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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm

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Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that

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Speaker 1: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,

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Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today

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Speaker 1: is writer Nadia Awusu, whose debut memoir After Shocks was

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Speaker 1: recently published. Nadia's story is about secrets and that very

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Speaker 1: close first cousin to secrets, lies or potential lies. I

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Speaker 1: think it's safe to say that where there are secrets,

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Speaker 1: there are almost inevitably lies, lies, either told to cover

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Speaker 1: up or to protect, or to defend, or sometimes to

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Speaker 1: exact revenge. Nadia's story is also about learning to live

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Speaker 1: with the fact that we might just never the whole truth,

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Speaker 1: and maybe that's okay. So, Nadia, I always begin by

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Speaker 1: asking my guest this question, but in your case, it's

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Speaker 1: actually an even more interesting question than usual, which is,

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Speaker 1: tell me about the landscape of your childhood. So I

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Speaker 1: was born in Dar Sala, Tanzania, and I was born

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Speaker 1: there because my father worked for you an agency. My

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Speaker 1: father was from Ghana and my mother is Armenian American,

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Speaker 1: and they met in Massachusetts, where my mother grew up

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Speaker 1: and my father was there for graduate school, so right

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Speaker 1: from the very beginning I had a very sort of

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Speaker 1: international upbringing. UM. My mother left when I was two

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Speaker 1: years old. She left Tanzania and moved back to the

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Speaker 1: United States, where she very quickly remarried and had two

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Speaker 1: other children. So I was largely raised by my father

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Speaker 1: versus a single parent. My sister and I were sent

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Speaker 1: to live with my aunt Harriet for a little while

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Speaker 1: while he sort of got his life together to parent

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Speaker 1: two girls on his own. My sister is a year

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Speaker 1: younger than me, and then my father remarried Uh and

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Speaker 1: we all moved together to Rome, Italy, where the headquarters

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Speaker 1: of the agency he worked for was. And so I

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Speaker 1: spent my childhood moving back and forth between Italy and

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Speaker 1: largely East Africa. I lived in Ethiopia, Uganda, UM, Tanzania,

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Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in Ghana with my father's family,

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Speaker 1: and in the UK, where my father's sisters, UM and

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Speaker 1: all my cousins lived, and had a really sort of

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Speaker 1: hop scotched upbringing, always sort of straddling cultures and languages.

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Speaker 1: And you know, just as we settled into a new home,

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Speaker 1: my father would tell us that it was time to

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Speaker 1: leave again, and we pack up and move on to

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Speaker 1: the next place. And in some ways, this is a

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Speaker 1: really wonderful way to grow up because I grew up

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Speaker 1: among so many people, um, so many different kinds of people,

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Speaker 1: so many different cultures, and got to see so much

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Speaker 1: of the world from a very young age, and especially

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Speaker 1: because of who my father was, he was always deeply

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Speaker 1: engaged in what was going on in the world around him.

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Speaker 1: I got to learn a lot about the world and

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Speaker 1: about people and places. But on the other hand, there

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Speaker 1: was always sort of this sense of longing to really

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Speaker 1: belong to a place in a in a clearer way,

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Speaker 1: and sort of a anxiety about, you know what else

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Speaker 1: I might lose, having lost my mother so young and

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Speaker 1: her absence was very palpable in my life, and then

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Speaker 1: when I was thirteen my father passed away. I'm always curious,

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Speaker 1: um because I grew up in one home, in one

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Speaker 1: neighborhood and really basically never left until I went to

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Speaker 1: college and then didn't go far and never had that

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Speaker 1: experience of being the new kid again and again and again.

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Speaker 1: And I always I wonder about like what that does,

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Speaker 1: like both what muscles it builds, and also as you

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Speaker 1: as you describe kind of that, you know, the longing

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Speaker 1: that it can also produce. You know, there are many

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Speaker 1: of us around the world who live this kind of childhood,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, were often called third culture kids, you know,

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Speaker 1: kids who grew up kind of in between their parents

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Speaker 1: cultures and sort of straddling borders and boundaries. And I

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Speaker 1: think because I went to international schools my whole life

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Speaker 1: largely with kids like me who were moving around a lot.

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Speaker 1: Their parents worked for you and agencies or for embassies,

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Speaker 1: and so all of us lived this very transient life,

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Speaker 1: which I think sort of made it more normal than

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Speaker 1: if you're moving into a community that you know is

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Speaker 1: already established. But at the same time, I think that

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Speaker 1: because we were moving to different countries and having to

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Speaker 1: sort of adapt to you know, even though our international

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Speaker 1: school international schools are pretty consistent where where you are,

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Speaker 1: but everything around us changed, including sort of the language

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Speaker 1: that we communicated in. It was always really important to

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Speaker 1: my father that we learned the language, and so I

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Speaker 1: guess that's one of the sort of muscles that we

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Speaker 1: sort of flexed as I was growing up. Um And

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Speaker 1: I think that you get to know people differently when

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Speaker 1: you're speaking their language, so and I think languages come

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Speaker 1: easier to children at a young age. And so I

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Speaker 1: was able to move pretty easily, you know, in and

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Speaker 1: out of different worlds, and also to discern sort of

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Speaker 1: what was expected of me in different environments. I was

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Speaker 1: a very observant child, and I think a lot of

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Speaker 1: kids who go up the way that I did are

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Speaker 1: as well. And we're very adaptable in a lot of ways.

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Speaker 1: But we also, um, I think from talking to other,

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Speaker 1: you know, people who are third culture kids, many of

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Speaker 1: us have this sense of anxiety about sort of doing

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Speaker 1: something wrong or making a misstep or um sort of

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Speaker 1: being judged for not clearly but longing to a place,

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Speaker 1: um or having sort of a stable identity. Our identities

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Speaker 1: tend to be pretty fluid, and we moved in and

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Speaker 1: out of them, and in some ways that's a wonderful

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Speaker 1: thing because it's sort of a celebration of multiplicity. But

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, we can sometimes be seen as

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Speaker 1: sort of not trustworthy or sort of have this fear

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Speaker 1: that people are going to sort of accuse us of

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Speaker 1: sort of faking a sense of self in some ways,

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Speaker 1: and there's you know, there's often a demand on all

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Speaker 1: of us that we should choose, you know, or that

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Speaker 1: we should see our identities as fixed. And I think

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Speaker 1: for kids who grew up like I did, that's really

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Speaker 1: difficult to do because, you know, in my case, for example,

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Speaker 1: I didn't speak my father's language tree, and so although

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Speaker 1: I was raised to sort of when people asked me

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Speaker 1: to say that I was gunn in, and I was

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Speaker 1: raised among the gunny inside of my family, I didn't

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Speaker 1: feel like I could claim that in an uncomplicated way.

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Speaker 1: And even when I met a gunny and they would

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Speaker 1: sort of question because my mother's why and because of

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Speaker 1: my appearance, because I don't speak the language, they would

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Speaker 1: sort of question my gunnyan nous. And you know, I

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Speaker 1: felt that about sort of all of the identities that

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Speaker 1: I have inhabited and tried to sort of own and

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Speaker 1: belong to. And I have come to a place where

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Speaker 1: I claim, you know, a lot of the places and

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Speaker 1: people that I've lived among and loved and tried to

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Speaker 1: belong to. But it has never been simple. It's always

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Speaker 1: been very complicated. So your your mother left when you

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Speaker 1: were two, Yes, and there was a real a bright

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Speaker 1: line around her leaving. It wasn't she didn't she didn't

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Speaker 1: move around the corner. She left and started another family.

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Speaker 1: Do you have memories of her from pre her leaving?

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Speaker 1: You know, I feel as though I do, Like I

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Speaker 1: feel like I can remember these images or you know,

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Speaker 1: her smell. There's this sense that I have of her

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Speaker 1: being there. I've had that sense in these sort of

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Speaker 1: images in my mind for a long time. But of

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Speaker 1: course I was so young, and it's difficult to sort

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Speaker 1: of tell to what extent those memories are real and

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Speaker 1: to what extent they're sort of constructed memories from the

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Speaker 1: photographs that we had in our house, or you know,

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Speaker 1: from later memories. Um. I did spend a lot of

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Speaker 1: time thinking about her and sort of gazing at photographs

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Speaker 1: of her, So it's really hard for me to to

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Speaker 1: know to what extent I can trust my memories of

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Speaker 1: her before she left. So often we searched photographs for clues,

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Speaker 1: especially when we can't remember, and we read into those

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Speaker 1: photographs for meaning when the memory of the people in

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Speaker 1: the photograph carries with it a whiff of trauma. This

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Speaker 1: is even more true when Nadia is seven, she's living

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Speaker 1: in Rome with her father and stepmother, and out of

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Speaker 1: seemingly nowhere, her mother pays a surprise visit. Her father

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Speaker 1: hadn't wanted to tell Nadia that her mother was coming

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Speaker 1: because he didn't know if she would actually show up.

