WEBVTT - Yellow Legal Notepad 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:05.520 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio M 0:00:08.440 --> 0:00:11.560 I always knew my mother had a secret. She guarded 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:15.319 it fiercely, keeping it under lock and key. That was 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:18.560 how I envisioned it, hidden chamber, tucked away in the 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:23.439 recesses of my mother's twisted mind. But her secret was 0:00:23.480 --> 0:00:26.400 too big to be contained, and it would use out 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:29.880 like a thick slurry, poisoning her thoughts and covering our 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:38.120 family in darkness. That's Justine Cowen, attorney and writer, author 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:41.559 of the recent memoir The Secret Life of Dorothy Solmes. 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:45.760 Justine's is a story about the long reach of secrecy 0:00:46.000 --> 0:01:02.880 and its power to shape our deepest relationships. I'm Danny Shapiro, 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:05.960 and this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:08.560 from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:19.440 secrets we keep from ourselves. I began my life in 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:23.120 San Francisco, and when we were six, we moved to 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:28.760 a wealthy enclave of San Francisco called Hillsboro, UM, which 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:35.920 had wide, beautiful streets and estates throughout the town UM, 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:38.520 and it was so exclusive. There were actually no stores 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:43.800 in Hillsboro UM, just winding roads and that sort of thing. 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:49.080 And on the outside, our lives looked really perfect. We 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:53.480 had a beautiful Mediterranean house that my mother kept sparkling 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:59.240 clean and wonderfully decorated. And Um, every day I would 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:02.520 wake up and it would probably start with maybe a 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:05.440 violin lesson, and then I would go off to a 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:08.639 good school and my mother would pick me up after 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:12.720 school and we would go down to Woodside, California, which 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.960 was about twenty minutes away, where I would take riding lessons, 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.320 and um, we'd come home for a home cooked meal. 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:23.640 Following the meal, I might have some diction lessons with 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.960 my mother so that I could hopefully get the English 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:30.560 accent that she had, although that obviously did not work, 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:34.840 and then maybe some reading before bed. And so my 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:38.960 life was filled with tutors and lessons and nice things. 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:43.440 Tell me about your mother from that time. My mother 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:50.720 was beautiful. She had lovely, silky dark brown hair and 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:57.800 beautiful hazel eyes, and she carried herself with style and 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:04.920 always wore a perfectly put together outfit and just exuded class. 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:10.120 But that was the persona that she showed to the 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:15.400 outside world. Um, inside the house she was much more 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:19.400 her curial and some sometimes she could be volatile. I 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.800 remember some incidences where, for example, she threw my dullhouse 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:28.040 across the room and it smashed pieces. And another time 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:33.480 she slend the glass coffee table in the living room 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:40.800 and shattered it into pieces. So life inside her home 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:43.760 was not the same as what it appeared to those 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:47.720 that might be appearing in. What would set her off 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:52.120 when she would fly into these rages, I never really knew, 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:57.560 and I think that was part of what created some 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:01.920 fear in me not wanting to set her off, is 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:04.800 because you never really knew what the trigger was. I mean, 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:08.240 sometimes there were some things that you knew would upset her. 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:11.200 Sometimes she would retreat to her room and sit alone 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:15.280 in the dark, and I didn't know why. My earlier 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.800 memories were that I didn't want to upset her, and 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.440 I didn't want to do anything wrong, and that was 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:27.360 always very important that I don't do anything, And so 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:31.440 there was a fear. But then as I grew older, 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:38.719 that fear turned into anger, which turned into hatred, and 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:44.680 I harbored very deep resentful feelings towards my mother for 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.839 pretty much most of my life. And tell me about 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:53.560 your father. Oh, I loved my father. Um. He was 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:59.359 kind and very even I only remember him raising his 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.800 voice me once or twice in my entire life. He 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:06.640 was an attorney and he would come home after work 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:08.600 and I would run down the hall and see him, 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.280 and it was just the most exciting part of the day. 