Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Shame
Speaker 1: is so powerful that the minute it has a little
Speaker 1: bit of the creep factor, like you give it a
Speaker 1: little bit of room to breathe, it's it rolls over
Speaker 1: you again. And it's so funny because I live my
Speaker 1: life today not being ashamed of my conduct, not being
Speaker 1: ashamed of how I navigate this world. Yet it lives
Speaker 1: in me. This is Jane Mints. Jane is an interventionist,
Speaker 1: which means that she flies all over the world trying
Speaker 1: to intervene when someone an alcoholic, an addict needs a
Speaker 1: serious amount of help. When you want to bring the
Speaker 1: big guns in the person who can handle all of it,
Speaker 1: the blood, the gore, the vomit, the denial, the life
Speaker 1: and death stakes of the addict at the end of
Speaker 1: the line, that's Jane. Because Jane's been there herself, right
Speaker 1: in the center of that shame, that addiction. It doesn't
Speaker 1: own me anymore, but it is something that I battle
Speaker 1: every single day and I just and I think that, um,
Speaker 1: I feel better when I'm able to help somebody that
Speaker 1: is really sort of unconsciously deciding if they want to
Speaker 1: live or die. And there is that moment when I'm
Speaker 1: able to connect to somebody for the moment they choose
Speaker 1: to live, and that's the opening. So that's the power
Speaker 1: of what wounded people can do together. I'm Danny Shapiro,
Speaker 1: and this is Family Secrets, the secrets that are kept
Speaker 1: from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the
Speaker 1: secrets we keep from ourselves. This is a story about adoption, addiction, recovery, identity, nature, nurture,
Speaker 1: and well just a little organized crime, but we'll get
Speaker 1: to that. And like a soft thrumming heartbeat beneath all
Speaker 1: of it, shame. I've been thinking a lot about shame
Speaker 1: during this first season of Family Secrets, because so many
Speaker 1: of these stories either originate in shame, or cause shame,
Speaker 1: or both. In Jane's case, her story begins with being adopted.
Speaker 1: She's the eldest of three adopted children, brought into a wonderful, loving,
Speaker 1: privileged family. So everything's good, just as it ought to be.
Speaker 1: I grew up and Shaker Heights, Ohio. My father was
Speaker 1: a surgeon, my mother stay at home mother. I had
Speaker 1: to adopted siblings and we lad really an idyllic life. Um,
Speaker 1: the rhythm of life was terrific. I had all the
Speaker 1: opportunity that was afforded me in terms of excellent education,
Speaker 1: great camps, very feminist you know, grow girl environment, private
Speaker 1: schools and that kind of thing, lots of travel. My
Speaker 1: family was incredibly social. We had lots of extended family
Speaker 1: and friends, and I was really supported and cherished and
Speaker 1: celebrated as a kid. But I was very lucky because
Speaker 1: my life could have been the polar opposite, and I
Speaker 1: knew that my whole life. So when you say your
Speaker 1: life could have been the polar opposite, it's because you
Speaker 1: had the knowledge that you were adopted, and so the
Speaker 1: sense of luck of the draw or like being adopted
Speaker 1: into one particular family that was loving and privileged as
Speaker 1: opposed to another. Correct it absolutely. And I didn't at
Speaker 1: that time know anything about my birth history, but I
Speaker 1: knew I was lucky. And I had a relationship with
Speaker 1: my father, who's passed on about five years now. Um,
Speaker 1: that was extraordinary. Jane's dad was a huge personality. She
Speaker 1: describes him as the mayor of everything. He was Cleveland's
Speaker 1: favorite eye doctor, and Jane would tag along on his
Speaker 1: medical calls to the hospital, into the emergency room, even
Speaker 1: the operating room. He brought home cow eyes, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but you you and taught her how to operate on
Speaker 1: them in the family's basement. Jane's mom was also a
Speaker 1: lovely human being, though Jane felt less connected to her.
