Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets
Speaker 2: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 2: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today
Speaker 2: is Read Harkness, a filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. Reads
Speaker 2: is a story about turning his camera on a family,
Speaker 2: his family, specifically his younger half brother Sam, in a
Speaker 2: lifelong attempt to understand what happened, what went wrong, and
Speaker 2: how to make it right if such a thing as possible.
Speaker 2: Read's documentary, twenty five years in the making, Sam Now,
Speaker 2: is a powerful illustration of the way that art can
Speaker 2: drive us to a deeper truth. Tell me about the
Speaker 2: landscape of your childhood, just whatever the word landscape means
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 3: I grew up on the West Coast. My parents divorced
Speaker 3: when I was a toddler, and my dad stayed in
Speaker 3: Seattle and my mom went back to her family home
Speaker 3: in Palo Alto, California. Most of my life I've lived
Speaker 3: along I five. I currently live in Portland, Oregon, but
Speaker 3: I'd say the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest is
Speaker 3: very much home to me. In Seattle. When I was
Speaker 3: about five, my dad remarried to Joyce, who came with
Speaker 3: my stepbrother Peter. He's about a year older than me.
Speaker 3: Not that long after they were married. They had two sons,
Speaker 3: Jared and then Sam, So in the summertimes when I
Speaker 3: was in Seattle, I had three brothers. It was a
Speaker 3: house full of boys.
Speaker 2: And when you were with your mom in Palo Alto,
Speaker 2: were there any more kids in that household.
Speaker 3: My mom remarried when I was about five, and a
Speaker 3: parallel thing happened, except she had two daughters. So I
Speaker 3: would go between one house majority women and one house
Speaker 3: majority boys. It was a really interesting experience for me.
Speaker 2: So when Jared and Sam were growing up, you would
Speaker 2: see them mostly summers. Were there also sort of holidays
Speaker 2: in between?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd be in Seattle every summer and pretty much
Speaker 3: every Christmas vacation. But I did school with my mom
Speaker 3: until I was a teenager and junior year. I did
Speaker 3: some part of high school in Seattle, and then right
Speaker 3: away after high school I moved up to Seattle.
Speaker 2: When did you first pick up a camera?
Speaker 3: M that's a gread question. What's funny is I remember
Speaker 3: not having a camera, but setting up scenes with cardboard
Speaker 3: and clay and creating these little sets. After watching those
Speaker 3: Will Vinton claymation specials, I would try to recreate those things,
Speaker 3: but I didn't have a camera, and I would just
Speaker 3: like move them around, all the clay around, and I'd
Speaker 3: like imagine them being animated. My first actual camera was
Speaker 3: a PXL two thousand made by Fisher Price. A friend
Speaker 3: borrowed it a week later and broke it. I think
Speaker 3: things like that kind of cement the passion. Sometimes. My
Speaker 3: grandmother had a VHS camera that she would let all
Speaker 3: of us cousins and my brothers use, and that was
Speaker 3: really the first like time where I felt like I
Speaker 3: can experiment. So grandma had a VHS camera that she
Speaker 3: kept in this old like floral suitcase, and I just
Speaker 3: remember the feeling of like un zipping that suitcase, getting
Speaker 3: the camera out, putting it huge VHS tape in and
Speaker 3: recording something with my cousins and brothers.
Speaker 2: And what was it like for you being the filmmaker,
Speaker 2: being the director, if you will, Like, what did that
Speaker 2: do for you as a kid, you know, and sort
Speaker 2: of as a teenager when you began to really record
Speaker 2: it seems like just at every opportunity, we know, record
Speaker 2: as much of both life and sort of invention as
Speaker 2: you possibly could.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I grew up being told no a lot, couldn't
Speaker 3: keep focus, and therefore, you know, was put into special
Speaker 3: ed classes and in a lot of ways maybe taught
Speaker 3: down to But I would go home after school and
Speaker 3: delve into projects, things like screen printing or airbrushing or
Speaker 3: taking apart machinery. I loved the experience of diving in
Speaker 3: and film all kinds of things. We shoot things like
Speaker 3: squibs and pretend we were getting shot. We would you know,
Speaker 3: create masks a lot of the time, like we like
Speaker 3: we were like casting our faces and you know, we're
Speaker 3: doing all these horror special effects. And then we just
Speaker 3: do things that were just spontaneous, like boys running around
Speaker 3: the neighborhood, raw energy stuff. And I think that that's
Speaker 3: the stuff that I started to get really interested in.
Speaker 3: And I think cameras and video became an interesting way
Speaker 3: for me to explore and I got to a place
Speaker 3: where I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to
Speaker 3: make my own films. I think before it was like
Speaker 3: goofing around and playfulness. And I saw my brother Sam,
Speaker 3: He's eight years younger than me, just sitting playing Nintendo
Speaker 3: on the floor, and I thought, Okay, Sam's really doesn't
Speaker 3: have anything planned for the day. I'm going to see
Speaker 3: if he'll do this this movie with me. And I
Speaker 3: had had this idea after watching Michael Aptead series. This
Speaker 3: is in ninety seven, the Up series. It's like a
Speaker 3: series is where they start, you know, seven year olds
Speaker 3: and then fourteen year olds, and they go on every
Speaker 3: seven years making a movie about the same group. And
Speaker 3: I thought it would be interesting if I started filming
Speaker 3: my brother as he's growing up, and I make this
Speaker 3: movie called Sam one, and then pretty much every year
Speaker 3: we make Sam two, Sam three, Sam four, Sam five.
Speaker 3: But in that the first one, I'm not approaching it
Speaker 3: like a documentary. I'm making a short film. It's a
Speaker 3: concepted film about you know, Sam's he's sick at school,
Speaker 3: he goes home, he's locked out of the house and
Speaker 3: he's like staring in the window in horror as an
Speaker 3: animated frog like eats his sack lunch that's on the table.
Speaker 3: It's very much an art film.
Speaker 2: So Sam really became your subject. How old were you
Speaker 2: and how old was he?
Speaker 3: Sam was around ten and I would have been seventeen
Speaker 3: or eighteen.
Speaker 2: Why Sam, it wasn't Jared, it wasn't your step brother,
Speaker 2: It wasn't a kid from school.
Speaker 3: I mean, for one thing, he was available. He was
Speaker 3: accessible to me, Like he was just literally sitting there
Speaker 3: on the floor playing video games. I was like, hey,
Speaker 3: come with me, and he was like okay. And I
Speaker 3: think that his personality is like he's down for an
Speaker 3: Adventure's something about me being up there in the summertime,
Speaker 3: you know, was always an exciting thing, I think for
Speaker 3: my younger brothers. And we loved connecting, we loved wrestling,
Speaker 3: we loved like being in the outdoors. And Sam was
Speaker 3: someone who he was the kid that he would fall
Speaker 3: down and he'd get right back up. And it was
Speaker 3: something a quality that I didn't have. I would fall
Speaker 3: down and stay down. I would feel it so hard
Speaker 3: if something happened.
