Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Mat
Speaker 1: had made a myth out of me, spending so many
Speaker 1: stories about my travels and adventures that some of her
Speaker 1: friends did not believe I was real. Is this the one,
Speaker 1: one of them said. As I sat in MAT's kitchen,
Speaker 1: tucking into a bowl of noodles, I was. I'll leave
Speaker 1: from a journalism job in Cambodia, always choosing to go
Speaker 1: home when I had time off rather than on holiday.
Speaker 1: Matt's friends smiled and squeezed my arm as if to
Speaker 1: confirm I was not a ghost. Is this your baby
Speaker 1: girl with the big job and all the money, the
Speaker 1: one who almost died on the boat. Matt smiled and nodded.
Speaker 1: Her friend turned to me. Your mother talks about you
Speaker 1: all the time, she said, still holding my arm. She
Speaker 1: says you are special. That's puts out O Rang, journalist
Speaker 1: and author of the Sea Ring memoir Ma and Me.
Speaker 1: Putsada's is a story right from the start of overcoming
Speaker 1: staggering odds. It's also a story about familial loyalty and
Speaker 1: cultural expectations, and the strength it takes to become one's
Speaker 1: truest self. I'm Danny Shapiro and This is family secrets,
Speaker 1: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: I was born in a seaside town in Cambodia called
Speaker 1: the Bung Sum, in a hospital right in downtown near
Speaker 1: an open market called Salo, and I have no memory
Speaker 1: of where I was born, although when I was a
Speaker 1: teenager I went for the first time to visit, and
Speaker 1: immediately I fell in love with this beach community. I
Speaker 1: could smell the briny air and feel that the sea
Speaker 1: breeze pushing through my hair, and um, there was something
Speaker 1: very idyllic and peaceful about it. But I remember about
Speaker 1: the first time I visited Kabung Soud, Cambodia, were so
Speaker 1: many palm trees and just absolutely everywhere coconut trees, just
Speaker 1: a landscape that was so very different from anything that
Speaker 1: I ever knew growing up in America. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where you you see a place for
Speaker 1: the first time with clear eyes and with new eyes,
Speaker 1: and it just steared in my heart as I felt
Speaker 1: so proud to be from this bland cut through with
Speaker 1: such a pure light and um, just everything about where
Speaker 1: I was born engaged my senses, the size of sounds,
Speaker 1: that smells, to feel every thing, you know, sand between
Speaker 1: my toes. They're on the beach and seeing the beautiful,
Speaker 1: gorgeous sunsets Um they're in Kabung Sum. It's something that
Speaker 1: just never leaves you. It was a bit of paradise.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to equate that slice of paradise with
Speaker 1: the reality of my country, which is the dark history
Speaker 1: of genocide. It was four when I was born in
Speaker 1: Kobung Sound, Cambodia. Most of Kimbodia had already been overrun
Speaker 1: by the Camarouge communist regime, and so by then I
Speaker 1: imagine um and my mother has the memories of this,
Speaker 1: that Kabung Sum, this place that I saw for the
Speaker 1: first time in a in a time of peace. Back
Speaker 1: then in seventy four, when I was born, it was
Speaker 1: actually a period of terrible chaos. It was a quiet
Speaker 1: kind of chaos. As my mom describes that she could
Speaker 1: feel a particular energy in the air and a certain
Speaker 1: heaviness in the air. Kbung Sound, my mother tells me,
Speaker 1: had been a place for the ultra wealthy and tourists
Speaker 1: to come in and play with a playground for the
Speaker 1: wealthy and during the war, and it specifically in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four when I was born there suddenly it was
Speaker 1: absolutely quiet. Nobody was on the streets, there were no taurists.
Speaker 1: So my mother felt the weight of that moment and
Speaker 1: what was about to happen. I don't think that she
Speaker 1: actually knew that our country would truly fall to the
Speaker 1: cammarriage at that moment in time, but she certainly felt
Speaker 1: that something, something terrible was on the horizon. My mom
Speaker 1: gave birth to five children, one of whom her second child,
Speaker 1: died as a baby. All of my parents children were
Speaker 1: born with a midwife at home, but something different happened
Speaker 1: with me. When I was in my mother's room, she
Speaker 1: felt nothing through the course of her pregnancy, no movement,
Speaker 1: no eggs, nothing. It's almost as if I wasn't there.
Speaker 1: And she worried that this baby she was carrying was
Speaker 1: possibly dead. And so she made the decision with my
Speaker 1: father that for the first time, she would go give
Speaker 1: birth with trained professionals at the nearest clinic or hospital
Speaker 1: to where my family lived in Realm, Cambodia, also on
Speaker 1: the coast, about a twenty minute drive away. She entered
Speaker 1: the clinic, pregnant, intending to give birth, and she was
Speaker 1: absolutely convinced that something was wrong with me when I
Speaker 1: was in her room, because I wasn't moving. You know,
Speaker 1: she got zero sense that she was even pregnant at all.
