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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm

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Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that

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Speaker 1: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,

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Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. As I tore

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Speaker 1: the nation from my book Inheritance, I've heard from so

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Speaker 1: many about your own family secrets and realize that what

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Speaker 1: we are creating for each other on this podcast is

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Speaker 1: a community, a community for those who are looking for

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Speaker 1: a safe and supportive space to unburden themselves. To that end,

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Speaker 1: we've created a number for listeners to call in to

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Speaker 1: record stories to share here in this space. This week,

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Speaker 1: I'd like to share a few of those stories from

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Speaker 1: our community. Thanks for listening. Hi, I have let to

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Speaker 1: podcasts no one to leave my family secrets. In brief,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of two different secrets, but kind of revolved

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Speaker 1: around the same people. I lost my dad in May

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Speaker 1: of two seventeen, and ten months later my mom was killed.

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Speaker 1: Um my dad overdosed, which had been his own personal secret.

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Speaker 1: We actually to know he was even using. There were

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Speaker 1: no signs, nothing. And then ten months later my mom

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Speaker 1: was actually hit by a car while she was walking

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Speaker 1: on a sidewalk and killed, and it kind of opened

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Speaker 1: up big secrets in my mom's side of a family

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Speaker 1: that almost everybody that had died before I've known were

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Speaker 1: killed in strange ways. I have great uncles that were

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Speaker 1: struck by lightning, and another one was killed by a snowmobile.

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Speaker 1: Um ones that drowned. It seems like in my family,

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Speaker 1: you don't really live past the age of sixty, and

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Speaker 1: you die in really strange ways. Then I never knew

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Speaker 1: about it till my mom passed, and then on my

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Speaker 1: dad time. UM his dad, so my paternal grandfather I'd

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Speaker 1: only met three times in my life, but when my

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Speaker 1: dad died, I felt like I need to reach out

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Speaker 1: to him, just to let him know that his son

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Speaker 1: had passed. And UM, I knew he lived in the

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Speaker 1: same city, and so my mom and I before she passed,

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Speaker 1: did some research and tried to find him, and we

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Speaker 1: cannot find him anywhere, and we don't know what happened

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Speaker 1: to him. And then we found out that his girlfriend

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Speaker 1: moved to Texas and I ended up finding her phone

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Speaker 1: number and calling her, and she's actually has some sort

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Speaker 1: of dementia and they she said he was put into

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Speaker 1: a nursing home for alcoholism and has dementia too, and

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Speaker 1: she can't remember what nursing home he was put into.

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Speaker 1: So at this point we're still trying to look into it.

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Speaker 1: And I was always told that his family there wasn't

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Speaker 1: anybody else. And then I come to find out that

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Speaker 1: actually my paternal grandfather had six siblings, and now I

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Speaker 1: did my ancestry DNA and I actually connect it with

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Speaker 1: one of my second cousins on that side, and it

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Speaker 1: turns out that I have probably another like family members

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Speaker 1: through there that I've never met, and we're all starting

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Speaker 1: to reconnect. And so that's pretty much where my story

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Speaker 1: is right now. Thank you, bye, good morning. I had

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Speaker 1: an interesting experience occur last week and then listening to

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Speaker 1: your podcasts since it began and has been enjoying very

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Speaker 1: much all of the stories of all the different types

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Speaker 1: of secrets families came from keep and completely unaware that

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Speaker 1: there was a family secret in my life. And I

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Speaker 1: got a phone call, ironically while I was listening to

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Speaker 1: one of your podcasts from my uncle asking me for

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Speaker 1: the photos of my mother had before she passed, of

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Speaker 1: the known family my grandpa had, which was to sisters.

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Speaker 1: The story had always been that he had been left

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Speaker 1: in Missouri, that he had a mother, my great grandmother,

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Speaker 1: Um had contracted tuberculosis and had gone off to the Southwest.