Speaker 2: Do you mean that both physically and metaphorically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel things really strongly. And Sam, he would
Speaker 3: fall out of like a treehouse, hit the ground with
Speaker 3: a thought, and then get right back up. Everybody's thinking,
Speaker 3: we need to call an ambulance. He had this confidence
Speaker 3: that it was really fun and also strange, and my cousin,
Speaker 3: and I called him Candy Bones because he just like
Speaker 3: he seemed like he could never get hurt. He was
Speaker 3: just bounced right back up. So I was fascinated by
Speaker 3: that because I'm not somebody that does that. I haven't
Speaker 3: broken many bones or anything, but I definitely like have
Speaker 3: been really hurt. And I think that if I fall
Speaker 3: off that highev, I would There's no way that I
Speaker 3: would have liked just got up like Sam did.
Speaker 2: Contributing to this household of raw energy, as Reed calls it,
Speaker 2: is Joyce and her effervescence. She's a big and joyful
Speaker 2: presence in the boy's life. What they don't know at
Speaker 2: the time is that her big presence will soon become
Speaker 2: a big absence.
Speaker 3: In my youth. Joyce was a really interesting step parent
Speaker 3: to me. I remember her being the one that would
Speaker 3: be like she would set out like a whole tray
Speaker 3: full of water balloons and it's like, all right, guys,
Speaker 3: water balloon fight, and then she'd be like throwing water
Speaker 3: balloons out of the kitchen window outside at us too.
Speaker 3: She had this quality that was like the super fun
Speaker 3: mom who loved to, you know, get the party started.
Speaker 3: She also was very creative and very like arts focused
Speaker 3: and like to you know, sort of encourage us to
Speaker 3: listen to music, you know, watch interesting content. She introduced
Speaker 3: me to Pee Wee's Playhouse. I remember, and I remember
Speaker 3: that being like, Okay, this is like kind of a
Speaker 3: weird kids show, but it's really awesome. It was just
Speaker 3: really interested in creativity and you know, playfulness, and she
Speaker 3: really seemed to like bomb with us around playful energy.
Speaker 3: She really brought a lot of that out. She inspired
Speaker 3: a lot of that, like you know, keep going and
Speaker 3: like she was really excited when I started making the
Speaker 3: Sam movies. You thought it was like the coolest project.
Speaker 3: I think that in hindsight, what's strange is that my
Speaker 3: youth and my in my childhood home with my dad
Speaker 3: and stepmom was normal. It was something normal to me.
Speaker 3: Now when I look back and I sort of like
Speaker 3: pick apart things, I can see patterns of things to come.
Speaker 3: Like I could see, especially in hearing stories from my dad,
Speaker 3: how he was in a lot of pain in that relationship,
Speaker 3: and that there would be things that you know, we're
Speaker 3: pretty manic where something really surprising would just happened out
Speaker 3: of the blue, and you know, Joyce would would have
Speaker 3: a really strong reaction and leave the house and as
Speaker 3: kids who are really engaged with other kids like I'm
Speaker 3: just I'm connecting more with my brothers than I am
Speaker 3: with with my parents. I wasn't really that aware of it.
Speaker 2: Read and Sam continue to make their movies together. To
Speaker 2: watch their movies is to see the sheer joy of
Speaker 2: two brothers creating stories together creatively on fire. They both
Speaker 2: love it, but their regular filmmaking is disrupted in the
Speaker 2: fall of nineteen ninety nine when Reid moves to Portland
Speaker 2: for an animation job. Sam still occasionally comes to visit
Speaker 2: and stay with his older brother so that they can
Speaker 2: continue making their films. But then a different kind of
Speaker 2: disruption happens, a much bigger one. When Sam is thirteen,
Speaker 2: his mother reads stepmother, Joyce, disappears. It's the year two
Speaker 2: thousand and Reid doesn't have the details, but he knows
Speaker 2: something has happened. He hears from family members bits and
Speaker 2: pieces of where they think might have gone and if
Speaker 2: or when they think she's coming back. When Sam comes
Speaker 2: out to Portland to film and spend time with Reid,
Speaker 2: they don't talk about the fact that Joyce has vanished,
Speaker 2: and nobody has heard from her.
Speaker 3: It had become this taboo in our family where nobody
Speaker 3: wanted to bring it up with Sam and Jared. They
Speaker 3: had a discomfort with the unknown. And then my dad
Speaker 3: was in a place where he really didn't want to
Speaker 3: pursue contact with her, so he wasn't encouraging conversation around it.
Speaker 3: And then the extended family, like my grandmother, my aunt Cindy,
Speaker 3: there was like these like ripples of like different people
Speaker 3: in the family are really harboring the emotion and anger
Speaker 3: of this and not knowing what to do. Cindy told
Speaker 3: me later that she kind of wanted to adopt Sam
Speaker 3: and Jared during those years, my aunt and it was
Speaker 3: really heartbreaking because our family is very tight knit, not
Speaker 3: just a nuclear family, but like the whole Harkness family,
Speaker 3: which is like a really big group of aunts and
Speaker 3: uncles and cousins, and we all congregate at my grandmother's
Speaker 3: house regularly. Were all It just seemed like the ideal
Speaker 3: support system regarding family, the whole It takes a village,
Speaker 3: you know. That was my family. They were like we
Speaker 3: were always together, we were always doing things. There was
Speaker 3: like open door policy at Grandma's. There was always cookies.
Speaker 3: There was always food in the fridge. The support system
Speaker 3: was there, it just was failing to operate around the
Speaker 3: taboo of you know, Joyce is gone, what do we do?
Speaker 2: And do you think that that was because the larger
Speaker 2: net of the family, they were taking their cues from
Speaker 2: your father, and he really didn't want to talk about it,
Speaker 2: so then nobody talked about it. Like the silence became
Speaker 2: kind of contagious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say the silence became contagious. I think that.
Speaker 3: But there's a thing with men and boys not talking
Speaker 3: about difficult stuff generally, and I think in the Pacific
Speaker 3: Northwest it's like even more amplified. And then I think
Speaker 3: that you know, this is this is a family that's
Speaker 3: made up mostly of educators, even very specifically childhood educators.