Speaker 1: She only believed and was convinced that I was alive
Speaker 1: when she did give birth, and the doctor held me
Speaker 1: upside down and smacked me on the butt, and she
Speaker 1: heard a very tiny little ink, a little cry come out,
Speaker 1: and that's when she knew her baby was alive. And
Speaker 1: you were four and a half pounds when you were born.
Speaker 1: I was I was very little. My mother believes that
Speaker 1: she had about of hemorrhoids when she was pregnant with me,
Speaker 1: and she took medicine that had an alcohol base, and
Speaker 1: she believed that it was the medicine that she took
Speaker 1: this sort of left me drunk and debilitated in her
Speaker 1: womb and therefore unable to move or or not unable
Speaker 1: to move. But but that I didn't move. It's almost
Speaker 1: as if I was just, you know, sleeping, waiting for
Speaker 1: my day to arrive in the world. When she brought
Speaker 1: me back to the naval base where my family lived.
Speaker 1: My father was an accountant in the Cambodian Navy. The
Speaker 1: women of the village rushed to her to get a
Speaker 1: look at my parents latest baby, and they weren't convinced
Speaker 1: that my mother was carrying anything at home, because they
Speaker 1: didn't see me for a while until they kind of
Speaker 1: pilled back the layers of they called it Grandma, which
Speaker 1: are which are sort of like computy ubiquitous scarves. And
Speaker 1: once they peeled back the layers and saw there was
Speaker 1: indeed a baby there, everybody was satisfied. But my mom
Speaker 1: tells me, and has always told me, that I was
Speaker 1: born sort of the kind of like the rent of
Speaker 1: the family, the smallest, the weakest, the one who always
Speaker 1: got sick. And so that's the story that I believed
Speaker 1: about myself because that's the one that I heard most consistently.
Speaker 1: But this isn't the only survival story that defines Putsada's
Speaker 1: early life. When put is just a year old, it's
Speaker 1: no longer safe for the family to stay in Cambodia,
Speaker 1: and her parents, Ma and Bab decide to make their escape.
Speaker 1: During that difficult journey, puts life is very much in
Speaker 1: danger again. So in there came a point when my
Speaker 1: father went to work and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: chaos happening that day, and he was listening with his
Speaker 1: coworkers to radio communications with their headquarters in Kimbodia's capital,
Speaker 1: kunot Bing, and their colleague in kunot Bing said to them,
Speaker 1: the Communists have arrived in punot Bing. They've taken over.
Speaker 1: If you can get out, get out, go and good luck.
Speaker 1: And that was it. The radio went dead. It was
Speaker 1: April seventeen ninet and so my family rushed to the
Speaker 1: docks to escape the only way we could, which was
Speaker 1: by sea, and because of the fact that my father
Speaker 1: worked for the Kimbodi Navy, we were allowed to get
Speaker 1: on board one of four naval ships that were docked
Speaker 1: at Real Naval based on the coast of Cambodia. In addition,
Speaker 1: my father was able to go back to our neighborhood
Speaker 1: and collect other family members, and so in total there
Speaker 1: were fourteen relatives that were able to get into this
Speaker 1: boat before my father ran out of time. My parents
Speaker 1: tell me about that time that nobody on the boat,
Speaker 1: including my parents, believe that we were going to be
Speaker 1: leaving our country forever. There was always a feeling of
Speaker 1: we're just going to go out to see for a
Speaker 1: few days, wait till things calmed down. You know, with
Speaker 1: the help of the Americans, we will prevail against the communists.
Speaker 1: That was the prevailing attitude among my father and his
Speaker 1: colleagues and the military wise at the time. Well, of
Speaker 1: course that didn't happen. So suddenly these boats get thrust
Speaker 1: out to see. And these boats, they were built for
Speaker 1: a crew of sa to thirty men. Suddenly you have
Speaker 1: more than three people on board each one. The way
Speaker 1: my mother describes it, there was no room to sleep.
Speaker 1: You just kind of sat the whole time and then
Speaker 1: took turns laying down at night. On April seventeenth, n
Speaker 1: it was actually ten days to my first birthday. And
Speaker 1: from the time that I was born up until the
Speaker 1: time my family left the shores of Cambodia, I had
Speaker 1: not been doing very well healthwise. Um I was still
Speaker 1: pretty small. I had not been growing robustly in the
Speaker 1: way that my older siblings had been growing, and so
Speaker 1: by the time my family got thrust out to see,
Speaker 1: I was already a bit of a disadvantage in the
Speaker 1: sense that I was already I won't stay sick, but
Speaker 1: I was certainly, you know, in need of more nutrients
Speaker 1: than what we ended up getting on the boat. So
Speaker 1: when I turned one years old, about ten days after
Speaker 1: our escape, I stopped moving and I stopped crying. There
Speaker 1: wasn't very much to eat on the boat. There wasn't
Speaker 1: much water to drink. And you know, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: a mother who was lactating needs nourishment to continue to
Speaker 1: lactate and to provide milk for her baby. But my
Speaker 1: mother didn't have that, and so she had no milk
Speaker 1: in her breast to feed me, and so I didn't eat.