Speaker 1: She was a beautiful entertainer, a great cook, a classic
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties stay at home mom. My mother today is
Speaker 1: eighty six years old and reads three newspapers a day
Speaker 1: and is glued to CNN and ms NBC and the two.
Speaker 1: The thing that we have most in common today as politics,
Speaker 1: which is great. But we're very, very different people. And
Speaker 1: while I love and appreciate my mother, I never developed,
Speaker 1: you know, that rapport that I had with my dad.
Speaker 1: It was just a very different relationship. And still, you know,
Speaker 1: deeply loving and and all that good stuff. But we're
Speaker 1: just cut from completely different class. So, in terms of
Speaker 1: being adopted, were you told that you were adopted at
Speaker 1: a particular age or was it part of the fabric
Speaker 1: of growing up for you always? How did your parents
Speaker 1: handle it? I think from the time I could comprehend,
Speaker 1: my mom and dad would read me a little book
Speaker 1: called The Chosen One, and that was the message from
Speaker 1: the time I was a small child, is that I
Speaker 1: was chosen and you know, very special because of that,
Speaker 1: and so they normed out adoption. The mistake of norming
Speaker 1: it out was the misunderstanding that children are blank slates.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of an interesting dynamic where I
Speaker 1: always felt very you know, loving and accepted and come
Speaker 1: from this amazingly cool family. It wasn't until much later
Speaker 1: in my life that I sort of stood in my
Speaker 1: own truth and said I deserve to know. I really
Speaker 1: deserve it. The book Chain Remembers is actually titled The
Speaker 1: Chosen Baby. Published in the cover features a whimsical drawing
Speaker 1: of a little boy climbing out of his crib, and
Speaker 1: the book is described as a universally popular children's story
Speaker 1: about adoption. The opening goes like this. The first baby
Speaker 1: was a little boy with blue eyes and curly blonde hair.
Speaker 1: He laughed and played with a rattle. The man and
Speaker 1: his wife watched the baby. Then they shook their heads
Speaker 1: and said, this is a beautiful child, but we know
Speaker 1: it is not our baby. And they were taken to
Speaker 1: see the next and they're asleep. In the crib lay
Speaker 1: a lovely, rosy, fat baby boy. He opened his big
Speaker 1: brown eyes and smiled. The wife picked him up and
Speaker 1: sat him on her lap. The baby gurgled, and the
Speaker 1: man and his wife said, this is our chosen baby.
Speaker 1: We won't have to look any further. We will have
Speaker 1: everything ready for him by tomorrow and would like to
Speaker 1: take him home. Then. I am sure the book was
Speaker 1: well intentioned and its author well meaning, and the parents
Speaker 1: who read it to their children were ahead of their time,
Speaker 1: those who were trying to tell the truth to their
Speaker 1: kids about their adoption. And yet, in Jane's words, the
Speaker 1: whole idea was to norm it out, to instill strongly
Speaker 1: the sense that being chosen was all that mattered. My
Speaker 1: adoption was a private adoption. And what what I think
Speaker 1: did go wrong over time is that while it appeared
Speaker 1: to be transparent, you know, in terms of me knowing
Speaker 1: I was adopted, my parents claimed they knew nothing about
Speaker 1: my adopted family, which is not true. So it took
Speaker 1: me getting my grandmother really drunk and imploring her to
Speaker 1: show me my original birth certificate, which had been altered.
Speaker 1: My grandmother, my mother's mother, was just this little pocket person,
Speaker 1: but she was all ry. I mean, she was no
Speaker 1: joke at all. And um, I think that when I
Speaker 1: was born, my parents gave my grandfather and my grandmother
Speaker 1: my original birth certificate, and somehow I had gotten wind
Speaker 1: of that at around seven years old. So I went
Speaker 1: over to my grandmother's house and she used to smoke
Speaker 1: Lucky Strikes cigarettes and drink scotch. So we started drinking
Speaker 1: scotch and smoking Lucky Strikes cigarettes together, and I just
Speaker 1: said to her, I have to know. And her whole
Speaker 1: thing was, well, if your mother ever found out, I
Speaker 1: would never be able to recover from that because they
Speaker 1: were very, very bonded and had, you know, beautiful relationship.