Speaker 3: My dad is was a first grade teacher for thirty years,
Speaker 3: and my grandmother worked like her whole career in early
Speaker 3: childhood education, you know, learning about like the most pioneering methods,
Speaker 3: and these are really cool aspects that like really do
Speaker 3: help shape like who we are, these kind of free
Speaker 3: range kids that are like able to lean into adventuresome
Speaker 3: spirit and a lot of creative play. But I think
Speaker 3: something that comes with being in a classroom and being
Speaker 3: an educator and being that kind of observer to things
Speaker 3: that might happen. And I think I'm thinking of my
Speaker 3: dad here, Like I remember helping out in his classroom,
Speaker 3: so like I remember the challenge that he would face
Speaker 3: every day and how you know, just keeping order, keeping things,
Speaker 3: keeping things moving, keeping a smile on his face. I'm
Speaker 3: sure that this had had an impact. And I'm sure
Speaker 3: that there was many things. Many factors in his view
Speaker 3: were things that you just you didn't address, you didn't
Speaker 3: talk about, but you knew. So I think that he
Speaker 3: may have become conditioned to just keeping things going and
Speaker 3: being stable, yet not addressing some of the elephants in
Speaker 3: the room directly.
Speaker 2: And it seems like both Sam and Jared both had
Speaker 2: very different responses to Joyce's disappearing. Jared, he wears it
Speaker 2: all kind of outwardly. He stops going to school. He's
Speaker 2: completely signaling you know, I am not okay. He shows it,
Speaker 2: whereas Sam bottles it up and nothing seems like it's
Speaker 2: really affecting him. And he has this great laugh and
Speaker 2: he just is always laughing it off in a way
Speaker 2: and performing and so they have these two really different
Speaker 2: ways of coping during those years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is the high dive. You know, Sam
Speaker 3: fell off the high dive in real life, as you know,
Speaker 3: an eight year old and landed on the on the
Speaker 3: cement and walked away. And he did the same thing
Speaker 3: emotionally when Joyce left, he sprung back. I think that
Speaker 3: also there's a factor here where, you know, seeing Jared
Speaker 3: being so depressed, just crumpled in a ball on the floor,
Speaker 3: not going to school at all. I think he was
Speaker 3: like he cut class for like sixty days or something ridiculous.
Speaker 3: He was like figuring out some way, Well, my dad
Speaker 3: was at work to you know, make it seem like
Speaker 3: he was at school. And I think Sam saw that
Speaker 3: and wanted to take the high road. What I saw
Speaker 3: was like he started associating with like, you know, the
Speaker 3: honorall kids, even though he wasn't Jared was the academic.
Speaker 3: Sam was definitely not the a student, and he started
Speaker 3: getting into school sports too. He was into wrestling and
Speaker 3: then he found the sport of ultimate frisbee, which ultimately
Speaker 3: became like his his big life passion and getting in
Speaker 3: with those groups, you know, those social groups where there's
Speaker 3: a lot of like camaraderie and like encouragement. I think
Speaker 3: that he was able to sort of ride this wave
Speaker 3: of like we can power through. I can like be
Speaker 3: physically strong, I can be mentally stronger than this.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: Nearly three years past was no word from Joyce. Sometimes
Speaker 2: she sends packages though boxes full of random stuff. There's
Speaker 2: never a note or a letter. It all feels so
Speaker 2: impersonal that the boys speculate that the packages might not
Speaker 2: even be from her. The boxes have her name on them,
Speaker 2: but no return address, a clear indication that she does
Speaker 2: not want to be found. One year, during Christmas, one
Speaker 2: such box arrives. This time it contains homemade fudge.
Speaker 3: The setting is It's Christmas, I'm visiting my family in Seattle.
Speaker 3: And the year before Sam and Jared and I on
Speaker 3: Christmas Day went up to the mountains and went sledding
Speaker 3: and had like one of my favorite days ever. The
Speaker 3: ski slopes were closed, and so we just like hyped
Speaker 3: up the ski slopes and were just like sledding down
Speaker 3: for what felt like miles. We had such a good
Speaker 3: time that we wanted to recreate that the next year
Speaker 3: and we had talked about this. Sam was so excited.
Speaker 3: Jared was immovable. He was just like on the floor.
Speaker 3: He's just like no, no, no, no, like just would
Speaker 3: not come with us. And we imagine both of these
Speaker 3: like really excited brothers just trying to like drag him,
Speaker 3: pull him, encourage him, you know remember last year all that,
Speaker 3: and he's not able to won't. So it's just me
Speaker 3: and Sam. Sam offered me some fudge and I said
Speaker 3: who made the fudge? And he's like Mom. And I
Speaker 3: was like, who's mom? And he's like mom, And I
Speaker 3: was like really, I was in such disbelief that that
Speaker 3: could be possible. So that's the same day that we
Speaker 3: go up sledding and it's just me and Sam and
Speaker 3: we're on this mountain. We're hiking up this old logging
Speaker 3: road and you know, it's snowing, and we've got these
Speaker 3: two sleds and we as we're hiking where we're imagining it,
Speaker 3: we're just gonna have the longest sled run ever. We're
Speaker 3: gonna like hike up as long as we can and
Speaker 3: then just sled all the way down the mountain, so
Speaker 3: it would be like a couple miles maybe, and we
Speaker 3: get to the point where it's like the sun setting,
Speaker 3: and we're like, okay, now we need to turn around,
Speaker 3: and we set our sleds down and we're like, let's race,
Speaker 3: and we're like one, two, three, go, and we realized
Speaker 3: that it's not steep enough to actually sled, So then
Speaker 3: we're walking back with a totally different energy. Instead of
Speaker 3: this idea that we're gonna hike all the way up
Speaker 3: to have a fun ride down, we're now just walking down.
Speaker 3: And on this walk we start talking about the next
Speaker 3: film we're gonna make. It would be Sam six, and
Speaker 3: Sam has these ideas. He's got these ideas about this
Speaker 3: Apple Ganger alter identity of his called the Blue Panther,
Speaker 3: who's just this goofy mock superhero who wears a wrestling
Speaker 3: mask and a too small wet suit. And he's telling
Speaker 3: me about how the Blue Panther is going to battle
Speaker 3: twin robots and his girlfriend at the time is a
Speaker 3: twin and so she's going to play this twin character,
Speaker 3: and then the twins are going to divide into more twins,
Speaker 3: so there'll be like four twins fighting the Blue Panther.
Speaker 3: And I'm thinking about this this conflict I'm thinking about
Speaker 3: this like idea of Sam and his alter ego and
Speaker 3: how he really wants to take on this, like I'm
Speaker 3: going to take on like four people, you know, And
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking about like how we've done a lot
Speaker 3: of really childish filmmaking. I love it. I love all
Speaker 3: the youthful filmmaking that we do. But I'm at a point,
Speaker 3: you know, where I'm kind of like, I want to
Speaker 3: do something serious. And so I just turned to him
Speaker 3: and I say, Sam, how about the blue panther his mom?
