Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that
Speaker 1: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today
Speaker 1: is writer Nadia Awusu, whose debut memoir After Shocks was
Speaker 1: recently published. Nadia's story is about secrets and that very
Speaker 1: close first cousin to secrets, lies or potential lies. I
Speaker 1: think it's safe to say that where there are secrets,
Speaker 1: there are almost inevitably lies, lies, either told to cover
Speaker 1: up or to protect, or to defend, or sometimes to
Speaker 1: exact revenge. Nadia's story is also about learning to live
Speaker 1: with the fact that we might just never the whole truth,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's okay. So, Nadia, I always begin by
Speaker 1: asking my guest this question, but in your case, it's
Speaker 1: actually an even more interesting question than usual, which is,
Speaker 1: tell me about the landscape of your childhood. So I
Speaker 1: was born in Dar Sala, Tanzania, and I was born
Speaker 1: there because my father worked for you an agency. My
Speaker 1: father was from Ghana and my mother is Armenian American,
Speaker 1: and they met in Massachusetts, where my mother grew up
Speaker 1: and my father was there for graduate school, so right
Speaker 1: from the very beginning I had a very sort of
Speaker 1: international upbringing. UM. My mother left when I was two
Speaker 1: years old. She left Tanzania and moved back to the
Speaker 1: United States, where she very quickly remarried and had two
Speaker 1: other children. So I was largely raised by my father
Speaker 1: versus a single parent. My sister and I were sent
Speaker 1: to live with my aunt Harriet for a little while
Speaker 1: while he sort of got his life together to parent
Speaker 1: two girls on his own. My sister is a year
Speaker 1: younger than me, and then my father remarried Uh and
Speaker 1: we all moved together to Rome, Italy, where the headquarters
Speaker 1: of the agency he worked for was. And so I
Speaker 1: spent my childhood moving back and forth between Italy and
Speaker 1: largely East Africa. I lived in Ethiopia, Uganda, UM, Tanzania,
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in Ghana with my father's family,
Speaker 1: and in the UK, where my father's sisters, UM and
Speaker 1: all my cousins lived, and had a really sort of
Speaker 1: hop scotched upbringing, always sort of straddling cultures and languages.
Speaker 1: And you know, just as we settled into a new home,
Speaker 1: my father would tell us that it was time to
Speaker 1: leave again, and we pack up and move on to
Speaker 1: the next place. And in some ways, this is a
Speaker 1: really wonderful way to grow up because I grew up
Speaker 1: among so many people, um, so many different kinds of people,
Speaker 1: so many different cultures, and got to see so much
Speaker 1: of the world from a very young age, and especially
Speaker 1: because of who my father was, he was always deeply
Speaker 1: engaged in what was going on in the world around him.
Speaker 1: I got to learn a lot about the world and
Speaker 1: about people and places. But on the other hand, there
Speaker 1: was always sort of this sense of longing to really
Speaker 1: belong to a place in a in a clearer way,
Speaker 1: and sort of a anxiety about, you know what else
Speaker 1: I might lose, having lost my mother so young and
Speaker 1: her absence was very palpable in my life, and then
Speaker 1: when I was thirteen my father passed away. I'm always curious,
Speaker 1: um because I grew up in one home, in one
Speaker 1: neighborhood and really basically never left until I went to
Speaker 1: college and then didn't go far and never had that
Speaker 1: experience of being the new kid again and again and again.
Speaker 1: And I always I wonder about like what that does,
Speaker 1: like both what muscles it builds, and also as you
Speaker 1: as you describe kind of that, you know, the longing
Speaker 1: that it can also produce. You know, there are many
Speaker 1: of us around the world who live this kind of childhood,
Speaker 1: and in fact, were often called third culture kids, you know,
Speaker 1: kids who grew up kind of in between their parents
Speaker 1: cultures and sort of straddling borders and boundaries. And I
Speaker 1: think because I went to international schools my whole life
Speaker 1: largely with kids like me who were moving around a lot.
Speaker 1: Their parents worked for you and agencies or for embassies,
Speaker 1: and so all of us lived this very transient life,
Speaker 1: which I think sort of made it more normal than
Speaker 1: if you're moving into a community that you know is
Speaker 1: already established. But at the same time, I think that
Speaker 1: because we were moving to different countries and having to
Speaker 1: sort of adapt to you know, even though our international
Speaker 1: school international schools are pretty consistent where where you are,
Speaker 1: but everything around us changed, including sort of the language
Speaker 1: that we communicated in. It was always really important to
Speaker 1: my father that we learned the language, and so I
Speaker 1: guess that's one of the sort of muscles that we
Speaker 1: sort of flexed as I was growing up. Um And
Speaker 1: I think that you get to know people differently when
Speaker 1: you're speaking their language, so and I think languages come
Speaker 1: easier to children at a young age. And so I
Speaker 1: was able to move pretty easily, you know, in and
Speaker 1: out of different worlds, and also to discern sort of
Speaker 1: what was expected of me in different environments. I was
Speaker 1: a very observant child, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: kids who go up the way that I did are
Speaker 1: as well. And we're very adaptable in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: But we also, um, I think from talking to other,
Speaker 1: you know, people who are third culture kids, many of
Speaker 1: us have this sense of anxiety about sort of doing
Speaker 1: something wrong or making a misstep or um sort of
Speaker 1: being judged for not clearly but longing to a place,
Speaker 1: um or having sort of a stable identity. Our identities
Speaker 1: tend to be pretty fluid, and we moved in and
Speaker 1: out of them, and in some ways that's a wonderful
Speaker 1: thing because it's sort of a celebration of multiplicity. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, we can sometimes be seen as
Speaker 1: sort of not trustworthy or sort of have this fear
Speaker 1: that people are going to sort of accuse us of
Speaker 1: sort of faking a sense of self in some ways,
Speaker 1: and there's you know, there's often a demand on all
Speaker 1: of us that we should choose, you know, or that
Speaker 1: we should see our identities as fixed. And I think
Speaker 1: for kids who grew up like I did, that's really
Speaker 1: difficult to do because, you know, in my case, for example,
Speaker 1: I didn't speak my father's language tree, and so although
Speaker 1: I was raised to sort of when people asked me
Speaker 1: to say that I was gunn in, and I was
Speaker 1: raised among the gunny inside of my family, I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like I could claim that in an uncomplicated way.