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:15.440 And on the weekends he would bring work home um 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:18.560 and he would sit in the library and read briefs 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:21.000 or whatever he may be doing, and I would lie 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:23.919 on the harbor floor beneath the table where he was 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:27.880 working and read books while he was there. And it 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:32.760 just felt comforting to be in his presence. And at 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:38.560 the same time, there were these moments, these incidents with 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:44.080 your mother. You write about your first memory of her 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:49.839 being awakened because she's screaming because she's having a nightmare. Yes, 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.120 And it was when we were in San Francisco, and 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:58.880 I just heard her screaming, and I ran into the 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:02.480 bedroom and I remember seeing my father holding my mother 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.520 and she continued to scream, and he told me to 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:12.080 go back to bed, and then she eventually stopped. And 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:14.560 you know, later I was told that it was because 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:19.680 the air raid sirens that are sprinkled around San Francisco 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:22.400 that had originally been put in in the event the 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:26.599 Japanese flew across the ocean in World War Two, but 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:30.400 we're now used for other purposes in San Francisco, such 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:33.360 as I suppose there was a tsunami or something like 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:38.560 that had gone off accidentally and it had triggered memories 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:42.320 of World War Two from my mother. And what were 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:45.800 some of the stories you were told about your mother, 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:49.400 or you know, told by your mother about herself while 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:52.120 you were growing up? You know, I think with with 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:58.520 family's secrets, so often there are clues um things that 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:01.640 we don't even register as clues until we have a 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:05.160 lot more information. But when you're a child, you accept 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.039 the stories that are told to you, you know, by 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:10.000 your parents, because they're your parents, and it's all you 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:13.520 really know. Well, I knew that my mother was from England, 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:18.320 and she had always told me that she came from 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:22.280 blue Blood, which I came to understand at an early 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:28.000 age meant some sort of aristocratic blood from England. I 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:32.520 also knew that she was illegitimate. My mother told me 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.600 that she was from blue Blood, but I have no 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:39.960 memory of anyone telling me that she was illegitimate, but 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:44.280 I always knew it. That's so interesting, and yet you 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:46.840 can't locate how you discovered it or whether you were 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:49.880 told it's just something that you knew. Yes, it was 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:54.880 something that I always knew. And I also I knew 0:07:54.920 --> 0:08:00.200 that I should never ask about my mother's background. I 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.480 shouldn't ask who my grandmother was. I shouldn't ask anything 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:07.680 about my grandfather that would trigger an event with my mother. 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:09.560 I knew that was one of the things that would 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:13.480 and she would become angry, or she would get upset, 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:15.720 or she would retreat back to her room. And so 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:18.160 I just need better than to ask, and so I 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:23.880 just didn't. In the ninth grade, Justine leaves the manicured 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.680 streets of Hillsboro to attend a prestigious boarding school down 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:31.840 the coast of California in a town called Ojai. Always 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:35.199 wanted to put a premium on her daughter's education. Justine's 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.400 mother is the one who pushes her to attend. Justine 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.800 doesn't really want to go, but she goes anyway. Boarding 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.439 school is only one of the many ways Justine's mother 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.440 attempts to shape and groom her throughout her childhood. She 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:54.239 learns as many skills as humanly possible, musical instruments, languages, athletics, 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:59.320 even lessons in penmanship and diction. Years later, when she 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:01.680 asks her father, why did I have to go to 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:05.560 boarding school? Why did you support it, he says, to 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:10.120 