Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets that
Speaker 1: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. One of the
Speaker 1: things I've noticed about family secrets, aside from the fact
Speaker 1: that just about everybody has them, is that often if
Speaker 1: somebody is, say a writer, an artist, a playwright, a filmmaker,
Speaker 1: she or he ends up with a very strong impulse
Speaker 1: to tell the story, to make something out of it,
Speaker 1: to turn all that weird silence, shame, confusion, and betrayal
Speaker 1: into a narrative into something that shines a bright light
Speaker 1: in the darkness. I know, I did, I still do.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of what this podcast is all about.
Speaker 1: You're about to hear Steve Licktie, who did just that
Speaker 1: in a very personal documentary film called Open Secret. I
Speaker 1: began by asking Steve to tell me about the landscape
Speaker 1: of his childhood, his family, and the town in which
Speaker 1: he grew up. I was raised in a large Catholic
Speaker 1: family on a farm in Kansas. The closest town was
Speaker 1: eight miles away, and it was very small. It was
Speaker 1: five hundred people, the school I went to. It was
Speaker 1: small towns had come together to attend This school that
Speaker 1: was built in the middle of a cow pasture, had
Speaker 1: about three hundred students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. My
Speaker 1: class had around forty students. And these are kids that
Speaker 1: I would have got to school with from kindergarten all
Speaker 1: the way through to twelfth grade. The town center was
Speaker 1: essentially the school, really, and that's where we gathered for
Speaker 1: most things, and that's where the center of our our
Speaker 1: world was. At an early age, you remember was being
Speaker 1: five or six years old, Steve was told by his
Speaker 1: parents that he was adopted. Do you have a memory
Speaker 1: of that moment? I'm afraid it might be conjured, uh,
Speaker 1: like a made up memory. I feel like I do
Speaker 1: have a memory of that with my mother telling me
Speaker 1: that I was adopted and that my real parents loved
Speaker 1: me very much. But I'm afraid it's been so long
Speaker 1: I went out. Maybe that's what I wanted to be
Speaker 1: remembered as if I know my family, like I think
Speaker 1: I know my family, probably did not happen that way.
Speaker 1: It's probably a very peripheral conversation, not even a conversation,
Speaker 1: just a telling like a check off the list. Okay,
Speaker 1: we told him move on. Steve was the youngest by far,
Speaker 1: the youngest of his adoptive siblings. Before his parents Don
Speaker 1: and Mary Jane adopted him, they raised a family of eight.
Speaker 1: There were two boys and six girls. Who arranged an
Speaker 1: aid from Steve's sister Beth, who was nine years older
Speaker 1: than Steve, all the way to his oldest sister joe Me,
Speaker 1: who was twenty two years his senior. By the time
Speaker 1: Steve was five, Joanie had moved out of the house
Speaker 1: and was living in Colorado. So I just went on
Speaker 1: with my life having this information with my adoptive parents,
Speaker 1: who were older than my classmates parents by probably thirty years,
Speaker 1: I would say. But then the day before my high
Speaker 1: school graduation, everything changed, at least how I saw myself changed.
Speaker 1: My two best friends, Alan and Vance came over to
Speaker 1: my house, walked into my bedroom and said that they
Speaker 1: needed to tell me something. It was Vance who said,
Speaker 1: we know who your mom is. He says, it's Joanie.
Speaker 1: So up until that moment, I thought Joanie was my
Speaker 1: adopted sister. This meant then that my adoptive parents were
Speaker 1: really my grandparents. My memory of that moment was me
Speaker 1: almost immediately trying to prove them wrong in a very
Speaker 1: sort of half hearted way. I kept saying that it
Speaker 1: didn't make it. But I think that there was something
Speaker 1: always in the back of my mind where I knew
Speaker 1: something was not quite right with my family and my
Speaker 1: situation within that family. And I remember asking them about
Speaker 1: my father, but they didn't know anything about my father.
Speaker 1: And then that was it. I mean, I think we
Speaker 1: talked a little longer they left. I graduated from high school,
Speaker 1: and for most of that summer I don't think I
Speaker 1: talked about it again. Do you know why Alan and
Speaker 1: Vance decided that this was the moment to tell you
Speaker 1: what they knew, Because again, in my mind, going back
Speaker 1: to this small town, I'm imagining it was a place
Speaker 1: that people lived in for generations, not a lot of
Speaker 1: people moved in, not a lot of people moved out.
Speaker 1: And these were guys that you grew up with your
Speaker 1: whole life. Is that correct? That's right? They knew every thing.