Speaker 1: And even when I met a gunny and they would
Speaker 1: sort of question because my mother's why and because of
Speaker 1: my appearance, because I don't speak the language, they would
Speaker 1: sort of question my gunnyan nous. And you know, I
Speaker 1: felt that about sort of all of the identities that
Speaker 1: I have inhabited and tried to sort of own and
Speaker 1: belong to. And I have come to a place where
Speaker 1: I claim, you know, a lot of the places and
Speaker 1: people that I've lived among and loved and tried to
Speaker 1: belong to. But it has never been simple. It's always
Speaker 1: been very complicated. So your your mother left when you
Speaker 1: were two, Yes, and there was a real a bright
Speaker 1: line around her leaving. It wasn't she didn't she didn't
Speaker 1: move around the corner. She left and started another family.
Speaker 1: Do you have memories of her from pre her leaving?
Speaker 1: You know, I feel as though I do, Like I
Speaker 1: feel like I can remember these images or you know,
Speaker 1: her smell. There's this sense that I have of her
Speaker 1: being there. I've had that sense in these sort of
Speaker 1: images in my mind for a long time. But of
Speaker 1: course I was so young, and it's difficult to sort
Speaker 1: of tell to what extent those memories are real and
Speaker 1: to what extent they're sort of constructed memories from the
Speaker 1: photographs that we had in our house, or you know,
Speaker 1: from later memories. Um. I did spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time thinking about her and sort of gazing at photographs
Speaker 1: of her, So it's really hard for me to to
Speaker 1: know to what extent I can trust my memories of
Speaker 1: her before she left. So often we searched photographs for clues,
Speaker 1: especially when we can't remember, and we read into those
Speaker 1: photographs for meaning when the memory of the people in
Speaker 1: the photograph carries with it a whiff of trauma. This
Speaker 1: is even more true when Nadia is seven, she's living
Speaker 1: in Rome with her father and stepmother, and out of
Speaker 1: seemingly nowhere, her mother pays a surprise visit. Her father
Speaker 1: hadn't wanted to tell Nadia that her mother was coming
Speaker 1: because he didn't know if she would actually show up.
Speaker 1: The day kind of started like a normal day. I
Speaker 1: came down. It was a weekend. I came down for breakfast,
Speaker 1: and I was sitting at the kitchen table with my father.
Speaker 1: My father always made pancakes on the weekend, and so
Speaker 1: we were eating pancakes, and my father was listening to
Speaker 1: the radio, and I have a very clear memory of,
Speaker 1: you know, the my father listened to the BBC World Service,
Speaker 1: and I have a really clear memory of the broadcaster
Speaker 1: talking about the possibility of aftershocks and about this earthquake
Speaker 1: that had destroyed a city in Armenia. And you know,
Speaker 1: my mother being Armenian American, I kind of and my
Speaker 1: father didn't really like to talk about my mother very much.
Speaker 1: I always got the sense that it sort of made
Speaker 1: him uncomfortable and sad, and yet I was always really
Speaker 1: curious about her. And so since this you know, person
Speaker 1: on the radio had said that there was an earthquake
Speaker 1: in Armenia, I sort of grasped onto the opportunity to
Speaker 1: ask my father about my mother's family, and I asked him,
Speaker 1: you know she had family in Armenia, because I knew
Speaker 1: that she had grown up in the in the United States,
Speaker 1: and my father said, no, her family are mostly in
Speaker 1: the United States now summer in Argentina. They moved all
Speaker 1: over the world, and I kind of vaguely knew that
Speaker 1: my mother's family had left what was then the Ottoman
Speaker 1: Empire because of a genocide. I didn't fully understand what
Speaker 1: that meant, but I knew that there was some violent
Speaker 1: history that had sort of sent them to America and
Speaker 1: to other parts of the world. But you know, we
Speaker 1: sort of left it at that. And then there was
Speaker 1: this knock on the door and there was my mother
Speaker 1: with these red balloons in her hand. Um, and my
Speaker 1: father came to the door and said, you know, your
Speaker 1: mother is going to take you to lunch. And so
Speaker 1: my sister and I went to lunch with my mother.
Speaker 1: She was in Italy on vacation with her husband, her
Speaker 1: then husband, and so he drove us to Piazza and Avona,
Speaker 1: and the three of us got out and walked around,
Speaker 1: and you know, my mother took us to a restaurant.
Speaker 1: She talked about my half sisters you know, back in
Speaker 1: the States, and how she would bring them next time,
Speaker 1: and she asked us about school. But it wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: this deep, meaningful conversation at all. But I remember feeling
Speaker 1: this this sense that I wanted to say something important
Speaker 1: to her that she would remember or that would make
Speaker 1: her come back. Um, even though she was mostly a
Speaker 1: stranger and I was like both nervous around her because
Speaker 1: I was always shy around strangers, and I had this
Speaker 1: sort of big idea of what it was to have
Speaker 1: a mother, because everyone, all of the other children I knew,
Speaker 1: had mothers that were very central in their lives. After lunch,
Speaker 1: she dropped us back at our house, and you know,
Speaker 1: I watched her walk away, and I think because I
Speaker 1: was so young when she left the first time, this
Speaker 1: was the first time that I had really watched her
Speaker 1: walk away, So it sort of stayed with me, that
Speaker 1: image of the back of her head and seeing her
Speaker 1: get into the car and drive away again. And you know,
Speaker 1: her arrival on the same day as an earthquake in
Speaker 1: our Medea. I think that the idea of the earthquake
Speaker 1: and the way that I sort of felt uneasy and
Speaker 1: shaken by her arrival kind of combined in me and
Speaker 1: I sort of constructed this story and became sort of
Speaker 1: obsessed in some ways with with earthquakes and held on
Speaker 1: too that for a very long time. So at this point,
Speaker 1: your stepmother, annabel has been in your life for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, at the point that your that your
Speaker 1: mother makes this visit at that time, what was your
Speaker 1: relationship with Annabelle? Like I mean and describe annabel for
Speaker 1: us a little bit. Annabelle was very young when she
Speaker 1: married my father. She was in her early twenty um.
Speaker 1: She actually finished college in Rome when she was living
Speaker 1: with us. I wasn't aware of how young she was
Speaker 1: at the time. I didn't think about it that much.
Speaker 1: She seemed like a grown up to me, but you know,
Speaker 1: she was twenty three, I think twenty two or twenty three.