Speaker 3: And then he stopped talking and it was quiet and
Speaker 3: it's just footsteps in the snow, and then he comes
Speaker 3: back with yeah, And I was like really, and he's
Speaker 3: like yeah. We drive home and we talk about it
Speaker 3: a little more. I kind of put it away a
Speaker 3: little bit. It really felt like that was sort of
Speaker 3: the big taboo. It really felt like that might have
Speaker 3: really hurt Sam for me to say that, But he
Speaker 3: presented something different or unexpected, which was that he kind
Speaker 3: of wanted he wanted to engage with me around it,
Speaker 3: and so we continue to have conversations about what that
Speaker 3: would be like, and he wanted to go at his
Speaker 3: midwinter break, which was in February, so it's like two
Speaker 3: months away. He wanted to go and go in a
Speaker 3: road trip and try to try to find her, and
Speaker 3: I'm thinking that sounds really crazy, but I'm also thinking, hey,
Speaker 3: wants to go on a road trip with me, and
Speaker 3: this is kind of like also our dream, and this
Speaker 3: is also something that we a place where we thrive
Speaker 3: and even if nothing happens, you know, it might be
Speaker 3: a really good experience. I'm somebody who's like, you know,
Speaker 3: read a lot of like Joseph Campbell and been really
Speaker 3: interested in things like Rites of Passage, and I'm thinking
Speaker 3: about our relationship and I'm thinking about, you know how
Speaker 3: I always wanted a big brother, and I'm thinking, hey,
Speaker 3: this could be really cool. It's like I become a detective.
Speaker 3: I kind of put down my filmmaker hat, like I
Speaker 3: was like, Okay, this is not really going to be
Speaker 3: the blue Panther finds his mom. I have to get
Speaker 3: some pieces together. I have to actually figure out where
Speaker 3: we're going on this road trip. And that turns out
Speaker 3: to be a big challenge. I talk to like everybody
Speaker 3: I can find that new joice, and everybody's got different ideas.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, maybe she's in Texas, maybe she's in California,
Speaker 3: she's a seminar somewhere. So there's like no concrete evidence,
Speaker 3: and like the person who seems to have like the
Speaker 3: most intel is my stepbrother Peter. Seems like he had
Speaker 3: done some research and he had found this like professor
Speaker 3: done in southern California who might have been in contact
Speaker 3: with her. But then he's like reluctant to give me
Speaker 3: his name, and I like, you know, I'm doing all
Speaker 3: these searches, and then finally we get this name of
Speaker 3: this professor and a really basic plan, because we don't
Speaker 3: have any other leads to where anyone else that knows
Speaker 3: her is. We're gonna drive down I five to southern
Speaker 3: California and we're gonna meet this professor on his office
Speaker 3: hours which are posted online, and just like approach him
Speaker 3: in person. This is like I didn't even have a
Speaker 3: cell phone. I'm just gonna walk in there and hopefully
Speaker 3: he'll just like see us and be like I can't
Speaker 3: turn you away and I'll help you. And along the way, Chwis'
Speaker 3: family lives in Medford, Oregon, so we'll we'll talk to
Speaker 3: them and see if they've heard from her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a particularly riveting part of your film where
Speaker 2: you you do meet with Joyce's adoptive mother and brother
Speaker 2: and sister, and it's such a stark contrast to the
Speaker 2: family scenes that we see of your family. It's like
Speaker 2: it's like it's like in a different key, it's in
Speaker 2: a different palette.
Speaker 3: The Taylor family. Yeah, you know, I think of our
Speaker 3: the Harkness family is being very connected, very interested in play,
Speaker 3: very much like you know, there's kind of a lot
Speaker 3: of like laughter and smiling and kind of kind of
Speaker 3: an encouraging vibe. I couldn't help but feel that we
Speaker 3: talk about the sort of family secret part of like okay,
Speaker 3: nobody really wants to talk about Joyce leaving, But then
Speaker 3: meeting and talking to the Taylor family, they were so
Speaker 3: much more closed off. I mean they were they were like,
Speaker 3: they're honest, they're forthcoming. But her mom said when she
Speaker 3: left her kids, I just wiped her out of my life.
Speaker 3: When Joyce made the decision to abandon Sam and Jared,
Speaker 3: I abandon her basically, And that's something that has really
Speaker 3: hard to reconcile. That kind of attitude.
Speaker 2: Read and Sam make it down to southern California to
Speaker 2: meet this mysterious professor with the camera on. Of course,
Speaker 2: Sam shows up at the university during the professor's office hours,
Speaker 2: but when they arrive, they learn that the professor is
Speaker 2: on an extended and semi permanent leave of absence. This
Speaker 2: had been their only lead. The door cracked open, now
Speaker 2: seems like it is slammed shut. It seems like this
Speaker 2: might be the end of the road, but they stay
Speaker 2: in the area and try other tactics. They post missing
Speaker 2: Mom flyers. At one point, Sam uses a paper megaphone
Speaker 2: to shout into the beautiful hills of California, mother, where
Speaker 2: are you mother? The stakes are high, but Read and
Speaker 2: Sam possess that harkness sense of play that their filmmaking
Speaker 2: has always allowed them. They are full of light and energy.
Speaker 2: The brothers are stymied, but undaunted. They're not ready to
Speaker 2: give up, not yet. They returned to a list they'd
Speaker 2: made of other phone numbers linked to the professor's name.
Speaker 2: There's one number on the list they haven't tried. Sam
Speaker 2: calls it, and there's a recording stating that the number
Speaker 2: has been disconnected, but a new number is provided on
Speaker 2: the recording. Sam calls that new number and Joyce answers
Speaker 2: the phone.
Speaker 3: So that was so unbelievable. I'm still like, how did
Speaker 3: that happen?
Speaker 2: Was there some part of you that thought, this is
Speaker 2: never going to happen, but it's going to be the journey.
