Speaker 1: You know what I think. I think every family has secrets, secrets.
Speaker 1: Some are big, really big secrets, and some are a
Speaker 1: little and some, once the revealed, are huge life changing.
Speaker 1: Today's guest, I love someone with Delilah discovered quite by
Speaker 1: accident that her family had been keeping one of those
Speaker 1: huge life changing type of secrets. In Danny Shapiro and
Speaker 1: her husband sent some DNA testing kits in for analysis.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to be just a little thing, a
Speaker 1: whimsical little thing. Her husband was doing it. Danny, who
Speaker 1: is a very successful author, thought I'll do it too,
Speaker 1: But the surprising results evoked some serious emotions that could
Speaker 1: be labeled anything but whimsical. What Danny, a self proclaimed
Speaker 1: daddy's girl, learned was it the man who raised her,
Speaker 1: the man she adored, could not possibly have been her
Speaker 1: biological father. Imagine that some of you have found that
Speaker 1: out in the same way. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: at this time when Danny discovered it, both her parents
Speaker 1: had passed away, so when covering the mystery was up
Speaker 1: to her, there was simply no one left to ask.
Speaker 1: As an author of several nonfiction books, and now with
Speaker 1: curiosity and all these jumbles of emotions, Danny, alongside her
Speaker 1: journalistic husband, set to work. It took her just three
Speaker 1: short days to unlock the truth of her conception and
Speaker 1: her identifying her biological father. Danny shared her story and
Speaker 1: found that there are many people who have uncovered similar
Speaker 1: findings from these beginnings. Her podcast series Family Secrets was conceived.
Speaker 1: Season three debuts on Thursday, February six. Family Secrets features
Speaker 1: real life stories of individuals sharing facts that maybe DNA
Speaker 1: and genealogy research has revealed, presented in the kindest and
Speaker 1: most compassionate of ways. Danny also has a new book out, Inheritance,
Speaker 1: about her own discovery and the journey of self it
Speaker 1: took her on. She's joining us today to talk about
Speaker 1: this journey. Right after I shared this important information with
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Speaker 1: when you need it most. With me on the phone
Speaker 1: is Danny Shapiro, author of a number of books. Her
Speaker 1: latest is called Inheritance, a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love.
Speaker 1: I love the cover of it. Is that one of
Speaker 1: your dresses as a child, Thank you? It was that
Speaker 1: was address that I wore as a flower girl and
Speaker 1: a cousin's wedding. So it's really meaningful to me that
Speaker 1: it's on the cover. Very ethereal. Yeah, Like it's got
Speaker 1: like a blithe spirit feel to it. When I picked
Speaker 1: up the book and saw the cover, I thought, I
Speaker 1: bet this was one of her dresses, without ever delving
Speaker 1: into the inside, just judging a book by its cover.
Speaker 1: I like the cover. I'm glad. I'm glad. I really
Speaker 1: it was so important to me. I mean, the book
Speaker 1: to me is so much about love and there's a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of warmth in it, and I wanted I mean,
Speaker 1: we do judge books by their covers. So I wanted
Speaker 1: there to be that sense of just being about family
Speaker 1: and history. And you know, there's a reason why the
Speaker 1: word love is in the subtitles. To me, all about
Speaker 1: love ultimately, In fact, I would say I'm not that
Speaker 1: far into it. I'm only up to a hundred and fifteen.
Speaker 1: But so far everything I've read is dripping with love.
Speaker 1: I would have started it with a memoir of love
Speaker 1: and just left it there, I think, thank you. So
Speaker 1: let's kind of start at the beginning. Born and raised
Speaker 1: Orthodox jew Yeah, I was raised in New Jersey, just
Speaker 1: outside of New York City, and my father's family in
Speaker 1: particular were a observant, you know, very religious, devout family,
Speaker 1: and my mother's family was less so. But you know,
Speaker 1: both of my parents were were Jewish, and my mother,
Speaker 1: when she married my father, agreed to raise any children
Speaker 1: that they would have in that religious observant way. So
Speaker 1: that is how I was raised as an only child
Speaker 1: in Hillside, New Jersey. And the whole time, just by
Speaker 1: the stories I've read, you were a daddy's girl. I
Speaker 1: was a total daddy's girl. I just adored my dad. Um,
Speaker 1: he was really you know, the much warmer of my
Speaker 1: two parents, the much more like sort of physically affectionate
Speaker 1: with a huge hugger. And you know, my mom just
Speaker 1: kind of didn't have those particular kinds of instincts. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I've heard it said if you have one
Speaker 1: adult or you know, preferably a parent, but any really
Speaker 1: anyone in your childhood who really gives you that kind
Speaker 1: of love, you know, that's what saves us. I've heard
Speaker 1: that said, and I've shared that truth over and over
Speaker 1: and over again on the air off the air because
Speaker 1: I work a lot with kids in foster care, and
Speaker 1: I say, you know, if a kid has just one
Speaker 1: parent or one person who's consistent with love, with unconditional love,
Speaker 1: that changes the trajectory of a life. It's so true.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could be a grandparent, or a teacher,
Speaker 1: or a mentor or a neighbor. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be someone in the immediate family. But it's just I
Speaker 1: was always I mean, that was my dad for me.