Speaker 1: I think that those kids who were my classmates and
Speaker 1: the people I went to school with all kind of
Speaker 1: found out at different times of their lives. That they
Speaker 1: didn't all find it out at once. Some found out
Speaker 1: very young. Some found out in junior high, but there
Speaker 1: was a collective agreement among them to make sure that
Speaker 1: I didn't find out. I just have to stop for
Speaker 1: a second here, just stop, hold on. It's one thing
Speaker 1: to have a massive secret kept from you for your
Speaker 1: entire life, to grow up thinking you're adopted, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden find out that not only are
Speaker 1: you not adopted, but your older sister is your mother
Speaker 1: and your adoptive parents are your actual grandparents. That would
Speaker 1: be world rocking enough, but then it turns out that
Speaker 1: a whole town, your teachers, coaches, friends, parents, friends, teammates,
Speaker 1: the checkout guy at the grocery store had kept that
Speaker 1: secret from you were eighteen years I remember Vance and
Speaker 1: Alan both saying to me, we're men now, and Vance,
Speaker 1: I think, says, you know, they weren't going to tell
Speaker 1: you your parents, so I did. This was true love
Speaker 1: and respect for my friends at the time, saying hey,
Speaker 1: here's this thing. We've known. Everybody that we grew up
Speaker 1: with knows, and you now need to know too. You
Speaker 1: have to be brought in to this secret because we're
Speaker 1: going to be separating and going our separate ways, and
Speaker 1: we think you should know, secrets do a lot of
Speaker 1: things to different people in different ways, and the secret creators,
Speaker 1: the secret keepers, and then the people who are on
Speaker 1: the receiving end of the secret, of the victims of
Speaker 1: the secret, all have different things that that they grapple with.
Speaker 1: One image particularly stands out for me from Steve's documentary.
Speaker 1: I found it incredibly haunting. It's a photo taken with
Speaker 1: an a day or so of Steve being told the
Speaker 1: truth about his identity, that he isn't adopted at all,
Speaker 1: that his older sister is his mother, and that his
Speaker 1: mother and father are his grandparents. And in this photo
Speaker 1: Steve has his arms around both his parents, or rather grandparents,
Speaker 1: and he has this great, big smile on his face.
Speaker 1: It's always a little bit dangerous to read too much
Speaker 1: into a photograph, but when I looked at this one,
Speaker 1: it was hard to reconcile that grinning kid at his
Speaker 1: high school graduation and what must have been going on
Speaker 1: beneath the surface. They completely pushed down all of that
Speaker 1: information and didn't bring it up at all to my
Speaker 1: parents for a while. That was a period of me
Speaker 1: just trying to enjoy that moment of graduating from high
Speaker 1: school and this next phase of my life. But I'm
Speaker 1: sure underneath all that, I was thinking, well, what is
Speaker 1: the next phase of my life? Who am I? Literally?
Speaker 1: Who am I? Why did my family do this? We're
Speaker 1: going to pause for a moment. Do you think that
Speaker 1: you were afraid or nervous about talking to your parents
Speaker 1: about it because you were trying to kind of absorb
Speaker 1: it in terms of your own reality and not bring
Speaker 1: their reality into it, or perhaps because did you wonder
Speaker 1: if they would be angry or whether they would deny
Speaker 1: yes to all those things that you just said. I
Speaker 1: was worried about all that stuff, and I kind of
Speaker 1: always kept my emotions in check, and I still do
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, and it was something that I
Speaker 1: didn't want to lose control by bringing it up so
Speaker 1: soon after finding out and feeling like I was going
Speaker 1: to careen into this emotional territory that I wasn't ready
Speaker 1: to deal with. Steve's family wasn't one to talk to
Speaker 1: each other about feelings or problems. It was an atmosphere
Speaker 1: of Midwestern stoicism, with a less said the better and
Speaker 1: secrets were best off remaining. Just that, like so many
Speaker 1: dustballs swept under the rug. So it makes total sense
Speaker 1: that Steve would want to stay in control of his
Speaker 1: own brand new narrative for as long as he could.
Speaker 1: When he did think about it, he did the mental math. Well,
Speaker 1: Joanie is twenty two years older than him, That makes sense.
Speaker 1: Of course she would have been able to give birth
Speaker 1: to a child. And then there was the fact that
Speaker 1: he resembled some members of his family in a way
Speaker 1: that an adoptive kid probably wouldn't. And as I started
Speaker 1: to think about those things, it started to make more
Speaker 1: sense to me. And I think that my belief in
Speaker 1: it crept up over time, and eventually, you know, then
Speaker 1: became something that I fully and holly believed and knew
Speaker 1: to be true. And that's probably when the lid really
Speaker 1: came off of everything. So here's another thing about secrets.
Speaker 1: Once we know the truth, it can't help but live
Speaker 1: inside us. Even if we try to ignore what we know.
Speaker 1: It pushes its way to the surface of our consciousness.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it whispers, sometimes it shouts. One weekend when he's
Speaker 1: home from college, Donn and Mary Jane walk in on
Speaker 1: Steve having sex with a girlfriend. Picture Mary Jane as
Speaker 1: a seventies something. Francis McDormand that's who would be cast
Speaker 1: as her in the movie. And Don is a sort
Speaker 1: of elderly ed Harris all gruff and taciturn. So Don
Speaker 1: and Mary Jane walk in on two teenagers and Steve's
Speaker 1: traditional Catholic parents, or I should say grandparents, are appalled.
