 1: never really crossed my mind up until at point, up
Speaker 1: until they sort of kept asking me, weren't they also
Speaker 1: telling you that they were trying to reach Dr Hazen,
Speaker 1: that they couldn't reach him. Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: Even on the first day that I was there, they said, hey,
Speaker 1: we don't quite know why you're here, you know. I
Speaker 1: told him I was very depressed and that I wasn't
Speaker 1: doing well in my classes, and they said, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not okay, that's I guess that's a good reason. But
Speaker 1: we were going to have to talk to your psychiatrists.
Speaker 1: But there's a problem. We can't really reach him. So
Speaker 1: unless we're able to reach him, that's when we can
Speaker 1: provide a proper diagnosis and proper treatment plan and then
Speaker 1: send you on your way. And so day after day
Speaker 1: they would come into my room and say, we can't
Speaker 1: reach him. We can't we don't know where he is.
Speaker 1: So you're just going to have to be patient. And
Speaker 1: I think at that point I felt really abandoned. I
Speaker 1: didn't understand what was going on, and I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like there was anybody I could really reach out to.
Speaker 1: My friends all saw me getting escorted out of the dorms,
Speaker 1: and that was such a humiliating experience. I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: my parents. My parents didn't know where I was. I
Speaker 1: could tell my brothers, and at that point I had
Speaker 1: such little contact with my family that even if I
Speaker 1: had disappeared for two weeks, they didn't matter. They never
Speaker 1: found out. I can't underscore enough what a profound failure
Speaker 1: this was on the part of the psychiatrist Dr Hayes.
Speaker 1: It turns out that doctor Hayes wasn't reachable because doctor
Speaker 1: Hayes had gone on vacation. He was very green as
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist. Lee was his first patient and he thought
Speaker 1: that a good place to deposit her while he enjoyed
Speaker 1: his time off would be involuntary committal to a psych word.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really extraordinary betrayal. Yes, we had discussed
Speaker 1: it in his office that he would find a way
Speaker 1: to get me this medical withdrawal, But I had no
Speaker 1: idea that I would result in a two weeks stay
Speaker 1: at the psych board and to to not even have
Speaker 1: contact with him to figure out, Okay, what do I
Speaker 1: do while I'm here? What do I tell the psychiatrists
Speaker 1: in charge? I just felt so alone. I felt like
Speaker 1: he really did betray me. And then even after I
Speaker 1: was released, I made one more appointment to see him,
Speaker 1: and you know, he acknowledged that maybe he shouldn't have
Speaker 1: gone on vacation. He said I was allowed to be
Speaker 1: mad at him. Um, yeah, I thought mad. I mean,
Speaker 1: is that even enough? Is that word even enough to
Speaker 1: describe what I'm feeling right now? And I think maybe
Speaker 1: that's when you know, the wall that I had built
Speaker 1: up over the years to separate myself from my emotions,
Speaker 1: like the negative emotions mostly, but even the positive emotions.
Speaker 1: I think that's when that wall began to crumble, because
Speaker 1: I felt so incredibly upset and I just never went
Speaker 1: back to see him, and he never inquired after me
Speaker 1: after that either. You know, it's interesting what you're saying
Speaker 1: to about feeling some of those more difficult feelings. And
Speaker 1: it strikes me that you grew up never being allowed
Speaker 1: to be angry, Like there was no room for being mad.
Speaker 1: There's no room for being angry. That was all your
Speaker 1: father's territory. And as a girl, there was no room,
Speaker 1: you know. I remember every time I would get angry,
Speaker 1: my mother would say, look at yourself. Look at that face.
Speaker 1: Is that is that your face? Is this angry face?
Speaker 1: And you know, I couldn't even see my face at
Speaker 1: the time, but I didn't want to look in such
Speaker 1: a way that wasn't me, and so I just would
Speaker 1: would fix my face very quickly. And yeah, anger is
Speaker 1: just something that I very seriously allowed myself to feel.
Speaker 1: And if I did feel it, I didn't have a
Speaker 1: word for it. And during my sessions at Dr Hayes,
Speaker 1: it was very clear that I was unable to put
Speaker 1: a name to what I was feeling oftentimes, and so
Speaker 1: you know, we had a lot of sessions in which
Speaker 1: there was complete silence because he would say, tell me
Speaker 1: about your feelings after I had told him everything which
Speaker 1: I thought were my feelings, but it was just facts.