Speaker 1: But I was also always on the search. I was always.
Speaker 1: I think one saving grace for me was that I
Speaker 1: recognized my angels when they appeared. I recognized my teachers
Speaker 1: and all through my life. Um, but certainly. I mean
Speaker 1: I lost my dad when I was twenty three, but
Speaker 1: certainly for those first twenty three years he was that
Speaker 1: for me, and afterwards too. He's always been there for
Speaker 1: me all through my life, you know, to this day.
Speaker 1: So growing up Orthodox community, blonde hair, fair skin, pink cheeks.
Speaker 1: You start your novels saying you were always staring at
Speaker 1: the in the mirror as a little girl, looking for something,
Speaker 1: but you didn't even know what you were looking for,
Speaker 1: just looking deep into your eyes to to unlock this mystery.
Speaker 1: Did you ever feel like that story of the ugly
Speaker 1: duckling where the the swan doesn't quite fit in with
Speaker 1: the ducks. Yeah, I absolutely did, because I was told
Speaker 1: every single day of my life, really literally every day.
Speaker 1: This is not an exaggeration. I was told, you don't
Speaker 1: look Jewish. It doesn't you know, your mother must have
Speaker 1: had an affair with the Swedish milk command or you know,
Speaker 1: you're sure you're Jewish, or when I was older, it
Speaker 1: became because Shapiro is I'm fond of saying Piro was
Speaker 1: like the Smith of Jews. Yes, yes it is. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a dead giveaway, and people would say, so is
Speaker 1: your husband, the Shapiro. You know, once I was married,
Speaker 1: you know, once I was a grown up. So every
Speaker 1: day of my life I was, in one way or
Speaker 1: another told that I didn't look like who I knew
Speaker 1: myself to be. UM. So when when that happens when
Speaker 1: you're a child, it really contributes to making you feel
Speaker 1: like you don't belong. I felt, I felt like something
Speaker 1: didn't add up. I think it probably is what turned
Speaker 1: me into a writer. You know, from the time that
Speaker 1: I was a teenager, I was always just scribbling and
Speaker 1: scribbling in notebooks and you know, you know, under the
Speaker 1: cover's late at night writing trying to like dig for
Speaker 1: something that I didn't even know was there. But I
Speaker 1: just knew that something didn't add up. There was a
Speaker 1: mystery that I couldn't solve, and and I think I
Speaker 1: felt writing, in some way or another was helping me
Speaker 1: to solve it. Well, I think you were born and
Speaker 1: a writer. Just reading the little bit that I've read,
Speaker 1: you were born a writer, But solving that mystery probably
Speaker 1: propelled you into being a really good writer. M hmm,
Speaker 1: I wondered, because you know, when I started writing, I
Speaker 1: started writing novels, and then I turned to memoirs. You know,
Speaker 1: I turned to telling stories that were out of my
Speaker 1: own life and shaping stories out of my own experience.