Speaker 1: That was a Saturday. The next day, Sunday, I was
Speaker 1: in bed and I heard the TV go on loudly,
Speaker 1: and it was a preacher televangelista, you know, on a
Speaker 1: Sunday morning show, preaching abstinence, and my mom turned it
Speaker 1: up really loud. And my room was right next to
Speaker 1: the living room where the TV was, And I got up,
Speaker 1: walked out into the living room and I said, did
Speaker 1: you play this sermon for Joanie? And then I went
Speaker 1: over and I shut the TV off, and she said,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? I said, did you play
Speaker 1: this sermon about not having sex to Joanie? And she said,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what you mean. I go, I
Speaker 1: know Joanie is my mother, and she just kept denying it.
Speaker 1: I have no idea, what are you talking about? Who
Speaker 1: told you that? There was a back and forth for
Speaker 1: a time, and then the most vivid memory of this
Speaker 1: is my father sitting in his recliner while this is
Speaker 1: all going on, and he just takes his hand, he
Speaker 1: slams it down on the arm and he says, damn it,
Speaker 1: Mary Jane, just tell him. And that's when it all
Speaker 1: sort of broke away, and she said, yes, it's true, Joanie,
Speaker 1: is your mother. We adopted you, we your grandparents. And
Speaker 1: then I was incredibly angry. I stored out of the house,
Speaker 1: I got into my car and drove away, checked into
Speaker 1: a motel room in the town, the big town, called
Speaker 1: my friends, and we got drunk. But with your anger
Speaker 1: towards your parents, it sounds a little bit like confronting
Speaker 1: them and then having them finally acknowledge it and admit
Speaker 1: it brought this to a different level of reality for you,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't sound like you were walking around angry
Speaker 1: prior to that. It sounds like you were just trying
Speaker 1: to digest it and maybe even in a bit of
Speaker 1: a state of numbness. But the reality of that confrontation
Speaker 1: brought it home for you. Yeah, it's funny. I think
Speaker 1: I remember I was embarrassed about being caught having sex.
Speaker 1: That was like a real felt like was an invasion
Speaker 1: of my privacy, and I just felt really embarrassed about it.
Speaker 1: I always wonder if that had not happened, how long
Speaker 1: would it have gone before I confronted? Would I have ever?
Speaker 1: Would I have just like never talked about it. But
Speaker 1: there was something about that moment, my mom's sort of
Speaker 1: almost like smugness about it, her shame in me having
Speaker 1: premarital sex, and I just couldn't take the hypocrisy in
Speaker 1: that moment. I think that's partly why I snapped. It
Speaker 1: was all these mixed emotions of embarrassment and feeling like
Speaker 1: she didn't have any place to be lecturing me about
Speaker 1: these things when her own daughter, her real own daughter,
Speaker 1: had this affair as a young woman and got pregnant.
Speaker 1: There's nothing an eighteen year old boy like less than hypocrisy,
Speaker 1: That's right. I was like a very holding Coffield moment
Speaker 1: of like, who these phonies treating me like they don't
Speaker 1: know who I am and what I do? And how
Speaker 1: dare her? You know? I'm a man. I keep going
Speaker 1: back to the whole idea that the entire town knew
Speaker 1: the truth of Steve's identity and that he was the
Speaker 1: only one in the dark. I think I'm obsessed with
Speaker 1: this part of his story my own personal obsession with
Speaker 1: it because when I discovered my own massive family secret
Speaker 1: that my dad had not been my biological father, and
Speaker 1: I began calling people who were still alive since both
Speaker 1: my parents were long gone, to ask them what they knew.
Speaker 1: I was terrified that the only one who didn't know
Speaker 1: the truth of my own identity was me. Right, I
Speaker 1: was really digging for what did they know? And each
Speaker 1: time I made a phone call, my heart was pounding
Speaker 1: and my palms were sweating. And I finally realized that
Speaker 1: what I was most afraid I was going to find
Speaker 1: out was that everybody knew. Interesting, you know, that I
Speaker 1: was the only one in the dark. So I was
Speaker 1: very conscious of that, wondering what that would have felt
Speaker 1: like for you. It's like you were living in the
Speaker 1: Truman Show. Yeah right, that's right. I it's funny that
Speaker 1: you felt that was your fear in your own circumstances.
Speaker 1: I have many fears, but one of them was did
Speaker 1: everybody know this but me? So let me let me
Speaker 1: ask you this, if you don't mind, let me turn
Speaker 1: the tables for one second. Do you feel embarrassed by
Speaker 1: that that you lacked that ability to perceive something that
Speaker 1: was so obviously not right, Or what is the feeling
Speaker 1: that you're having about everyone knowing but you. It's already
Speaker 1: evolved in a couple of years that I've been living
Speaker 1: with this. I think initially there was a little bit
Speaker 1: of a feeling of embarrassment or shame or I should
Speaker 1: have known, or you know. I pride myself on my intuition.