Speaker 1: But she sort of at that moment, there was this
Speaker 1: crack and I was able to slip through and she
Speaker 1: gave me my birth certificate, which then gave me the
Speaker 1: actual doctor and the town that I was born. After
Speaker 1: she finally finds her birth certificate. Jane hires a private detective.
Speaker 1: Jane is twenty six years old. She's in retail computer sales.
Speaker 1: Her career is on hire. She's a hard partying up
Speaker 1: and comer. Within three days, she was able to find
Speaker 1: everything out that I needed to know. And she called
Speaker 1: me and she said, UM, you better sit down, and I, boy,
Speaker 1: did I sit down, and she told me I found
Speaker 1: her This is where she is um. She would like
Speaker 1: to talk to you. She wanted me to tell you.
Speaker 1: You know, she's been waiting for you your whole life.
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, have her call. And of course,
Speaker 1: at that time, I was drinking like a fish, and
Speaker 1: I grabbed a Scotch bottle and I sat on the
Speaker 1: edge of my bed and the phone rang, and she
Speaker 1: said exactly those things to me. She said, I've been
Speaker 1: waiting for you all my life. And and then we
Speaker 1: agreed to meet. We're going to pause for a moment
Speaker 1: before we get to the moment when Jane first eats
Speaker 1: her birth mother. I want to know more about the
Speaker 1: whole inside Jane, inside so many of us whose origins
Speaker 1: have been kept from us. After all, she's had it
Speaker 1: pretty good. What sends her to the private detective and
Speaker 1: ultimately to her biological mother? I mean, what is that confusion?
Speaker 1: What is that sense of emptiness all about? Well, it's
Speaker 1: interesting when you live in such a beautiful bubble and
Speaker 1: you have nothing but really good things happening to you
Speaker 1: all the time. And I was successful, I was had
Speaker 1: great friends, I had great family. My whole life, I
Speaker 1: felt like there was a black hole in my soul
Speaker 1: that was so deep and wide, and I felt like
Speaker 1: I didn't deserve to feel that way, and that I
Speaker 1: felt really ashamed of having these feelings and not being
Speaker 1: able to really identify what that was about. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think shame is is what I learned to feel
Speaker 1: about myself my whole life, even though there was no
Speaker 1: evidence that I should be ashamed. But I felt ashamed
Speaker 1: for wanting to know more about myself and sort of
Speaker 1: being acculturated. I can't really describe it, but you never
Speaker 1: you always feel on the outside of life, always, and
Speaker 1: then there's no evidence for why you should feel that way,
Speaker 1: so that there's an incongruence. Yeah, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how much I relate to that, Okay, Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: that the feeling of I don't have a right to
Speaker 1: this pain. I mean, you know, look at me, look
Speaker 1: where I live, Look look at this privilege, and you
Speaker 1: know this environment in which really nothing has gone wrong,
Speaker 1: that's right, But the feeling of something being terribly wrong, right,
Speaker 1: and that being an extremely confusing thing for a kid.