Speaker 1: And you know, knowing what I know today, you know
Speaker 1: from where I sit now, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I know why that was the case. Um, it was
Speaker 1: the case because I was after some sort of elusive
Speaker 1: truth that I couldn't get at. So fifty plus years,
Speaker 1: five decades, you live as Danny Shapiro, Jewish daughter, living
Speaker 1: your life, married, had a child, and then your husband says, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we take this DNA test just for the
Speaker 1: fun of it, And you didn't even really think of
Speaker 1: it there was a big thing. I totally didn't think
Speaker 1: of it as a big thing. In fact, I almost
Speaker 1: didn't do it. I mean, he wanted to do it
Speaker 1: just for sort of recreational reasons, and he just asked
Speaker 1: me if I wanted to do it too. And I
Speaker 1: think about that now because taking that DNA has changed
Speaker 1: my entire life and my understanding of myself and of
Speaker 1: my history. And if I hadn't done it, I just
Speaker 1: never would have known. And it's so interesting because you know,
Speaker 1: I have been a student of identity in some way
Speaker 1: or another, all my life. And I've also been someone
Speaker 1: who's always tried to tried and tried to make meaning
Speaker 1: out of things I didn't understand. And you know, if
Speaker 1: it's true what they say, some people believe that when
Speaker 1: we pass away, we get a moment where we can
Speaker 1: survey the whole thing and we can see everything that
Speaker 1: we didn't know. And I think about that sometimes now
Speaker 1: because if that, if that's the case, and if that
Speaker 1: were me, and if I had never made the discovery
Speaker 1: that I did, I would have just like knocked myself
Speaker 1: upside the head at that moment and think I missed it.
Speaker 1: I missed the whole thing, Delilah, Like I just missed um,
Speaker 1: something so fundamental and essential about myself. And how many
Speaker 1: other people have taken those same DNA tests and learned
Speaker 1: truths that they had no clue of. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: can tell you. Actually, I mean, twenty six million people
Speaker 1: in the last two years to have ordered these over
Speaker 1: the counter DNA tests. It's become the most popular holiday
Speaker 1: gift in America. Families are all giving these kids to
Speaker 1: each other and then approximately two of people who take
Speaker 1: these tests find out what's called it's actually has um
Speaker 1: initials it's called an m p E, which is what
Speaker 1: happened to me. It stands for not parent expected, and
Speaker 1: in PE is kind of like an e MP, a
Speaker 1: big bomb that goes off and doesn't damage the buildings,
Speaker 1: but damages like everything inside your heart. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the impact that truth bomb had on you,
Speaker 1: that e MP right after this important message. So you
Speaker 1: got your results back, that's right, I mean, I so,
Speaker 1: so I I get my results back and I and
Speaker 1: I discover in really pretty short order that my beloved
Speaker 1: dad had not been my biological father, and that changed
Speaker 1: both everything and nothing right, Like I remember saying to
Speaker 1: my best friend a few weeks later, do you still
Speaker 1: see me as the same person? I was in such
Speaker 1: I was reeling, I was in such shock, and she
Speaker 1: looked at me with such compassion, and she said, you
Speaker 1: are the same person. You just didn't You just didn't
Speaker 1: have all the information. But you, Danny, are the same person.
Speaker 1: But now you have all of the pieces of the puzzle.
Speaker 1: But you know I should say too that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I now see my story and you know what I
Speaker 1: discovered and the journey that I've been on, and that
Speaker 1: I write about an inheritance. I see it as miraculous
Speaker 1: because I had just enough clues to be able to
Speaker 1: piece together the story of my identity. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are so many people out there who never are able
Speaker 1: to know. And it only took thirty six hours from
Speaker 1: the moment that I realized that my dad had not
Speaker 1: been my biological father until I found the man who
Speaker 1: was thirty six hours with nothing more. I don't have
Speaker 1: like great detective skills. It was just nothing more than
Speaker 1: a couple of hunches and a little face block and
Speaker 1: little googling and a couple of long ago conversations that
Speaker 1: came back to me. Because I also think one of
Speaker 1: the things about just all of us as human beings
Speaker 1: is that when something's really important, like if we have
Speaker 1: a conversation and we don't even know it's really important
Speaker 1: at the time, if it's really important, something inside of
Speaker 1: us kind of sits up and takes note and remembers it.
Speaker 1: It's like an invisible tape recorder kind of goes off
Speaker 1: and we are able to retain it whole. And that's
Speaker 1: what happened to me. Um conversation I've had with my
Speaker 1: mother literally thirty years earlier came back to me, and
Speaker 1: it was full of clues. If I hadn't had that
Speaker 1: conversation with my mother, I'd still be walking around going
Speaker 1: I know my father wasn't my biological father, but I
Speaker 1: don't know who was. And I'm never going to know
Speaker 1: more about this story. Both of my parents have passed.
Speaker 1: But your mom gave you that clue when she said
Speaker 1: an institute in Philadelphia, that's right. And it was just
Speaker 1: such a quote unquote, such an accident, right, such a
Speaker 1: um unlikely thing that my mother would have let that slip.