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Speaker 1: The day kind of started like a normal day. I

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Speaker 1: came down. It was a weekend. I came down for breakfast,

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Speaker 1: and I was sitting at the kitchen table with my father.

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Speaker 1: My father always made pancakes on the weekend, and so

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Speaker 1: we were eating pancakes, and my father was listening to

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Speaker 1: the radio, and I have a very clear memory of,

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Speaker 1: you know, the my father listened to the BBC World Service,

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Speaker 1: and I have a really clear memory of the broadcaster

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Speaker 1: talking about the possibility of aftershocks and about this earthquake

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Speaker 1: that had destroyed a city in Armenia. And you know,

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Speaker 1: my mother being Armenian American, I kind of and my

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Speaker 1: father didn't really like to talk about my mother very much.

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Speaker 1: I always got the sense that it sort of made

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Speaker 1: him uncomfortable and sad, and yet I was always really

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Speaker 1: curious about her. And so since this you know, person

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Speaker 1: on the radio had said that there was an earthquake

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Speaker 1: in Armenia, I sort of grasped onto the opportunity to

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Speaker 1: ask my father about my mother's family, and I asked him,

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Speaker 1: you know she had family in Armenia, because I knew

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Speaker 1: that she had grown up in the in the United States,

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Speaker 1: and my father said, no, her family are mostly in

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Speaker 1: the United States now summer in Argentina. They moved all

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Speaker 1: over the world, and I kind of vaguely knew that

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Speaker 1: my mother's family had left what was then the Ottoman

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Speaker 1: Empire because of a genocide. I didn't fully understand what

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Speaker 1: that meant, but I knew that there was some violent

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Speaker 1: history that had sort of sent them to America and

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Speaker 1: to other parts of the world. But you know, we

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Speaker 1: sort of left it at that. And then there was

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Speaker 1: this knock on the door and there was my mother

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Speaker 1: with these red balloons in her hand. Um, and my

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Speaker 1: father came to the door and said, you know, your

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Speaker 1: mother is going to take you to lunch. And so

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Speaker 1: my sister and I went to lunch with my mother.

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Speaker 1: She was in Italy on vacation with her husband, her

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Speaker 1: then husband, and so he drove us to Piazza and Avona,

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Speaker 1: and the three of us got out and walked around,

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Speaker 1: and you know, my mother took us to a restaurant.

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Speaker 1: She talked about my half sisters you know, back in

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Speaker 1: the States, and how she would bring them next time,

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Speaker 1: and she asked us about school. But it wasn't, you know,

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Speaker 1: this deep, meaningful conversation at all. But I remember feeling

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Speaker 1: this this sense that I wanted to say something important

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Speaker 1: to her that she would remember or that would make

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Speaker 1: her come back. Um, even though she was mostly a

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Speaker 1: stranger and I was like both nervous around her because

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Speaker 1: I was always shy around strangers, and I had this

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Speaker 1: sort of big idea of what it was to have

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Speaker 1: a mother, because everyone, all of the other children I knew,

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Speaker 1: had mothers that were very central in their lives. After lunch,

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Speaker 1: she dropped us back at our house, and you know,

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Speaker 1: I watched her walk away, and I think because I

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Speaker 1: was so young when she left the first time, this

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Speaker 1: was the first time that I had really watched her

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Speaker 1: walk away, So it sort of stayed with me, that

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Speaker 1: image of the back of her head and seeing her

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Speaker 1: get into the car and drive away again. And you know,

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Speaker 1: her arrival on the same day as an earthquake in

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Speaker 1: our Medea. I think that the idea of the earthquake

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Speaker 1: and the way that I sort of felt uneasy and

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Speaker 1: shaken by her arrival kind of combined in me and

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Speaker 1: I sort of constructed this story and became sort of

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Speaker 1: obsessed in some ways with with earthquakes and held on

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Speaker 1: too that for a very long time. So at this point,

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Speaker 1: your stepmother, annabel has been in your life for a

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Speaker 1: couple of years, at the point that your that your

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Speaker 1: mother makes this visit at that time, what was your

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Speaker 1: relationship with Annabelle? Like I mean and describe annabel for

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Speaker 1: us a little bit. Annabelle was very young when she

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Speaker 1: married my father. She was in her early twenty um.

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Speaker 1: She actually finished college in Rome when she was living

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Speaker 1: with us. I wasn't aware of how young she was

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Speaker 1: at the time. I didn't think about it that much.

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Speaker 1: She seemed like a grown up to me, but you know,

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Speaker 1: she was twenty three, I think twenty two or twenty three.

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Speaker 1: How did they meet? So they met in Tanzania, Annabelle's

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Speaker 1: Tanzanian and you know, my father was stationed there, and

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Speaker 1: this was during the time that he had sent my

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Speaker 1: sister and I to live with his older sister and

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Speaker 1: my aunt Harriet in the UK because he was traveling

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Speaker 1: so much for work and he didn't like the idea

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Speaker 1: of us spending a lot of time with Nanny's and

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Speaker 1: so we spent you know, a couple of years with

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Speaker 1: my aunt. And so it was during that time that

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Speaker 1: he met Annabelle in Tanzania and fell for her. And

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Speaker 1: then after he moved to Rome, she came with him

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Speaker 1: a few months later to to live with us. And so,

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Speaker 1: in the early years of your relationship with Annabelle, how

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Speaker 1: would you characterize that time? Yeah, Um, I think that

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Speaker 1: I would sort of describe it as confusing. You know,

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Speaker 1: there were there all these ways in which I resented her.

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Speaker 1: You know, my sister and I had just been reunited

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Speaker 1: with our father, and we had lost her mom at

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Speaker 1: such an early age, and my father was already at

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Speaker 1: that time sort of the great hero of my life.

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Speaker 1: I adored him, and as much as I loved my

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Speaker 1: Aunt Harriet and loved living with her, I always wanted

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Speaker 1: to be around my father, and so Annabelle I kind

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Speaker 1: of saw her, you know, as competition in some ways, um,

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Speaker 1: And I think some of that was my own story

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Speaker 1: that I had made up about who she was, but

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Speaker 1: some of it also, you know, did show up in

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Speaker 1: some of her behaviors, like she seemed unsure of who

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Speaker 1: to be in relationship to me and my sister. And

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Speaker 1: sometimes she could be very fun and I enjoyed sort

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Speaker 1: of being around her, and she was very beautiful, and

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Speaker 1: so I liked to sort of watch her and sort

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Speaker 1: admire her in some ways. But sometimes she seemed to

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Speaker 1: resent us and to not want us around. I remember

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Speaker 1: sort of her sort of snapping at me to not

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Speaker 1: bother them when they were sleeping. I had had a nightmare,

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Speaker 1: and I, you know, was used to being able to

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Speaker 1: go into my father's room and he would sort of

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Speaker 1: come and tuck me back into bed. And she was

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Speaker 1: very clear that that was a boundary and that was

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Speaker 1: not going to happen. And so our relationship from a

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Speaker 1: very start was complicated. There was both sort of an

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Speaker 1: an uneasy sort of moving towards each other, but then

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Speaker 1: also just this sense that we were competitors in some way.

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Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

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Speaker 1: Within this fraud family dynamic, there was something else, something

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Speaker 1: secret going on. Not as much adored father is actually sick.