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Speaker 1: His father ended up um an alcoholic and was incapable

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Speaker 1: of taking care of his youngest son. So his oldest daughters,

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Speaker 1: my great aunts, took their little brother, my grandpa, and

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Speaker 1: moved to Oregon. And that was always a story I

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Speaker 1: grew up around. My whole family were very, very close.

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Speaker 1: I thought there was no secrets, And I got a

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Speaker 1: phone call from my uncle asking for these photos of

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Speaker 1: the hierarchy, saying that he had just gotten a phone

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Speaker 1: call film a cousin he didn't know he had. And

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Speaker 1: turns out my grandpa had a live being mother and

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Speaker 1: father and two brothers. That we're all living within a

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Speaker 1: hundred miles of us my entire life. And it made

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Speaker 1: me think of a time that I was about nineteen

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Speaker 1: years old and in a town different than the one

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Speaker 1: I had grown up in, and a young man walked

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Speaker 1: by me and he looked just like my cousins. So

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Speaker 1: I called from my cousin and this man turned around

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Speaker 1: and was not him. And I never mentioned the last name.

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Speaker 1: I'm kind of wishing I had now because I believe

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Speaker 1: that was probably one of my great uncles kids or

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Speaker 1: grandkids that could have been a cousin. And I had

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Speaker 1: no idea. None of us had any idea, And there's

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Speaker 1: over a hundred and sixty of us. So just when

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Speaker 1: you think your family can't hide anything, coplomo, everything changes. Hi.

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Speaker 1: I stumbled on the family secret by accident. Um All

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Speaker 1: I had meant to do was fact heck mom's family

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Speaker 1: story to figure out why she'd been such a critical

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Speaker 1: mother to me. I figured that something must have happened

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Speaker 1: to her when she was a child that had traumatized

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Speaker 1: her and perhaps made her unable to be emotionally supportive.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it was because her mother was a paranoid schizophrenic.

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Speaker 1: So I requested grandma's patient record from the state hospital

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Speaker 1: where she had been a patient for over a decade.

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Speaker 1: When I got my hands on it, the secrets just

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Speaker 1: spilled out. Three other women in Grandma's family had also

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Speaker 1: been patients there, and I got their records to her sister,

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Speaker 1: her mother, and her mother's sister. I had two generations

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Speaker 1: and records full of the social history of the family.

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Speaker 1: The most shocking secret was the Grandma had been sexually

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Speaker 1: abused by another member of the family, her aunt's husband,

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Speaker 1: right around the time that Mom was born. When I

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Speaker 1: found this out, I had just retired from a career

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Speaker 1: as a research librarian. So I did what a librarian

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Speaker 1: naturally does. I followed the clues in Grandma's record, and

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Speaker 1: I visited the homes where she had lived and the

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Speaker 1: cemeteries where my ancestors were buried. I took a DNA test,

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Speaker 1: and I determined that Grandpa was not Mom's biological father.

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Speaker 1: I found cousins I never knew I had, and some

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Speaker 1: of them were accepting of my discoveries, but others were not.

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Speaker 1: Um I just finished writing a book about what happened

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Speaker 1: in Mom's family. I feel like the trauma of the

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Speaker 1: past has been passed down to my generation, and the

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Speaker 1: only way that I can stop that from continuing to

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Speaker 1: happen is to bring the story to life. I think

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Speaker 1: there's a lesson in my family story that can benefit others,

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Speaker 1: and that's also why I think a podcast such as

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Speaker 1: yours is so important, So I want to thank you

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Speaker 1: for doing it. If you'd like to share your story,

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Speaker 1: call one eight eight eight secret zero and record your story.

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Speaker 1: We won't be able to run all the stories, but

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Speaker 1: we do want to shine a light on as many

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Speaker 1: as we can. The number again is one eight eight

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Speaker 1: eight Secret and then the numeral zero for more podcasts

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Speaker 1: for my Heart Radio