Speaker 1: But she used the word institute and she said Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: And based just on that, I was able to put
Speaker 1: together a big part of the story. And if I
Speaker 1: hadn't had that, I would have looked at those results
Speaker 1: and I would have made up You know, we all
Speaker 1: we we make up stories all the time. We all
Speaker 1: go through life that way, not just writers. We we
Speaker 1: create narratives to make sense of the world around us
Speaker 1: and to make sense of ourselves and to make sense
Speaker 1: of our families. And if I had discovered that my
Speaker 1: dad hadn't been my biological father, and I hadn't known
Speaker 1: anything more about it, I would have had to assume
Speaker 1: that my mother had an affair that would have been
Speaker 1: the only thing that would have made any sense, and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have made any sense, but that's what I
Speaker 1: would have assumed. And instead my mother let's slip that
Speaker 1: my parents had trouble with fertility, trouble conceiving me, and
Speaker 1: they had gone to an institute in Philadelphia. And because
Speaker 1: of that, really, within minutes of making the discovery about
Speaker 1: my dad, I knew what had happened, and I knew
Speaker 1: that my biological father must have been a spun downer.
Speaker 1: And that was the beginning of unraveling the mystery of
Speaker 1: you know, couples. In those days, we're told never to
Speaker 1: tell anyone, to keep it the biggest secret if they
Speaker 1: made a baby in that way, to not tell their
Speaker 1: own parents, to not tell their siblings. That was the
Speaker 1: case with everything. I mean, that was the case with everything.
Speaker 1: When when I was a teenager, I got in a
Speaker 1: fight with my dad. My father and I were fighting
Speaker 1: every day, every week, and I was sent to live
Speaker 1: with my grandparents. And I was sobbing and crying and
Speaker 1: I said to my grandma, my mother's mother, my maternal grandma,
Speaker 1: I don't know why my dad hates me so much.
Speaker 1: And she said sissy. He doesn't hate you. He's afraid
Speaker 1: you're going to turn out just like he did. And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't get that. He's a wonderful man.
Speaker 1: He's successful, he's an engineer, he's smart, you know. And
Speaker 1: I'm going on and on listing all my dad's great qualities.
Speaker 1: And she said, your dad got a girl pregnant in
Speaker 1: high school and he's afraid you're going to end up
Speaker 1: in the same boat. Mm hmm. Wow. And just like
Speaker 1: you described in your book when you looked at the
Speaker 1: DNA results and realized, wait a minute, I just sat
Speaker 1: there like and I was, what fourteen fifteen maybe sixteen,
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. And then she dropped the big bomb.
Speaker 1: You can't tell anyone. I told you this. You can't
Speaker 1: tell your mother, you can't tell your father, you can't
Speaker 1: tell anyone. I told you this. Yeah, you know. I
Speaker 1: have this podcast called Family Secrets in which I talked
Speaker 1: to my guests about family secrets. And one of the
Speaker 1: most heartbreaking things for me and so many of the
Speaker 1: story is that the person who the secret was kept
Speaker 1: from often ends up being thrust into the role of
Speaker 1: being the secret keeper. And you know, it's like this
Speaker 1: double whammy. It's like you find out something that you
Speaker 1: were never supposed to know and it was hidden from you,
Speaker 1: and then you have to hold it yourself. I don't
Speaker 1: believe in keeping secrets like that. I don't either. I
Speaker 1: have so many kids that are adopted, and you know,
Speaker 1: in our generation when when you were adopted, you weren't
Speaker 1: told that, you were never told that. You know, it
Speaker 1: was all these big secrets and you weren't told who
Speaker 1: your birth family was. Or I have a girlfriend who
Speaker 1: got pregnant when she was a teenager and she never
Speaker 1: got to know her baby, never got to bond with
Speaker 1: her baby. They took her baby, they placed her baby
Speaker 1: for adoption, and you don't talk about it. Well, that's
Speaker 1: the amazing thing about now. The time that we're living
Speaker 1: in now is because of the combination of this DNA
Speaker 1: testing and the unintended consequences of the d n A testing,
Speaker 1: which is that everybody's signing out. Everybody's signing like I.
Speaker 1: I've been on the road since Inheritance came out in hardcover,
Speaker 1: and everywhere I've gone there have been wall to wall
Speaker 1: people and they are people with stories. And when it
Speaker 1: started happening, it stunned me. I mean, I'm a writer.
Speaker 1: I've been on book tour a bunch of times. I
Speaker 1: had never experienced anything like this. And they were late
Speaker 1: discovery adoptees who never knew they were adopted. They were many,
Speaker 1: many people who had biological fathers who had been sperm donors,
Speaker 1: or even now biological mothers who were egg donors. There
Speaker 1: were lots of people from the adoptive community or adoptees.