Speaker 1: Where was my intuition? Actually? I think my intuition was
Speaker 1: alive and well and working very hard to try to
Speaker 1: understand something that I couldn't understand. I just couldn't. We believe,
Speaker 1: and we construct narratives around what we know and what
Speaker 1: we're told as children, and and the trust that we
Speaker 1: place in the adults around us, and it kind of
Speaker 1: forms our reality. I think I was most bothered by
Speaker 1: the idea that I think my mom and dad thought
Speaker 1: that they could get away with it, And I mean
Speaker 1: that that sounds so vicious that like a boy, they
Speaker 1: just crime. I don't know that they were ever going
Speaker 1: to tell me, and I think that is probably the
Speaker 1: driving force of any anger I may have about the situation.
Speaker 1: I don't know that they ever had any intention of
Speaker 1: actually ever telling me. I have a friend who has
Speaker 1: psychic abilities, and it's pretty sure she knows what happens
Speaker 1: when we die. I'm sure I've lost some of you here,
Speaker 1: and I'm a bit of a skeptic myself, so don't
Speaker 1: shoot the messenger anyway. She told me that when we die,
Speaker 1: we can look back and survey our lives with a
Speaker 1: sense of distance and compassion, and we get to see
Speaker 1: the whole thing, what we got right, what we missed,
Speaker 1: what we just didn't see. And I remember thinking that
Speaker 1: if this was true, if I hadn't discovered the truth
Speaker 1: about my dad, I would have been standing there thinking,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I missed the whole thing I was
Speaker 1: wrong about myself. I didn't have an essential piece of information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that would have been pretty bad death moment, big bummer,
Speaker 1: except apparently you don't feel like it's a bump because
Speaker 1: you're dead. So Steve has his big confrontation with Don
Speaker 1: and Mary Jane. He doesn't talk to anybody else about
Speaker 1: his secret, not for a very long time. But as
Speaker 1: he moves through his twenties, an aimlessness sets in. The
Speaker 1: kid who was a star in high school barely scrapes
Speaker 1: through college, and it's kind of flailing. He doesn't have
Speaker 1: a passion for work. His relationships are pretty unsatisfying. But
Speaker 1: he doesn't know what's wrong. He doesn't know why he's
Speaker 1: so miserable. I got up in the morning, I had jobs,
Speaker 1: I did all the things you do, but I was depressed.
Speaker 1: I sometimes I couldn't get out of bed for a
Speaker 1: whole day. I'm just play there. I did really poorly
Speaker 1: in college. Everything how I was in high school was
Speaker 1: not the way I was as the sort of young adult,
Speaker 1: drinking too much, all the stuff that goes along with
Speaker 1: something like this happening to you. But I never put
Speaker 1: two and two together. I wasn't like, oh, I I'm
Speaker 1: sad and depressed because the secret was kept for me
Speaker 1: my entire childhood. I never made that connection. And I
Speaker 1: went to various counselors and psychologists and so forth, and
Speaker 1: of course it would come out that I would tell
Speaker 1: this story, but I still can never make that direct connection.
Speaker 1: I just sort of thought, oh, well, I'm lazy, or
Speaker 1: I've not found the right thing to do in my life,
Speaker 1: or whatever it might be. And that was kind of
Speaker 1: my twenties. For the most part, just didn't feel good.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel close to my family, I didn't feel
Speaker 1: the relationships that I would have with people were always
Speaker 1: going to be on my terms. That you really do
Speaker 1: develop this lack of trust, even though you can't articulate that.
Speaker 1: It's just a feeling of I don't know about this person.
Speaker 1: Just keep you at arms length for a while. I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on with you. I don't want
Speaker 1: you in my space. And then you do this stupid
Speaker 1: thing where you use I did this a lot in
Speaker 1: my twenties that I look back on now, and then
Speaker 1: you use this story as like a little weapon or
Speaker 1: a way of getting people to think that you're interesting
Speaker 1: or damaged in some way. And I would deploy it
Speaker 1: at times that I thought would maybe that would impress
Speaker 1: this girl or maybe you know, I would really wow
Speaker 1: this party crowd with my story of my horrible and
Speaker 1: of course I would embellish it. But even then, I
Speaker 1: think I was trying to figure out, what does this
Speaker 1: story mean to me? Really? What is it all about? Really?