Speaker 2: We're going to be on our hero's journey, and the
Speaker 2: journey is the destination. The journey is what matters. And
Speaker 2: then you actually do find her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that I had two voices. One it
Speaker 3: was like, hey, this will like, no matter what happens,
Speaker 3: this will be a beneficial experience.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: What I was thinking was like I kept holding the
Speaker 3: idea of like no expectations, like reduce my expectations because
Speaker 3: I have no idea what's going to happen. I don't
Speaker 3: know if Sam's going to break down, you know, at
Speaker 3: like day one or day two or day five, and
Speaker 3: you know, it really felt like when we get there
Speaker 3: and the professor's on a leave, he's just like, you know,
Speaker 3: his offices has turned over someone else. Actually I started
Speaker 3: to break down. I started to be the one that
Speaker 3: was like losing it a bit and just like I
Speaker 3: don't know what to do now. And it was Sam
Speaker 3: who kind of held me up. And was like, come on,
Speaker 3: let's go through a frisbee and we go to the
Speaker 3: beach and we started tossing the frisbee and you know,
Speaker 3: while we're doing that, I'm starting to regulate a little
Speaker 3: bit and get to this place of like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: wait a minute. We have this notebook full of numbers
Speaker 3: that you know, we could just start calling numbers, and
Speaker 3: Joyce answers the phone. And what happens next is so
Speaker 3: amazing because Sam doesn't ask her questions. He just fills
Speaker 3: her in on everything that's happened over the last three
Speaker 3: years in his life. Jared and I got girlfriends, I
Speaker 3: went to Japan, I started playing ultimate frisbee, Like he
Speaker 3: just wants to let her know what's been going on
Speaker 3: in his life. And then she invites us to come
Speaker 3: see her. She's not in southern California. She's actually in
Speaker 3: southern Oregon, and we immediately start driving up there, and
Speaker 3: this is like back to the energy of like, oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, this is the most exciting thing. I can't
Speaker 3: believe this's happening, like, but we're also nervous, and I
Speaker 3: remember asking Sam multiple times, like what are you going
Speaker 3: to say? What's gonna happen, and he's just like it's
Speaker 3: gonna be cool. It's like, we just got to go.
Speaker 3: He was so excited. And we get there and knock
Speaker 3: on the door and she answers and welcomes us in,
Speaker 3: and the professor's there with her. They're in our relationship,
Speaker 3: and it was like as if nothing had happened. She
Speaker 3: had like Sam's favorite sushi ready to go. She had
Speaker 3: like these sodas. I think it was like blue Sky
Speaker 3: sodas that she always had stocked in the fridge at
Speaker 3: her in Seattle, and it was like, oh, yeah, come over.
Speaker 3: It was like as if three years hadn't passed, and
Speaker 3: instead it was just, hey, I started in a relationship
Speaker 3: and I'm I'm down here now and like come on
Speaker 3: down anytime you're ready. It was like that. It was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: there was excitement, and there was like pure joy of reconnection,
Speaker 3: and then there wasn't. There wasn't anything further until we
Speaker 3: go to this coffee shop nearby her house and she
Speaker 3: just breaks down mostly to me why she left, in
Speaker 3: a kind of a really fast rant that I've watched
Speaker 3: so many times, and it's really emotionally charged and and
Speaker 3: complex and cutting and confusing and in the most clear way,
Speaker 3: like true to her thought process. It's like I had
Speaker 3: to escape the control of everybody. I do escape control.
Speaker 2: The thing that really struck me during that time in
Speaker 2: the coffee shop was that she says with so much
Speaker 2: like with no charge, seemingly certainly no sense of apology.
Speaker 2: She says, I know I'm going to go down in
Speaker 2: history as the woman who broke up whole bunch of rules,
Speaker 2: But I'm happy. I had to save myself. And she
Speaker 2: repeats a number of times that she's happy, and I
Speaker 2: don't get the sense that, at least there that she's
Speaker 2: overly concerned about the pain that she's inflicted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is one of the hardest things to understand
Speaker 3: in this story. I think that she felt like she
Speaker 3: was losing her mind and that she was going to
Speaker 3: start acting out in ways that would potentially be more
Speaker 3: hurtful than if she if she stayed. But you know
Speaker 3: this part of like, I had to get out, I
Speaker 3: had to go, and I walked through a portal and
Speaker 3: now I'm happy. Oof. It's so that stuff just like
Speaker 3: hit me in the weirdest way. I still can't really
Speaker 3: wrap my head around. I mean, because I have a
Speaker 3: mom who is very much connected and is like the
Speaker 3: kind of mom where it's like I could count on
Speaker 3: her pretty much always be there, Like she would be
Speaker 3: there if I was in the hospital tomorrow, she would
Speaker 3: be calling or be there. And to have this really
Speaker 3: different perspective of like, nope, I have to take care
Speaker 3: of myself and be gone and I'm happy without the
Speaker 3: part of just saying like and I'm sorry that I
Speaker 3: hurt you, and I take accountability for any pain or trauma.
Speaker 3: It just was so hard. And here I am, too,
Speaker 3: in this place where it's like I've basically made this
Speaker 3: deal with Sam to help him find his mom my stepmom,
Speaker 3: and then we get to these places where it's like
Speaker 3: emotionally really confusing for me, and I'm in this like
Speaker 3: place of I'm helping Sam, and I can't burn bridges.
Speaker 3: I have to sort of like follow his lead.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Overall, for Sam, reuniting with Joyce
Speaker 2: is a positive experience. Finding Joyce is a big deal,
Speaker 2: and when the brothers get back home, they tell the
Speaker 2: whole extended family about their discovery. The family is gathered
Speaker 2: for someone's birthday and when Sam and reads share this
Speaker 2: monumental news. The tone of the room doesn't change as
Speaker 2: much as they expect it might. Nobody seems terribly impressed
Speaker 2: or surprised by this news. Nobody continues to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Do they not realize the gravity of what's happened? Do
Speaker 2: they not care? Everyone is just going about their evening,
Speaker 2: laughing and having a good time. At this point, Reid
Speaker 2: is moved to do something quite out of character. He
Speaker 2: comes out from behind the camera, He hands his camera
Speaker 2: to a relative, asks them to keep filming, and confronts
Speaker 2: his family. He's clearly uncomfortably full of emotion. What Sam
Speaker 2: did was so incredibly brave, and you're not talking about it?
Speaker 2: Why aren't we talking about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like this reveal moment where I've played this
Speaker 3: role of I'm recording what's going on, I'm in taking
Speaker 3: I'm observing everything, and I'm definitely I'm a sensitive, emotional
Speaker 3: human who's taking it all in and I'm not exposing
Speaker 3: that in the filming because I want to allow for
Speaker 3: other people's stories and opinions and emotions to matter. And
Speaker 3: also when I'm trying to follow the story of Sam,
Speaker 3: who is emotionally disconnected like he struggles with connecting with
Speaker 3: his emotions, and I wanted to let that lead, let
Speaker 3: that kind of hero be When it's so easy to
Speaker 3: connect to somebody that has like strong emotions, I wanted
Speaker 3: to let that more nuanced thing live and breathe and
Speaker 3: be focused on because it happens for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: You know, it's very real for a lot of people
Speaker 3: to suppress their emotions. Anyway, We've just come back from
Speaker 3: finding Joye and it's too much for me, and the
Speaker 3: elephant in the room is too big. And I step
Speaker 3: up on the stage of the family room and I
Speaker 3: say something, and I'm trembling and I'm not sure what
Speaker 3: I'm doing. It's one of the most uncomfortable moments in
Speaker 3: my life. And I and I try to convey the
Speaker 3: power of what's happened, and it's really messing with the
Speaker 3: energy of the room, where everyone wants to keep things light,
Speaker 3: everyone wants to just kind of laugh and like, hey,
Speaker 3: let's not get awkward. But I realized that, you know that,
Speaker 3: like families are really uncomfortable addressing discomfort, Like families will
Speaker 3: avoid it all costs, addressing these kinds of discomforts. And
Speaker 3: I see that as a major oversight in family support
Speaker 3: just in general, like, as we raise our kids, as
Speaker 3: we are family to each other, how is it that
Speaker 3: we can't Maybe some families do this totally well. Anyway,
Speaker 3: my family wasn't operating that way, and it was a
Speaker 3: really uncomfortable experience for me to just be like, you guys,
Speaker 3: you guys, can you see this? You know? And I
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, even with me doing that, Like
Speaker 3: what the power of that was? I just know that
Speaker 3: I was, I was speaking from I was naming the
Speaker 3: skeleton in the closet. I was definitely like pointing at
Speaker 3: it when everybody wanted to turn away.