Speaker 1: There were, like the story you just told me, grown
Speaker 1: women who as teenagers had put up a child for
Speaker 1: adoption and then that child grows up and find them eventually,
Speaker 1: or they find the child. There are men have always
Speaker 1: had children they didn't know about like that, they literally
Speaker 1: just never knew about you know, got to go pregnant
Speaker 1: and then you know, just never knew about it. And
Speaker 1: so there's like a reckoning going on because of all this,
Speaker 1: and it's huge. From where I sit, it's it's epidemic,
Speaker 1: and and I think that even though sometimes it's hard
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's painful and it's kind of rocking a
Speaker 1: lot of families, I also think it's great because it's
Speaker 1: the end of the era of secrecy. It's the it's
Speaker 1: the end of it. There can't be these kinds of
Speaker 1: secrets anymore because everybody's finding out everything. Well, my sister
Speaker 1: is the genealogist in our family. She loves genealogy. She
Speaker 1: she could have a business just doing genealogy for people
Speaker 1: because she's so good at it. I mean, she's just
Speaker 1: really really good. I am not that detail oriented person.
Speaker 1: I'm just not. And she pours over charts and graphs,
Speaker 1: and she reads the census. She loves censuses, and she
Speaker 1: reads the census takers comments from you know, decades gone by,
Speaker 1: and holy molly, she dug up a lot of secrets
Speaker 1: in our family. And I'm like, whoa, wow, because not that,
Speaker 1: you know, not that our family was perfect by any
Speaker 1: stretch of the imagination, and we weren't religious, we weren't
Speaker 1: Orthodox or anything like that. But you grow up with
Speaker 1: these concepts of these notions that you are who you are,
Speaker 1: and then when you find out you you aren't who
Speaker 1: you thought you were, it's it's bizarre, exactly. I mean.
Speaker 1: I I felt, you know, like, you know, so interesting
Speaker 1: for me as a writer, because I've always been digging
Speaker 1: and suddenly it all made sense. But it was also
Speaker 1: all this brand new, like it forced me to think
Speaker 1: about what makes us us, Like what makes a family
Speaker 1: of families doesn't matter? You know, the genes matter? Does
Speaker 1: biology matter? You know, nature versus nurture. You know, there
Speaker 1: was so much that I felt like, Wow, I am
Speaker 1: getting the most extraordinary front row seat to all this.
Speaker 1: Like I remember, you know, like you mentioned, I've like
Speaker 1: stared at my face in the mirror as a child.
Speaker 1: In the days after my discovery, and especially when I
Speaker 1: identified my biological father, who I happened to look a
Speaker 1: great deal like, I looked at my face in the mirror,
Speaker 1: and for the first time I actually understood my face,
Speaker 1: Like I understood why those people had all been saying
Speaker 1: that all my life. I understood where I came from
Speaker 1: in terms of the nature piece of it. And so
Speaker 1: much of the journey for me was one that had
Speaker 1: to do with you know, at the very beginning after
Speaker 1: my discovery, well meaning people would say things to me like, well,
Speaker 1: no matter what, your your father is still your father.
Speaker 1: And at the beginning I had a really hard time
Speaker 1: I'm taking that in or even knowing what it meant,
Speaker 1: because I had just discovered that in biological terms, he
Speaker 1: wasn't and in all likelihood. My parents knew that and
Speaker 1: had of course kept it a secret, and so I
Speaker 1: had been raised with that secret at the center of
Speaker 1: my life. And the journey was really one of and
Speaker 1: this is one of the greatest gifts of this for me.
Speaker 1: I had to really think about my parents, and I
Speaker 1: had to think of them not as my parents, but
Speaker 1: as people, as human beings who existed before me, and
Speaker 1: who made choices and decisions based on their own desires
Speaker 1: and their own histories, and the same. Of infertility in
Speaker 1: those days, oh my goodness, like the shame of male
Speaker 1: infertility was so tremendous that you couldn't even get a
Speaker 1: doctor to say it existed. And there was so much
Speaker 1: heartache that went into childlessness, not being able to have
Speaker 1: a child. And what I came to feel was that
Speaker 1: my dad was a hero. My books dedicated to him,
Speaker 1: and that he was more, if anything more my dad
Speaker 1: than he had been before, that he had done something
Speaker 1: that was hard and heroic and sacrificial, absolutely sacrificial. I think,
Speaker 1: you know. One of the very painful things for me
Speaker 1: is I did come to say because my father was
Speaker 1: a very sad guy, and I always felt his heart.