Speaker 1: It it really is. And you know, you and I
Speaker 1: were talking a little bit earlier that adoptive kids have
Speaker 1: a very high rate of addiction. And process addictions, which
Speaker 1: means being addicted to anything other than a substance. And
Speaker 1: my family were big cocktailers, and I can remember it
Speaker 1: nine years old, clearing the cocktail glasses and then taking
Speaker 1: my first drink, and that feeling of being different or
Speaker 1: separate or not a part of went away. So it's
Speaker 1: a classic when substance meets solution. And that was the
Speaker 1: story of my life. So rather than try to seek
Speaker 1: an inward journey, until I learned to do that, everything
Speaker 1: was external. Everything was an external fix. And that's even
Speaker 1: more disregulating because there's no you know, you're it's not
Speaker 1: an authentic journey at that point, right, And ye know
Speaker 1: what's going through my head is what possible tools? Would
Speaker 1: you have had to know that an inward journey was
Speaker 1: possible exactly? And it wasn't until I landed in treatment
Speaker 1: that that I started to connect with Native American spirituality
Speaker 1: and ritual and all this kind of stuff and really
Speaker 1: realized that there was a huge spiritual part of myself
Speaker 1: that I never knew existed. I didn't know existed for
Speaker 1: anybody else. Would you have though, like in middle school
Speaker 1: in high school, would you have been able to identify this.
Speaker 1: If somebody had asked you, are you good with what
Speaker 1: you know about yourself? Or is that does it feel
Speaker 1: like there's something more that that you're seeking that would
Speaker 1: you have been able to articulate that I would have.
Speaker 1: I would have, but I was never asked, and I
Speaker 1: didn't look to somebody to, you know, ask me that. Well,
Speaker 1: that goes back to the narrative of I was chosen.
Speaker 1: I've been so blessed, right, I'm so lucky. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: should just shut up and shut up and enjoy it, right,
Speaker 1: But you can't if something is so it's it's cellular,
Speaker 1: and it's also I'm a big YOUNGI in so the
Speaker 1: collective unconscious is you know, is always so intriguing to me,
Speaker 1: and there's there's a real disconnect and when you're in
Speaker 1: disharmony with the universe, you know, starting with yourself. Everything
Speaker 1: we talked about running around your back hand, that's what happens,
Speaker 1: is that you just end up course correcting all the time.
Speaker 1: When Jane talks about running around her backhand, this is
Speaker 1: a phrase that originates in her youth as a tournament
Speaker 1: tennis player, and one I love so much I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start using it myself. I was also a tournament tennis player,
Speaker 1: though probably not as good as Jane, and I remember
Speaker 1: that coaches love to say this, don't run around your
Speaker 1: back hand, meaning don't compensate or overcompensate, don't be afraid
Speaker 1: of your weaknesses, running around whatever your truth is, whatever
Speaker 1: you know deep down is the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: So you're only playing with half your game because you're
Speaker 1: so worried about failing or missing your shot. Or in
Speaker 1: Jane's case, if she was enough of a winner, is
Speaker 1: she nailed every shot, she would continue to be the
Speaker 1: lucky chosen baby. In my own mind, now that I
Speaker 1: can construct some of the stuff it was, they can't
Speaker 1: possibly give me back if I'm this good. So now
Speaker 1: Jane is twenty six years old, and she's sitting on
Speaker 1: the edge of her bed with her bottle of scotch
Speaker 1: and hearing the sound of her birth mother's voice for
Speaker 1: the first time in her life. When I heard her voice,
Speaker 1: it's like my my cell started knitting back together. It
Speaker 1: was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. So I decided,
Speaker 1: you know, on that phone call with my birth mom
Speaker 1: her name is Linda, to meet her and I flew
Speaker 1: to Dallas the next week and I was my uniform
Speaker 1: at the time probably still is today, was you know,
Speaker 1: cowboy boots, jeans and a white shirt. And I walked
Speaker 1: off the plane and at that time, people could meet
Speaker 1: you at the gate, remember that like back in the
Speaker 1: Stone ages. Uh. And there was my mother in a
Speaker 1: white shirt, jeans and cowboy boots and we're doppelgangers, were
Speaker 1: dead lookalikes. When you see somebody that you're a dead
Speaker 1: ringer for. I mean my mannerism, the cadence of my voice,
Speaker 1: the way I wore my hair, my blue eyes, my
Speaker 1: whole It was the most soul shattering moment, and I
Speaker 1: think sometimes you have to fall apart to put yourself
Speaker 1: back together. And that was that brought the house down
Speaker 1: for me. And then I started to learn to live.
