WEBVTT - Bonus: Listener Stories, Episode 2 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:11.440 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:15.640 Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:18.440 are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.919 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. As I tore 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.279 the nation from my book Inheritance, I've heard from so 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.880 many about your own family secrets and realize that what 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.000 we are creating for each other on this podcast is 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:35.920 a community, a community for those who are looking for 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:40.479 a safe and supportive space to unburden themselves. To that end, 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.600 we've created a number for listeners to call in to 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:48.160 record stories to share here in this space. This week, 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:50.599 I'd like to share a few of those stories from 0:00:50.640 --> 0:01:02.160 our community. Thanks for listening. So my family secret came 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:07.479 out with my paternal grandfather died. There had always been 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:13.039 your tension and conflict in his relationship with my dad, 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:17.720 who um suffered from drug addiction and mental illness and 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:21.680 lots of things throughout his life. But UM, I remember 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:26.120 being very distraught when my paternal grandfather died, and my 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:30.520 maternal grandmother said something like, well, I don't know why 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:34.160 you're so sad. He's not even really your grandfather. And 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:36.280 that was the first that I'd ever heard of it, 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:41.080 And only over the last five or six years since 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:45.959 that happened, through talking with my aunt, my dad's half sister, 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:50.480 have I found out that my paternal grandmother had an 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:55.400 affair with a married man in the early sixties and 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.240 um ended up pregnant with my dad. And then this 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.400 man died, right, I guess he had cancer. I don't 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:06.880 know what kind, And to this day, my paternal grandmother 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.480 and my dad don't know that I know, because we 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:15.760 have a very observant Roman Catholic family, and I think 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:20.520 my grandmother was just so ashamed that she still can't 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:24.440 talk about it. Anyway. Thank you for sharing your secrets 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:26.959 and so many others and making us feel us alone. 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:34.240 My secret, I guess is I found out a secret 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:36.880 and now I may be part of a secret. And 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:42.920 it's strange how that all happened. The story begins with 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:45.880 my name not being is the same as my mom's 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:48.320 maiden name, and I don't have a father on my 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:51.680 birth to the kids, so when questions were asked, I 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:54.440 was told that this other guy was my father, and 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:57.400 he was a father to my brother and sister, and 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:01.000 my third last names matches, so I just she just 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:06.720 said that the paperwork wasn't done and that's where it ended. 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:09.120 And then he died when I was six. So we 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:10.919 just left it at that for the rest of for 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:15.600 most of our life, until we found out that she 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:19.200 had given up another child for adoption when she was 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:24.559 younger before me, and that came out when we were teenagers. 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:27.840 And then uh, we actually met him, so I have 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:32.079 a half brother. And then uh, right before she died, 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:34.840 I asked her she had come down with cancer, and 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:39.480 I asked her again, point blank, was the original father 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:42.680 my father? And she said it was over the phone 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:46.360 or email, and over the phone and she said, I 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:48.160 wanted to tell you face to face. I was supposed 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:50.880 to see her that week. And I'm like, well, why 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:53.040 would you say that. She said something to the point 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:55.560 and I didn't want to hurt you or I was afraid, 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:58.640 and I'm like, okay, So I told her I had 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:01.920 talked to her then, but he died the next day. 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:06.080 A few years later, I did ancestry DNA and while 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.200 somebody tops up on my list as a brother who 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.800 isn't in my list, And it took about a year 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:16.560 until we finally touched base and I was able to 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:19.880 give him my story and time frame and he had his, 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.880 and yeah, sure enough, we think we've confirmed that we 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:27.640 had that secret, and that's where we ended up. Like so, 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.119 I now have a father who was alive, not dead, 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.440 and my brother and sister are not my half brother 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:39.080 and sister, and I gained a few other ones a 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:44.080 during all this. When I married my life. Right before that, 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:46.120 she had found out to his prince as an accident, 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:49.240 found out to his pregnant, and she wasn't sure if 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:52.320 it was me or somebody else, and she had talked 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:56.280 to somebody else, and he wanted her to get an abortion. 0:04:56.640 --> 0:05:00.720 And I had already been engaged to her for three 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.440 years and I said, I'll take that maybe no matter 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.200 what I know he has mine. And then when we 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:09.520 had the maybe, and when she grew up, she looked 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.240 as like my family, so we didn't take anything of it. 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:14.880 But when I took that answers to d NHS, she 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:18.960 did too, and she didn't find me in her list. 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:24.080 So at a moment now, after years of thinking that 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:26.800 she was my daughter, and I still believe she's my daughter. 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:29.599 I raised her as my daughter. But am I keeping 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:33.599 a secret now too? I did tell my life and 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:36.440 asked her if we should talk to her about it, 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:39.680 and she doesn't want to do that because it affects 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:45.039 so many people, my family and her family, and I 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:47.359 don't know. So now I'm part of a secret, and 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:52.400 it's it's strange how it's come around, or maybe part 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:54.159 of a secret. She it just means we have to 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:56.279 prove it, and I don't think we're gonna to try 0:05:56.279 --> 0:06:01.400 to prove it. So that's that's my strange Thanks for listening. 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:07.240 By My family secret story is that when I was 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:11.680 fourteen years old, um I was informed that my father 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:15.320 had a refugee family living with him and my parents 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:18.240 have been divorced for about two years at this point, 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:24.400 and there was some hushed tones surrounding this information. And 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.160 then I went to go see my father and learned 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:32.280 that this quote unquote refugee family was actually my father's 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:35.600 second wife that he married when he was in the 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:40.000 Vietnam War, and that I had siblings from that relationship, 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:43.840 and those siblings had known about me my whole life 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.279 and my siblings, but I had never known about them. 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:52.000 And this was also a very complicated situation because my 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:55.680 father had already been remarried to another woman at the time, 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:59.480 and he was a minister and a chaplain in the army, 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:02.720 so for one of his churches that was on the 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:06.960 army base, my one stepmother was his niece, and my 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:13.520 stepmother um, my other stepmother from Vietnam was just a 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:17.720 refugee family living with them and on his civilian church 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:24.400 off base. The story was that my one stepmother was 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:28.560 his wife. See now I don't even remember all of 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:31.200 this because it was so complicated, and I was also 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:35.560 asked by my father to keep these secrets. Meanwhile, I 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:38.840 was told that I was also supposed to tell people 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.080 that I was going to a boarding school in another 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:45.600 city and that my biological mother was in a mental institution. 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:50.240 So my father asked me to keep a lot of secrets. 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:51.960 Some of them I knew about and some of them 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:55.800 I did not. Uh. It was a very complicated family 0:07:55.880 --> 0:08:00.080 history with a lot of unraveling and undoing. But I 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:02.800 wanted to share because I've been listening to your podcast 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.520 and it makes me think about my own family secrets. 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:20.720 Thank you. If you'd like to share your story, call 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:25.360 one eight eight eight Secret zero and record your story. 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:27.720 We won't be able to run all the stories, but 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:29.520 we do want to shine a light on as many 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.679 as we can. The number again is one eight eight 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:47.400 eight Secret and then the numeral zero. For more podcasts 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:49.720 for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:52.840 Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.