Speaker 1: I always felt that he there was something at his
Speaker 1: core that was was lonely and sad, and I had
Speaker 1: a lot of thoughts about why that might be. But
Speaker 1: then when I discovered what I did, I realized that
Speaker 1: this contributed to that as well. That he knew he
Speaker 1: wasn't my biological father and he could not have loved
Speaker 1: any more. But I also think that he had a
Speaker 1: sadness about that. Um. But in the end, you know,
Speaker 1: I came to feel, you know, and I write this
Speaker 1: towards the end of the book, that I come from
Speaker 1: three people. That's pretty unusual. I I come from my mom,
Speaker 1: who I was not close to and never never felt
Speaker 1: connected to. But she's my mom. I checked, I did.
Speaker 1: I lasted like a ninety year old cousin of hers
Speaker 1: into like I got her kids to go, you know,
Speaker 1: get her to spit into a plastic violence sends it away.
Speaker 1: Because when something like this happens in your life, you
Speaker 1: really need a tent pole somewhere. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: I wanted to just be sure of something, so I know,
Speaker 1: she's my mom. Um, my dad who raised me is
Speaker 1: my dad and who loved me into being. And then
Speaker 1: the man who was the anonymous no longer anonymous sperm
Speaker 1: donor who was a medical student, you know, just making
Speaker 1: his way to medical school and you know, picking up
Speaker 1: a few dollars and doing something that might help a
Speaker 1: family have a child. He's I come from him, you know,
Speaker 1: I've come from him biologically. So I feel like I
Speaker 1: really lucked out, Like I end up with even more
Speaker 1: of a sense of solidity than I did before. I
Speaker 1: think also because when we know the truth, which I
Speaker 1: spent fifty four years not knowing, it really is true,
Speaker 1: that the truth will set us free. It is profoundly
Speaker 1: liberating to know the truth about something that was hidden
Speaker 1: for so long. I love that. I love it is true.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was written for five thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: The truth will set you free, and it's true. In
Speaker 1: my circumstance, I couldn't. I couldn't process what my grandma
Speaker 1: had told me. And I found out that my father
Speaker 1: actually had two children. He married the woman, the girl
Speaker 1: that got pregnant and had a daughter, and then she
Speaker 1: got pregnant again and they separated and divorced. She had
Speaker 1: a son, But my dad was never a part of
Speaker 1: his life. He was a part of his little girl's
Speaker 1: life for the first couple of years, and they made
Speaker 1: an agreement to go their separate ways because she was
Speaker 1: involved with somebody else, and that somebody else was raising
Speaker 1: the children as his own, and so she and my
Speaker 1: dad made an agreement that they would go their separate ways,
Speaker 1: and that they would bury the truth, and that the
Speaker 1: children would always believe they were their stepfather's biological children,
Speaker 1: and that my father would go on with his life.
Speaker 1: And like your dad, he had such an immense sadness
Speaker 1: I believe a sadness that led to his early death
Speaker 1: because he mourned that he grieved that, but he couldn't
Speaker 1: couldn't talk about it, couldn't acknowledge it. And they lived
Speaker 1: half an hour away mhm. So I was the one
Speaker 1: that that actually called my my brother, my half brother
Speaker 1: m hm. And he drove to my house the next weekend,
Speaker 1: and when he got out of the car, I almost fainted.
Speaker 1: Just like you described your sensation of seeing your biological
Speaker 1: dad in in the video, with the same expressions and
Speaker 1: the same hand movements, in the same pattern of conversation
Speaker 1: out of the car stands a younger version of my father.
Speaker 1: It was very weird. Oh, I have chilled. What made
Speaker 1: you do it finally, you know, at well, Grandma had
Speaker 1: seen an article again, this was my mother's mother had
Speaker 1: seen an article in the local newspaper I'm from a
Speaker 1: small town in Oregon, that he had graduated from a
Speaker 1: trade school and had gotten a job, a good job
Speaker 1: in Everett, Washington, which was only forty five minutes north
Speaker 1: of me. And she cut out the article and she
Speaker 1: mailed it to me, and she said, I think that
Speaker 1: is your brother, because she had told me, you know,
Speaker 1: years ago about my sister, and and seeing his picture,
Speaker 1: I knew he was my brother. Um, and back then
Speaker 1: you could just call, you know, the operator and get
Speaker 1: a phone number, and they called him and that was that.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to put the pieces together. I
Speaker 1: wanted to know the story. And I think mostly I
Speaker 1: wanted to understand my dad because he was always so mysterious,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to unlock that peace. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: find a reason, to get at the reason beneath all
Speaker 1: the behavior and the and the feelings and the energy.