Speaker 2: But the boys don't turn away from the situation or
Speaker 2: from Joyce. They continue to be in touch. She gets
Speaker 2: in touch with Jared too, and spends time with them both.
Speaker 2: Jared even moves in with her for a while. On
Speaker 2: the surface, things seem to be going really well. Having
Speaker 2: Joyce back in their lives is great for Sam, until
Speaker 2: it isn't. Some years later, the abandonment, the rejection, the secrecy,
Speaker 2: the childhood loss, it all catches up with him. Sam's
Speaker 2: in his late twenties and he's falling apart. He's afraid
Speaker 2: of relationships. He's afraid of abandoning others, and he starts
Speaker 2: to really wreck him with how destructive this experience has
Speaker 2: been for him. He feels he might be repeating some
Speaker 2: of the patterns his mother has instilled in him, hurting
Speaker 2: others without remorse. He writes Joyce a letter to convey
Speaker 2: this turmoil.
Speaker 3: In that letter, he says something about how he misses
Speaker 3: the mom he had when he was eleven, and he
Speaker 3: asks her if she could be more present in his
Speaker 3: life because in this time, even though he's found her,
Speaker 3: you know, and it's been over a decade of them
Speaker 3: being reconnected, he doesn't see her making much of an effort.
Speaker 3: He's the one that always has to contact her and
Speaker 3: plan any visits with her, and she never was coming
Speaker 3: up to Seattle to visit Jared, Sam and Peter live
Speaker 3: in Seattle and Joyce's in southern Oregon, and he wanted
Speaker 3: her to, you know, just come up and spend time
Speaker 3: with the three of them, and that hadn't happened since
Speaker 3: the reconnection. So she comes up to do that. Sam,
Speaker 3: Joyce and I have breakfast together and everything's just kind
Speaker 3: of normal. It's like we're just chit chatting and things
Speaker 3: seem pretty good. She's in good spirits. Sam's in a
Speaker 3: good mood. It's nice. And then my dad calls Sam
Speaker 3: and Sam immediately like hangs up the phone like doesn't
Speaker 3: doesn't answer, and Joyce is like, who is that and
Speaker 3: Sam's like it was Dad, and then she's like why
Speaker 3: didn't you answer? And then he's like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: we're like having breakfast, and she's like he should have answered,
Speaker 3: and then she's like, let's go see him, and so
Speaker 3: we get in the car and head over to my
Speaker 3: dad's house. So we just head over and we get
Speaker 3: there and knock on the door and my dad's in
Speaker 3: his pjs and he doesn't recognize Joyce and Joyce thinks
Speaker 3: it's hysterical and we go in and it's so awkward.
Speaker 3: I feel like we just ambushed my dad on like
Speaker 3: Jackass the movie. And we go in and my dad
Speaker 3: is makes the connection. He's like, oh my gosh, it's
Speaker 3: Joyce and he's just like whoa, okay, hold on, let
Speaker 3: me get dressed. And he comes back out and he's
Speaker 3: really uncomfortable. Sam's like, this is getting really weird, and
Speaker 3: then he starts to talk to Joyce. I'm filming too.
Speaker 3: That makes things weird, right, So there's the camera, there's
Speaker 3: my dad hasn't seen Joyce in twelve years. He's caught
Speaker 3: off guard, and then they have a conversation and it's like, well,
Speaker 3: brought you here, and she's just like I just decided
Speaker 3: to come up and it just like and all this
Speaker 3: so I was like her story is like, oh, just
Speaker 3: any other you know, like I haven't seen you in
Speaker 3: twelve years, but like, oh, you know, just decided to
Speaker 3: drop by. And she's so giddy and like thinks it's
Speaker 3: like really funny and fun and my dad's like on edge.
Speaker 3: And then he calls his mom, mother Doris, who lives
Speaker 3: a few blocks away, and is like, Joyce is here,
Speaker 3: and so then we go over to her house and
Speaker 3: then it's like a bigger group and my grandmother's reaction
Speaker 3: to seeing Joyce is like total embrace. She gives her
Speaker 3: like a minute long hug and they're both crying and she's,
Speaker 3: you know, the ultimate grandma. She just welcomes us all in,
Speaker 3: is like let me put on some tea, and like
Speaker 3: everyone's gathered in the family room and it's just this
Speaker 3: sort of like the mood changes to like this kind
Speaker 3: of like happy gathering all of a sudden, and then
Speaker 3: something really bizarre happens, which is she sort of draws
Speaker 3: Joyce into this conversation about narcissism, and she happens to
Speaker 3: have this book out about narcissism, and she's like, that's
Speaker 3: not where you're at, right, is like, yep, that's me.
Speaker 3: And she like defines in her own words how this
Speaker 3: pattern that she has of getting whipped up into a
Speaker 3: tailspin and either hurting herself or other people.
Speaker 2: Why did your grandmother have the book on narcissism out?
Speaker 3: That's a really good question. She had the book out
Speaker 3: to give to another family member who was dealing with
Speaker 3: somebody who had narcissistic patterns, and then mentioned it. Somehow
Speaker 3: it came up maybe she had been thinking about this
Speaker 3: regarding Joyce, but she brought it up in a really friendly,
Speaker 3: kind curious way, and Joyce's response to it was like, yep,
Speaker 3: that's me. Peter ends up coming over it to my
Speaker 3: grandma's house too, and then it's like a bigger group.
Speaker 3: Some family members are called and decline coming. It's too
Speaker 3: much for them.
Speaker 2: And Joyce seems so surprised by that. There's these really
Speaker 2: interesting interactions, like you know, Joyce at one point says
Speaker 2: to your mother, well, it did occur to us for
Speaker 2: a minute that you'd be surprised, and your father says,
Speaker 2: that's an understatement. And he also there's this moment where
Speaker 2: he actually like sort of slaps himself on the cheek
Speaker 2: a couple of times, like you know, am I in
Speaker 2: a fiction here? Like what is happening in this house?