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Speaker 1: He's been diagnosed with cancer and keeps it a secret

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Speaker 1: from his two daughters until keeping it a secret is

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Speaker 1: no longer possible. He dies when she's just shy of

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Speaker 1: fourteen years old. I had long believed that my father's

280
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Speaker 1: illness was very quick. My sister and I were sent

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Speaker 1: to boarding school in England when I was in I

282
00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:33,400
Speaker 1: think it was sixth grade, and we were told that

283
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Speaker 1: it was because you know, we were moving again and

284
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Speaker 1: it was messing with our education and my father wanted

285
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Speaker 1: us to have more stability. But we were then, after

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Speaker 1: a term, summoned back home to Rome, and it quickly

287
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Speaker 1: became clear that we had been sent to boarding school

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Speaker 1: because my father had been diagnosed with cancer. But over

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00:16:54,480 --> 00:16:58,160
Speaker 1: the course of that term, the cancer had spread, and

290
00:16:58,920 --> 00:17:02,280
Speaker 1: my father then to us around, you know, in case

291
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Speaker 1: he lost his fight with cancer. But I later learned

292
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Speaker 1: that he had actually been diagnosed years before, and I

293
00:17:10,560 --> 00:17:12,919
Speaker 1: had had sort of kept that secret from my sister

294
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Speaker 1: and me. So yeah, to me, the illness was really fast,

295
00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:20,359
Speaker 1: and you know, it was just you know, a year

296
00:17:21,119 --> 00:17:26,199
Speaker 1: or so between the diagnosis and him passing away. But

297
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Speaker 1: I'm told that he actually knew that he had cancer

298
00:17:29,760 --> 00:17:34,479
Speaker 1: for at least a year or two before that. So

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Speaker 1: there's sort of a its own kind of secret right there. Right.

300
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Speaker 1: You and your sister were very young, but the the

301
00:17:40,480 --> 00:17:43,159
Speaker 1: idea of the kind of secret that we keep in

302
00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:45,840
Speaker 1: order to protect, you know, in order to protect the

303
00:17:45,840 --> 00:17:47,879
Speaker 1: people that we love, in order to protect our children,

304
00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:51,800
Speaker 1: or protect whomever. So when did you find that out?

305
00:17:51,800 --> 00:17:54,280
Speaker 1: When did you find out that he had been diagnosed

306
00:17:54,280 --> 00:17:57,479
Speaker 1: with cancer prior? I didn't find that out until I

307
00:17:57,560 --> 00:17:59,960
Speaker 1: was in my twenties, And it was actually Annabelle's sister

308
00:18:00,080 --> 00:18:02,639
Speaker 1: who told me that, And during a period that I

309
00:18:02,720 --> 00:18:06,919
Speaker 1: was very angry with Annabelle for I don't remember what

310
00:18:06,960 --> 00:18:09,399
Speaker 1: the reason was now, but we were often sort of

311
00:18:09,440 --> 00:18:12,600
Speaker 1: angry with each other, but I had a good relationship

312
00:18:12,680 --> 00:18:15,800
Speaker 1: with many of the members of her family, and her

313
00:18:15,840 --> 00:18:19,560
Speaker 1: sister was sort of telling me about how hard it

314
00:18:19,640 --> 00:18:22,480
Speaker 1: was for annabel as well, you know, the loss of

315
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Speaker 1: my father and sort of finding herself alone with three

316
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Speaker 1: children by that point, my brother, my half brother, Flammie,

317
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Speaker 1: had been born by the time my father passed away,

318
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Speaker 1: and so she was sort of telling me a side

319
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Speaker 1: of the story that I didn't know or understand, and

320
00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:39,480
Speaker 1: was sort of emphasizing that annabel had lived with the

321
00:18:39,520 --> 00:18:42,720
Speaker 1: fear of his death for much longer and actually carried

322
00:18:42,720 --> 00:18:45,720
Speaker 1: a lot of trauma from that, And so, yeah, it

323
00:18:45,760 --> 00:18:48,879
Speaker 1: wasn't until my twenties that I learned that actually Annabelle

324
00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:51,560
Speaker 1: had kept that secret from from my sister and me

325
00:18:51,680 --> 00:18:53,920
Speaker 1: as well, which I see sort of as an act

326
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Speaker 1: of protection. As you said, So your dad dies when

327
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Speaker 1: you're almost fourteen, and in that situation, what would be

328
00:19:03,760 --> 00:19:07,960
Speaker 1: most logical or typical would be for you and your

329
00:19:07,960 --> 00:19:14,160
Speaker 1: sister to go to your mother. But that's not what happens, right, Yeah,

330
00:19:14,280 --> 00:19:18,000
Speaker 1: So after our father passed away, UM, I called my mother,

331
00:19:18,320 --> 00:19:21,480
Speaker 1: and you know, we had visited her a couple of

332
00:19:21,520 --> 00:19:26,399
Speaker 1: times after her visit to Rome, but eventually those visits

333
00:19:26,560 --> 00:19:30,080
Speaker 1: ended and the letters stopped as well. We stopped receiving

334
00:19:30,160 --> 00:19:33,240
Speaker 1: letters and phone calls, and my mother had sort of

335
00:19:33,280 --> 00:19:36,119
Speaker 1: disappeared from my wife for a number of years, and

336
00:19:36,200 --> 00:19:39,600
Speaker 1: I didn't really know why, and had sort of accepted

337
00:19:39,680 --> 00:19:42,520
Speaker 1: that that was going to be the way that it was.

338
00:19:43,080 --> 00:19:47,320
Speaker 1: But then after my father died, UM, everyone, my father's

339
00:19:47,760 --> 00:19:51,119
Speaker 1: family and friends and even Annabelle said, you know, you

340
00:19:51,200 --> 00:19:54,399
Speaker 1: have to call your mother and talk to her, and

341
00:19:54,480 --> 00:19:57,600
Speaker 1: so we did. I called her, and what I remember

342
00:19:57,680 --> 00:20:00,320
Speaker 1: most about that phone call was that my mother didn't

343
00:20:00,359 --> 00:20:05,399
Speaker 1: immediately say I'm coming to get you, or even I'm coming,

344
00:20:05,880 --> 00:20:09,119
Speaker 1: and I actually had to ask her, and she said

345
00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:11,320
Speaker 1: that she was living in Arizona at the time. She

346
00:20:11,359 --> 00:20:15,320
Speaker 1: couldn't leave, she had other children, she had work, and

347
00:20:15,560 --> 00:20:18,520
Speaker 1: that you know, maybe down the line my sister and

348
00:20:18,560 --> 00:20:21,600
Speaker 1: I could come to her and we could talk about

349
00:20:21,640 --> 00:20:26,760
Speaker 1: the future. And I just took that as such a rejection,

350
00:20:27,080 --> 00:20:29,640
Speaker 1: and I told her that I would, you know, never

351
00:20:29,680 --> 00:20:31,560
Speaker 1: speak to her again. And I sort of hung up

352
00:20:31,560 --> 00:20:37,639
Speaker 1: the phone and kept that promise for a decade. So

353
00:20:37,720 --> 00:20:44,199
Speaker 1: then Annabelle becomes you're de facto guardian. How did you

354
00:20:44,240 --> 00:20:46,600
Speaker 1: think of her over those next few years? You know,

355
00:20:46,640 --> 00:20:49,360
Speaker 1: you were fourteen and then you're eighteen when you moved

356
00:20:49,359 --> 00:20:51,960
Speaker 1: to New York, But in those few years where you're

357
00:20:52,040 --> 00:20:57,480
Speaker 1: living with her, how did you see her? Our relationship

358
00:20:57,520 --> 00:21:01,040
Speaker 1: has always been so complicated, and um, you know, there

359
00:21:01,080 --> 00:21:04,119
Speaker 1: were offers from other members of my father's family and

360
00:21:04,119 --> 00:21:07,959
Speaker 1: my father's sisters, some of my father's extended family in

361
00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:11,320
Speaker 1: Germany and Canada who had offered from my sister and

362
00:21:11,359 --> 00:21:13,160
Speaker 1: I to come and live with them as well. But

363
00:21:13,560 --> 00:21:17,040
Speaker 1: you know, we we sort of felt that we were

364
00:21:17,080 --> 00:21:19,800
Speaker 1: a family, you know, we were a complicated family, but

365
00:21:20,040 --> 00:21:23,280
Speaker 1: we didn't want to lose any any more of our

366
00:21:23,600 --> 00:21:26,520
Speaker 1: life as it was than we already had. And Annabelle

367
00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:31,000
Speaker 1: sort of made this very sort of heartfelt offer and

368
00:21:31,040 --> 00:21:33,560
Speaker 1: sort of told us that she had promised our father

369
00:21:33,680 --> 00:21:36,960
Speaker 1: that she would take care of us. And there was

370
00:21:37,040 --> 00:21:39,560
Speaker 1: a lot of tenderness between us, even you know, as

371
00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:42,280
Speaker 1: my father was really ill. You know, there were moments