get you away from your mother. After boarding school, Justine 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:13.040 goes to Berkeley, which is only forty five minutes from 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:15.360 where she was raised, but might as well be a 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:18.240 million miles away in terms of the culture of the 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:22.240 University of California Berkeley, where she's studying. There, she begins 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.559 to build a life on her own terms. She's finally 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:29.360 distancing herself from her mother's grip nineteen years old and 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:32.960 trying to create her own path. But one day the 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:36.240 phone rings. It's her father calling to tell Justine that 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:40.160 she needs to come home immediately. It's her mother. She's 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:44.640 in some sort of trouble. He had called me and 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:49.160 said that my mother had gotten into her car and 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:54.280 was driving um to the hospital, and that he'd have 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.760 to go after her and get her to pull over 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.640 her car and then bring her back home. And I 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:04.080 asked him if there was anything wrong, why was she 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:08.240 going to the hospital, And he just didn't really respond 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.480 to that, and just asked that I come home and 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:13.920 take care of her so that he could go to court. 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:18.760 And what did you discover when you got home? When 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:21.200 I went home, Um, I walked down the hall and 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:25.600 looking for my mother and knocked on the bedroom door, 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:32.520 and my mother was in bed in her nightgown and 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:37.120 had a notepad in her hand, and she was writing 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:42.080 something that I couldn't see, and she called me over 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.680 to her, and I looked down at this notepad and 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:47.120 I still remember what it looks like. It's just seared 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.480 in my memory. It was one of those yellow legal 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:53.280 notepads with the light green lines, and she had a 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:56.480 pencil in her hand, and she was just writing over 0:10:56.920 --> 0:11:01.560 and over and over again. Name that I had never 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:09.160 heard before, Dorothy Sulms, Dorothy Sulms, Dorothy Sulms. And what 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:15.000 did you, as a college student, a young woman, make 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:19.440 of that at the time, or did you just want 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:21.800 to get back to your life and sort of tuck 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:26.079 that away. I was surprised by what she had said, 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:28.720 and didn't know who Dorothy Sulms was, But at the 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:33.400 time I didn't want to know, and so I did 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.600 whatever I could to get out of that room and 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:41.280 to just extract myself from the situation. Um. You know, 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:44.360 by that point, I just didn't want to get into 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:48.360 it with her and was really working on distancing myself 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.559 from her, because that's really when I was most happy. 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:57.480 We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:16.880 In the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment states honor thy 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:21.080 father and thy mother. But sometimes, as in Justine's case, 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:24.760 it just isn't possible, And the only thing that is 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.800 possible for self preservation and survival is either to completely 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:32.880 break ties or create a very powerful set of boundaries. 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:36.760 The first boundaries that I thought up was just geographical. 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:39.920 I moved to Japan, and then I moved to Washington, 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:43.200 c And I always made sure to keep a physical 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:50.000 distance from my mother because I remember when I would 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:52.400 go home for the holidays, because that was expected, and 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:56.520 I mean I had to do that, I would start 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:01.880 to feel anxiety and depression. And two months before I 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:05.400 would go home, and when I would see my mother 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:08.600 and she wanted to touch me, and she wanted to 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:13.320 hug me, um, I would recoil, which you could see 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:17.800 it on her face that it broke her heart. But 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:22.600 I couldn't bring myself to hug her. So the best 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.360 thing for me to do was to just stay away 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:32.040 as much as I could. Staying away works for a while. 