Speaker 1: How did they meet? So they met in Tanzania, Annabelle's
Speaker 1: Tanzanian and you know, my father was stationed there, and
Speaker 1: this was during the time that he had sent my
Speaker 1: sister and I to live with his older sister and
Speaker 1: my aunt Harriet in the UK because he was traveling
Speaker 1: so much for work and he didn't like the idea
Speaker 1: of us spending a lot of time with Nanny's and
Speaker 1: so we spent you know, a couple of years with
Speaker 1: my aunt. And so it was during that time that
Speaker 1: he met Annabelle in Tanzania and fell for her. And
Speaker 1: then after he moved to Rome, she came with him
Speaker 1: a few months later to to live with us. And so,
Speaker 1: in the early years of your relationship with Annabelle, how
Speaker 1: would you characterize that time? Yeah, Um, I think that
Speaker 1: I would sort of describe it as confusing. You know,
Speaker 1: there were there all these ways in which I resented her.
Speaker 1: You know, my sister and I had just been reunited
Speaker 1: with our father, and we had lost her mom at
Speaker 1: such an early age, and my father was already at
Speaker 1: that time sort of the great hero of my life.
Speaker 1: I adored him, and as much as I loved my
Speaker 1: Aunt Harriet and loved living with her, I always wanted
Speaker 1: to be around my father, and so Annabelle I kind
Speaker 1: of saw her, you know, as competition in some ways, um,
Speaker 1: And I think some of that was my own story
Speaker 1: that I had made up about who she was, but
Speaker 1: some of it also, you know, did show up in
Speaker 1: some of her behaviors, like she seemed unsure of who
Speaker 1: to be in relationship to me and my sister. And
Speaker 1: sometimes she could be very fun and I enjoyed sort
Speaker 1: of being around her, and she was very beautiful, and
Speaker 1: so I liked to sort of watch her and sort
Speaker 1: admire her in some ways. But sometimes she seemed to
Speaker 1: resent us and to not want us around. I remember
Speaker 1: sort of her sort of snapping at me to not
Speaker 1: bother them when they were sleeping. I had had a nightmare,
Speaker 1: and I, you know, was used to being able to
Speaker 1: go into my father's room and he would sort of
Speaker 1: come and tuck me back into bed. And she was
Speaker 1: very clear that that was a boundary and that was
Speaker 1: not going to happen. And so our relationship from a
Speaker 1: very start was complicated. There was both sort of an
Speaker 1: an uneasy sort of moving towards each other, but then
Speaker 1: also just this sense that we were competitors in some way.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: Within this fraud family dynamic, there was something else, something
Speaker 1: secret going on. Not as much adored father is actually sick.
Speaker 1: He's been diagnosed with cancer and keeps it a secret
Speaker 1: from his two daughters until keeping it a secret is
Speaker 1: no longer possible. He dies when she's just shy of
Speaker 1: fourteen years old. I had long believed that my father's
Speaker 1: illness was very quick. My sister and I were sent
Speaker 1: to boarding school in England when I was in I
Speaker 1: think it was sixth grade, and we were told that
Speaker 1: it was because you know, we were moving again and
Speaker 1: it was messing with our education and my father wanted
Speaker 1: us to have more stability. But we were then, after
Speaker 1: a term, summoned back home to Rome, and it quickly
Speaker 1: became clear that we had been sent to boarding school
Speaker 1: because my father had been diagnosed with cancer. But over
Speaker 1: the course of that term, the cancer had spread, and
Speaker 1: my father then to us around, you know, in case
Speaker 1: he lost his fight with cancer. But I later learned
Speaker 1: that he had actually been diagnosed years before, and I
Speaker 1: had had sort of kept that secret from my sister
Speaker 1: and me. So yeah, to me, the illness was really fast,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was just you know, a year
Speaker 1: or so between the diagnosis and him passing away. But
Speaker 1: I'm told that he actually knew that he had cancer
Speaker 1: for at least a year or two before that. So
Speaker 1: there's sort of a its own kind of secret right there. Right.
Speaker 1: You and your sister were very young, but the the
Speaker 1: idea of the kind of secret that we keep in
Speaker 1: order to protect, you know, in order to protect the
Speaker 1: people that we love, in order to protect our children,
Speaker 1: or protect whomever. So when did you find that out?
Speaker 1: When did you find out that he had been diagnosed
Speaker 1: with cancer prior? I didn't find that out until I
Speaker 1: was in my twenties, And it was actually Annabelle's sister
Speaker 1: who told me that, And during a period that I
Speaker 1: was very angry with Annabelle for I don't remember what
Speaker 1: the reason was now, but we were often sort of
Speaker 1: angry with each other, but I had a good relationship
Speaker 1: with many of the members of her family, and her
Speaker 1: sister was sort of telling me about how hard it
Speaker 1: was for annabel as well, you know, the loss of
Speaker 1: my father and sort of finding herself alone with three
Speaker 1: children by that point, my brother, my half brother, Flammie,
Speaker 1: had been born by the time my father passed away,
Speaker 1: and so she was sort of telling me a side
Speaker 1: of the story that I didn't know or understand, and
Speaker 1: was sort of emphasizing that annabel had lived with the
Speaker 1: fear of his death for much longer and actually carried
Speaker 1: a lot of trauma from that, And so, yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until my twenties that I learned that actually Annabelle
Speaker 1: had kept that secret from from my sister and me
Speaker 1: as well, which I see sort of as an act
Speaker 1: of protection. As you said, So your dad dies when
Speaker 1: you're almost fourteen, and in that situation, what would be
Speaker 1: most logical or typical would be for you and your
Speaker 1: sister to go to your mother. But that's not what happens, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So after our father passed away, UM, I called my mother,
Speaker 1: and you know, we had visited her a couple of
Speaker 1: times after her visit to Rome, but eventually those visits
Speaker 1: ended and the letters stopped as well. We stopped receiving
Speaker 1: letters and phone calls, and my mother had sort of
Speaker 1: disappeared from my wife for a number of years, and
Speaker 1: I didn't really know why, and had sort of accepted
Speaker 1: that that was going to be the way that it was.