Speaker 1: And she had tried to spoon feed a canned milk
Speaker 1: into my mouth, but I wouldn't take it. I was
Speaker 1: so malnourished that I just became very life list. As
Speaker 1: my mother describes it, um I made no sounds, not
Speaker 1: even a cry on my I didn't move. She described
Speaker 1: me as being heavy, because she had been carrying me
Speaker 1: all these days um at sea already NonStop. And I
Speaker 1: remember asking her, how is that possible that a baby
Speaker 1: could be heavy, especially one who was born premature, and
Speaker 1: also a baby who was very malnourished. And I realized
Speaker 1: now looking back, that when she described me as heavy,
Speaker 1: it was perhaps more of an emotional feeling than a
Speaker 1: physical feeling that this idea and this absolute fear and
Speaker 1: terror that perhaps my baby is not going to make
Speaker 1: it on this journey. So what happened was there was
Speaker 1: a day that the captain of the ship walked across
Speaker 1: the bow and throughout other parts of the ship to
Speaker 1: sort of assess his passengers, and he came across my
Speaker 1: mother and bent low to her, and apparently, as the
Speaker 1: way my mother tells the story, looked at my mother's
Speaker 1: baby and saw that this baby looked dead to him,
Speaker 1: and he essentially told her, if your baby dies, you
Speaker 1: need to throw your baby overboard. Do you see all
Speaker 1: these passengers on this ship if you're if your baby dies,
Speaker 1: your baby is going to contaminate all these other passengers
Speaker 1: on my ship. Even though I've I've heard this story
Speaker 1: so many times, I've told this story myself so many times.
Speaker 1: I've written about this story so many times, and I
Speaker 1: still get emotional about it because I am not a mother. However,
Speaker 1: I can imagine what that moment must have been like
Speaker 1: for my mother. When somebody tells you your baby is dead,
Speaker 1: you have to get rid of this baby. It's like
Speaker 1: it's it's nightmarish, and it's like really literally the stuff
Speaker 1: of nightmares. So what does she all the captain. My
Speaker 1: mother is so clever and smart. She understood that she
Speaker 1: had to sort of find some commonality between her and
Speaker 1: the captain, and the commonality it was religion. They are Buddhist,
Speaker 1: and so she told the captain. You know, she said lok,
Speaker 1: which is a term of reverence in the language. Please
Speaker 1: let me keep my baby. We're Buddhist. Please let me
Speaker 1: keep my baby until we reach land and I can
Speaker 1: give my baby a proper burial. And that was the
Speaker 1: strategy that worked. My mother was able to keep me.
Speaker 1: When I think about it now, I can't imagine the
Speaker 1: fierce determination it must have taken my mother, just absolute
Speaker 1: steely determination. It took her to face down somebody of
Speaker 1: authority in our culture where we are always told, especially
Speaker 1: as women and girls, too respect authority. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have a right to request anything, or to
Speaker 1: talk back or anything like that. And yet she did.
Speaker 1: She did it in the name was keeping her baby
Speaker 1: and saving her baby, saving me. In Puts memoir, she
Speaker 1: quotes the poet wars on Shire who once wrote, you
Speaker 1: have to understand that no one puts their children in
Speaker 1: a boat unless the water is safer than the land.
Speaker 1: This couldn't ring truer from Ma and their tumultuous experience
Speaker 1: at sea. There is no predetermined destination. The ship docks
Speaker 1: at the naval base in Subic Bay in the Philippines.
Speaker 1: For over three weeks, Ma has seen only sea and sky.
Speaker 1: When she finally sees land, safe land, she weeps. By
Speaker 1: the time the ship docked, my mother had a single
Speaker 1: and very narrow mission in mind. She was going to
Speaker 1: do whatever she could to save me, truly, because she
Speaker 1: herself wasn't fully convinced that I was still alive. So
Speaker 1: when the ship sure as a big bay nettle base,
Speaker 1: she thrust me into the arms of the very first
Speaker 1: white man she saw, who was a soldier there on
Speaker 1: the base, And that soldier pointed her to a building
Speaker 1: with a red cross on It was the American Red Cross,
Speaker 1: and so my mother went there. My mother had no
Speaker 1: English words whatsoever to explain that her baby was sick
Speaker 1: and she needed help, and so she passed me off
Speaker 1: to the nurses there. And it was in that moment,
Speaker 1: for the very first time, that I think my mother
Speaker 1: could actually take one true deep breath because she no
Speaker 1: longer was carrying me in her arms, and that she
Speaker 1: felt safe now that she was with you know, she
Speaker 1: was in a facility of doctors and nurses that could
Speaker 1: help revive her baby, and indeed they did, you know,
Speaker 1: immediately doctors and nurses hooked me up to an IVY trip.