372
00:21:42,280 --> 00:21:45,399
Speaker 1: of anger, we thought, but there were also these moments

373
00:21:45,440 --> 00:21:47,840
Speaker 1: where we really felt like we were in this together

374
00:21:48,040 --> 00:21:50,480
Speaker 1: and that we were family and we loved each other

375
00:21:50,760 --> 00:21:54,760
Speaker 1: despite the complications, and she was in many ways a

376
00:21:54,840 --> 00:21:57,960
Speaker 1: mother to me, you know, she was she was there

377
00:21:58,560 --> 00:22:01,000
Speaker 1: when I was so young and had long been a

378
00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:03,320
Speaker 1: part of my life. And then with this offer that

379
00:22:03,400 --> 00:22:05,960
Speaker 1: she would continue to raise my sister and I until

380
00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:09,320
Speaker 1: we graduated from college, that sort of cemented this sense

381
00:22:09,320 --> 00:22:12,280
Speaker 1: of us sort of being a family and being linked

382
00:22:12,760 --> 00:22:16,240
Speaker 1: through our love for for my father, definitely, but also

383
00:22:16,359 --> 00:22:20,000
Speaker 1: just through the relationship that that we had forged over

384
00:22:20,040 --> 00:22:22,480
Speaker 1: the years. But at the same time, sort of the

385
00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:26,000
Speaker 1: shape of our relationship had already been established, this sense

386
00:22:26,040 --> 00:22:30,120
Speaker 1: that we were competitors. The resentments, many resentments that had

387
00:22:30,160 --> 00:22:33,080
Speaker 1: sort of um bubbled up and then dissipeted over the

388
00:22:33,200 --> 00:22:39,280
Speaker 1: years still existed between us and continued to fuel some

389
00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:43,439
Speaker 1: pretty vicious fights, you know, over the several years that

390
00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:46,280
Speaker 1: we continue to live together, and we had this sort

391
00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:48,920
Speaker 1: of pattern of you know, there would be a blow

392
00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:52,560
Speaker 1: up and she would become very angry, and you know,

393
00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:55,240
Speaker 1: I would be sort of seething, and we would retreat

394
00:22:55,280 --> 00:22:58,520
Speaker 1: to our separate rooms and not speak for a period

395
00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:01,000
Speaker 1: of time, and she would some times throw things, or

396
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:03,520
Speaker 1: she would declare that my sister and I were no

397
00:23:03,560 --> 00:23:06,960
Speaker 1: longer allowed to eat food in the house, you know,

398
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:09,440
Speaker 1: that we were to take our meals at school. And

399
00:23:09,760 --> 00:23:13,200
Speaker 1: there were all sorts of ways that we punished each other.

400
00:23:13,359 --> 00:23:15,560
Speaker 1: You know, I would I would give her the silent treatment,

401
00:23:16,280 --> 00:23:19,520
Speaker 1: and then we would sort of without talking about it,

402
00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:23,440
Speaker 1: just move back into a sort of detante. And that

403
00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:25,800
Speaker 1: was sort of a pattern that continued, you know, after

404
00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 1: I turned eighteen and graduated and moved to the United

405
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:34,840
Speaker 1: States as well. Young adulthood is such an incredibly vulnerable age.

406
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:39,919
Speaker 1: You're legally technically an adult, and yet, as any neurobiologists

407
00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:42,639
Speaker 1: will tell you, our brains don't reach their full adult

408
00:23:42,680 --> 00:23:46,280
Speaker 1: maturity until the age of twenty five. All the while

409
00:23:46,720 --> 00:23:51,159
Speaker 1: we're wrestling with some of life's biggest questions. Nadias In

410
00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:54,360
Speaker 1: school in the States, she's under a lot of pressure,

411
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:58,119
Speaker 1: she's not doing well, and then she finds out that

412
00:23:58,160 --> 00:24:00,960
Speaker 1: her tuition bill, which Annabe was supposed to be taken

413
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:05,119
Speaker 1: care of, hasn't been paid. So she finds herself applying

414
00:24:05,119 --> 00:24:08,880
Speaker 1: for student loans. She's staring at a box on the application,

415
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 1: the kind that asks you to define yourself, and there's

416
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 1: this box that says orphan, and it stops her cold.

417
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:23,879
Speaker 1: You know, I moved to the United States at at eighteen,

418
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:27,040
Speaker 1: and I was on my own because although my mother

419
00:24:27,160 --> 00:24:31,120
Speaker 1: is American, I'm a US citizen, I've never lived here before,

420
00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:35,639
Speaker 1: and I didn't have family here, and so I found

421
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 1: myself sort of on my own and for the first

422
00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: time really sort of contending with what my life was

423
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:47,120
Speaker 1: going to be like where were my roots and who

424
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:49,000
Speaker 1: was my family? And was there a home to go

425
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:52,159
Speaker 1: back to um if if things went wrong? And I

426
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:57,439
Speaker 1: remember just being just this general sense of fear and anxiety,

427
00:24:57,640 --> 00:25:00,720
Speaker 1: and a lot of anxiety related to money. You know,

428
00:25:00,760 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 1: as you said, I my father had left some life

429
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:08,880
Speaker 1: insurance that contributed to paying for me to go to college,

430
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:12,439
Speaker 1: and there was some conversation about, because Annabelle was my

431
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:14,600
Speaker 1: guardian and she at that point worked for the un

432
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 1: that the u N might cover some of my tuition.

433
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: But Annabelle was always sort of she would give and

434
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:22,679
Speaker 1: then if if she was angry, she would take away,

435
00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:25,920
Speaker 1: or she would say, I'm actually not going to help

436
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 1: with this. So there was always this sense of am

437
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:31,720
Speaker 1: I even going to be able to finish college? And

438
00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:34,480
Speaker 1: I was already funny, I'd always been a really good student,

439
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:37,040
Speaker 1: and the first year of college, you know, when my

440
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:40,560
Speaker 1: father's insurance was covering my tuition, I did really well

441
00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:44,840
Speaker 1: in school. But as the anxieties mounted, and I was

442
00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 1: also feeling this sort of sense of grief and anger

443
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:51,959
Speaker 1: that I didn't have parents who were hoping to at

444
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:56,119
Speaker 1: least guide me to figure out how to organize my life,

445
00:25:56,600 --> 00:26:00,959
Speaker 1: and so I just I felt really alone. And my

446
00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: conversations with Annabelle at that time we're not going anywhere. Really.

447
00:26:05,560 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: Sometimes she would make promises and then I wouldn't hear

448
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 1: from her, and so I was really trying to figure

449
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:13,040
Speaker 1: out what can I do? You know, I was working

450
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:17,600
Speaker 1: three jobs um at one point and just really struggling

451
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:21,760
Speaker 1: in school. My grades spell, you know, not being American,

452
00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:24,440
Speaker 1: I didn't even or I am a US citizen, but

453
00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:27,399
Speaker 1: not having grown up here, I didn't even really fully understand,

454
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 1: you know, the ways that people paid for college, or

455
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: that financial aid was an option for me. I didn't

456
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:36,399
Speaker 1: have a Social Security number when I moved here, so

457
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:37,919
Speaker 1: I had to sort of figure out all of the

458
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:41,480
Speaker 1: bureaucracy of how I was going to explain why I

459
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 1: had an American passport but I didn't have a Social

460
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:46,639
Speaker 1: Security number, and all of these confusions, and I was

461
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:50,400
Speaker 1: very shy and an introvert, and I was very intimidated

462
00:26:50,480 --> 00:26:54,120
Speaker 1: by all of the bureaucracy and having to explain myself

463
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:57,040
Speaker 1: and have this sort of general fear that I had

464
00:26:57,080 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 1: done something wrong or I was going to do something

465
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:02,359
Speaker 1: wrong and my whole life would fall apart. So finally, I,

466
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: you know, I figured out that I could apply for

467
00:27:06,119 --> 00:27:10,000
Speaker 1: financial aid, but that in order to apply for financial

468
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:13,680
Speaker 1: aid without sort of having a parent attached, that I

469
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 1: would need to declare myself an orphan on this form.

470
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:21,359
Speaker 1: I think that that moment really struck me because I

471
00:27:21,440 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 1: had not before I thought of myself in those terms.

472
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:27,960
Speaker 1: You know, I did have this big, extended family on

473
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:30,879
Speaker 1: my father's side that definitely was very loving, and you know,

474
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:33,119
Speaker 1: they did what they could that they were so far away.