Speaker 1: But then after my father died, UM, everyone, my father's
Speaker 1: family and friends and even Annabelle said, you know, you
Speaker 1: have to call your mother and talk to her, and
Speaker 1: so we did. I called her, and what I remember
Speaker 1: most about that phone call was that my mother didn't
Speaker 1: immediately say I'm coming to get you, or even I'm coming,
Speaker 1: and I actually had to ask her, and she said
Speaker 1: that she was living in Arizona at the time. She
Speaker 1: couldn't leave, she had other children, she had work, and
Speaker 1: that you know, maybe down the line my sister and
Speaker 1: I could come to her and we could talk about
Speaker 1: the future. And I just took that as such a rejection,
Speaker 1: and I told her that I would, you know, never
Speaker 1: speak to her again. And I sort of hung up
Speaker 1: the phone and kept that promise for a decade. So
Speaker 1: then Annabelle becomes you're de facto guardian. How did you
Speaker 1: think of her over those next few years? You know,
Speaker 1: you were fourteen and then you're eighteen when you moved
Speaker 1: to New York, But in those few years where you're
Speaker 1: living with her, how did you see her? Our relationship
Speaker 1: has always been so complicated, and um, you know, there
Speaker 1: were offers from other members of my father's family and
Speaker 1: my father's sisters, some of my father's extended family in
Speaker 1: Germany and Canada who had offered from my sister and
Speaker 1: I to come and live with them as well. But
Speaker 1: you know, we we sort of felt that we were
Speaker 1: a family, you know, we were a complicated family, but
Speaker 1: we didn't want to lose any any more of our
Speaker 1: life as it was than we already had. And Annabelle
Speaker 1: sort of made this very sort of heartfelt offer and
Speaker 1: sort of told us that she had promised our father
Speaker 1: that she would take care of us. And there was
Speaker 1: a lot of tenderness between us, even you know, as
Speaker 1: my father was really ill. You know, there were moments
Speaker 1: of anger, we thought, but there were also these moments
Speaker 1: where we really felt like we were in this together
Speaker 1: and that we were family and we loved each other
Speaker 1: despite the complications, and she was in many ways a
Speaker 1: mother to me, you know, she was she was there
Speaker 1: when I was so young and had long been a
Speaker 1: part of my life. And then with this offer that
Speaker 1: she would continue to raise my sister and I until
Speaker 1: we graduated from college, that sort of cemented this sense
Speaker 1: of us sort of being a family and being linked
Speaker 1: through our love for for my father, definitely, but also
Speaker 1: just through the relationship that that we had forged over
Speaker 1: the years. But at the same time, sort of the
Speaker 1: shape of our relationship had already been established, this sense
Speaker 1: that we were competitors. The resentments, many resentments that had
Speaker 1: sort of um bubbled up and then dissipeted over the
Speaker 1: years still existed between us and continued to fuel some
Speaker 1: pretty vicious fights, you know, over the several years that
Speaker 1: we continue to live together, and we had this sort
Speaker 1: of pattern of you know, there would be a blow
Speaker 1: up and she would become very angry, and you know,
Speaker 1: I would be sort of seething, and we would retreat
Speaker 1: to our separate rooms and not speak for a period
Speaker 1: of time, and she would some times throw things, or
Speaker 1: she would declare that my sister and I were no
Speaker 1: longer allowed to eat food in the house, you know,
Speaker 1: that we were to take our meals at school. And
Speaker 1: there were all sorts of ways that we punished each other.
Speaker 1: You know, I would I would give her the silent treatment,
Speaker 1: and then we would sort of without talking about it,
Speaker 1: just move back into a sort of detante. And that
Speaker 1: was sort of a pattern that continued, you know, after
Speaker 1: I turned eighteen and graduated and moved to the United
Speaker 1: States as well. Young adulthood is such an incredibly vulnerable age.
Speaker 1: You're legally technically an adult, and yet, as any neurobiologists
Speaker 1: will tell you, our brains don't reach their full adult
Speaker 1: maturity until the age of twenty five. All the while
Speaker 1: we're wrestling with some of life's biggest questions. Nadias In
Speaker 1: school in the States, she's under a lot of pressure,
Speaker 1: she's not doing well, and then she finds out that
Speaker 1: her tuition bill, which Annabe was supposed to be taken
Speaker 1: care of, hasn't been paid. So she finds herself applying
Speaker 1: for student loans. She's staring at a box on the application,
Speaker 1: the kind that asks you to define yourself, and there's
Speaker 1: this box that says orphan, and it stops her cold.
Speaker 1: You know, I moved to the United States at at eighteen,
Speaker 1: and I was on my own because although my mother
Speaker 1: is American, I'm a US citizen, I've never lived here before,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have family here, and so I found
Speaker 1: myself sort of on my own and for the first
Speaker 1: time really sort of contending with what my life was
Speaker 1: going to be like where were my roots and who
Speaker 1: was my family? And was there a home to go
Speaker 1: back to um if if things went wrong? And I
Speaker 1: remember just being just this general sense of fear and anxiety,
Speaker 1: and a lot of anxiety related to money. You know,
Speaker 1: as you said, I my father had left some life
Speaker 1: insurance that contributed to paying for me to go to college,
Speaker 1: and there was some conversation about, because Annabelle was my
Speaker 1: guardian and she at that point worked for the un
Speaker 1: that the u N might cover some of my tuition.
Speaker 1: But Annabelle was always sort of she would give and
Speaker 1: then if if she was angry, she would take away,
Speaker 1: or she would say, I'm actually not going to help
Speaker 1: with this. So there was always this sense of am
Speaker 1: I even going to be able to finish college? And
Speaker 1: I was already funny, I'd always been a really good student,
Speaker 1: and the first year of college, you know, when my
Speaker 1: father's insurance was covering my tuition, I did really well
Speaker 1: in school. But as the anxieties mounted, and I was
Speaker 1: also feeling this sort of sense of grief and anger
Speaker 1: that I didn't have parents who were hoping to at
Speaker 1: least guide me to figure out how to organize my life,
Speaker 1: and so I just I felt really alone. And my
Speaker 1: conversations with Annabelle at that time we're not going anywhere. Really.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she would make promises and then I wouldn't hear
Speaker 1: from her, and so I was really trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what can I do? You know, I was working
Speaker 1: three jobs um at one point and just really struggling
Speaker 1: in school. My grades spell, you know, not being American,
Speaker 1: I didn't even or I am a US citizen, but
Speaker 1: not having grown up here, I didn't even really fully understand,
Speaker 1: you know, the ways that people paid for college, or
Speaker 1: that financial aid was an option for me. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a Social Security number when I moved here, so
Speaker 1: I had to sort of figure out all of the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy of how I was going to explain why I
Speaker 1: had an American passport but I didn't have a Social
Speaker 1: Security number, and all of these confusions, and I was
Speaker 1: very shy and an introvert, and I was very intimidated
Speaker 1: by all of the bureaucracy and having to explain myself
Speaker 1: and have this sort of general fear that I had
Speaker 1: done something wrong or I was going to do something
Speaker 1: wrong and my whole life would fall apart. So finally, I,
Speaker 1: you know, I figured out that I could apply for
Speaker 1: financial aid, but that in order to apply for financial
Speaker 1: aid without sort of having a parent attached, that I
Speaker 1: would need to declare myself an orphan on this form.