Speaker 1: And I think that's what I was playing with in
Speaker 1: those early days, and it moved forward to something more concrete,
Speaker 1: and as I discovered journalism, and I just discovered that
Speaker 1: there is a real power in crafting a truthful narrative,
Speaker 1: or at least as truthful as you can make it
Speaker 1: and your emotional truth. Steve eventually discovers his calling as
Speaker 1: a journalist and finds success working for NPR and various
Speaker 1: other news organizations. He digs for the truth in other
Speaker 1: people's stories, and eventually he begins to think he might
Speaker 1: want to make a film to dig for the truth
Speaker 1: of his own family story and in order to tell
Speaker 1: the truth in three and sixty degrees, not only Steve's
Speaker 1: own story, but seen through the lens of everyone in
Speaker 1: his family. He begins a process of interviewing his brother's sisters, Mary, Jane, Don,
Speaker 1: his old friends, the ones who broke the news to him.
Speaker 1: To begin with, being the documentarian allows Steve a little
Speaker 1: bit of distance, and also this is so important permission,
Speaker 1: his camera and recording equipment a buffer between himself and
Speaker 1: his own pain. Then I started to see like there
Speaker 1: was a way to do this, tell the story that
Speaker 1: would be fair to everyone, not just to me, but
Speaker 1: to my family. I learned that there was a way
Speaker 1: to let people have their say about what had happened
Speaker 1: without any accusations and without people feeling like they were
Speaker 1: put on trial, and that's ultimately where I got to.
Speaker 1: But it was incredibly long period of time, and even
Speaker 1: the making of the film was long. You know. I
Speaker 1: started in two thousand three. I don't think I finished
Speaker 1: in two two eleven. So it was a very very
Speaker 1: hard pulling thread very slowly. Do you think that in
Speaker 1: part was because as you could sort of only really
Speaker 1: examine it a little bit at a time. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: couldn't have done it all at once. It would have
Speaker 1: killed me. Every time I did an interview with a
Speaker 1: family member, it would take this little chunk out of me.
Speaker 1: Then I just steal myself for the next one. And
Speaker 1: also you know, the issues of job and money and
Speaker 1: all those sorts of things. But it was just every
Speaker 1: interview was like a little slice of energy. Decision making,
Speaker 1: all those things were just sort of taken away and
Speaker 1: it took a while. Then you do all the interviews
Speaker 1: for it, and then you have the editing process, which
Speaker 1: was absolutely torturous for me to watch myself, to see
Speaker 1: the things I was saying, to acting the way I
Speaker 1: was acting. I had a great editor who taught me
Speaker 1: to be honest in those moments and don't ask to
Speaker 1: have things cut out that are gonna be truthful and honest,
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break. And then there's Joanie.
Speaker 1: The palpable awkwardness and discomfort during the moments Joanie is
Speaker 1: on screen made me squirm as Steve and Joanie talk
Speaker 1: that awkwardness sometimes turns to anger. There's such a feeling
Speaker 1: of disconnect between them. She doesn't seem like his mother,
Speaker 1: she doesn't seem like his sister. A glass of wine
Speaker 1: is always nearby whenever she's on camera, and she seems
Speaker 1: a bit lost, baffled at the turns her life is taken.
Speaker 1: Try as I might, I didn't really feel a bond
Speaker 1: between them. Steve does, however, seem like a son during
Speaker 1: his moments with Mary, Jane and Don because he was
Speaker 1: their son for eighteen formative years. It's not like his
Speaker 1: discovery automatically turned them into grandparents in his psyche, nor
Speaker 1: did it turn Joanie into his mother, because that's just
Speaker 1: not how it works. In the film, you in review
Speaker 1: Joanie a number of times, and those are some of
Speaker 1: the most painful scenes to me. They were in the film,
Speaker 1: and there's a moment in which I guess it's in
Speaker 1: anticipation of an upcoming wedding and your wedding and whether
Speaker 1: she's going to come or not come, and who she
Speaker 1: will be at your wedding, how do you explain her?
Speaker 1: What is her role? And you say to her, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I'm ever gonna be able to
Speaker 1: call you mother? Right right? Yeah, So could you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that, about that moment. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a preface to that. I get the film has been
Speaker 1: around for a while, and it's been on all the
Speaker 1: places where you can get to see movies, and it's
Speaker 1: been a festivals and so forth, and I've had a
Speaker 1: lot of great reactions, but I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: negative reactions to how I am in the film, toward
Speaker 1: Joanie in particular. And this is one moment that people
Speaker 1: talk about. You softened it, actually, I actually say it,
Speaker 1: how would you feel if I never called you mom?
Speaker 1: Which is that's a really pointed question and kind of
Speaker 1: a jerky way to saying it. But of course is
Speaker 1: the moment in the film, and no one knows all
Speaker 1: the backstory to that moment. Necessarily they see what they
Speaker 1: see in the movie, and there's only so much you
Speaker 1: can include and and all the feelings and emotions that
Speaker 1: came up to that moment. I feel so bad about
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and I've I've always thinking I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask my distributor to take the movie down off of
Speaker 1: all the places and nobody can see it ever again.