Speaker 1: And it was because I felt finally that that I
Speaker 1: did belong somewhere. Jane's mother, Linda, Her life is complex.
Speaker 1: Jane describes her as an extraordinary, very wounded person with
Speaker 1: a loose grip on reality. Linda also has another child,
Speaker 1: one she has raised, Jane's half brother, who has mixed
Speaker 1: feelings about the discovery that he has a sibling. He
Speaker 1: had never known about On her end, she had kept
Speaker 1: me a secret from my half brother and the family,
Speaker 1: so she had to come clean. So we went over
Speaker 1: and we met my my half brother, who was not
Speaker 1: really buying into this whole thing. He'd been the golden
Speaker 1: child and his family, but they had lived a very
Speaker 1: challenging life, I mean, just needless to say. And so
Speaker 1: I met him, I met his two little kids and
Speaker 1: his wife at the time, and the three of us
Speaker 1: just decided to go out and do some skeet shooting
Speaker 1: and that was really great. Um. And that's the other
Speaker 1: thing is, from the time I was a small child,
Speaker 1: I could ride and shoot like nobody's beeswax. Skeet shooting
Speaker 1: as a bonding activity doesn't seem to quite go together
Speaker 1: with Jane's Shaker Heights, progressive Jewish upbringing. Yes, a liberal
Speaker 1: Jewish progressive Democrat, you know. I mean we we didn't
Speaker 1: shoot guns, we didn't do all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But I went to these this fabulous summer camp where
Speaker 1: we did all that, and that was just such a
Speaker 1: part of my d n A because that's my whole family.
Speaker 1: We're all you know, outdoorsy outlaws, addicts, you know, really
Speaker 1: colorful group of people. So we just blew stuff up
Speaker 1: and it was sort of this cathartic cool bonding. D
Speaker 1: N a d oxy ribonucleic acid. There's a mouthful for you.
Speaker 1: Here's a definition the fundamental and distinctive characteristics or qualities
Speaker 1: of someone or something, especially when regarded as unchangeable. What
Speaker 1: is it to recognize the characteristics or qualities of yourself
Speaker 1: in someone else for the very first time. I remember
Speaker 1: when I first laid eyes on my biological father. The
Speaker 1: first time I saw him was on a YouTube video.
Speaker 1: He was giving a lecture, and what I felt watching
Speaker 1: him was a shocking sense of familiarity. His gestures, his
Speaker 1: facial expressions, his very nature was like an overlay of
Speaker 1: my own. The one thing about my mother, uh Linda,
Speaker 1: was that she was dynamic. I mean, there was just
Speaker 1: something She would just weave a spell around you. Her
Speaker 1: charisma was extraordinary, and as she started to tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about her life, she started to answer
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about how I operated. Because I'm
Speaker 1: sort of an outlaw at heart, but I've been refined
Speaker 1: and I've been educated, and I have a very distinct
Speaker 1: moral compass and sort of code of conduct. But my mother,
Speaker 1: who polished herself, up ended up leaving home at fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen years old, found her way into the St.
Speaker 1: Louis Mob and became a very high ranking U copo.
Speaker 1: Just hold on a second here. In all the fantasies
Speaker 1: that adopted children have about who their birth mother might be,
Speaker 1: you know, famous actress, foreign royalty, I wonder if high
Speaker 1: ranking capo in the St. Louis Mob has ever made
Speaker 1: the list. Jane's mother with a mobster. She drove getaway cars,
Speaker 1: She used her beauty to lure men into rooms where bad,
Speaker 1: bad things happened. She fell in love with Kurt Flood,
Speaker 1: a Hall of Fame baseball player, and even tried to
Speaker 1: run away with him. Jane describes Linda as a black
Speaker 1: widow type, dark and dangerous in a glamorous package. So
Speaker 1: many of the stories that she told me about that
Speaker 1: part of her life, which were really the glory days
Speaker 1: of her life, started to help me make sense of
Speaker 1: the mobster and me. And it was just an unbelievable like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, now I get it, I get why
Speaker 1: I think this way, I get so. It was just
Speaker 1: a kind of a a chicken and egg thing. You know,
Speaker 1: when you can't figure out why you're you operate this
Speaker 1: like as a little Jewish girl from Shaker Heights. There
Speaker 1: would be no reason for me to be as street
Speaker 1: smart as I am. There would be no reason for
Speaker 1: me to be able to read a room as quickly
Speaker 1: as I can, um no frame of reference for any
Speaker 1: of this stuff, and very different than my other siblings
Speaker 1: and even my parents. The nature is so strong, you know.