Speaker 1: My mother there ended up laying on the ground underneath
Speaker 1: my hospital bed and and I'm certain, out of sheer exhaustion,
Speaker 1: just fell into the deepest sleep. I just think about
Speaker 1: that time. I just can't imagine. Here's this young mother,
Speaker 1: thirty years old. She has carried her baby for three
Speaker 1: and a half weeks in the middle of the ocean,
Speaker 1: fleeing her war torn country, and unsure of what her
Speaker 1: future is, holding an issure of even where her family
Speaker 1: is going to end up, and her single concern is
Speaker 1: keeping her baby alive. And that the moment she's able
Speaker 1: to release her baby into the arms of medical professionals,
Speaker 1: that is the moment that I could imagine, like one's
Speaker 1: body just gives in as she just the way she
Speaker 1: described it, she just you know, I can't translate the
Speaker 1: word correctly, but but them my word is a lot
Speaker 1: and I think the closest translation I could come up
Speaker 1: with is the you faint, We'll be right back put
Speaker 1: recovers at the Red Cross. And after this temporary stint
Speaker 1: in the Philippines, the family finally makes it to America.
Speaker 1: They settle in Corvallis, Oregon, where they are among the
Speaker 1: first Cambodian refugees brought into this community. There's this perfume
Speaker 1: in the air in Carvellis, Oregon that I am certain
Speaker 1: has to do with all of the crops that grow
Speaker 1: all up and down the Willamet Valley. You have strawberries
Speaker 1: and raspberries, blackberries, any kind of berry you can imagine
Speaker 1: grows in the Willamette Valley. And so every summer the
Speaker 1: air is just filled with an absolute sweetness. That is
Speaker 1: something that I think of and I smile whenever I
Speaker 1: think of my hometown. Um there in Oregon. So my family,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a I would describe our neighborhood
Speaker 1: as sort of a lower middle class neighborhood. Um, and
Speaker 1: you know, we we live. My family lived in a
Speaker 1: in a ranch style house. It was a three bedroom
Speaker 1: to bath house, constantly overrun with kids. Because not only
Speaker 1: were my parents raising myself and my siblings, but they
Speaker 1: were also raising one of my cousins and then over
Speaker 1: the years more of my cousins. Immediately, the family embarks
Speaker 1: on the project of rebuilding their lives. Those a landscape
Speaker 1: is lush and welcoming, the transition is far from seamless.
Speaker 1: Ma and Boss struggle to find work. My dad went
Speaker 1: from wearing a navy uniform with three stripes on his
Speaker 1: a pelts and feeling very proud of who he was
Speaker 1: working for the Kimbootan government, now suddenly wearing an apron
Speaker 1: and flipping burgers at our local diner in downtown Carvella
Speaker 1: Is called m Burton's Diner. And my mom she had
Speaker 1: to convince my dad to go out and find work.
Speaker 1: Because my mom is a very prideful woman and though
Speaker 1: she accepted the help of our church sponsors and Carvallis,
Speaker 1: she didn't want any anybody in America to think that
Speaker 1: we were dependent on Americans to survive. She wanted to
Speaker 1: prove that we were independent and that we could survive
Speaker 1: our our own So she worked as a janitor, scrubbing
Speaker 1: toilets and vacuuming and mopping floors at the Student Health
Speaker 1: Center at Oregon State university and it was essentially media
Speaker 1: labor when we first arrived in Carvallis, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: I never I remember growing up and not really seeing
Speaker 1: them that whole much. In essence, we were raised And
Speaker 1: when I say we, my siblings and my cousins were
Speaker 1: raised by my older sister Cineow. She was oldest in
Speaker 1: the family. She was eight years old when we escaped Cambodia,
Speaker 1: and she was the one that cooked our dinners, and
Speaker 1: she was one the baby sat us and walked us
Speaker 1: to school and whatnot. And I think that this is
Speaker 1: one of the things as a child of immigrants, but
Speaker 1: specifically a child of refugees, um that I've come to
Speaker 1: learn and appreciate and be extraordinarily grateful for for my
Speaker 1: parents is that there's that kind of silent sacrifice that
Speaker 1: parents do. You know, when one leaves one's country by force,
Speaker 1: and in the case of my family, because of a war,
Speaker 1: you end up in another country, you do absolutely whatever
Speaker 1: it takes to do to survive. Tell me a bit
Speaker 1: about them expectations culturally regarding familial duty and what it
Speaker 1: means to be a member of a family, and particularly
Speaker 1: what it means to be a female member of a
Speaker 1: family to be a daughter in my culture and my culture,
Speaker 1: when you were born and if you are born female,
Speaker 1: essentially your life is going to have one path only,
Speaker 1: and that path is that one day you are going
Speaker 1: to get ready to a command man and you are
Speaker 1: going to be a stay at home mother and or