475
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:37,000
Speaker 1: And then after my father passed away, I did have

476
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:40,800
Speaker 1: mothering from Annabelle in some ways, even though our relationship

477
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:43,439
Speaker 1: was complicated. But now that I was in the United States,

478
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: it seems like she wasn't going to be that mother

479
00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: figure anymore. It was sort of like I turned eighteen

480
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:53,119
Speaker 1: and now I was on my own, and so coming

481
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:56,879
Speaker 1: to terms with this idea or this new story that

482
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,159
Speaker 1: I was alone in the world in some ways and

483
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:03,919
Speaker 1: that I was orphaned. That was a really difficult moment.

484
00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:25,400
Speaker 1: We'll be right back not yet. Does eventually finish college,

485
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:27,960
Speaker 1: and she stays in New York for the next six

486
00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 1: years or so. She gets by mostly on her own.

487
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:34,359
Speaker 1: When she is twenty eight, she's working a few jobs

488
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:38,520
Speaker 1: for a nonprofit and also waitressing to supplement her meager salary.

489
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 1: Plus she's in graduate school studying urban policy. This is

490
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 1: when Annabelle happens to be on a work trip to

491
00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 1: the city. The two women go out to dinner. They're

492
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 1: sitting across a table from each other, and the rage

493
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 1: and tension between them grows and grows until it ignites

494
00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 1: Annabelle becomes more and more agitated. Nadia knows that if

495
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:06,360
Speaker 1: there's one thing annabel can't bear, it's being called crazy,

496
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:11,280
Speaker 1: and also that if Nadia remains utterly unflappable and calm,

497
00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 1: annabel will just will lose it. So that's what Nadia does.

498
00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:20,800
Speaker 1: She very calmly, with no drama, suggests to annabel that

499
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 1: she's acting unstable. You know that that's going to completely

500
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:30,360
Speaker 1: get to her because she can't think of herself that way.

501
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: And she then lobbies back something which is that your

502
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:40,680
Speaker 1: father didn't die of cancer. He died of AIDS, right,

503
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 1: So you know that argument began from something very small.

504
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:51,800
Speaker 1: You know, she was in New York visiting, and as

505
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:55,200
Speaker 1: was our pattern, you know that I have described despite

506
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: a year of silence, you know, we hadn't spoken in

507
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: a long time, and she showed up. It was her

508
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 1: expectation was that it was going to be as though

509
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 1: we were in regular contact and she was my mother

510
00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 1: and um, so she expected me to make a lot

511
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:14,520
Speaker 1: of time for her. And I think I was a

512
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:18,280
Speaker 1: little bit resentful of that, but I was also I

513
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: was sort of part of that pattern too, you know,

514
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:22,840
Speaker 1: I played along with that pattern for many years. And

515
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:25,560
Speaker 1: so we had dinner and we just were talking about

516
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:28,600
Speaker 1: normal things. It was a perfectly nice dinner, and then

517
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 1: she wanted to go do something else afterwards, and I

518
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 1: had plans with my friends, and to myself, I was

519
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:38,400
Speaker 1: sort of like, I'm not going to move everything around

520
00:30:38,520 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: because she's here. She has not been around very much

521
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 1: for me, um, And so I, you know, told her

522
00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 1: that I was busy, and she got angry and said,

523
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:51,240
Speaker 1: how can you say that I'm busy. You're busy, I've

524
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 1: come to New York. I'm your mother. You have to

525
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:58,120
Speaker 1: make time for me. And hearing her say that after

526
00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:03,040
Speaker 1: what I felt like, after the ways that I felt

527
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:07,440
Speaker 1: like she had failed me, I felt myself sort of

528
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: the fury was sort of bubbling in me. But I

529
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 1: knew that what would annoy her. As you said, I

530
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:15,800
Speaker 1: was very much aware of how to push your buttons

531
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:18,080
Speaker 1: and she was aware of how to push mine. And

532
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: I knew that one way of winning this argument that

533
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 1: was about nothing and everything at the same time was

534
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:32,480
Speaker 1: to sort of be detached and unbothered and to sort

535
00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: of accuse her of being crazy and you know, over

536
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 1: exaggerating and unstable and making a big deal out of nothing,

537
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 1: and those were all things. You know. I think both

538
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 1: of us experienced through our grief, UM, some sort of

539
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 1: trauma and madness in the years after my father died,

540
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 1: and both of us sort of hit from that reality

541
00:31:55,040 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: in different ways. She sort of had a story of

542
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,800
Speaker 1: herself that she was a survive ever, and that other

543
00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 1: people who lived in their grief and spent a lot

544
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 1: of time talking about their feelings that they were weak,

545
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:10,040
Speaker 1: and you know, she had come through on the other side,

546
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:14,080
Speaker 1: and she didn't want her past struggles to be pointed

547
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 1: out to her in any way. And I knew that UM,

548
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 1: and I, on the other hand, was very much focused

549
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: on sort of building a life separate from my past

550
00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 1: and constructing a story in which, you know, my father

551
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 1: was sort of a godlike figure and he was all

552
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 1: I needed. And you know, so we're both in denial

553
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 1: in different ways, but we knew how to use each

554
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: other's denial against each other, and so yeah, I did.

555
00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 1: I pushed her buttons through, kind of calling her crazy

556
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:52,120
Speaker 1: in so many words, and she responded by telling me

557
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:55,640
Speaker 1: what she knew was something that would really hurt me,

558
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 1: which is that my father died not of cancer and

559
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 1: of AIDS. And I think her assumption as to why

560
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 1: would hurt me was because she knew how much I

561
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 1: needed that story of my father, and the story that

562
00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:11,480
Speaker 1: I had constructed for myself was that I was the

563
00:33:11,520 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 1: most important person in his world, and he was always

564
00:33:14,560 --> 00:33:17,000
Speaker 1: honest with me, and that I was the one who

565
00:33:17,080 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 1: was by his side the most when he was suffering,

566
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:23,440
Speaker 1: and and I had sort of made of him a

567
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:26,880
Speaker 1: god and a perfect person, and and she was going

568
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: to take that away from me um with that revelation,

569
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 1: which you know, embedded in that was was the idea

570
00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:36,440
Speaker 1: that he had a life sort of separate from who

571
00:33:36,480 --> 00:33:38,959
Speaker 1: he was to me um, and that I didn't know

572
00:33:39,040 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: him as well as I thought I did. But also

573
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:44,240
Speaker 1: embedded in that was sort of a harmful story about

574
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:48,240
Speaker 1: and a biased story that so many of us have

575
00:33:48,600 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 1: internalized about AIDS, and you know, people who live with

576
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 1: and die from AIDS, and so there was sort of

577
00:33:56,160 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: a shaming innuendo in that story as well, the idea

578
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:02,720
Speaker 1: that my father might have had affairs or might have

579
00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:09,920
Speaker 1: had sort of a life in the shadows. This is

580
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:14,239
Speaker 1: the moment that a fault line opens up her whole history,

581
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:18,400
Speaker 1: her mother's disappearance, her father's illness and death, her a

582
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:22,880
Speaker 1: loneness in the world catches up with Nadia. The sleeping

583
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:27,560
Speaker 1: giant of trauma awakens and when long held trauma comes

584
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:32,480
Speaker 1: out of hiding, watch out. Following that dinner with Annabel,

585
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:37,080
Speaker 1: Nadia can't stop moving. She walks and walks the entire

586
00:34:37,200 --> 00:34:41,000
Speaker 1: length of Manhattan with no destination in mind. On one

587
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:44,799
Speaker 1: of these walks, she encounters a blue chair that had

588
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:48,040
Speaker 1: been left on the sidewalk. It was just a week

589
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:52,160
Speaker 1: or two after, you know, I went into a deep

590
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:55,400
Speaker 1: denial for a little while, and in order to maintain

591
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:58,840
Speaker 1: that denial, I decided that Annabel was a liar, and

592
00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:00,840
Speaker 1: then I was not going to her to take the

593
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 1: story of my father away from me, which was in

594
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 1: many ways a sacred story to me, and it was

595
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:08,640
Speaker 1: one of the few things in my life that I

596
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 1: felt was constant and steady. And then I could turn

597
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 1: to to remind myself that deep love had existed for

598
00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:20,359
Speaker 1: me in the world before and potentially could again. I

599
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 1: really needed that story, and I had decided. I decided

600
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:25,680
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to allow her to take that away