Speaker 2: And it's like that's the voice of reason in that moment, right,
Speaker 2: which is like, this is wild. He hasn't seen his
Speaker 2: ex wife in decades since one day she just walked out,
Speaker 2: and now she's come back and she's laughing and everybody's laughing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's what is that I'm trying
Speaker 3: to put my finger on this quality of how Joyce
Speaker 3: is in that scene, and it feels to me like
Speaker 3: this sort of clown, Like she's playing the role of
Speaker 3: clown in order to make things light, like maybe there
Speaker 3: will be some levity if I'm kind of fun and
Speaker 3: laughing and that that'll take off some of the seriousness
Speaker 3: and the pressure and the discomfort of this whole thing,
Speaker 3: and maybe it backfires and it's like super unreal and
Speaker 3: super ungrounding, and my dad is just like, what is
Speaker 3: going on? He does slap his face and he's like,
Speaker 3: is this some kind of fiction that's going on here?
Speaker 3: And Sam is having the same look on his face,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, am I, you know, like I'm not
Speaker 3: saying it much because I'm recording, but I'm like, am
Speaker 3: I contributing to this by having a camera? And you know,
Speaker 3: it definitely chills out at Grandma's house, But in my
Speaker 3: dad's house it is just a very very strange, like
Speaker 3: a practical joke feeling. Twelve years later, surprise.
Speaker 2: This flippant tone is all too familiar to Read. The
Speaker 2: temperature in the room is so similar to how it
Speaker 2: had been when Read and Sam first told their family
Speaker 2: about finding Joyce. Things are there's laughter. The family defaults
Speaker 2: to levity for better or worse. At least this time,
Speaker 2: the elephant in the room is in fact in the room.
Speaker 2: Joyce is right there with them in person, and it's
Speaker 2: harder to stay cavalier, as evidenced by their grandma bringing
Speaker 2: up the book on narcissism and their dad slapping himself
Speaker 2: on the cheek. The levity, it seems, has worn sin
Speaker 2: as a coping mechanism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the elephant herself is in the room, and you
Speaker 3: really can see sort of like a little more the
Speaker 3: dynamic between Joyce and my dad. And then right after that,
Speaker 3: I'm in the car driving with my grandmother and my
Speaker 3: dad and I'm asking my grandmother what was that like
Speaker 3: for you to see Joyce after all these years, And
Speaker 3: she's like, it was really good. And at the same time,
Speaker 3: my dad he thinks I'm asking him the question, and
Speaker 3: he's speaking over her and saying it was freakish, for
Speaker 3: it was freakish, And my grandmother continues and she's like,
Speaker 3: it was just really good to connect with her after
Speaker 3: all these years, and there's this quality to it where
Speaker 3: it's like my grandmother's doing this radical acceptance thing where
Speaker 3: she's just like, I'm gonna embrace Joyce. I know that
Speaker 3: this is something that is like, has been a real
Speaker 3: pain in our family, and I'm just gonna embrace her.
Speaker 3: And then my dad is feeling pain and my grandmother
Speaker 3: is failing to connect with his pain and putting Joyce first,
Speaker 3: saying that like, I think she needs this. I think
Speaker 3: that she needs this connection with me. And I think
Speaker 3: about this and I'm thinking like my grandmother's hip. She's
Speaker 3: like done all these years of early childhood experience. She
Speaker 3: really knows what's going on, and she's like, oh my gosh, Joyce, narcissism, abandonment, adoption.
Speaker 3: She really hasn't had like warm, connective parental figures. However,
Speaker 3: I am that for her a little bit, and I
Speaker 3: can be that and I will play that role now.
Speaker 3: At the same time, in the same beat, she's failing
Speaker 3: to connect with her son over this pain, and my
Speaker 3: dad he's somebody who has felt abused by Joyce in
Speaker 3: their marriage. I feel for the whole situation. It's like,
Speaker 3: here's grandmother trying to heal some ancient wound with Joyce,
Speaker 3: trying to like, you know, provide this maternal role to her.
Speaker 3: Joyce didn't feel like her adoptive parents really loved her.
Speaker 3: She was put up for adoption at eighteen months by
Speaker 3: her mother never reconnected with her. And then here's Grandma Dorris,
Speaker 3: who has been a mother role to her mother in
Speaker 3: law role to her, saying like I accept you, I
Speaker 3: welcome you back in. Yet my dad is very distraught
Speaker 3: and she's failing to see that there in the car.
Speaker 3: This is a further level of elephant in the room.
Speaker 3: I go with Sam later that night, he's making his
Speaker 3: Halloween costume. I've been talking about clowns and all this.
Speaker 3: You know, Joyce might be putting on a little bit
Speaker 3: of a show for Halloween, but I don't know. And
Speaker 3: I asked Sam how that was, and he's like, the
Speaker 3: jury's out. I'm going to put off thinking about it.
Speaker 3: That was too much for me. It definitely wasn't what
Speaker 3: I expected. I never expected Joyce to like be at
Speaker 3: Grandma's house ever again. So he's just he's just really confused,
Speaker 3: and this is another level of kind of waking up.
Speaker 3: I think for Sam. I think that there's many levels
Speaker 3: of fantasy involved in this story. You know, some are like, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be the Blue Panton. I'm going to
Speaker 3: like you know, I'm going to go and like find
Speaker 3: my mom, you know. And then there's levels of like
Speaker 3: I can tolerate this, like this is something I can handle.
Speaker 3: And then there's when my mom comes up, It'll be
Speaker 3: like old times. And I think that that's the most
Speaker 3: sad part for me, is just like the holding onto
Speaker 3: hope of like that he will get his mom back
Speaker 3: in the way that he hopes. You know that this
Speaker 3: sort of like like when we were all living together,
Speaker 3: like when he used to be easy, and you know,
Speaker 3: I'd see her all the time and we talk all
Speaker 3: the time. And I think that that's the sad reality
Speaker 3: is just that like the fantasy that you know that
Speaker 3: Sam seems to hold around it over time is like
Speaker 3: slowly crushed. And I think that what's extra sad about
Speaker 3: it for me is just thinking about how knowing two
Speaker 3: stable parents, my mom and my dad, I can kind
Speaker 3: of like refer back to nostalgic times with them and
Speaker 3: kind of see a through line to now. When I
Speaker 3: think about Sam and Joyce and Jared and Joyce, they
Speaker 3: think about how this disruption and time really did cause
Speaker 3: a permanent shift that would need like a great amount
Speaker 3: of repair work to get back to some level of
Speaker 3: trust and security. I think that Jared got that a
Speaker 3: bit more than Sam by living with her and like
Speaker 3: really kind of immersing into her new world. Sam did
Speaker 3: not get that, and it's been really challenging, and his
Speaker 3: process with her has been more of a slow drip.