Speaker 1: you know, work in the rice patties, if your family
Speaker 1: happens to own rice patties. But you know, for for
Speaker 1: girls and for women in Cambodia, there's no sense of agency,
Speaker 1: there's no sense of independence. It's almost as if you
Speaker 1: belong to the men in your family. It's a very
Speaker 1: patriarchical society in that way. And so in America that
Speaker 1: was really difficult. Indeed, it was a culture clash in
Speaker 1: my family and specifically for my parents and even more
Speaker 1: specifically for my mother, because so much of what America
Speaker 1: is for for being a woman is different than how
Speaker 1: it is to be a woman in Cambodia. And so
Speaker 1: on the one hand, though my mother went out and
Speaker 1: worked outside of the home, she wore pants, she ended
Speaker 1: up learning how to drive, She did all of these
Speaker 1: things that my women don't do in Cambodia. But we
Speaker 1: were not in Cambodia. We were in America and they
Speaker 1: were starting new lives, and so she understood she had
Speaker 1: to operate in a different way. However, she still held
Speaker 1: onto those cultural codes of what it means to be
Speaker 1: a girl in my culture, because that's the way that
Speaker 1: she raised my sisters and I. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I grew up hearing as well as my sisters
Speaker 1: was one day, when you grow up, you're going to
Speaker 1: have a husband, and when you do, you have to
Speaker 1: have a hot meal ready for him when he gets
Speaker 1: home from work. I'll never forget that. She told us
Speaker 1: that so many times. It just steered into my into
Speaker 1: my entire being, and so I had a very narrow
Speaker 1: vision of what it meant to be a my daughter.
Speaker 1: And at the time, one of the things that's so
Speaker 1: hard is that an American culture, in American society, it's
Speaker 1: already hard enough to be a teenager and figure out
Speaker 1: how to fit in, but then to have this added
Speaker 1: complexity of being a Cambodian refugee in American society and
Speaker 1: added familial pressure and cultural pressure of adhering to and
Speaker 1: maintaining a fidelity to my own Cambodian culture while also
Speaker 1: navigating this American culture that was an extremely difficult place
Speaker 1: to be and to navigate those two worlds. It was
Speaker 1: a real challenge, and not just for me. This is
Speaker 1: something that you know is repeated with among many refugees
Speaker 1: and among many immigrants. Though Ma imposes many of these
Speaker 1: Kami conventions upon her children, she herself had flouted them
Speaker 1: when she was a teenager growing up in Cambodia. Ma
Speaker 1: was raised in a very traditional family and she was
Speaker 1: expected to fulfill all the duty of a perfectly obedient
Speaker 1: to my daughter. But she bristled, she pursued an education,
Speaker 1: and when her marriage to Put's father was arranged, she fled.
Speaker 1: She literally ran away. So she had this history of
Speaker 1: really not wanting this, but nonetheless, you know, fulfilling her duty,
Speaker 1: and that becomes a huge part of her story, and
Speaker 1: then a huge part of her story with you, that's right,
Speaker 1: and then it became my story until I met my wife. Essentially,
Speaker 1: I often feel that as a child, we come across
Speaker 1: these moments in our lives, where would we get a
Speaker 1: glimpse into our parents before they were parents, Like they
Speaker 1: were actually people, they they were young people, they were
Speaker 1: kids also, they had dreams, they had ambitions. You know,
Speaker 1: they fought with their parents away. You know I fought
Speaker 1: with my parents. You know, they were their own people,
Speaker 1: because when I'm when I was growing up, I only
Speaker 1: ever sought my parents as just parents. And so there's
Speaker 1: this whole other life that they had before they had
Speaker 1: children and before they made a family together. And so
Speaker 1: for my mom, when I learned a story about how
Speaker 1: she ran away because she didn't want to get married
Speaker 1: in an arranged marriage, what I understood about her was that,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, all this time I felt that my
Speaker 1: mom and I had been always in conflict with each other,
Speaker 1: always fighting with each other, and all this time I
Speaker 1: thought it was because we were so different, when in fact,
Speaker 1: what that story tells me, the story of my mother
Speaker 1: running away rather than getting married, is that we are
Speaker 1: actually so similar. And when you were a kid growing
Speaker 1: up and your mother was saying, really, essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: your job is to marry my man and have a
Speaker 1: hut dinner ready for him at the table, you didn't
Speaker 1: know any of this. And you know, I think our
Speaker 1: parents often protect us from this knowledge, or protect themselves
Speaker 1: from our having this knowledge when we're children. That's right,
Speaker 1: In addition to secrecy. Put also grows up amidst violence.