Speaker 1: The nurture is important, but what I learned was over
Speaker 1: my lifetime was to appreciate so much the cellular knowledge
Speaker 1: that is transferred from one generation to another, which it
Speaker 1: could be argued, is why it's so important, why the
Speaker 1: child is not a blank slate. Oh my gosh, it's
Speaker 1: so true. And without somebody being able to claim their
Speaker 1: history and to understand their history, most people feel fraudulent
Speaker 1: and out of congruence. It's a terrible way to live.
Speaker 1: And that school of thinking. School of thought has destroyed
Speaker 1: so many people. And today, you know, after my own
Speaker 1: journey of my own addiction, my job every single day
Speaker 1: is to be rigorously honest with myself and other people.
Speaker 1: And telling the truth is a hard thing to do,
Speaker 1: and reconciling the truth is a hard thing to do.
Speaker 1: So Jane meets her birth mom and the rest of
Speaker 1: her birth family and learns so much about herself that
Speaker 1: black hole, that yawning empty space inside her is all
Speaker 1: filled up. She no longer feels the need to drink.
Speaker 1: Cue the violence. In the Hollywood version of Jane's life,
Speaker 1: that's what would happen right the moment she meets her mother,
Speaker 1: her biological mother, she would have everything she needs, her
Speaker 1: questions all would be answered, and her addiction, well, that
Speaker 1: would just go away. But life is not a Hollywood movie.
Speaker 1: Jane is in her mid twenties when she meets Linda,
Speaker 1: and it takes her until the age of forty to
Speaker 1: get sober. Because I was carrying a secret, and that
Speaker 1: destroyed me, ultimately destroyed me, and I ended up working
Speaker 1: my whole life around protecting that secret of having met her,
Speaker 1: establishing a relationship with her, you know, being forced to
Speaker 1: live a double life because I was immediately welcomed in
Speaker 1: to my birth family, all the while remaining staunchly a
Speaker 1: part of my adoptive family. And I should have felt
Speaker 1: like I was complete, but I felt like I had
Speaker 1: betrayed that I was, had been treacherous and deceitful, that
Speaker 1: if my family ever really found out that I had
Speaker 1: done this, that I would be disowned, that the relationships
Speaker 1: would be forever fractured. And that's actually pretty much what happened.
Speaker 1: I had to end up telling my father, my beloved father,
Speaker 1: because my brother was coming to town. My half brother
Speaker 1: was coming to town to visit me, and I just
Speaker 1: it's such a close knit community that we look so
Speaker 1: much alike my birth mother and looks at that. I
Speaker 1: knew that the minute he came to town, it was
Speaker 1: the cat was out of the bag. So I ended
Speaker 1: up telling my dad about this. Course he was shattered,
Speaker 1: and he went and told my mother about this, and
Speaker 1: I don't know that she's ever recovered. And that was
Speaker 1: the last anybody ever spoke of it. So that's another wound, right.
Speaker 1: But it strikes me that you didn't have to have
Speaker 1: your half brother come to town, so you must have
Speaker 1: on some level needed to bring this to a boil,
Speaker 1: no question about it. And you know, some of that's
Speaker 1: really a blur, and I think instinct kicks in. I
Speaker 1: wanted my children to meet him, um, I wanted my
Speaker 1: then husband to meet him, and I needed some support.