Speaker 3: And they do, you know, they'll do phone calls maybe
Speaker 3: once or twice a month and talk about the weather,
Speaker 3: but nothing to tend not to talk about like emotional
Speaker 3: things or like about the abandonment or about the movie.
Speaker 3: They just keep it really basic. And then when they
Speaker 3: do have visits, which is is like every few years now,
Speaker 3: it seems like at the fastest clip, it's like visit
Speaker 3: for a day and then leave. It's like, in Sam's words,
Speaker 3: about as much as they can take of each other.
Speaker 2: And this was Sam choosing, really choosing himself for a
Speaker 2: period of time, stop being in touch with Joyce and
Speaker 2: then now having this much much more distanced, much more
Speaker 2: sporadic relationship with her. I mean, there's a moment where
Speaker 2: she says, because he's distanced himself that she felt that
Speaker 2: he was punishing her, And it's said in such a
Speaker 2: kind of befuddled way, like why would he do that?
Speaker 3: Why would he?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Sam does choose himself, and in so doing he
Speaker 2: builds a life that, while certainly shaped by Joyce's abandonment,
Speaker 2: also makes meaning out of his emotionally complex and traumatic experience.
Speaker 2: This is all we can do, right, take what life
Speaker 2: has handed us and make something true, something real, something
Speaker 2: powerful from the ashes. By the time Read's film ends
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, Sam has a longtime partner. Bailey Reid
Speaker 2: asks the couple whether they think they'll have kids. They
Speaker 2: look at each other in a way, and then they
Speaker 2: say that they're thinking about fostering and adopting. That's the
Speaker 2: way they want to make a family. And that has
Speaker 2: also become Sam's life's work. He does youth social work
Speaker 2: with unhoused kids.
Speaker 3: It's so hard to know these things, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, Sam choosing to go into social work, Sam
Speaker 3: choosing to work with young people who also are experiencing
Speaker 3: like alienation from their parents, street youth. I think of this.
Speaker 3: I think of, like, how how many youth are on
Speaker 3: the street that are like disconnected from their parents, and
Speaker 3: why all those trust issues, all these kind of same things.
Speaker 3: Sam works with people like that. Now he's doing domestic
Speaker 3: violence work, where he'll work with like high school sports
Speaker 3: teams and like help them understand relationship concepts. He works
Speaker 3: with survivors and domestic violence and does an amazing work.
Speaker 3: The through line is so incredible. It's like his personal pain,
Speaker 3: like this really big thing in his world is what
Speaker 3: he's most committed to giving back and where he feels
Speaker 3: the strongest calling. I find that really interesting and I'd
Speaker 3: be interested to know if that's If that's true for
Speaker 3: a lot of people in social work.
Speaker 2: I think it's true in my experience on this podcast
Speaker 2: and just in my life of hearing a lot of
Speaker 2: stories of a lot of trauma, that the capacity to
Speaker 2: make meaning out of it is what saves us. And
Speaker 2: there are multiple ways of making meaning out of trauma.
Speaker 2: Some people make art out of trauma. Some people write
Speaker 2: books out of trauma, some people make films out of trauma.
Speaker 2: Some people go into the healing arts out of trauma,
Speaker 2: some people go into psychology and social work out of trauma.
Speaker 2: And you know, it strikes me as such an incredibly
Speaker 2: healthy adaptation, because if we can make meaning out of something,
Speaker 2: then we've stripped it of its power over us because
Speaker 2: we've made something good out of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like that, And I like how Sam sort
Speaker 3: of uses this as a pattern breaking in his life too,
Speaker 3: where he's like actively engaging in other people's stories and
Speaker 3: learning about all these different tools and methods for how
Speaker 3: to talk about relationships, like just being on the pioneering
Speaker 3: side of relationship conversations, and that that is providing for
Speaker 3: him this understanding, you know, for work that he needs
Speaker 3: to do for himself. It's keeping him aware of it.
Speaker 3: Yet at the same time he says things like, I
Speaker 3: think a lot of my life has been helping other people,
Speaker 3: so I don't have to face my own shit, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 3: this person has it really rough, I'm gonna focus on
Speaker 3: their thing. But also I see the awareness of trauma,
Speaker 3: childhood trauma, the awareness of of like patterns in life,
Speaker 3: and how you know, he starts replaying some of the
Speaker 3: patterns that were handed down and how he's he begins
Speaker 3: to actively say things like I want to break I
Speaker 3: want to be the one to step out of this.
Speaker 3: So these are the things where it's like what does
Speaker 3: it take to truly break a generational pattern? But you know,
Speaker 3: we've got Joyce's mother has in Japan put her up
Speaker 3: for adoption. There's like maybe a first observation of an abandonment,
Speaker 3: and then she's adopted to this American family who Joyce
Speaker 3: claims didn't really love her or connect with her in
Speaker 3: a way that would bring about security, and so there's
Speaker 3: another level of abandonment. And then Joyce you know, of course,
Speaker 3: like you know, gets to this point where she abandons
Speaker 3: her own children, and then Sam comes to the awareness
Speaker 3: that like he's capable of abandoning people. He's really scared
Speaker 3: of that idea. And he has just kind of had
Speaker 3: these relationships with girlfriends where he's just sort of walked
Speaker 3: away with no feeling no oh, I just heard that person.
Speaker 3: And he has become aware of it. He's done therapy
Speaker 3: and he's like kind of like, oh my gosh, what
Speaker 3: is this? So you know, lifetimes, lifetimes are happening. And
Speaker 3: then we get to Sam and then Sam's like, how
Speaker 3: do I address this? And you know, and I'm a
Speaker 3: part of that too, with like, hey, I'm I'm recording
Speaker 3: this all and I'm putting it out so that you
Speaker 3: have it and also so that other families can look
Speaker 3: at this. And then there's the patterning in the Harkness
Speaker 3: family too, where it's like, what are the ways in
Speaker 3: which we support these patterns that aren't seen? And I
Speaker 3: think that that's the elephant in the room stuff, the secrecy,
Speaker 3: the part where it's like it's uncomfortable to talk about
Speaker 3: some things. That's where the things are allowed to ride
Speaker 3: on forever unless we look at them, unless we feel
Speaker 3: the fear and the pain of them. I think that
Speaker 3: they just they'll just ride on. They'll stay there. The
Speaker 3: skeletons will stay there. They'll stay right there in the
Speaker 3: closet unless you open the door and look at it
Speaker 3: and think about what it is, and then and then
Speaker 3: it can potentially be free.
Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccur is
Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 2: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd
Speaker 2: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 2: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.