Speaker 1: But Steve, when you say you feel bad about the
Speaker 1: whole thing, you mean you feel bad about the whole thing,
Speaker 1: or you feel bad about the film part or or
Speaker 1: what I feel bad about the whole thing. I feel
Speaker 1: bad about that I ever knew. I feel bad that
Speaker 1: I made the film. I feel embarrassed about how I
Speaker 1: come across in the film, even though I'm also at
Speaker 1: the same time, if you can imagine this, proud of it,
Speaker 1: because it's an accurate journalistic depiction of me in that moment.
Speaker 1: I was angry at times. I was kind of a
Speaker 1: jerk at times. I don't often come across as that articulate.
Speaker 1: At times, I sometimes make these leaps of logic that
Speaker 1: don't make any sense, you know, all this stuff. But
Speaker 1: in thinking about the conversation that we were going to have,
Speaker 1: I had this. I mean, it's an epiphany. It really is.
Speaker 1: It's not to put too much of a dramatic point
Speaker 1: on it. But I had this moment of of something
Speaker 1: that has never once occurred to me in all the
Speaker 1: years and even all the adoption conferences that I've taken
Speaker 1: this film too. In that moment, in that scene, the
Speaker 1: reason I said it that way it was feeling so angry,
Speaker 1: or it was an angry way of asking it, is
Speaker 1: that it is hard to understand if you have not
Speaker 1: been adopted or had a secret kept from you about
Speaker 1: who you are. It seems to me that part of
Speaker 1: why you would have been mad about it is it
Speaker 1: was erasing your history. It was essentially saying those first
Speaker 1: eighteen years where you believed what you believed, that doesn't matter. Right.
Speaker 1: And the people who understand this actually are adoptees. When
Speaker 1: I go to those conferences and show this film and
Speaker 1: I always preface it with this sort of oh, I'm
Speaker 1: a real jerk in this, sorry everybody, And at the
Speaker 1: end they're like, what are you talking about? You are
Speaker 1: not a jerk at all. In fact, you are acting
Speaker 1: how anybody would act, and you deserve to be able
Speaker 1: to act that way and you should never apologize for that.
Speaker 1: A lot of states still have closed adoption records, although
Speaker 1: that's changing, So you really don't have any access to
Speaker 1: your history, your actual biological history. You have to take
Speaker 1: on this other history that is really hard to understand
Speaker 1: if you have not been through it. And that is
Speaker 1: my if, if as any message I could send to
Speaker 1: the people who say, boy, Stevie really hard on Joanie
Speaker 1: in that movie and man, poor Janie. And I agree
Speaker 1: she had a rough time to absolutely, but it's really
Speaker 1: important to understand that I feel like I'm sounding angry
Speaker 1: right now. I'm more of just emphatic about it. Is
Speaker 1: that because I so it's brand new, I'm just coming
Speaker 1: to This is the hardest thing for me to have
Speaker 1: realized all these years, and that I just realized recently,
Speaker 1: is that I actually don't owe Joanie anything. I don't
Speaker 1: owe her relationship. I don't owe her to be called mom.
Speaker 1: I don't owe her to act as a son to her.
Speaker 1: I don't owe her anything because there was never any
Speaker 1: agreement made between us or transaction made between us. We
Speaker 1: are just two people. Do you suppose that there is
Speaker 1: also an element to that response that that that people
Speaker 1: have that is probably a largely unconscious response when they
Speaker 1: have it that the person in those circumstances is supposed
Speaker 1: to feel grateful. In other words, absolutely, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you were taken in, you were loved, Otherwise you might
Speaker 1: have had very different circumstances. Or I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know whether the reason why I'm relating to this is
Speaker 1: as someone who discovered that she was donor conceived, um,
Speaker 1: but I know that what people feel about people who
Speaker 1: find out that they were doing or conceived is well,
Speaker 1: you're you're here, aren't you. I mean, you're glad you're here,
Speaker 1: You've you've had this great life and that as if
Speaker 1: that's supposed to check that box and then you're kind
Speaker 1: of done with it and there's no room for other feelings,
Speaker 1: much more complex feelings of what led to in my case,
Speaker 1: my being born and in your case, the way that
Speaker 1: you were raised. Oh there's yeah, I've heard that many
Speaker 1: many times. You know, you're lucky that you weren't aborted,
Speaker 1: You're lucky you were't abused. All true. And you know
Speaker 1: you can be grateful and still be adamant that you
Speaker 1: don't owe the person something beyond the gratefulness. You know, Yes,
Speaker 1: you can have two things in your head at the
Speaker 1: same time of like thank you for not aborting me
Speaker 1: or abusing me. And I'm not going to call you mom,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to call you mom, So let
Speaker 1: me ask you what's your relationship out to Joanie and
Speaker 1: in the fullness of time and in the aftermaths of
Speaker 1: open secret coming out. So she did not like the film.