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:36.120 Justine has a lovely early adulthood. She surrounds herself with 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:40.200 good friends. She becomes an attorney working in environmental law, 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:44.160 following her beloved of father's footsteps. But even though she's 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.360 moving on, her relationship with her mother continues to weigh 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:50.160 her down, as does the secret at the core of 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:54.720 her mother's history and identity. To Justine's knowledge, her mother's 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:58.240 name is Eileen Thompson. So who in the world is 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.960 Dorothy Solmes and why does she loom so large in 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:07.800 her mother's past. The first hint that I had about 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:10.640 her past, what more than a hint when she started 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:13.200 to try to tell me about it, was and when 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:16.120 I was in my late twenties, and she sent me 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.400 a letter. It was a short letter, just a page 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:23.520 or two, but in it she mentioned that she was 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:29.720 a foundling, and I had never heard the term foundling before, 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:32.640 and it was clear that she wanted me to pick 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:35.480 up the phone and call her and talked to her 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:39.200 about it, but I decided I didn't want to, so 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:43.880 we didn't speak of it. Several years later, when I 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:48.760 was probably in my early to mid thirties, an envelope 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:51.840 showed up from my mother, and I always knew it 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:55.560 was from her because she had this wonderful handwriting. And 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:59.400 I opened it up and there was a six stack 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:03.760 of pages, and I looked at the front and it 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.680 was clear that it was a memoir, a memoir that 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:11.360 my mother had written about her life. Did it have 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:17.440 a title it did? It said Coreum Girl, And I 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.440 didn't know what that meant. I had no idea what 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:24.760 a Korum girl was, and I didn't want to know um. 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:30.440 At that point in my life, I was finally creating 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:34.000 happiness for myself. I was keeping distant from my mother, 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:39.280 and quite honestly, it felt manipulative. UM. I had wanted 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:44.320 to know the history of our family for years and years, 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:49.360 and it wasn't until I had really kind of broken 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:53.200 free and created my own life that suddenly my mother 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:56.440 wanted to tell all. And it felt to me like 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:59.640 she was trying to reel me back in. So I 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:03.120 put it in an envelope and put it in the 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.400 back of a file cabinet. I mean, I must have 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.720 known that it was important and that I shouldn't just 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:13.080 toss it away. I saved it as I did the 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:16.920 letter that she sent years before, but I didn't want 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:20.200 to read it. When it comes to family's secrets, um, 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:26.480 there has to be a certain kind of readiness involved, 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:31.320 Otherwise finding something out at the wrong moment can actually 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:34.880 end up being destructive, and that we do have some 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:40.320 kind of internal radar for that. You had a hard 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:44.680 one life at that point, and you had overcome a 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:52.160 lot of psychological obstacles and instability that it really could 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:56.120 be drawn pretty much directly right back to the way 0:16:56.160 --> 0:16:58.080 that your mother had raised you and the way that 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.640 she had been And so that is not a point 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:05.400 where you wanted to go there. But as you say, 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:08.359 you tucked it away, it's not like you burned it. 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:13.160 I must have known that one day I would revisit it. 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:16.800 I just knew that that wasn't the day. I didn't 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:21.720 realize that it would be twenty years. What is the day? 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:25.280 How did that come about? Was it a slow build? 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:27.760 Was it sort of haunting you in some way? Or 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:31.040 was there just this eureka moment of now it's a 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:33.640 time and I need to know. Well, it was after 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:40.160 another's death, and my mother's death really took me by 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:45.480 surprise in terms of how it impacted me emotionally. I 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:48.280 worked so hard to keep an emotional distance from her, 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:52.440 and when she died, I was at her deathbed and 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:59.960 I was overwrought. I ran from the room. I saw 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:07.120 obed like I had never sobbed before. Justine's mother had 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:11.120 died of Alzheimer's, so Justina is surprised by her reaction 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:14.760 to her mother's death because the death itself was not sudden. 