Speaker 1: I think that that moment really struck me because I
Speaker 1: had not before I thought of myself in those terms.
Speaker 1: You know, I did have this big, extended family on
Speaker 1: my father's side that definitely was very loving, and you know,
Speaker 1: they did what they could that they were so far away.
Speaker 1: And then after my father passed away, I did have
Speaker 1: mothering from Annabelle in some ways, even though our relationship
Speaker 1: was complicated. But now that I was in the United States,
Speaker 1: it seems like she wasn't going to be that mother
Speaker 1: figure anymore. It was sort of like I turned eighteen
Speaker 1: and now I was on my own, and so coming
Speaker 1: to terms with this idea or this new story that
Speaker 1: I was alone in the world in some ways and
Speaker 1: that I was orphaned. That was a really difficult moment.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back not yet. Does eventually finish college,
Speaker 1: and she stays in New York for the next six
Speaker 1: years or so. She gets by mostly on her own.
Speaker 1: When she is twenty eight, she's working a few jobs
Speaker 1: for a nonprofit and also waitressing to supplement her meager salary.
Speaker 1: Plus she's in graduate school studying urban policy. This is
Speaker 1: when Annabelle happens to be on a work trip to
Speaker 1: the city. The two women go out to dinner. They're
Speaker 1: sitting across a table from each other, and the rage
Speaker 1: and tension between them grows and grows until it ignites
Speaker 1: Annabelle becomes more and more agitated. Nadia knows that if
Speaker 1: there's one thing annabel can't bear, it's being called crazy,
Speaker 1: and also that if Nadia remains utterly unflappable and calm,
Speaker 1: annabel will just will lose it. So that's what Nadia does.
Speaker 1: She very calmly, with no drama, suggests to annabel that
Speaker 1: she's acting unstable. You know that that's going to completely
Speaker 1: get to her because she can't think of herself that way.
Speaker 1: And she then lobbies back something which is that your
Speaker 1: father didn't die of cancer. He died of AIDS, right,
Speaker 1: So you know that argument began from something very small.
Speaker 1: You know, she was in New York visiting, and as
Speaker 1: was our pattern, you know that I have described despite
Speaker 1: a year of silence, you know, we hadn't spoken in
Speaker 1: a long time, and she showed up. It was her
Speaker 1: expectation was that it was going to be as though
Speaker 1: we were in regular contact and she was my mother
Speaker 1: and um, so she expected me to make a lot
Speaker 1: of time for her. And I think I was a
Speaker 1: little bit resentful of that, but I was also I
Speaker 1: was sort of part of that pattern too, you know,
Speaker 1: I played along with that pattern for many years. And
Speaker 1: so we had dinner and we just were talking about
Speaker 1: normal things. It was a perfectly nice dinner, and then
Speaker 1: she wanted to go do something else afterwards, and I
Speaker 1: had plans with my friends, and to myself, I was
Speaker 1: sort of like, I'm not going to move everything around
Speaker 1: because she's here. She has not been around very much
Speaker 1: for me, um, And so I, you know, told her
Speaker 1: that I was busy, and she got angry and said,
Speaker 1: how can you say that I'm busy. You're busy, I've
Speaker 1: come to New York. I'm your mother. You have to
Speaker 1: make time for me. And hearing her say that after
Speaker 1: what I felt like, after the ways that I felt
Speaker 1: like she had failed me, I felt myself sort of
Speaker 1: the fury was sort of bubbling in me. But I
Speaker 1: knew that what would annoy her. As you said, I
Speaker 1: was very much aware of how to push your buttons
Speaker 1: and she was aware of how to push mine. And
Speaker 1: I knew that one way of winning this argument that
Speaker 1: was about nothing and everything at the same time was
Speaker 1: to sort of be detached and unbothered and to sort
Speaker 1: of accuse her of being crazy and you know, over
Speaker 1: exaggerating and unstable and making a big deal out of nothing,
Speaker 1: and those were all things. You know. I think both
Speaker 1: of us experienced through our grief, UM, some sort of
Speaker 1: trauma and madness in the years after my father died,
Speaker 1: and both of us sort of hit from that reality
Speaker 1: in different ways. She sort of had a story of
Speaker 1: herself that she was a survive ever, and that other
Speaker 1: people who lived in their grief and spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time talking about their feelings that they were weak,
Speaker 1: and you know, she had come through on the other side,
Speaker 1: and she didn't want her past struggles to be pointed
Speaker 1: out to her in any way. And I knew that UM,
Speaker 1: and I, on the other hand, was very much focused
Speaker 1: on sort of building a life separate from my past
Speaker 1: and constructing a story in which, you know, my father
Speaker 1: was sort of a godlike figure and he was all
Speaker 1: I needed. And you know, so we're both in denial
Speaker 1: in different ways, but we knew how to use each
Speaker 1: other's denial against each other, and so yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: I pushed her buttons through, kind of calling her crazy
Speaker 1: in so many words, and she responded by telling me
Speaker 1: what she knew was something that would really hurt me,
Speaker 1: which is that my father died not of cancer and
Speaker 1: of AIDS. And I think her assumption as to why
Speaker 1: would hurt me was because she knew how much I
Speaker 1: needed that story of my father, and the story that
Speaker 1: I had constructed for myself was that I was the
Speaker 1: most important person in his world, and he was always
Speaker 1: honest with me, and that I was the one who
Speaker 1: was by his side the most when he was suffering,
Speaker 1: and and I had sort of made of him a
Speaker 1: god and a perfect person, and and she was going
Speaker 1: to take that away from me um with that revelation,
Speaker 1: which you know, embedded in that was was the idea
Speaker 1: that he had a life sort of separate from who
Speaker 1: he was to me um, and that I didn't know
Speaker 1: him as well as I thought I did. But also
Speaker 1: embedded in that was sort of a harmful story about
Speaker 1: and a biased story that so many of us have
Speaker 1: internalized about AIDS, and you know, people who live with
Speaker 1: and die from AIDS, and so there was sort of