Speaker 1: She felt that she wasn't portrayed in a positive way,
Speaker 1: which I disagree. I think she comes across as a
Speaker 1: very sympathetic person who went through a very difficult childhood,
Speaker 1: had her struggles with her own identity, trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, who she wanted to be, and I think
Speaker 1: she found it embarrassing. It's funny. Other members of the
Speaker 1: family feel like that was an absolute accurate depiction of
Speaker 1: her in every way. I wouldn't have released it if
Speaker 1: I thought that it was somehow damning to her. I
Speaker 1: think that she comes out as someone who's incredibly complicated
Speaker 1: and has a lot to tell and a lot to show.
Speaker 1: The movies a lot about two women, you know, my mom,
Speaker 1: Mary Jane and Joanie and the struggles of that time
Speaker 1: being choice is not given to them, choice is taken away,
Speaker 1: and I felt like that was portrayed fairly accurately for them.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like this whole experience has very much
Speaker 1: affected your interest in not keeping secrets in your family
Speaker 1: and in your family that you've made with with your
Speaker 1: wife and your kids. Yeah, any secret that has an
Speaker 1: effect on someone else, I am very much against. You know,
Speaker 1: there are lots of secrets, their secrets that you keep
Speaker 1: for yourself that only affect you, like that you eat
Speaker 1: too many cupcakes at night when nobody's looking or whatever.
Speaker 1: But then there's the secrets that of people's identity or
Speaker 1: any secret that I think can obstruct someone's progress in
Speaker 1: the world. I think is a bad secret and it
Speaker 1: needs to be told. I feel very very strongly about that.
Speaker 1: And I would never keep a secret from my kids
Speaker 1: if it was something that if they knew the truth,
Speaker 1: would make their life better or not even better, it
Speaker 1: would just move their life forward. Yeah, exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that we are formed by what we don't know,
Speaker 1: at least as much, if not more, then by what
Speaker 1: we do. And we're when we're formed by what we
Speaker 1: don't know, it's going is gonna sound like a word puzzle,
Speaker 1: but we we were being formed by something we don't
Speaker 1: even know we're being formed by. And so there's something
Speaker 1: that's very dangerous about that because it's so it's so
Speaker 1: unavailable and so unconscious. Yeah, I always think my my
Speaker 1: hypothetical and all this is imagine if my parents had
Speaker 1: set me down at the age of five and six,
Speaker 1: instead of saying adopted, said hey, listen, you should know
Speaker 1: we're your grandparents and we love you very much. And
Speaker 1: Joanie is your mom and she had you and she
Speaker 1: couldn't take care of you because she wasn't ready to
Speaker 1: do that. But they're part of this family, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to raise you as our grandson and our
Speaker 1: son if you want us to, and you know, welcome.
Speaker 1: You know what an amazing moment that now I get it.
Speaker 1: This is Kansas, this is Catholic. People were like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, Janie, I can't believe she's pregnant. What kind
Speaker 1: of awful person is she? You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: the social mores of the time, but that would have
Speaker 1: been a really amazing thing to have happened if it
Speaker 1: would have happened that way. Of course, this story would
Speaker 1: not be complete without talking about Henry. Who's Henry, you
Speaker 1: might ask, Steve's biological father. I remember there was a
Speaker 1: very brief conversation that I had with Joni at the
Speaker 1: age I was twenty, I think I was in school,
Speaker 1: and she goes, I have Henry's phone number. I've had
Speaker 1: it for a long time. Um. She told me that
Speaker 1: in that moment that she had been sending photos to him.
Speaker 1: She had an address and a phone number, so he
Speaker 1: knew I existed, but she didn't know anything about him.
Speaker 1: She's like, I don't know. He has a thick accent,
Speaker 1: and I don't even know where he's from. I think
Speaker 1: she you know, she told me very stories about him
Speaker 1: being from Romania and from Italy and all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: but she never knew anything really about him. But she
Speaker 1: had a name and a phone number, and he was
Speaker 1: living in Los Angeles, which is where she met him
Speaker 1: when she ran away from home that summer and got pregnant.
Speaker 1: And so I took that number from her and I
Speaker 1: held onto it for a while, and then one night
Speaker 1: I called it and he answered the phone, and it
Speaker 1: was the thickest accent I had ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1: Like it was, this is a kid from Kansas who
Speaker 1: had never been really anywhere, and uh, it was this
Speaker 1: thick European accent. And you know, I'll tell you. What.