601
00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:27,400
Speaker 1: from me. But I think you know, as you were

602
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:29,880
Speaker 1: saying about trauma. That was sort of the way that

603
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 1: I had reacted as well, to my mother leaving, to

604
00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 1: her rejecting me again after my father died. To my

605
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:39,880
Speaker 1: father's death, you know, I had tried for so long

606
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: to just keep moving forward and to sort of cling

607
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:49,000
Speaker 1: to this idea of my father as a saving grace

608
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: in my story, and to leave the trauma and the

609
00:35:53,600 --> 00:35:57,759
Speaker 1: grief behind. And I agree with you that that you

610
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: carry that in your body and you can only run

611
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:02,399
Speaker 1: away from it for so long and it will catch

612
00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:04,480
Speaker 1: up with you. And I think I was, in some

613
00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:08,240
Speaker 1: ways very literally trying to run away from my fear

614
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: and my grief and the trauma. At that point, I

615
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:14,960
Speaker 1: was taking these incredibly long walks all over Manhattan. I

616
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:16,879
Speaker 1: lived in Chinatown at the time, and I would sort

617
00:36:16,920 --> 00:36:20,160
Speaker 1: of walk aimlessly on days when I didn't have to

618
00:36:20,239 --> 00:36:24,279
Speaker 1: work um or I didn't have classes, I would just

619
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:27,560
Speaker 1: walk aimlessly around the city, kind of wandering around. And

620
00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 1: I felt like I needed to keep moving because if

621
00:36:30,480 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 1: I sat still, that everything that I was feeling in

622
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:35,439
Speaker 1: my body was going to be too much to bear.

623
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:37,600
Speaker 1: And I kind of sensed that I wasn't going to

624
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 1: be able to stand up, and so I kept walking,

625
00:36:40,719 --> 00:36:43,040
Speaker 1: and I was returning from one of those long walks,

626
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:46,120
Speaker 1: and I saw this blue It was an arm chair,

627
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:48,840
Speaker 1: but I found that it was also a rocking chair.

628
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: And you know, in New York, nice furniture is often

629
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:55,719
Speaker 1: left on the street, and for some reason, I felt

630
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:58,200
Speaker 1: like I really needed this chair. I really wanted it,

631
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:02,239
Speaker 1: even though I wasn't someone who often picked up furniture

632
00:37:02,239 --> 00:37:04,960
Speaker 1: on the street, but I it felt urgent that I

633
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:07,799
Speaker 1: needed this chair, and so I carried it home and

634
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:11,800
Speaker 1: carried it up to my apartment and found myself increasingly

635
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: wanting to sit in that chair and not go out

636
00:37:16,239 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: into the world. How far were you from your apartment

637
00:37:20,120 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 1: when you saw the chair? Where where was the chair?

638
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 1: I think it was it was on the border between

639
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:29,400
Speaker 1: Tribeca and Chinatown, So it wasn't that far because I

640
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:33,520
Speaker 1: lived in Chinatown, but it was, you know, probably over

641
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 1: ten blocks which carrying you know, this big bulky chair.

642
00:37:38,239 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 1: And it had started to rain, so it was it

643
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 1: was a little bit and so I was in a

644
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:44,239
Speaker 1: rush because I didn't want to get drenched and for

645
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: the chair to get drenched, because then I wouldn't want

646
00:37:47,120 --> 00:37:49,040
Speaker 1: to keep the chair. And I felt like I really

647
00:37:49,080 --> 00:37:50,880
Speaker 1: needed it, and so I was sort of in a rush,

648
00:37:50,920 --> 00:37:53,360
Speaker 1: and I was puffing, and my back was sort of

649
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:56,560
Speaker 1: bent backwards. And I'm very I'm a very petite person.

650
00:37:56,600 --> 00:37:59,799
Speaker 1: I'm a five feet tall and quite slight, and so

651
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:02,400
Speaker 1: it was quite a feat for me to lug that

652
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:05,520
Speaker 1: chair home and up the three stories to get to

653
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:12,160
Speaker 1: my my apartment. What was it about the chair that

654
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 1: created in you that sense of urgency. I didn't understand

655
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:19,799
Speaker 1: it at the time, and now, sort of when I

656
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:22,600
Speaker 1: look back on it, I think that part of it

657
00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:25,640
Speaker 1: was that there was something familiar about it, especially when

658
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 1: I found out that it was you know, I sort

659
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 1: of went over and kind of touched the chair, and

660
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 1: I found out that it was a rocking chair. And

661
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:36,520
Speaker 1: my father was very fond of rocking chairs, and we

662
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:39,080
Speaker 1: always had rocking chairs in every house that I lived

663
00:38:39,080 --> 00:38:42,000
Speaker 1: in with him, and when I was very little, I

664
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:44,280
Speaker 1: would sort of crawl into his lap and he would

665
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:47,880
Speaker 1: rock me to sleep and read stories to me, and

666
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:50,760
Speaker 1: maybe that was part of it. I also, I didn't

667
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:55,120
Speaker 1: have a chair in my room, um, and I had

668
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:59,759
Speaker 1: found myself increasingly not leaving my room and so sort

669
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:02,600
Speaker 1: of lying in my bed or sitting in my bed

670
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:05,360
Speaker 1: up against the wall, and so I kind of felt

671
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: like maybe I needed a chair in my room since

672
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:11,680
Speaker 1: I was spending so much time there, But I don't know.

673
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:13,759
Speaker 1: It was a little bit and and still is a

674
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:16,880
Speaker 1: little bit mysterious to me. UM. I do think that

675
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:21,319
Speaker 1: we sometimes will choose objects that we pore our our

676
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:25,239
Speaker 1: grief into or connect with in an emotional way. In

677
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:28,799
Speaker 1: that chair was that for me, and in ways that

678
00:39:29,520 --> 00:39:34,319
Speaker 1: beyond what I can really understand or explain, and it

679
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:40,239
Speaker 1: becomes the locus of essentially really like the place in

680
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:42,839
Speaker 1: which you really fall apart, Like you don't you don't

681
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:46,840
Speaker 1: leave that chair for what eight days? I retreated to

682
00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:50,440
Speaker 1: that chair for um, for seven days. Um, for the

683
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:52,719
Speaker 1: most part, you know, I did. I did sort of

684
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:55,480
Speaker 1: get out of the chair to lie on For some reason,

685
00:39:55,520 --> 00:39:57,279
Speaker 1: I didn't want to get into my bed, so I

686
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:00,239
Speaker 1: was sleeping on the floor for some of that time.

687
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:01,719
Speaker 1: But I would get out of the chair and sort

688
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:04,839
Speaker 1: of curl up on the floor by the chair, and

689
00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:07,640
Speaker 1: I would leave the chair to go to the bathroom

690
00:40:07,760 --> 00:40:10,520
Speaker 1: or to grab a hunk of bread from the kitchen.

691
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 1: But for the most part, for seven days, I was

692
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:17,239
Speaker 1: sitting in that chair, just rocking and thinking, and you know,

693
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:21,160
Speaker 1: I did some reading, I wrote furiously in in a notebook,

694
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:25,399
Speaker 1: and I just had this fear of going back out

695
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:27,760
Speaker 1: into the world. I didn't know who I was anymore

696
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:30,240
Speaker 1: in some ways, and I didn't I didn't I couldn't

697
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 1: trust that my sacred stories, the stories that had always

698
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 1: been so important to me, And I felt like my

699
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 1: grief had come crashing down on me. And I didn't

700
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:41,799
Speaker 1: know if I was going to be able to get

701
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:44,319
Speaker 1: out of that and get out of the chair, you know,

702
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:47,719
Speaker 1: because because the chair did become the place that that

703
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:50,799
Speaker 1: was in some ways where I went to greet it

704
00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:54,960
Speaker 1: became both a refuge and I was also fearful that

705
00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 1: I would become a prison in some ways. While in

706
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 1: the Blue Share Not Yet also turns to literature, to

707
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 1: a world of women writers who had come before her

708
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:11,760
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison, Audre Lord, June Jordan's Zora, Neil Hurston, Tony

709
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 1: Kate Bambara. She's calling in the spirits, calling in what

710
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 1: she calls a council of mothers. I had long sort

711
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 1: of been able to locate myself in literature, and I

712
00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:29,880
Speaker 1: think because I I had for so long felt this

713
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 1: absence of my mother, and I had long sort of