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:18.720 Her mother's decline had been gradual, as it so often 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.800 is with Alzheimer's disease. She had been losing her memory 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:25.840 for years plus. You'd think the history between Justine and 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:29.240 her mother and the distance between them wouldn't provoke such 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:34.719 a tidal wave of grief. When I went back home 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:37.320 to the home that I had with my husband Patrick, 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:41.760 I was exhausted. I could barely get off the couch 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:47.840 for days. And even after that, I was just fatigued, 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:50.760 and I would go out and I would cry for 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:55.560 no reason. And I was stunned at my reaction. And 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:58.040 then I just put it away. Um, you know, it 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:01.680 faded over time, and I just tucked it into the 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:04.240 back of my mind and went on and life was 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:07.520 really happy. I had this wonderful man that I had met, 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:12.040 so loving and kind. His entire family brought me in 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:18.119 and life was just wonderful. And we went on a 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:23.040 month long trip to Europe and my husband said, let's 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:27.640 go to London. Well, I had never been to England, 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:31.320 and I've traveled quite a bit, but I intentionally never 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:36.720 went to England because it felt too emotionally powerful, because 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:39.520 I knew that's where my mother was from. But I said, oh, 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:41.480 it's gonna be fine. There's not going to be a 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.840 problem here, and I'm gonna be with my husband and 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:48.159 my mother's you know, two died years ago. It's going 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:51.840 to be fine. And I went to London and we 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:55.280 walked around the streets and I could not stop thinking 0:19:56.040 --> 0:20:00.600 about my mother and I didn't know why. And when 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:05.040 we came back from Europe, when we landed, I again 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:07.639 became emotional, and it was because I knew that my 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:10.679 mother wasn't going to call me, even though I never 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:15.360 wanted my mother to call me. So I sat at 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.560 my computer and I typed in the words that I 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:23.880 had heard only once before, thirty years before, Dorothy Sums. 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:29.280 And that didn't get me very far. But then I 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:32.760 remembered the other word that I had learned when my 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:35.720 mother had reached out when I was in my late twenties. 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:38.960 In that letter the word Foundling, and I put in 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:44.160 Foundling and London, and then there it was the Foundling Hospital. 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:49.280 And that was the first step. And I emailed someone 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:54.280 at the Foundling Hospital which is now called Quorum and said, 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:59.919 I think my mother might have been Dorothy Sums. Now, 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.960 how you've put something together here and you think maybe 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:07.359 your mother was known as Darthy Solmes when she was 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:12.640 a child, when she was a foundling at the Foundling Hospital. Yes, yeah, 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:37.720 we'll be right back. Justine dives into research. She digs 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:40.760 into the history of the Foundling Hospital, both during the 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:44.320 time her mother was there and the institution's history dating 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:48.159 back to seventeen thirty nine. She also returns to her 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:52.040 mother's manuscript, which is so painful to read that she 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:54.080 can only read it a few pages at a time. 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:58.520 It's interesting, looking back on it, that the first thing 0:21:58.600 --> 0:22:01.840 that I did was reach out to a complete stranger 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:05.680 in London to start my research instead of just going 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:08.520 into my foul cabinet and picking up my mother's manuscript 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:10.760 to get me started. Why do you think that was? 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:13.720 Because I think it was going to be too painful, 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:17.200 and I was afraid what I was going to learn. 