Speaker 1: If there's anything that I'm embarrassed about, it's about how
Speaker 1: just dumb I was in those moments where I had
Speaker 1: this man on the phone and I didn't know what
Speaker 1: to ask him. I just froze. And all he said
Speaker 1: to me was I don't have anything for you. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if he meant that monetarily or emotionally
Speaker 1: or what it was, but I was so panicked. I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds like the thing you described earlier about your
Speaker 1: heart's racing and you're gripping the phone. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do. I was still a kid in that way,
Speaker 1: and so I just was like, I don't want anything
Speaker 1: from you, thank you for talking to me, goodbye, and
Speaker 1: I hung up and that was it. I never talked
Speaker 1: to him again. He died, um, you know, five or
Speaker 1: six years later. Eventually I was able to track down
Speaker 1: a daughter that he had from his marriage, who is
Speaker 1: the same age as Joanie, by the way, and I
Speaker 1: wrote her a letter and we connected that way, and
Speaker 1: that's where I found out who he was, where he's from.
Speaker 1: He was born and raised in Poland, was a Holocaust survivor.
Speaker 1: All these pieces sort of started to come together and
Speaker 1: just in case you're thinking that this story can't get
Speaker 1: even more complex than it already is, it turns out
Speaker 1: that Steve has a biological half sister that his father, Henry,
Speaker 1: was in fact married when he got Jonie pregnant. I
Speaker 1: talked to her recently. She had just gone on a
Speaker 1: trip to Poland with her son, one of her sons,
Speaker 1: who was at my wedding. By the way, I've become
Speaker 1: sort of friendly with him. He was very interested in
Speaker 1: this whole story. He's my same a I'm his uncle technically,
Speaker 1: but we're the same age. But she had gone to
Speaker 1: Poland to go visit Henry's the town where he lived
Speaker 1: and where he was rounded up, and all those sorts
Speaker 1: of things, and she wanted to talk to me about it.
Speaker 1: So we had a phone call, and you know, we
Speaker 1: talk about it. It's funny, and she'll refer to Henry
Speaker 1: as our father, which I think is something she obviously
Speaker 1: does not have to do but does. And then she
Speaker 1: had said, I can't wait to meet your boys. You know,
Speaker 1: they're my they're my only nephews. It's funny. I see,
Speaker 1: he was a member of my family, but with no
Speaker 1: name attached, no signifier, attached to it. No, like sister, brother, cousin.
Speaker 1: She's just is somebody who's part of my world. Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean it's such it's such a depiction of modern family,
Speaker 1: the families that we make, the families that we end
Speaker 1: up with. We're so interested in defining with labels who
Speaker 1: we are to each other. Right, Oh yeah, I just
Speaker 1: see her as this person who's in my life and
Speaker 1: who is a family member. But it would be very
Speaker 1: strange to call her sister, and you know what, she's
Speaker 1: ever asked me to. As Steve and I talk, I
Speaker 1: find myself thinking a lot about closure. After all, he's
Speaker 1: known the truth since he was eighteen. He's now forty nine,
Speaker 1: He's made a film about it, he has a wife, kids,
Speaker 1: a great career, a life he built in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Is there a point when a family secret like this
Speaker 1: begins to lose its power? Is closure a real thing?
Speaker 1: Does Steve believe in it? No? I don't. Actually, I
Speaker 1: think that I sort of visualize it. The secret part
Speaker 1: of it, or the grappling with it, is like a bumpy,
Speaker 1: pothole filled road. It's a bumpy gravel road with twists
Speaker 1: and turns. And then when you come to sort of
Speaker 1: grips with it. The road smooths out, but it keeps going,
Speaker 1: so there's not an ending, and that road could become
Speaker 1: bumpy again. So it's a traveling metaphor. You know, you're
Speaker 1: the closure is when you die. That's the end, that
Speaker 1: it's closure. But I'm always going to be grappling with
Speaker 1: all of this. Right now, I'm on a smooth road
Speaker 1: with it, and I love Joanie. I care about what
Speaker 1: happens to her. I can't forge a mother's son relationship
Speaker 1: with her that will never happen. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: I don't have feelings for her or respect her and
Speaker 1: care about how she's doing. But there was a time
Speaker 1: where that road was awfully bumpy and not good to
Speaker 1: travel on, and now it feels like it's a nice, steady,
Speaker 1: smooth ride. And my goal is for it to just
Speaker 1: continue that way on my own terms. Now, she may
Speaker 1: she may say the opposite. She'd be like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: the road is still really bumpy and it's not good.
Speaker 1: I'll say, well, that's that's your perception of it. Mine
Speaker 1: is this. I'd like to thank my guest Steve Lichtie
Speaker 1: for sharing his story with us today. For more about
Speaker 1: his documentary, visit Open Secret film dot com. Family Secrets
Speaker 1: is an I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagan is the
Speaker 1: supervising producer, Andrew Howard and Tristan McNeil are the audio engineers,
Speaker 1: and Julie Douglas is the executive producer. If you have
Speaker 1: a family secret you'd like to share, you can get
Speaker 1: in touch with us at listener mail at Family Secrets
Speaker 1: podcast dot com, and you can also find us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Danny Ryder, and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod
Speaker 1: and Twitter at Fam Secrets Pod. That's fam Secrets Pod.
Speaker 1: For more about my book, Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot com.