Speaker 1: Right then, I think, you know, I've been a student
Speaker 1: of secrets probably all my life, and it sort of
Speaker 1: threaded through all of my work, you know, Interestingly, given
Speaker 1: what I didn't know. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: I had real in the last two years because I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: what does secrets haven't like holding a secret, keeping a secret,
Speaker 1: burying a secret, Like what what what do secrets have
Speaker 1: in common? And I think whenever there is a secret
Speaker 1: that is held so closely, there's shame thrumming just beneath it.
Speaker 1: We keep secrets because we're ashamed. We think no one
Speaker 1: will understand or ashamed of our behavior, where we think
Speaker 1: will be shunned off people new. And that's like it's
Speaker 1: like the sea of shame. You know that these secrets
Speaker 1: just bob along. And but the thing is what we
Speaker 1: know now, and we know it. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: there are still many many people who try to keep secrets,
Speaker 1: but we know now that you can't just bury something
Speaker 1: and really think like that it disappeared. Nothing disappears. It's there,
Speaker 1: but it's I look back at both of my parents
Speaker 1: now and I can see that so much of what
Speaker 1: made them them and what formed them over the years
Speaker 1: that we you know, walked the earth together, was formed
Speaker 1: around the um. It must have been so lonely for
Speaker 1: each of them. I don't I don't think they ever
Speaker 1: spoke about it. To each other ever again, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll never know, but I believe that they basically went
Speaker 1: ahead and did this thing and then pretty much decided
Speaker 1: that it had never happened and they were just gonna
Speaker 1: get on with things. Um. And yet they have this blonde,
Speaker 1: blue eyed, pink cheeked daughter who nobody can seem to
Speaker 1: fail to comment on how she doesn't look Jewish, And
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it was always always there. There
Speaker 1: were probably things prodding and poking constantly, but that feeling
Speaker 1: that you just what you describe your your your dad as.
Speaker 1: I think when we keep secrets like that, it diminishes
Speaker 1: us ultimately, when we hold that darkness in and we
Speaker 1: feel like we can't talk about it and we're blanketed
Speaker 1: in shame, we wrap ourselves with that shame, and then
Speaker 1: we have these fake personas, you know, especially now with
Speaker 1: social media, where we you know, we crop and alter
Speaker 1: and boost and change the shape of everything to look
Speaker 1: like what we think it should look like when inside
Speaker 1: we're just we feel unworthy, right right, absolutely, and then
Speaker 1: we compare ourselves with other people's furnished you know images.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like a vicious it's a vicious cycle. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you've written the book. I'm glad that
Speaker 1: you got to the bottom of your secret, as painful
Speaker 1: as that was, but as healing as it is. Banned.
Speaker 1: But I'm really, really glad Danny, that you're giving a
Speaker 1: forum of voice to those you know, two percent of
Speaker 1: people who find out guess what Dad wasn't dad or
Speaker 1: mom wasn't mom, and are able to talk about it,
Speaker 1: because the more we talk about it, the more you know.
Speaker 1: I went on vacation a couple of years ago. So
Speaker 1: one of my closest friends has an adopted daughter, and
Speaker 1: it was in an open adoption, and the birth mom,
Speaker 1: beautiful woman, was at a point in her life where
Speaker 1: she could not parent to child, and so she made
Speaker 1: the very loving, healthy decision to choose her child's mother,
Speaker 1: who is my best friend. And I went on vacation
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, and I took my god daughter,
Speaker 1: the adopted child, all of my adopted children, and we
Speaker 1: met her birth mom and spent a week on vacation together.