Speaker 1: I needed people to share this burden with me, which
Speaker 1: it's a weird word to use, but that's what it was.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back
Speaker 1: in a moment. This idea of being burdened feels like
Speaker 1: an important one. Whenever a family secrets, who carries that burden?
Speaker 1: And why does the burden shift from one family member
Speaker 1: to another? Does the burden exist if the secret manages
Speaker 1: to stay secret? What are all the implications of the hidden,
Speaker 1: the unseat, the unknown. Can you talk more about shame,
Speaker 1: because it seems to me there are a few through
Speaker 1: lines both in my story and all the stories with
Speaker 1: the people that I've been in conversations with for this podcast,
Speaker 1: and one of those through lines is shame. Another is
Speaker 1: a close cousin to shame, which is this feeling of
Speaker 1: not deserving. And so it seems to me that when
Speaker 1: someone has been raised in the atmosphere of the unseid
Speaker 1: in some way, even if you know child, a child
Speaker 1: doesn't know necessarily what the what that thing is. It's
Speaker 1: just this feeling of not having all the information and
Speaker 1: somehow not having a right to it, or not having
Speaker 1: a right to one's own reality, right oh you, just
Speaker 1: like I feel like i'm you know, a little unglued
Speaker 1: because you've just hit me so hard with you know,
Speaker 1: those are the through lines of my life, are feeling worthy.
Speaker 1: And my sense of worth was in my accomplishments, and
Speaker 1: people in my life were very happy to wear my
Speaker 1: accomplishments on their sleeve. So then I was validated socially
Speaker 1: and all for all of that. But that was such
Speaker 1: an external thing. And then shame is another thing that
Speaker 1: I still, you know, at fifty eight years old, battle
Speaker 1: every day of my life. And I really do look
Speaker 1: in the mirror and say, what do you have to
Speaker 1: be ashamed of? Like You're a cool person, You've raised
Speaker 1: great kids, you have great business, you help people, you
Speaker 1: do it. But deep in my soul, I have never
Speaker 1: been able to heal that, you know, even with as
Speaker 1: much work as I've done, you know, in my own
Speaker 1: growth and my own sort of therapeutic growth, I can't
Speaker 1: get it right. It's like such a broken piece of
Speaker 1: me and I just don't quite know how to do it,
Speaker 1: but I keep trying. Jane has some years of heading
Speaker 1: down a parallel track to Linda's. Linda is a pill addict.
Speaker 1: Jane is an active alcoholic. This is something they have
Speaker 1: in common, something also likely rooted in their shared biology.
Speaker 1: But in Jane finally gets sober and Linda, Linda does not.
Speaker 1: I just had a sort of a flash of insight here.
Speaker 1: But I lived just culturally differently. But I lived the
Speaker 1: same story as my mother of feeling on the outside,
Speaker 1: you know, finding ways to belong um, dealing with the
Speaker 1: trauma of trying to fit in and figure out where
Speaker 1: you exist. And ultimatelyly my mother destroyed herself. I didn't,
Speaker 1: and I was able to catch myself before I died prematurely.
Speaker 1: But that same desire to want to destroy one's self
Speaker 1: I share with my mother. Now I was clean and sober,
Speaker 1: and she was starting to fall further further into depression,
Speaker 1: um compensatory behaviors. She was a terrible cigare at smoker,
Speaker 1: and um she was an alcoholic, but she was prescription
Speaker 1: painkiller queen. And I just saw mental illness started roll
Speaker 1: over her and there was no stopping it. And then,
Speaker 1: you know, as somebody new in recovery, you want to
Speaker 1: share that and you want to talk about it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the last thing that somebody wants to talk about
Speaker 1: when they're in active addiction. Linda dies in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: destitute and alone in government housing in rural Missouri near
Speaker 1: the Ozark Mountains, in a tiny house filled with the
Speaker 1: stench of cigarettes, every surface covered with tar. Jane had
Speaker 1: already completed her graduate degree and by that time was
Speaker 1: well on her way to doing her work as an interventionist. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: she ended up perishing, and the the talk about the
Speaker 1: shame of not being able to save her, you know,
Speaker 1: and then really watch her die and then discover her
Speaker 1: in the condition, her living condition, which I knew nothing about,
Speaker 1: thank god, because I would have bankrupted myself to provide
Speaker 1: some kind of lifestyle for her. I mean, what a mess.