Speaker 1: I would just tell him facts about my life and
Speaker 1: he said, well, how do you feel about it? And
Speaker 1: I just my mind grew a blank. And I think
Speaker 1: now the word angry is certainly one of the words
Speaker 1: that I would have attributed to what I was feeling
Speaker 1: during those sessions. And was it during that time that
Speaker 1: you went back home and ended up having an argument
Speaker 1: with your parents and actually did crossover into anger exasperation
Speaker 1: and you take out your contacts and show them and
Speaker 1: there's a shift. Yeah. Well, at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: it's my second year at the Honors College, and I'm
Speaker 1: just so depressed after this this episode in the psych word,
Speaker 1: I really just descend into a spiral of darkness that
Speaker 1: I was impossible for me to get out of. So,
Speaker 1: you know, my medical draw from the previous semester wasn't
Speaker 1: enough for me to to do well in my second
Speaker 1: year that hunter, and so part of the Honors program
Speaker 1: is that you had to maintain a three point five
Speaker 1: g p A in order to stay. And I was
Speaker 1: not able to maintain a g p A, and so
Speaker 1: I was dismissed from the Honors College and matriculated to
Speaker 1: Hunter College. And I lost all of my privileges, all
Speaker 1: all those parks, the dorm room, the laptop, the tuition,
Speaker 1: I lost it all, and so I had to move
Speaker 1: out of the dring. And this is when I realized
Speaker 1: that no matter how hard I try, I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: not going to going to be able to escape my fate,
Speaker 1: which to me at the time was a fate of
Speaker 1: working in the nail salon with my mother. So I
Speaker 1: take all of my belongings home, and my parents are
Speaker 1: there and they see my bags, and there's sort of
Speaker 1: this the sense of we told you so, you're a girl.
Speaker 1: The fact that you made it this far as already
Speaker 1: so shocking to us. My mother says, you know, when
Speaker 1: your father first arrived to America, his greatest wish for
Speaker 1: you all was to to get past high school. And
Speaker 1: that's it. And now you know your brothers are they're
Speaker 1: going to be done with college, all of them soon.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you at least had one or
Speaker 1: two years of college, that's great, you know, but if
Speaker 1: you didn't do well, then that was to be expected
Speaker 1: because you're a girl. And I was livid just at
Speaker 1: that point. I thought, you know, I've lost everything. I've
Speaker 1: lost any kind of sense of dignity. I've I've lost
Speaker 1: all hope for a better future. And I thought, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm just gonna tell them. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to tell them I've been wearing contact all this time
Speaker 1: because I thought, you know what, I think part of it,
Speaker 1: I wanted to hurt them. Um, that's part of why
Speaker 1: I took out my contact. I wanted to show them like, look,
Speaker 1: I betrayed you, and I've been doing it all this time,
Speaker 1: and it's because you failed me. I really needed to
Speaker 1: see and you refused to understand that. And so here,
Speaker 1: look at this. What do you make of this now?
Speaker 1: And I think doing that was a breakthrough in my
Speaker 1: understanding of my father, especially because I expected for him
Speaker 1: to punish me, and maybe in a way I wanted
Speaker 1: him to punish me because I wanted to punish myself
Speaker 1: for being such a failure. But and he did. He
Speaker 1: smacked me once, but he kind of just looked afraid.
Speaker 1: He looked like he was going to cry. I remember
Speaker 1: thinking about that expression and thinking, what is that. Why
Speaker 1: did he look like that. I could have sworn he
Speaker 1: would beat me or just own me or something, but
Speaker 1: he just sort of looked like a frail person who
Speaker 1: was scared and paranoid. And the more that I really
Speaker 1: examined that expression, the more I realized, Oh, he really
Speaker 1: did love me. And seeing the fact that I was
Speaker 1: relying on these contacts, even against his wishes, is when
Speaker 1: he realized that he had failed me as a father.
Speaker 1: And what was this failure Lie saw reflected in her
Speaker 1: father's eyes. It was a terror of imperfection, of vulnerability
Speaker 1: in an unforgiving existence that allowed no room for it.
Speaker 1: If Lee has something wrong with her, if her eyes
Speaker 1: don't work, then perhaps she'll be left behind. This is
Speaker 1: when the potent cocktail of love and fear can turn
Speaker 1: into desperation and secret keeping. When he realized, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: my child actually really does need glasses. She really can't
Speaker 1: see like other people. That's when he realized, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: I failed to keep my child healthy. I don't know
Speaker 1: even to this day, if he realizes sort of the
Speaker 1: damage that he like the extent to which she had
Speaker 1: damaged me by not allowing me to to wear glasses.
Speaker 1: But then Lee's dad does something so surprising, so extraordinary,
Speaker 1: that no one could have seen it coming. Perhaps it's
Speaker 1: because time has gone by, Perhaps it's because she's on
Speaker 1: the road to academic and therefore future success. Perhaps this
Speaker 1: is one of those nods of the turtle. He asks
Speaker 1: Lee if she would like to have Lasik surgery. When
Speaker 1: he saw an ad for la si surgery and he
Speaker 1: started to really develop a relationship with me. He starts
Speaker 1: to ask me about my contacts, and this is obviously
Speaker 1: after I'm doing a little bit better in my life.
Speaker 1: But he says, do these contacts hurt you in any way?