Speaker 1: And she went for a walk on the beach and
Speaker 1: I said, can I join you? Because I could tell
Speaker 1: she needed some alone time. She said, yeah, please, and
Speaker 1: we walked and she cried, she said. She said, being
Speaker 1: able to talk about my experience openly and honestly and
Speaker 1: without judgment is something I have not been able to
Speaker 1: do in any setting, not with my husband, not with
Speaker 1: my family, she said. But you and your kids talk
Speaker 1: about it like you're talking about what's for dinner. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful story, and you know it's it's making
Speaker 1: me think that one thing I really want to get
Speaker 1: across is that one of the things about my story
Speaker 1: and what happened is that everybody tried to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. What I mean by that is when I
Speaker 1: reached out to my biological father. You know, seventy eight
Speaker 1: year old man, retired physician living in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: You know, he he must have opened his email one
Speaker 1: day and expected to see an announcement from like, you know,
Speaker 1: his golf club and um, you know, what's for lunch
Speaker 1: or whatever, and instead he receives an email from a
Speaker 1: complete stranger saying, I hope this won't come as too
Speaker 1: much of a shock, but I think that you may
Speaker 1: be my biological father. Right. I hear so many stories
Speaker 1: of families where this kind of thing is happening because
Speaker 1: it's happening in hundreds of thousands of the families right now,
Speaker 1: in one way or another. Where the first response, and
Speaker 1: admittedly it was my biological father's first response too, but
Speaker 1: he got past it. The first response is to feel threatened.
Speaker 1: What do you want from me? What do you want?
Speaker 1: You know, it's like it's the ultimate like in the
Speaker 1: other the stranger, you know, the interloper, what do you want?
Speaker 1: And when people can get beyond that very sort of
Speaker 1: primitive human impulse and actually make room for each other
Speaker 1: and for each other's experiences. I mean my biological father,
Speaker 1: and he will never feel like he's not my dad,
Speaker 1: but I do come from him and his kids, particularly
Speaker 1: his daughter who is just only a few years younger
Speaker 1: than I am, the daughter that he and his he
Speaker 1: has three kids that he and his wife raised. They've
Speaker 1: become we have a special relationship now, um, And it's
Speaker 1: because there was this openness and this sense of who
Speaker 1: are we to each other? Who do we want to
Speaker 1: be to each other? And the you know what you're
Speaker 1: describing with your goddaughter and her birth mother, or what
Speaker 1: I see you know when I'm out on the road.
Speaker 1: You know, just stories where half siblings find each other
Speaker 1: and then start getting together and having you know, sort
Speaker 1: of meetups and families who have used donors or surrogates
Speaker 1: all being able to gather together. It's like the opposite
Speaker 1: of shame. It's celebrating all different forms and shapes of
Speaker 1: what makes the family a family and how we you know,
Speaker 1: how we move through this life together. You know that
Speaker 1: that we're all, you know, more the same than we're
Speaker 1: different inside. And how do we do that, you know,
Speaker 1: with each other and with open and loving hearts. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for writing your book, Thank you for having
Speaker 1: your podcast and giving people a place to bring their
Speaker 1: stories and share their stories. Is we need to talk
Speaker 1: about it? Absolutely true. You know. On my podcast we
Speaker 1: have these highly produced episodes every season, but we also
Speaker 1: have a pull free number eight number that people people
Speaker 1: can call in and just record their stories. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that has just been amazing is to
Speaker 1: see how many stories pour in from people who some
Speaker 1: of them are still very much keeping secrets, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're just sharing them on this line and
Speaker 1: sometimes we you know, we include them in bonus episodes
Speaker 1: and so they're being heard by you know, millions of people. Um,
Speaker 1: but that desire to share is so powerful that it's
Speaker 1: even something to pick up the phone and say, this
Speaker 1: happened to me. I want to I want to share
Speaker 1: what happened to me, or I want to share what
Speaker 1: happened in my family. Okay. The book is Inheritance by
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and mostly love.
Speaker 1: Uh and and I would encourage anyone to read it
Speaker 1: that has ever questioned their inheritance, but but also anybody
Speaker 1: to read it because it's so well written. You're a
Speaker 1: wonderful writer. And I'm halfway through it and I'm loving it,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to finish it before the day is over.
Speaker 1: Thanks to love. I'm gonna love thinking of you reading it.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you for being here, Danny, God blessio.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Take care. The book is called Inheritance,
Speaker 1: a Memoir of genealogy, paternity, and mostly love, and Danny's
Speaker 1: podcast is called Family Secrets. New episodes will be released
Speaker 1: each week through the winter and into spring. You can
Speaker 1: find it on I Heart Radio and all of your
Speaker 1: favorite podcast platforms. I'm a little more than halfway through
Speaker 1: the book. Can't wait to finish it. Listen You will
Speaker 1: love this book. Even if you don't have a big
Speaker 1: family secret like Danny did, you will still love this book.
Speaker 1: Pick up your copy today, and you and me next
Speaker 1: time I love someone with Delilah or I will do
Speaker 1: my best to inspire you to change the world, one
Speaker 1: heart at a time.