Speaker 1: a shaming innuendo in that story as well, the idea
Speaker 1: that my father might have had affairs or might have
Speaker 1: had sort of a life in the shadows. This is
Speaker 1: the moment that a fault line opens up her whole history,
Speaker 1: her mother's disappearance, her father's illness and death, her a
Speaker 1: loneness in the world catches up with Nadia. The sleeping
Speaker 1: giant of trauma awakens and when long held trauma comes
Speaker 1: out of hiding, watch out. Following that dinner with Annabel,
Speaker 1: Nadia can't stop moving. She walks and walks the entire
Speaker 1: length of Manhattan with no destination in mind. On one
Speaker 1: of these walks, she encounters a blue chair that had
Speaker 1: been left on the sidewalk. It was just a week
Speaker 1: or two after, you know, I went into a deep
Speaker 1: denial for a little while, and in order to maintain
Speaker 1: that denial, I decided that Annabel was a liar, and
Speaker 1: then I was not going to her to take the
Speaker 1: story of my father away from me, which was in
Speaker 1: many ways a sacred story to me, and it was
Speaker 1: one of the few things in my life that I
Speaker 1: felt was constant and steady. And then I could turn
Speaker 1: to to remind myself that deep love had existed for
Speaker 1: me in the world before and potentially could again. I
Speaker 1: really needed that story, and I had decided. I decided
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to allow her to take that away
Speaker 1: from me. But I think you know, as you were
Speaker 1: saying about trauma. That was sort of the way that
Speaker 1: I had reacted as well, to my mother leaving, to
Speaker 1: her rejecting me again after my father died. To my
Speaker 1: father's death, you know, I had tried for so long
Speaker 1: to just keep moving forward and to sort of cling
Speaker 1: to this idea of my father as a saving grace
Speaker 1: in my story, and to leave the trauma and the
Speaker 1: grief behind. And I agree with you that that you
Speaker 1: carry that in your body and you can only run
Speaker 1: away from it for so long and it will catch
Speaker 1: up with you. And I think I was, in some
Speaker 1: ways very literally trying to run away from my fear
Speaker 1: and my grief and the trauma. At that point, I
Speaker 1: was taking these incredibly long walks all over Manhattan. I
Speaker 1: lived in Chinatown at the time, and I would sort
Speaker 1: of walk aimlessly on days when I didn't have to
Speaker 1: work um or I didn't have classes, I would just
Speaker 1: walk aimlessly around the city, kind of wandering around. And
Speaker 1: I felt like I needed to keep moving because if
Speaker 1: I sat still, that everything that I was feeling in
Speaker 1: my body was going to be too much to bear.
Speaker 1: And I kind of sensed that I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be able to stand up, and so I kept walking,
Speaker 1: and I was returning from one of those long walks,
Speaker 1: and I saw this blue It was an arm chair,
Speaker 1: but I found that it was also a rocking chair.
Speaker 1: And you know, in New York, nice furniture is often
Speaker 1: left on the street, and for some reason, I felt
Speaker 1: like I really needed this chair. I really wanted it,
Speaker 1: even though I wasn't someone who often picked up furniture
Speaker 1: on the street, but I it felt urgent that I
Speaker 1: needed this chair, and so I carried it home and
Speaker 1: carried it up to my apartment and found myself increasingly
Speaker 1: wanting to sit in that chair and not go out
Speaker 1: into the world. How far were you from your apartment
Speaker 1: when you saw the chair? Where where was the chair?
Speaker 1: I think it was it was on the border between
Speaker 1: Tribeca and Chinatown, So it wasn't that far because I
Speaker 1: lived in Chinatown, but it was, you know, probably over
Speaker 1: ten blocks which carrying you know, this big bulky chair.
Speaker 1: And it had started to rain, so it was it
Speaker 1: was a little bit and so I was in a
Speaker 1: rush because I didn't want to get drenched and for
Speaker 1: the chair to get drenched, because then I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to keep the chair. And I felt like I really
Speaker 1: needed it, and so I was sort of in a rush,
Speaker 1: and I was puffing, and my back was sort of
Speaker 1: bent backwards. And I'm very I'm a very petite person.
Speaker 1: I'm a five feet tall and quite slight, and so
Speaker 1: it was quite a feat for me to lug that
Speaker 1: chair home and up the three stories to get to
Speaker 1: my my apartment. What was it about the chair that
Speaker 1: created in you that sense of urgency. I didn't understand
Speaker 1: it at the time, and now, sort of when I
Speaker 1: look back on it, I think that part of it
Speaker 1: was that there was something familiar about it, especially when
Speaker 1: I found out that it was you know, I sort
Speaker 1: of went over and kind of touched the chair, and
Speaker 1: I found out that it was a rocking chair. And
Speaker 1: my father was very fond of rocking chairs, and we
Speaker 1: always had rocking chairs in every house that I lived
Speaker 1: in with him, and when I was very little, I
Speaker 1: would sort of crawl into his lap and he would
Speaker 1: rock me to sleep and read stories to me, and
Speaker 1: maybe that was part of it. I also, I didn't
Speaker 1: have a chair in my room, um, and I had
Speaker 1: found myself increasingly not leaving my room and so sort
Speaker 1: of lying in my bed or sitting in my bed
Speaker 1: up against the wall, and so I kind of felt
Speaker 1: like maybe I needed a chair in my room since
Speaker 1: I was spending so much time there, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: It was a little bit and and still is a
Speaker 1: little bit mysterious to me. UM. I do think that
Speaker 1: we sometimes will choose objects that we pore our our
Speaker 1: grief into or connect with in an emotional way. In
Speaker 1: that chair was that for me, and in ways that
Speaker 1: beyond what I can really understand or explain, and it
Speaker 1: becomes the locus of essentially really like the place in
Speaker 1: which you really fall apart, Like you don't you don't
Speaker 1: leave that chair for what eight days? I retreated to
Speaker 1: that chair for um, for seven days. Um, for the
Speaker 1: most part, you know, I did. I did sort of
Speaker 1: get out of the chair to lie on For some reason,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to get into my bed, so I
Speaker 1: was sleeping on the floor for some of that time.