Speaker 1: And I say, no, you know, I've been wearing them
Speaker 1: all these years, if it's fine, And he's like, well,
Speaker 1: have you ever considered lap sick surgery? And I think
Speaker 1: I was just so taken aback, like fly on Earth?
Speaker 1: Would you even ask about Lasik surgery? Do you know
Speaker 1: how expensive that is? He just was so excited about it,
Speaker 1: to the point where, you know, he he offered to
Speaker 1: pay for it. He said, your mother and I have
Speaker 1: some money saves that we can pay for this, and
Speaker 1: I think he just wanted to make things right. I
Speaker 1: think he wanted to be my father, to to fulfill
Speaker 1: that role as my father. Again, you're back in school, right,
Speaker 1: You're at Columbia at that point, and you're still an undergraduate.
Speaker 1: I'm still an undergraduate because after I had matriculated to
Speaker 1: Hunter College, there was a time when I just was
Speaker 1: so depressed that I dropped out of college altogether. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I spent two years just wandering the streets because I
Speaker 1: didn't want to tell my parents that I had dropped
Speaker 1: out of college altogether. I feared their viewpoints that was
Speaker 1: expected for a girl to not do well. And then
Speaker 1: another angel, another mentor, goes above and beyond. Lee runs
Speaker 1: into a woman she knew in high school, a legal
Speaker 1: advocate who she hasn't seen in years. This woman pushes
Speaker 1: and probes, and Lee reluctantly ends up telling her everything
Speaker 1: that has happened. And she told me to apply to
Speaker 1: all of these different colleges, one of which happened to
Speaker 1: be the School of General Studies at Columbia University. And
Speaker 1: I laughed and said, there's no way that I can
Speaker 1: make it there, but sure, I'll apply, I'll humor you,
Speaker 1: and yes, somehow I was accepted to Columbia. And when
Speaker 1: I was accepted, the admissions officer who interviewed me told
Speaker 1: me that it was on the strength of my essay,
Speaker 1: my personal statement, that I was accepted. And that's when
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, my gosh, my my story. I guess
Speaker 1: was worth telling. Prayer, supplication, blessing, bargaining. As a child,
Speaker 1: while Lee knelt before an ever expanding altar and recited
Speaker 1: Buddhist scripture she knew by heart, the air thick with incense,
Speaker 1: another practice began taking root, a practice all her own.
Speaker 1: She constructed a crystal dome of protection in her mind's eye,
Speaker 1: one that would keep her and everyone she loved safe
Speaker 1: from harm. You know, it occurs to me that you
Speaker 1: write about your crystal dome of protection, that as a
Speaker 1: child you would have trouble falling asleep or be afraid
Speaker 1: of the dark, and create very meticulously this crystal dome
Speaker 1: of protection over yourself, and then over every single you know,
Speaker 1: one of you and your family, and then even then
Speaker 1: over the monsters that you were afraid we're lurking in
Speaker 1: corners because you felt sorry for them because they needed
Speaker 1: protection too. I was just really struck by that and
Speaker 1: that being you know, almost like a child's form of
Speaker 1: a kind of prayer or looking for protection or causality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's funny because I do that choose this day.
Speaker 1: So it's something that hasn't left me, you know. And
Speaker 1: when someone in my family or a good friend of
Speaker 1: mine goes away in a trip, I was just quickly
Speaker 1: create a dome around them so that they can arrive
Speaker 1: through the destination safely. I think it it comes from
Speaker 1: my wish for us to be protected and all the
Speaker 1: stories that my parents told me, and a feeling of powerlessness.
Speaker 1: And for me it was it was one way in
Speaker 1: which I could feel like I was in control of
Speaker 1: my situation, which at the time, you know as a child,
Speaker 1: there are all these events happening around you, your destitute.
Speaker 1: You know your parents are struggling, and even though you
Speaker 1: can't quite grasp what those struggles are because you don't
Speaker 1: yet have the language or just wherewithal to understand, you
Speaker 1: feel it on a deep level. And I think for
Speaker 1: me that came out during these sleepless nights. I felt
Speaker 1: that helplessness, and so I would just create these crystal
Speaker 1: domes in the hopes that we could all be protected,
Speaker 1: including the monsters. Family Secret is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Media. Dylan Fagin and Bethan Macaluso are the executive producers.
Speaker 1: Andrew Howard is our audio editor. If you have a
Speaker 1: secret you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and
Speaker 1: your story could appear on an upcoming bonus episode. Our
Speaker 1: number is one eight Secret zero. That's secret and then
Speaker 1: the number zero. You can also find us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Danny Writer, Facebook at facebook dot com, slash Family
Speaker 1: Secrets Pod, and Twitter at fami Secret Spot. And if
Speaker 1: you want to know about my family's secret that inspired
Speaker 1: this podcast, check out my New York Times best selling
Speaker 1: memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.