714
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:38,040
Speaker 1: believed that I could find this council of mothers in

715
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:40,920
Speaker 1: in literature and that there was so much wisdom to

716
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 1: be found there. And I had turned to that wisdom

717
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:44,600
Speaker 1: in the past, and so I felt like I could

718
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:47,080
Speaker 1: turn to it again. And I was also thinking a

719
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:49,319
Speaker 1: lot at that time about the stories that my father

720
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 1: had told me. And my father was from the Ashanti

721
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:55,359
Speaker 1: tribe of Ghana, which is a tribe that really does

722
00:41:55,520 --> 00:41:58,720
Speaker 1: even though you know, most Ashanti people today are a Christian,

723
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:03,440
Speaker 1: but the old beliefs are still part of the Ashanta

724
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 1: people's worldview. And the stories that my father told me

725
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 1: where were stories about how the ancestors are always with us,

726
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:13,920
Speaker 1: past as present, and they are um always guiding and

727
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:18,160
Speaker 1: influencing our lives. And I had long grown up with

728
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:20,960
Speaker 1: this idea of being able to sort of call in

729
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 1: spirits and ancestors and that they were present, and I

730
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:26,399
Speaker 1: had sort of thought of my father that way too,

731
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:28,719
Speaker 1: and so I was also speaking to him, to my

732
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:32,160
Speaker 1: memories of him and trying to recall those. And I

733
00:42:32,200 --> 00:42:36,799
Speaker 1: think both locate wisdom and a sense of possibility in

734
00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:41,120
Speaker 1: the literature that I was reading, and also to construct

735
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: and reconstruct a story that I could live inside of,

736
00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:47,719
Speaker 1: because the one that I had long told myself UM

737
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 1: was no longer working for me. That was all part

738
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:55,719
Speaker 1: of UM. In a very sort of confused and desperate

739
00:42:55,760 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: way that I was, I was searching for all of

740
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 1: that while in the Blue Chair. M You also, towards

741
00:43:02,560 --> 00:43:05,600
Speaker 1: the end of your time in the Blue Chair turned

742
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:10,800
Speaker 1: to jazz, which really struck me as UM, the moment

743
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 1: where you were able to access your father more, you know,

744
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:21,240
Speaker 1: having sort of lost that sense of him, as having

745
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 1: a deep knowing of him, of you know, sort of

746
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: being certain of his um, you know, of the of

747
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:31,000
Speaker 1: the place that he occupied in your world and in

748
00:43:31,080 --> 00:43:34,840
Speaker 1: the world. And there's this passage where you talk about,

749
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 1: you know, the music that that your father loved, and

750
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:42,279
Speaker 1: and Coltrane in particular, and you construct a playlist and

751
00:43:42,719 --> 00:43:45,480
Speaker 1: get lost in it, you know, in this kind of

752
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 1: the instability in a way of jazz, and that seems

753
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 1: like it's the point where you get out of the chair. Yeah,

754
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:58,120
Speaker 1: that's right. I had this sort of memory of my

755
00:43:58,239 --> 00:44:02,719
Speaker 1: father telling me about why he felt so connected to

756
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:05,760
Speaker 1: jazz and part of it, and particularly the more avant

757
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:09,399
Speaker 1: garde forms of jazz, and part of it was that

758
00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 1: he believed that there was so much dissonance in the world,

759
00:44:14,560 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 1: and that letting go of our expectation that there was

760
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:21,040
Speaker 1: always going to be harmony and allowing ourselves to feel

761
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:26,279
Speaker 1: and hear and and touch the beauty in kind of

762
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:31,319
Speaker 1: wildness and dissonance and the unknown. That was something that

763
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: I remembered him telling me. And you know, he would

764
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:37,800
Speaker 1: always emphasize that that kind of jazz was really about questions,

765
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:42,319
Speaker 1: that it was really a philosophical music form, and that

766
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:46,760
Speaker 1: it had deep roots and including roots in in Ashanti music,

767
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:49,920
Speaker 1: and that actually you can still hear ancient Ashanti rhythms

768
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:53,520
Speaker 1: and jazz. And so for all of those reasons, I

769
00:44:53,600 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: kind of had this um desire to better understand that

770
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:00,440
Speaker 1: music that had meant so much to my father, and

771
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 1: and so I created this playlist um and for the

772
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:05,799
Speaker 1: first time, really, you know, when my father was telling

773
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:07,839
Speaker 1: me this when I was a child, I was sort

774
00:45:07,840 --> 00:45:11,239
Speaker 1: of like, this is so noisy, I don't understand it.

775
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:14,800
Speaker 1: But at this point in my life where where nothing

776
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 1: made sense, you know, I felt like connecting to an

777
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:23,799
Speaker 1: art form that really was about wrestling with with dissonance

778
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:27,160
Speaker 1: and uncertainty, and that there was something that I could

779
00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: find there and maybe even locate my father in that

780
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:33,720
Speaker 1: music as well. And so it really was a moment

781
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:37,400
Speaker 1: where not only did I connect to this music that

782
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:39,480
Speaker 1: was so important to him, and it sort of opened

783
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:41,680
Speaker 1: something up in me and allowed me to let go

784
00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:45,560
Speaker 1: of all of this tension that I was holding, this

785
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:48,319
Speaker 1: this sort of need for everything to make sense and

786
00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:51,320
Speaker 1: to be orderly and to have my story back exactly

787
00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:53,759
Speaker 1: the way that I needed it. It allowed me to

788
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:57,920
Speaker 1: imagine that maybe there was freedom in in the unknown.

789
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:01,720
Speaker 1: But also in some ways, I think I was able

790
00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 1: to locate him there because it also brought back these

791
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:08,799
Speaker 1: joyful memories of him just trying to get me to

792
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:12,000
Speaker 1: see the world in different ways and just reminded me

793
00:46:12,160 --> 00:46:16,759
Speaker 1: that no matter what in terms of this revelation that

794
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:21,400
Speaker 1: Annabel had given me about my father, that my memories

795
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:23,719
Speaker 1: of him and who he was in my life and

796
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:25,600
Speaker 1: the love that he had for me and my sister

797
00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:30,440
Speaker 1: and my brother, that that remained unchanged. So through listening

798
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:32,680
Speaker 1: to this music, I could hear those lessons, and so

799
00:46:32,719 --> 00:46:36,560
Speaker 1: many of those lessons were about the questions and and

800
00:46:36,719 --> 00:46:41,360
Speaker 1: being comfortable with questions and following curiosities and being open

801
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 1: um to new possibilities in the world, and that was

802
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 1: so much a part of who he was, And so

803
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:49,840
Speaker 1: I was reminded of the lessons that he tried to

804
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: teach me in the music. But also I started to

805
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 1: feel that maybe, you know, what Annabel had revealed didn't

806
00:46:59,520 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 1: change everything in the way that I thought it had,

807
00:47:02,360 --> 00:47:05,240
Speaker 1: and that maybe through that revelation that I could actually

808
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:10,359
Speaker 1: come to know my father in a deeper way. Some

809
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:14,279
Speaker 1: journeys we take without ever leaving the spot. During her

810
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:17,360
Speaker 1: time in the Blue Chair, Nadia moved away from a

811
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:20,560
Speaker 1: need to know the quote unquote truth about her father's

812
00:47:20,600 --> 00:47:27,520
Speaker 1: illness and death and toward a place of acceptance. At

813
00:47:27,560 --> 00:47:35,080
Speaker 1: some point, the journey becomes really about being able to

814
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:39,360
Speaker 1: live with not knowing. You. You don't know for sure

815
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:45,040
Speaker 1: whether Annabel was telling you the truth or whether Annabel

816
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:51,160
Speaker 1: was hurling a lie at you to hurt you. You'll

817
00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:55,279
Speaker 1: you'll never know, So the last question I really have

818
00:47:55,440 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 1: for you is how do you hold that not knowing?

819
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:03,800
Speaker 1: I remember when I found out that my dad, who

820
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:06,840
Speaker 1: I have grieved very similarly to the way you grieved yours.