Speaker 1: Bah her father has a temper, but it's not until
Speaker 1: well into her adulthood that Put realizes why he was
Speaker 1: so often angry after enduring the war and trauma of
Speaker 1: escaping Cambodia. Like so many survivors, Bah had PTSD. I
Speaker 1: think some of wider lens about this idea of writing memoir.
Speaker 1: There's always this question that comes up of you know,
Speaker 1: what do you put in and what do you leave out?
Speaker 1: And on the topic of my father's violence, I really
Speaker 1: struggled with that because I still wanted to protect him.
Speaker 1: I still wanted to protect our family and that and
Speaker 1: that's the power of secrets. And yet a bigger part
Speaker 1: of me felt that I absolutely needed to write about
Speaker 1: my father's violence as a way in which to show
Speaker 1: how complex of a person he is, and also a
Speaker 1: way in which to show how war has a very
Speaker 1: long tail. War impacts people in such deep ways that
Speaker 1: that manifests later on and manifest across generations. And this
Speaker 1: is something that I think so much about now, especially
Speaker 1: when I see on the news the war in Ukraine
Speaker 1: and I think about, Oh my gosh, all the men
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, how many more families are going to be
Speaker 1: like mine, where the fathers don't have an outlet for
Speaker 1: their PTSD and it manifests in very violent ways, or
Speaker 1: either violence towards family members or violence towards themselves. Um
Speaker 1: and um. You know so much of what I experienced
Speaker 1: growing up with my father's short temper and his violence,
Speaker 1: and ultimately how he had a nervous breakdown and ended
Speaker 1: up being admitted into a psychiatric ward. I can look
Speaker 1: on it now as an adult and look behind me
Speaker 1: and look with compassion, But at the time, when you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of it, all I had was anger
Speaker 1: towards my father. I just felt so angry at him,
Speaker 1: like how could you hurt people you love? How could
Speaker 1: you hurt your own kids, your own wife? And that
Speaker 1: anger for me manifested in me stabbing my father with
Speaker 1: a pencil when I was four years old. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about that your weapon, your weapon was a
Speaker 1: number two pencil, exactly, and and intervening in the dynamic
Speaker 1: between your parents, intervening in the violence between your parents
Speaker 1: as a four year old. Yeah, I had to stop it.
Speaker 1: You know. I have always felt that my duty was
Speaker 1: to protect my mother. It's something that I felt was
Speaker 1: an intrinsic part of me that I was I was
Speaker 1: put on this earth to protect my mother, and that
Speaker 1: indeed also she was put on this earth to protect me.
Speaker 1: And so in that sense there was always existing this
Speaker 1: very symbiotic relationship between us and or you know, one
Speaker 1: would say co dependence, which is also very true. The
Speaker 1: difference between my relationship with my mother and my siblings
Speaker 1: relationship with our mother is that story on the boat
Speaker 1: and the fact that my mother saved me, because what
Speaker 1: it meant was that, already being female in my culture,
Speaker 1: I was saddled with this notion of debt and duty
Speaker 1: I just culturally being female in Cambodia. On top of
Speaker 1: that we add the extra dimension of the fact that
Speaker 1: my mother saved me. It just compounded my sense of
Speaker 1: duty to my mother that I owed her everything. I
Speaker 1: thought at one point I owed her my life, and
Speaker 1: so in essence, I felt like every action that I
Speaker 1: made had to do with protecting her, preserving our relationship,
Speaker 1: preserving our reputation, making her happy. Everything that I did
Speaker 1: was focused on her. And in that kind of dynamic,
Speaker 1: there's no me what a profound and telling way of
Speaker 1: viewing oneself there's no me in this dynamic. As a
Speaker 1: young girl put struggles with her identity, she doesn't have
Speaker 1: language for it. Who is she? I think I knew
Speaker 1: since I was a little girl that I was different.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the vocabulary. I didn't know the word
Speaker 1: gay back then, but I knew it was different. I
Speaker 1: knew that I liked girls in a different way than
Speaker 1: I liked boys. And yet, because I was so confused
Speaker 1: by that feeling, I did absolutely everything that I could
Speaker 1: to tamp that feeling down because I just thought it
Speaker 1: was just it was so weird, and it was very
Speaker 1: disorienting to me because I thought, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: supposed to like why why do I feel something, you know,
Speaker 1: beyond liking, you know, my female friends? What is this
Speaker 1: other feeling that I'm feeling? And it was kind of
Speaker 1: just this. I can barely articulate and describe it other
Speaker 1: than to say it was just this depth of emotion
Speaker 1: for certain female friends I had when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: That and I did not have that feeling at all
Speaker 1: towards boys. And you know, I could look back on
Speaker 1: and out so obvious I was crushing out on, you know,
Speaker 1: my my girlfriends. When I was a kid. But then
Speaker 1: there was another piece of it to I understood I
Speaker 1: was different. My siblings, they always used to call me
Speaker 1: tomboy because I dressed like my brother. I wore jeans
Speaker 1: and T shirts always. I hated wearing a dress. I
Speaker 1: still do now. But where things really I think I
Speaker 1: sort of became clear to me, or a feeling that
Speaker 1: got really worded in me, was when my mom also
Speaker 1: started calling me tomboy. My siblings and my mother saw
Speaker 1: who I was before I saw who I was. I
Speaker 1: felt who I was, but I couldn't see and admit
Speaker 1: who I was, which is that I was gay. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things where when I look back
Speaker 1: what we do to try to figure out our own identities,
Speaker 1: it's almost like that there's a self sabotage. I just
Speaker 1: didn't know that there were things I hid for myself.