Speaker 1: But I would get out of the chair and sort
Speaker 1: of curl up on the floor by the chair, and
Speaker 1: I would leave the chair to go to the bathroom
Speaker 1: or to grab a hunk of bread from the kitchen.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, for seven days, I was
Speaker 1: sitting in that chair, just rocking and thinking, and you know,
Speaker 1: I did some reading, I wrote furiously in in a notebook,
Speaker 1: and I just had this fear of going back out
Speaker 1: into the world. I didn't know who I was anymore
Speaker 1: in some ways, and I didn't I didn't I couldn't
Speaker 1: trust that my sacred stories, the stories that had always
Speaker 1: been so important to me, And I felt like my
Speaker 1: grief had come crashing down on me. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know if I was going to be able to get
Speaker 1: out of that and get out of the chair, you know,
Speaker 1: because because the chair did become the place that that
Speaker 1: was in some ways where I went to greet it
Speaker 1: became both a refuge and I was also fearful that
Speaker 1: I would become a prison in some ways. While in
Speaker 1: the Blue Share Not Yet also turns to literature, to
Speaker 1: a world of women writers who had come before her
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison, Audre Lord, June Jordan's Zora, Neil Hurston, Tony
Speaker 1: Kate Bambara. She's calling in the spirits, calling in what
Speaker 1: she calls a council of mothers. I had long sort
Speaker 1: of been able to locate myself in literature, and I
Speaker 1: think because I I had for so long felt this
Speaker 1: absence of my mother, and I had long sort of
Speaker 1: believed that I could find this council of mothers in
Speaker 1: in literature and that there was so much wisdom to
Speaker 1: be found there. And I had turned to that wisdom
Speaker 1: in the past, and so I felt like I could
Speaker 1: turn to it again. And I was also thinking a
Speaker 1: lot at that time about the stories that my father
Speaker 1: had told me. And my father was from the Ashanti
Speaker 1: tribe of Ghana, which is a tribe that really does
Speaker 1: even though you know, most Ashanti people today are a Christian,
Speaker 1: but the old beliefs are still part of the Ashanta
Speaker 1: people's worldview. And the stories that my father told me
Speaker 1: where were stories about how the ancestors are always with us,
Speaker 1: past as present, and they are um always guiding and
Speaker 1: influencing our lives. And I had long grown up with
Speaker 1: this idea of being able to sort of call in
Speaker 1: spirits and ancestors and that they were present, and I
Speaker 1: had sort of thought of my father that way too,
Speaker 1: and so I was also speaking to him, to my
Speaker 1: memories of him and trying to recall those. And I
Speaker 1: think both locate wisdom and a sense of possibility in
Speaker 1: the literature that I was reading, and also to construct
Speaker 1: and reconstruct a story that I could live inside of,
Speaker 1: because the one that I had long told myself UM
Speaker 1: was no longer working for me. That was all part
Speaker 1: of UM. In a very sort of confused and desperate
Speaker 1: way that I was, I was searching for all of
Speaker 1: that while in the Blue Chair. M You also, towards
Speaker 1: the end of your time in the Blue Chair turned
Speaker 1: to jazz, which really struck me as UM, the moment
Speaker 1: where you were able to access your father more, you know,
Speaker 1: having sort of lost that sense of him, as having
Speaker 1: a deep knowing of him, of you know, sort of
Speaker 1: being certain of his um, you know, of the of
Speaker 1: the place that he occupied in your world and in
Speaker 1: the world. And there's this passage where you talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the music that that your father loved, and
Speaker 1: and Coltrane in particular, and you construct a playlist and
Speaker 1: get lost in it, you know, in this kind of
Speaker 1: the instability in a way of jazz, and that seems
Speaker 1: like it's the point where you get out of the chair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I had this sort of memory of my
Speaker 1: father telling me about why he felt so connected to
Speaker 1: jazz and part of it, and particularly the more avant
Speaker 1: garde forms of jazz, and part of it was that
Speaker 1: he believed that there was so much dissonance in the world,
Speaker 1: and that letting go of our expectation that there was
Speaker 1: always going to be harmony and allowing ourselves to feel
Speaker 1: and hear and and touch the beauty in kind of
Speaker 1: wildness and dissonance and the unknown. That was something that
Speaker 1: I remembered him telling me. And you know, he would
Speaker 1: always emphasize that that kind of jazz was really about questions,
Speaker 1: that it was really a philosophical music form, and that
Speaker 1: it had deep roots and including roots in in Ashanti music,
Speaker 1: and that actually you can still hear ancient Ashanti rhythms
Speaker 1: and jazz. And so for all of those reasons, I
Speaker 1: kind of had this um desire to better understand that
Speaker 1: music that had meant so much to my father, and
Speaker 1: and so I created this playlist um and for the
Speaker 1: first time, really, you know, when my father was telling
Speaker 1: me this when I was a child, I was sort
Speaker 1: of like, this is so noisy, I don't understand it.
Speaker 1: But at this point in my life where where nothing
Speaker 1: made sense, you know, I felt like connecting to an
Speaker 1: art form that really was about wrestling with with dissonance
Speaker 1: and uncertainty, and that there was something that I could
Speaker 1: find there and maybe even locate my father in that
Speaker 1: music as well. And so it really was a moment
Speaker 1: where not only did I connect to this music that
Speaker 1: was so important to him, and it sort of opened
Speaker 1: something up in me and allowed me to let go
Speaker 1: of all of this tension that I was holding, this
Speaker 1: this sort of need for everything to make sense and
Speaker 1: to be orderly and to have my story back exactly
Speaker 1: the way that I needed it. It allowed me to
Speaker 1: imagine that maybe there was freedom in in the unknown.
Speaker 1: But also in some ways, I think I was able
Speaker 1: to locate him there because it also brought back these
Speaker 1: joyful memories of him just trying to get me to
Speaker 1: see the world in different ways and just reminded me
Speaker 1: that no matter what in terms of this revelation that
Speaker 1: Annabel had given me about my father, that my memories
Speaker 1: of him and who he was in my life and
Speaker 1: the love that he had for me and my sister
Speaker 1: and my brother, that that remained unchanged. So through listening
Speaker 1: to this music, I could hear those lessons, and so
Speaker 1: many of those lessons were about the questions and and
Speaker 1: being comfortable with questions and following curiosities and being open
Speaker 1: um to new possibilities in the world, and that was
Speaker 1: so much a part of who he was, And so
Speaker 1: I was reminded of the lessons that he tried to
Speaker 1: teach me in the music. But also I started to
Speaker 1: feel that maybe, you know, what Annabel had revealed didn't
Speaker 1: change everything in the way that I thought it had,
Speaker 1: and that maybe through that revelation that I could actually
Speaker 1: come to know my father in a deeper way. Some
Speaker 1: journeys we take without ever leaving the spot. During her
Speaker 1: time in the Blue Chair, Nadia moved away from a
Speaker 1: need to know the quote unquote truth about her father's
Speaker 1: illness and death and toward a place of acceptance. At
Speaker 1: some point, the journey becomes really about being able to
Speaker 1: live with not knowing. You. You don't know for sure
Speaker 1: whether Annabel was telling you the truth or whether Annabel
Speaker 1: was hurling a lie at you to hurt you. You'll
Speaker 1: you'll never know, So the last question I really have
Speaker 1: for you is how do you hold that not knowing?