821
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:09,279
Speaker 1: Um when I found out that he had not been

822
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:12,880
Speaker 1: my biological father. In my office, I had a portrait

823
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 1: of his mother, my grandmother, on the wall and one

824
00:48:16,200 --> 00:48:17,840
Speaker 1: day I just looked at it and I needed to

825
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 1: take it down. I needed to take it down because

826
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:24,200
Speaker 1: she wasn't in fact, my biological grandmother, and it was

827
00:48:24,239 --> 00:48:27,160
Speaker 1: just confusing and freaking me out every time I felt

828
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:30,040
Speaker 1: her eyes on me, and I thought, well, what do

829
00:48:30,080 --> 00:48:33,600
Speaker 1: I replace it with? And you know, now I have

830
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:37,359
Speaker 1: this blank wall with say nail in it. And I

831
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:39,759
Speaker 1: ended up getting this piece of artwork by my friend

832
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:42,319
Speaker 1: Debbie Millman, who's actually I was a guest on this

833
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:46,440
Speaker 1: podcast in season one, and it was in her handwriting,

834
00:48:46,480 --> 00:48:49,759
Speaker 1: this kind of really beautiful and an inimitable handwriting that

835
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 1: Debbie has, and the words were this just this I

836
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:58,000
Speaker 1: am comfortable not knowing. And to me that felt like, well,

837
00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:01,799
Speaker 1: that's my life's work is I've constructed a lot of

838
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:03,640
Speaker 1: narratives in my life, and this one is going to

839
00:49:03,719 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 1: have to remain in that place of open endedness. Yeah,

840
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing that. I feel very similarly. You know,

841
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:16,640
Speaker 1: After all of that, I realized how rigid I had

842
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:20,279
Speaker 1: become in my need um for the story that I

843
00:49:20,320 --> 00:49:23,680
Speaker 1: had constructed, and I didn't like that rigidness, and actually

844
00:49:23,719 --> 00:49:26,000
Speaker 1: that rigidness sort of this counter to all of the

845
00:49:26,120 --> 00:49:28,440
Speaker 1: lessons that my father had tried to teach me about

846
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 1: the world and who I should be in it. And

847
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:34,400
Speaker 1: that's sort of what I've discovered. I thought that I

848
00:49:34,480 --> 00:49:36,239
Speaker 1: was going to do all of this research and sort

849
00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 1: of discover the truth, and then ultimately I was going

850
00:49:38,680 --> 00:49:41,960
Speaker 1: to call family members and demand that they tell me

851
00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:44,840
Speaker 1: what they knew. And I actually haven't done any of that.

852
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:48,600
Speaker 1: I haven't even now. I I still haven't spoken at

853
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:52,960
Speaker 1: great length about this question, except with my sister. And

854
00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:56,520
Speaker 1: it's because what I realized in the research, rather than

855
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 1: finding the true story of my father, what I found

856
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:03,640
Speaker 1: were things that I was uncomfortable with about myself that

857
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:06,479
Speaker 1: I felt like I really needed to reckon with more

858
00:50:06,520 --> 00:50:09,440
Speaker 1: than anything else. And you know, one of those things

859
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:13,200
Speaker 1: was this rigidness and my need to sort of make

860
00:50:13,280 --> 00:50:15,799
Speaker 1: up my father a perfect person in a god and

861
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:20,840
Speaker 1: in that deifying of him, to reject his humanity, but

862
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:24,840
Speaker 1: also the Annabel's humanity and my mother's humanity. And and

863
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:29,600
Speaker 1: I found how like uncurious I had been about you know,

864
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:34,080
Speaker 1: the mother's in my life and their inner lives, because

865
00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 1: I was so afraid of what they might reveal about

866
00:50:36,560 --> 00:50:39,400
Speaker 1: my father, who mattered most of all to me. And

867
00:50:39,560 --> 00:50:43,360
Speaker 1: what I also found was this ugly bias in myself

868
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:47,759
Speaker 1: that was about cancer being a more noble disease to

869
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:50,560
Speaker 1: die of than AIDS, and that that was a really

870
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:53,440
Speaker 1: harmful narrative. And I knew that it was ugly as

871
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:56,759
Speaker 1: soon as I started to panic about it, about the

872
00:50:57,600 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 1: possibility that my father had died of AIDS, I knew

873
00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:02,680
Speaker 1: that it was an ugly story. And at the same time,

874
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:05,120
Speaker 1: I also had to admit that it was very alive

875
00:51:05,160 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: in me, and that that sort of revealed biases within

876
00:51:09,120 --> 00:51:11,400
Speaker 1: myself that I needed to deal with and reckon with.

877
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:14,839
Speaker 1: And so in the research that I that I did

878
00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:17,759
Speaker 1: about sort of people living with and people who have

879
00:51:17,840 --> 00:51:21,440
Speaker 1: died from AIDS in in Uganda and in other and

880
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:23,920
Speaker 1: other places, you know, And we lived in Uganda at

881
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:27,640
Speaker 1: the time that my father had in fact died of AIDS,

882
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:31,480
Speaker 1: that that might have been where he would have contracted it,

883
00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:34,239
Speaker 1: and there was a huge AIDS epidemic at the time

884
00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:37,040
Speaker 1: that we were living there, and so I was doing

885
00:51:37,080 --> 00:51:39,239
Speaker 1: all of this research to see, as you said if

886
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:41,839
Speaker 1: it would sort of bring back any memories of that

887
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:44,919
Speaker 1: time and anything that my father might have said. Um.

888
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:48,400
Speaker 1: But what I realized was that for so much time

889
00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:51,440
Speaker 1: against the stories that my father had told me and

890
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:53,320
Speaker 1: the work that he did in the world, which was

891
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:57,520
Speaker 1: about recognizing the responsibilities that we all had towards each

892
00:51:57,520 --> 00:52:01,560
Speaker 1: other and how to forge deeper connection and across boundaries

893
00:52:01,560 --> 00:52:04,080
Speaker 1: and borders that had been drawn in ways that did

894
00:52:04,120 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 1: people harm, and that I had contributed to drawing a

895
00:52:07,880 --> 00:52:12,279
Speaker 1: boundary between myself and people who lived with and died

896
00:52:12,320 --> 00:52:15,080
Speaker 1: from AIDS. And so I actually spent a lot of

897
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:18,000
Speaker 1: time looking at that and sort of examining myself in

898
00:52:18,040 --> 00:52:22,120
Speaker 1: the mirror. And what I realized is that it doesn't

899
00:52:22,160 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 1: actually matter if my father died of cancer or of AIDS.

900
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:29,560
Speaker 1: You know, I lost him all the same, and that

901
00:52:30,080 --> 00:52:34,080
Speaker 1: actually opening up the possibility that there were parts of

902
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:35,920
Speaker 1: his life, which of course there were parts of his

903
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:38,360
Speaker 1: life that were unknown to me as a child, but

904
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:41,480
Speaker 1: opening up that possibility allowed me to then connect with

905
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:44,280
Speaker 1: him as a man, you know, in the fullness of

906
00:52:44,440 --> 00:52:47,560
Speaker 1: who he was, as opposed to this very rigid story

907
00:52:47,719 --> 00:52:51,319
Speaker 1: that I had created of him, and that that was

908
00:52:51,520 --> 00:52:53,840
Speaker 1: the best way to sort of honor his life and

909
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:56,399
Speaker 1: the lessons that he had given me. And I did

910
00:52:56,680 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 1: decide that I don't want to know. It doesn't matter

911
00:52:59,640 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 1: to me what he died of, and what matters to

912
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:05,759
Speaker 1: me was the relationship that we shared, and you know,

913
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 1: the love that he had for all of us. Family

914
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 1: Secrets is a production of I Heart Media. Dylan Fagin

915
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:30,040
Speaker 1: and Bethan Mcalouso are the executive producers. Andrew Howard is

916
00:53:30,040 --> 00:53:33,319
Speaker 1: our audio editor. If you have a secret you'd like

917
00:53:33,400 --> 00:53:36,520
Speaker 1: to share, leave us a voicemail and your story could

918
00:53:36,560 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 1: appear on an upcoming bonus episode. Our number is one

919
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:47,920
Speaker 1: secret zero. That's secret and then the number zero. You

920
00:53:47,960 --> 00:53:52,600
Speaker 1: can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer, Facebook

921
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:56,880
Speaker 1: at facebook dot com slash Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter

922
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:59,600
Speaker 1: at fami Secret Spot. And if you want to know

923
00:53:59,640 --> 00:54:03,640
Speaker 1: about my family secret that inspired this podcast, check out

924
00:54:03,719 --> 00:54:26,560
Speaker 1: my New York Times bestselling memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts.

925
00:54:26,560 --> 00:54:28,879
Speaker 1: For my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,

926
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:32,000
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.