Speaker 1: There were things about myself that I didn't want to acknowledge.
Speaker 1: And then and the big thing was that the fact
Speaker 1: that I was gay, and so that was a secret
Speaker 1: that I that I kept to myself, even when I
Speaker 1: did have the word for what I was feeling toward women.
Speaker 1: And do you attribute that to what it was going
Speaker 1: to mean? For your mother to know that. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: knew that if I were to admit in my family
Speaker 1: with my mother that I was gay, it was going
Speaker 1: to cause a rupture, an unbelievable rupture that that we
Speaker 1: may never recover from. I was certain of that, Um,
Speaker 1: and indeed the rupture did happen. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment with more family secrets. Put is sixteen years
Speaker 1: old and her family has opened up their home to
Speaker 1: over a dozen relatives from Cambodia who had survived the
Speaker 1: genocide and fled. The house is just full of traumatized
Speaker 1: family members, all of whom have, as Put describes it,
Speaker 1: genocide eyes, eyes that are glassy and opaque, eyes that
Speaker 1: taken no light and let none out either. This is
Speaker 1: the year her mother takes her on a trip to Cambodia.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what was about to happen. I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about my country. I grew up an
Speaker 1: American kid, and so at the tail end of that trip,
Speaker 1: when suddenly there was a line of young men outside
Speaker 1: our hotel door with their mother's asking my mother to
Speaker 1: issentially set up their sons in an arranged marriage with me. Um,
Speaker 1: I was just absolutely filled with panic, And suddenly I
Speaker 1: was thrust into the scenario where there were these young
Speaker 1: men my age, my men, I should just call them
Speaker 1: what they were, teenagers, they were boys. I was a
Speaker 1: girl waiting to, you know, have their mother's marry marry
Speaker 1: them off to me. I grew suspicious of my mother
Speaker 1: because I thought, oh, my gosh, is this why she
Speaker 1: brought me with her? Is this why she chose me
Speaker 1: to come to Cambodia. Is she's going to leave me
Speaker 1: here to get in and marry me off? And she
Speaker 1: didn't do that. That it certainly sparked a deep fear
Speaker 1: of me. Looking back, I can't say that that was
Speaker 1: part of the grooming, that that was part of the
Speaker 1: conditioning that you were going to grow up and marrying
Speaker 1: a commin. And this trip triggers something input and when
Speaker 1: they return home, she begins running away. Of course, put
Speaker 1: doesn't know this at the time, but running away is
Speaker 1: what her mother had done too all those years ago.
Speaker 1: Running away is part of her inheritance. When she graduates
Speaker 1: from high school, she runs to college, where she continues
Speaker 1: to struggle with her identity. She is recognizing that she
Speaker 1: has feelings for women, but she stifles the feelings, and
Speaker 1: so she runs away again, this time from her very self.
Speaker 1: She busies herself to the point of exhaustion, anything to
Speaker 1: avoid her truths. That was a really hard time in
Speaker 1: my life, you know, when when I got to college.
Speaker 1: I think because of the family in which I came from,
Speaker 1: I was already used to working, and not just working,
Speaker 1: but overworking, and so I really overextended myself by trying
Speaker 1: to graduate college in three years at the University of Oregon.
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of pressure in that. But
Speaker 1: also there was a pressure building inside of me that
Speaker 1: I knew I was gay. I knew I had attractions
Speaker 1: towards um, towards women, and towards female friends in particular,
Speaker 1: and yet I didn't know how to express that. I
Speaker 1: felt like I couldn't be who I was because if
Speaker 1: I were to admit that, the consequences in my family
Speaker 1: would be too severe. And so in college I tried
Speaker 1: to outrun my own feelings by overworking myself. I had
Speaker 1: two part time jobs, I took the maximum number of
Speaker 1: class credits that I could um at school. I just
Speaker 1: did everything I could to not think about this deeply
Speaker 1: unsettling feeling in myself that I was gay, and um,
Speaker 1: what I realized only looking back is that how foolish, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we can never outrun ourselves, we can never outrun who
Speaker 1: we truly are. Um, it's going to come up at
Speaker 1: some point and we're going to have to face it.