Speaker 1: I remember when I found out that my dad, who
Speaker 1: I have grieved very similarly to the way you grieved yours.
Speaker 1: Um when I found out that he had not been
Speaker 1: my biological father. In my office, I had a portrait
Speaker 1: of his mother, my grandmother, on the wall and one
Speaker 1: day I just looked at it and I needed to
Speaker 1: take it down. I needed to take it down because
Speaker 1: she wasn't in fact, my biological grandmother, and it was
Speaker 1: just confusing and freaking me out every time I felt
Speaker 1: her eyes on me, and I thought, well, what do
Speaker 1: I replace it with? And you know, now I have
Speaker 1: this blank wall with say nail in it. And I
Speaker 1: ended up getting this piece of artwork by my friend
Speaker 1: Debbie Millman, who's actually I was a guest on this
Speaker 1: podcast in season one, and it was in her handwriting,
Speaker 1: this kind of really beautiful and an inimitable handwriting that
Speaker 1: Debbie has, and the words were this just this I
Speaker 1: am comfortable not knowing. And to me that felt like, well,
Speaker 1: that's my life's work is I've constructed a lot of
Speaker 1: narratives in my life, and this one is going to
Speaker 1: have to remain in that place of open endedness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing that. I feel very similarly. You know,
Speaker 1: After all of that, I realized how rigid I had
Speaker 1: become in my need um for the story that I
Speaker 1: had constructed, and I didn't like that rigidness, and actually
Speaker 1: that rigidness sort of this counter to all of the
Speaker 1: lessons that my father had tried to teach me about
Speaker 1: the world and who I should be in it. And
Speaker 1: that's sort of what I've discovered. I thought that I
Speaker 1: was going to do all of this research and sort
Speaker 1: of discover the truth, and then ultimately I was going
Speaker 1: to call family members and demand that they tell me
Speaker 1: what they knew. And I actually haven't done any of that.
Speaker 1: I haven't even now. I I still haven't spoken at
Speaker 1: great length about this question, except with my sister. And
Speaker 1: it's because what I realized in the research, rather than
Speaker 1: finding the true story of my father, what I found
Speaker 1: were things that I was uncomfortable with about myself that
Speaker 1: I felt like I really needed to reckon with more
Speaker 1: than anything else. And you know, one of those things
Speaker 1: was this rigidness and my need to sort of make
Speaker 1: up my father a perfect person in a god and
Speaker 1: in that deifying of him, to reject his humanity, but
Speaker 1: also the Annabel's humanity and my mother's humanity. And and
Speaker 1: I found how like uncurious I had been about you know,
Speaker 1: the mother's in my life and their inner lives, because
Speaker 1: I was so afraid of what they might reveal about
Speaker 1: my father, who mattered most of all to me. And
Speaker 1: what I also found was this ugly bias in myself
Speaker 1: that was about cancer being a more noble disease to
Speaker 1: die of than AIDS, and that that was a really
Speaker 1: harmful narrative. And I knew that it was ugly as
Speaker 1: soon as I started to panic about it, about the
Speaker 1: possibility that my father had died of AIDS, I knew
Speaker 1: that it was an ugly story. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: I also had to admit that it was very alive
Speaker 1: in me, and that that sort of revealed biases within
Speaker 1: myself that I needed to deal with and reckon with.
Speaker 1: And so in the research that I that I did
Speaker 1: about sort of people living with and people who have
Speaker 1: died from AIDS in in Uganda and in other and
Speaker 1: other places, you know, And we lived in Uganda at
Speaker 1: the time that my father had in fact died of AIDS,
Speaker 1: that that might have been where he would have contracted it,
Speaker 1: and there was a huge AIDS epidemic at the time
Speaker 1: that we were living there, and so I was doing
Speaker 1: all of this research to see, as you said if
Speaker 1: it would sort of bring back any memories of that
Speaker 1: time and anything that my father might have said. Um.
Speaker 1: But what I realized was that for so much time
Speaker 1: against the stories that my father had told me and
Speaker 1: the work that he did in the world, which was
Speaker 1: about recognizing the responsibilities that we all had towards each
Speaker 1: other and how to forge deeper connection and across boundaries
Speaker 1: and borders that had been drawn in ways that did
Speaker 1: people harm, and that I had contributed to drawing a
Speaker 1: boundary between myself and people who lived with and died
Speaker 1: from AIDS. And so I actually spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time looking at that and sort of examining myself in
Speaker 1: the mirror. And what I realized is that it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually matter if my father died of cancer or of AIDS.
Speaker 1: You know, I lost him all the same, and that
Speaker 1: actually opening up the possibility that there were parts of
Speaker 1: his life, which of course there were parts of his
Speaker 1: life that were unknown to me as a child, but
Speaker 1: opening up that possibility allowed me to then connect with
Speaker 1: him as a man, you know, in the fullness of
Speaker 1: who he was, as opposed to this very rigid story
Speaker 1: that I had created of him, and that that was
Speaker 1: the best way to sort of honor his life and
Speaker 1: the lessons that he had given me. And I did
Speaker 1: decide that I don't want to know. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: to me what he died of, and what matters to
Speaker 1: me was the relationship that we shared, and you know,
Speaker 1: the love that he had for all of us. Family
Speaker 1: Secrets is a production of I Heart Media. Dylan Fagin
Speaker 1: and Bethan Mcalouso are the executive producers. Andrew Howard is
Speaker 1: our audio editor. If you have a secret you'd like
Speaker 1: to share, leave us a voicemail and your story could
Speaker 1: appear on an upcoming bonus episode. Our number is one
Speaker 1: secret zero. That's secret and then the number zero. You
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Speaker 1: at facebook dot com slash Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter
Speaker 1: at fami Secret Spot. And if you want to know
Speaker 1: about my family secret that inspired this podcast, check out
Speaker 1: my New York Times bestselling memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts.
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