Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro and welcome to a new bonus episode of
Speaker 1: Family Secrets. As my amazing producers and I are in
Speaker 1: the midst of creating our second season. Blown away by
Speaker 1: the response from millions of listeners from season one, we're
Speaker 1: delivering bonus content to you each week that I hope
Speaker 1: you'll enjoy and that you'll be a part of the
Speaker 1: continuing dialogue we've begun about family secrets in all forms,
Speaker 1: the ways that giving voices to those secrets frees us.
Speaker 1: You might even say that we're in a moment, a
Speaker 1: movement in which secrecy will no longer be possible. I
Speaker 1: want to talk with you guys today about what I've
Speaker 1: been seeing out there as I've criss crossed the country
Speaker 1: over the past months while on book tour from my
Speaker 1: memoir Inheritance. For those of you just listening for the
Speaker 1: first time, Inheritance as a memoir about a discovery I
Speaker 1: made after taking a DNA test that my dad had
Speaker 1: not been my biological father. It turns out that lots
Speaker 1: of people, hundreds of thousands of us each year, are
Speaker 1: making similar discoveries. At my events I've met people who
Speaker 1: have just discovered as adults that they were adopted, people
Speaker 1: who have just discovered they were conceived using a sperm
Speaker 1: donor or an egg donor. People have discovered half siblings
Speaker 1: or even full siblings they never knew existed. Fathers have
Speaker 1: learned of children they hadn't known they had. Birth Parents
Speaker 1: who gave up children for adoption are being discovered by
Speaker 1: those children, and children also discovered by birth parents. The
Speaker 1: list goes on. Now there are no more secrets. Last month,
Speaker 1: I spoke at Harvard Medical School's Center for Bioethics. A
Speaker 1: woman in her sixties raised her hand during the Q
Speaker 1: and a. Her eyes were filled with tears. She had
Speaker 1: just discovered that the father who raised her had not
Speaker 1: been her biological father. She was quaking literally, she trembled
Speaker 1: from head to toe as she spoke. She mentioned the
Speaker 1: name of a nearby Boston hospital where she had been born,
Speaker 1: and she wondered if there might be any one in
Speaker 1: the room who could help her solve the mystery. After
Speaker 1: the event, she was surrounded by people offering her insight,
Speaker 1: support and advice, and after a couple of weeks, she
Speaker 1: found her biological father in Portland, Oregon, A young woman
Speaker 1: approached me on the book signing line. I could tell
Speaker 1: before she said even a single word, that she too,
Speaker 1: had just made a profound discovery. I found my biological father,
Speaker 1: she said. I wrote to him and I got two
Speaker 1: words back. Not interested. In Laguna Beach, a middle aged
Speaker 1: woman clutched the hand of her friend as she said,
Speaker 1: I realized, now I have to tell my thirty year
Speaker 1: old daughter. I have to tell her that the father
Speaker 1: who raised her, who died when she was young, and
Speaker 1: who she worshiped, wasn't her biological father, because I know
Speaker 1: she's going to find out. A man spoke privately to
Speaker 1: me at a Boston bookstore. He and his wife had
Speaker 1: been among the legions of couples who chose not to
Speaker 1: disclose to their daughter that she had been conceived using
Speaker 1: a sperm donor. His daughter found out and now felt
Speaker 1: terribly betrayed. What can I tell her, he asked me.
Speaker 1: How can I help heal her pain? Did it matter
Speaker 1: to you, I asked him. I suddenly felt choked up myself.
Speaker 1: Did it matter that she wasn't your biological child? Of
Speaker 1: course not, he said, of course it had never mattered.
Speaker 1: In ten books I've never had the experience before of
Speaker 1: my events becoming sort of like large scale support groups
Speaker 1: for those who were dealing with family secrets. It's a
Speaker 1: thing of such unex affected beauty. I'm thankful for it
Speaker 1: and humbled by it. One of the side effects of
Speaker 1: learning a secret, or perhaps even of keeping a secret,
Speaker 1: is the feeling of being terribly alone. The shame surrounding
Speaker 1: secrets tells us that we're the only one that no
Speaker 1: one would understand. They were better off just staying quiet
Speaker 1: and powering through. But what I'm seeing and experiencing again
Speaker 1: and again through my own journey and witnessing the journeys
Speaker 1: of others, is that when we tell our stories, when
Speaker 1: we own them, hold them up to the light and
Speaker 1: say this is what happened to me, suddenly all that shame,
Speaker 1: that feeling of otherness, alienation, difference, vanishes. It disappears because
Speaker 1: shame and secrecy can't deal with all that light, with
Speaker 1: all that brightness and clarity, with a beautiful community of
Speaker 1: people all turning toward rather than away from each other
Speaker 1: and saying me too, Me too, I've been there too.
Speaker 1: Over the next couple of months, as we produce season
Speaker 1: two of Family Secrets. I'm also still on tour for Inheritance.
Speaker 1: I'll be in New York City, Baltimore, Westchester, Milwaukee, Chicago, Denver, Boulder, Aspen, Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Sun Valley, Idaho, and more. If these are places anywhere
Speaker 1: near you, I hope you'll come, say hi and feel
Speaker 1: for yourself the shift that's happening right here, right now.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.