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:23.040 And I think that as an attorney, I'm very accustomed 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:27.720 to research, and that being able to do the research 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:30.359 in the way that I would handle any sort of 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:33.800 case that I was working on allowed me to do 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:37.320 it in a way that didn't feel frightening and it 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:41.840 felt comforting. And that makes a lot of sense. To 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:45.040 understand what my mother went through, you really have to 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:50.000 go back to the beginning of the Family Hospital. It 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:54.920 started in the mid seventeen hundreds, and it was created 0:22:55.560 --> 0:23:01.719 two raise illegitimate children to pay degree changed chamber pots 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:05.240 for Britain's elite, and to serve them. It served a 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:09.240 second purpose, and the second purpose was to take a 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:16.920 woman who had had an unfortunate pregnancy and two restore 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:20.320 her back to her prior position. The only way that 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:24.600 that could be done is to take the child and 0:23:24.680 --> 0:23:30.520 to keep the child a secret, and that secret that 0:23:30.640 --> 0:23:35.520 the child itself was a secret and was shameful. That's 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:39.840 really what shaped the founding hospital for the next two 0:23:39.880 --> 0:23:45.840 centuries and what also shaped my mother. In the early 0:23:45.920 --> 0:23:50.199 nineteen thirties, my grandmother and her name was Lena Weston 0:23:51.200 --> 0:23:55.119 m a name that I had never heard before until 0:23:55.240 --> 0:23:58.960 I had gone to London and dug through the files. 0:23:59.640 --> 0:24:04.720 She had become pregnant and her brother had kicked her out, 0:24:04.880 --> 0:24:08.040 and she had nowhere to go, so she reached out 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:11.359 to the founding hospital and asked that they take her child. 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:17.119 It was my mother. They didn't just take the child. Instead, 0:24:17.640 --> 0:24:22.720 my grandmother had to go through a very rigorous process 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:25.840 in which she had to prove that she was a 0:24:25.920 --> 0:24:31.040 respectable woman and that if they took this child away 0:24:31.040 --> 0:24:34.439 from her, that she would be able to return to 0:24:34.800 --> 0:24:39.679 a virtuous life. The process included reaching out to, of 0:24:39.720 --> 0:24:42.639 course the men in her life, her doctor, her pastor, 0:24:42.720 --> 0:24:46.840 and her brother, and they all had to attest that 0:24:47.080 --> 0:24:50.880 she was a virtuous woman. And then she actually had 0:24:50.880 --> 0:24:55.280 to have an in person interview with the governors of 0:24:55.320 --> 0:24:57.960 the hospital, who were all very well to do men 0:24:58.960 --> 0:25:04.879 who um presumably quizzed her on how it was that 0:25:05.000 --> 0:25:08.040 she came to be in this situation and how she 0:25:08.080 --> 0:25:11.560 would conduct her life if they granted her the favor 0:25:11.560 --> 0:25:15.440 of taking her child from her. Apparently she was virtuous enough, 0:25:15.720 --> 0:25:18.960 and she had to go and on a particular day 0:25:19.240 --> 0:25:22.560 turned my mother over to the Fothering Hospital when my 0:25:22.640 --> 0:25:25.560 mother was two months old. And what year was this, 0:25:26.400 --> 0:25:33.800 That was nineteen two. Justine's mother spends twelve years in 0:25:33.840 --> 0:25:37.600 the Foundling Hospital's care. The first five years she lives 0:25:37.600 --> 0:25:40.360 with a foster mother, which was a practice dating back 0:25:40.400 --> 0:25:43.719 to the Foundling Hospital's early history. When the children who 0:25:43.760 --> 0:25:46.320 were in the hospital were discovered not to be doing 0:25:46.400 --> 0:25:48.800 very well, they'd be shipped off to the country to 0:25:48.840 --> 0:25:54.480 be wet nursed at the age of five. No matter 0:25:54.560 --> 0:25:59.200 whether the foster mother um and sometimes a foster father 0:25:59.480 --> 0:26:03.200 loved their foster child or not, the child would be 0:26:03.440 --> 0:26:10.680 taken away and sent to the institutional facility, which when 0:26:10.680 --> 0:26:13.600 my mother as a child was in Brokemstaed just outside 0:26:13.640 --> 0:26:18.920 of London, and they would be dropped off unceremoniously. Most 0:26:18.960 --> 0:26:21.959 of them were not told that they were even leaving. 0:26:22.480 --> 0:26:28.119 Their countless stories of children just being placed on a 0:26:28.200 --> 0:26:31.320 bus or a coach as they called it, and they 0:26:31.320 --> 0:26:33.480 thought they were coming back home at the end of 0:26:33.520 --> 0:26:36.080 the day, but instead they were dropped off at the 0:26:36.080 --> 0:26:40.000 family hospital. They were taken in, their clothes were removed, 0:26:40.160 --> 0:26:42.760 they were put in bathtubs, you know, two or three 0:26:42.800 --> 0:26:44.960 at a time. They would never see those clothes again. 0:26:45.720 --> 0:26:49.480 They would share their heads and they would sit there 0:26:49.520 --> 0:26:53.359 shivering and then sobbing, not knowing what was going on. 0:26:53.560 --> 0:26:58.800 Really just treated like prisoners and put in these uniforms, 0:26:59.320 --> 0:27:02.960 uniforms that had not changed since they were first designed 0:27:02.960 --> 0:27:07.280 in the mid sev hundreds, and then that would start 0:27:07.440 --> 0:27:12.920 their life at the family hospital. As Justine learns more 0:27:13.080 --> 0:27:16.439 about the way the foundlings were treated, living their lives 0:27:16.440 --> 0:27:20.639 in shapeless uniforms with sheared heads, she can't help but 0:27:20.720 --> 0:27:23.000 sink back to some of the strange aspects of our 0:27:23.040 --> 0:27:27.120 own childhood too. The clothes her mother bought her were 0:27:27.160 --> 0:27:33.000 always too big, extremely unfashionable, baggy sack like garments that 0:27:33.160 --> 0:27:38.159 must have resembled, perhaps subconsciously, to Eileen, the clothes she 0:27:38.160 --> 0:27:41.119 had been forced to wear as a child. And once, 0:27:41.200 --> 0:27:43.760 when Justine tried to cut her own hair in the 0:27:43.800 --> 0:27:47.159 style of her favorite Charlie's Angel, she botched it, of course, 0:27:47.640 --> 0:27:50.879 and this sent her mother into a panic. Promptly, Eileen 0:27:51.040 --> 0:27:53.600 arranged to have Justine's hair fixed by a fancy San 0:27:53.600 --> 0:27:58.360 Francisco stylist. What must have crossed her mother's mind when 0:27:58.359 --> 0:28:00.800 she saw her child with her hair all chopped off. 0:28:02.040 --> 0:28:06.520 Justine also soon discovers there are striking physical similarities between 0:28:06.520 --> 0:28:12.800 the Foundling Hospital and her own childhood home. I still 0:28:12.840 --> 0:28:18.280 remember being in the Founding Museum and walking into the room, 0:28:18.400 --> 0:28:22.360