Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, secrets that
Speaker 1: are kept from us, secrets that we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and secrets we keep from ourselves. As a toddler, he
Speaker 1: was the shadowy figure. He was just the smell of
Speaker 1: cigarettes and gold and cash, and and that's who my
Speaker 1: father was, this kind of gravelly voice figure in my house.
Speaker 1: That's an upcoming guest from season two looking back on
Speaker 1: a childhood with her father, who, along with her mother,
Speaker 1: suffered from addiction. It wasn't until she was older that
Speaker 1: she began to put together the pieces of their addiction
Speaker 1: and the secrets that surrounded them. Sometimes the impressions from
Speaker 1: our childhoods, the smells, the sights, the sounds, remain fingerprints
Speaker 1: on the windows of our memories. But when we get older,
Speaker 1: when we obtain a vital piece of information, these impressions
Speaker 1: come flooding back in. Every thing we experienced as a
Speaker 1: child is rearranged in our minds and finally settles into
Speaker 1: a pattern we can understand, and naturally we want to
Speaker 1: know more. When a kid, I think, is denied stories
Speaker 1: and answers, it just makes them more curious. That's the
Speaker 1: power of sharing our secrets. It allows us to untether
Speaker 1: ourselves from what feels like invisible forces holding us back.
Speaker 1: It allows us to see one another clearly, to become
Speaker 1: curious about why things happened the way they did, or
Speaker 1: why we are who we are. In Season two of
Speaker 1: Family Secrets, you'll hear from courageous people who confronted the
Speaker 1: secrets surrounding them. Some of these people grew up with
Speaker 1: a secret kept from them by someone else. What I
Speaker 1: didn't know was that evening would mark the beginning of
Speaker 1: just an epic extramarital love affair that my mother brought
Speaker 1: me along on. Some of these people were secret keepers,
Speaker 1: hiding their set sruality or concealing a medical condition, all
Speaker 1: in the hopes of sparing their loved ones. Marl and
Speaker 1: I called it the loving decision and loving choice to
Speaker 1: provide them enough information that they knew what was going
Speaker 1: on and not every detail. And though each secret is
Speaker 1: as unique as the person holding it, all my guests
Speaker 1: took the extraordinary step of walking into the light to
Speaker 1: tell their story, to know their story, and in so
Speaker 1: doing help all of us to confront the secrets in
Speaker 1: our own lives. It turns dark. She's standing at the door,
Speaker 1: pacing upset. Everyone's in their bed. He comes home and
Speaker 1: the same two person play plays out from ten to
Speaker 1: midnight like it was the first day, like I never left.
Speaker 1: It starts to come together for my mother that he
Speaker 1: is literally forgetting to lie, and my father sort of
Speaker 1: realizes that his brain has betrayed him and he's admitted
Speaker 1: to this thing, and he said, as oh, oh, I
Speaker 1: did a bad thing. Join us for Season two of
Speaker 1: Family Secrets, premiering on Monday August. Listen and subscribe to
Speaker 1: Family Secrets at Apple Podcasts or on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, or wherever you listen to podcasts.