Speaker 1: But um, what it did for me is it woke
Speaker 1: me up. And I'm a light keeper today. And unless
Speaker 1: you've lived in the dark, you don't know what light is.
Speaker 1: You think you do, but you don't, you know. Fifteen
Speaker 1: years down the road now, Um, I feel like I've
Speaker 1: lived several lifetimes in this lifetime. But this is where
Speaker 1: I belong because for some reason I have that ability
Speaker 1: to reach in up to the dark and pull people out,
Speaker 1: or be a part of pulling people out. I don't
Speaker 1: want to you know, sound like a grandized but it's
Speaker 1: kind of an amazing thing. Well, you aren't afraid of it, no,
Speaker 1: and you are able to recognize it. And I'm strong,
Speaker 1: you know, I've survived. Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 1: The way that it can all coexist? And it's still
Speaker 1: so confusing. While I have lots of pieces and parts,
Speaker 1: it's not completely integrated. And I think that that's my
Speaker 1: sole journey this time around, is to you know, continue
Speaker 1: to seek the truth and to be of service to others.
Speaker 1: And that's part of my healing and my journey and
Speaker 1: my self actualization. But it's all very confusing. Jane uses
Speaker 1: a lot of imagery in her conversation, and this makes
Speaker 1: sense to me. Images are often easier to hold onto
Speaker 1: the language than words. She described herself earlier as a
Speaker 1: huge young Gian Carl Jung, the psychoanalytic poet of the unconscious.
Speaker 1: When Jane studied for her master's degree, she was drawn
Speaker 1: to the work of Clarissa Pincola s d. Is one
Speaker 1: of the great Indian analysts of our time. She's told
Speaker 1: the story of the Zygote Baby and effectively, Um, and
Speaker 1: I'll probably butcher this, but you'll get it is that
Speaker 1: the stork is flying across the sky with a big
Speaker 1: basket on its back, and all these little babies are
Speaker 1: in the basket, ready to be delivered to their intended families.
Speaker 1: But there are always these the little ones that like
Speaker 1: over percolate, and they're so excited that they end up
Speaker 1: falling out of the basket into the wrong family, and
Speaker 1: they spend their whole lives trying to reconcile their difference.
Speaker 1: They're they're sort of intuitive, knowing difference from where they
Speaker 1: landed to who they are as human beings. That's the
Speaker 1: story of my life. And while I don't feel that
Speaker 1: my family was wrong, I felt that I did unnaturally
Speaker 1: land in my family. I am that zygote baby, and
Speaker 1: I think that many adoptive kids feel that way. But
Speaker 1: we end up actually being the most dynamic, resilient, powerful
Speaker 1: people because of everything that we've had to endure to
Speaker 1: get to our truth. I'd like to thank my guest
Speaker 1: Jane Mints, for sharing her family secret. You can find
Speaker 1: out more about Jane and her work at Jane mints
Speaker 1: dot com. Family Secrets is an I Heart Media production.
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer. Andrew Howard and Tristan
Speaker 1: McNeil are the audio engineers, and Julie Douglas is the
Speaker 1: executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like
Speaker 1: to share, you can get in touch with us at
Speaker 1: listener mail at Family Secrets Podcast dot com, and you
Speaker 1: can also find us on Instagram at Danny Ryder, and
Speaker 1: Facebook at Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter at Fami Secrets Pod.
Speaker 1: That's Fami Secrets. For more about my book, Inheritance, visit
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro dot com