Speaker 1: And indeed I did and and had to and wanted to.
Speaker 1: I think that part of one search for identity is
Speaker 1: wanting to be free ultimately, and I wanted to be free.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to get there. I didn't know
Speaker 1: if I would have the courage to live as I am,
Speaker 1: as being you know, lesbian, as being gay, but I
Speaker 1: definitely wanted to get there because it was so heavy.
Speaker 1: That's it's interesting that word, you just use it heavy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You write at one point that perfectionism was the price
Speaker 1: for affection with your mother, And you know, it just
Speaker 1: strikes me that you were gay. You knew you were gay.
Speaker 1: You wanted to be able to fully live. You know
Speaker 1: who you were and who you are and what you're
Speaker 1: You know what your desires are and what your identity is,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe just maybe if you did everything
Speaker 1: else perfectly, maybe that would be okay, that's exactly right. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought if I could be perfect, that that would
Speaker 1: be enough for my mother, that I would shine enough
Speaker 1: to balance out this ugly truth about me, which is
Speaker 1: that my mother had a gay child. When Put graduates
Speaker 1: from college, she pursues journalism. She quickly has success in
Speaker 1: the field, and by her early twenties, she's working as
Speaker 1: a professional journalist and writer. When she's twenty five, considered
Speaker 1: really old in her culture, Put makes a second trip
Speaker 1: to Cambodia with Ma. Given her geriatric age of Put
Speaker 1: receives a lot of pressure on this trip. Nobody in
Speaker 1: the family understands why she's not yet married to her
Speaker 1: husband and cooking him dinner. When I was a teenager
Speaker 1: years earlier, meeting my cousins for the first time, we
Speaker 1: were all the same age and they were working the
Speaker 1: rice patties. I was working in the strawberry fields of Carvals, Oregon.
Speaker 1: But then flash forward and I go on my second
Speaker 1: trip to Cambodia, and I am twenty five years old, unmarried,
Speaker 1: and yet here are my the same cousins. They are married,
Speaker 1: toting babies on their hips, and they thought, what is
Speaker 1: wrong with you, Put, Like, do you have a They'll
Speaker 1: never forget all my cousins crowded around me and just
Speaker 1: started peaching me questions, do you have a husband, don't
Speaker 1: you have children? How old are you now? And I
Speaker 1: think that that actually, that trip brought a fair amount
Speaker 1: of shame to my mother, because I saw my mother
Speaker 1: making excuses, um, to my relatives of why I was
Speaker 1: not married and why I did not have children, and
Speaker 1: she was saying, you know, put, she's got a career,
Speaker 1: she's a journalist, and you know she'll she'll meet somebody eventually,
Speaker 1: but right now, she's focused on earning money and and
Speaker 1: saving up. She wants to buy a house. Like just
Speaker 1: the excuses were just piled on thick because she didn't
Speaker 1: know and I knew but didn't yet tell her the
Speaker 1: real reason. So when you return home, you do tell her.
Speaker 1: I did. I came out to my mother, UM when
Speaker 1: I moved to California and I wasn't dating anybody at
Speaker 1: the time, and I knew that, UM, I wanted to
Speaker 1: tell her myself that I was gay. So my mom
Speaker 1: flew down to the Bay Area where I was working
Speaker 1: to visit me one weekend, and UM, I'll never forget
Speaker 1: just how stressful that moment was, because it in my mind,
Speaker 1: it was to make it or break a moment my
Speaker 1: mother would either accept me or she would abandon me.
Speaker 1: In that moment, that's what I felt was on the
Speaker 1: line um and she did something that was unexpected when
Speaker 1: I came out to my mother, when she came down
Speaker 1: to California for a weekend visit with me, she on
Speaker 1: me for the very first time, I love you. Going Now,
Speaker 1: in my culture, we don't communicate things like I love
Speaker 1: you and I'm sorry. It's you know, the emphasis is
Speaker 1: more on actions as it is on language and expressing
Speaker 1: through language. And so that was the first time she
Speaker 1: told me I love you, and I thought, in that moment, oh,
Speaker 1: the worst didn't happen. She's actually going to accept me.
Speaker 1: And just to make absolute sure she knew what I
Speaker 1: meant when I told her I'm gay, I piled us
Speaker 1: into my Honda Civic and I drunk this across the
Speaker 1: Bay Bridge, right into the heart of the Gay districtive
Speaker 1: San Francisco and the Castro And it's just this moment
Speaker 1: that I'll never forget for all of my life, in
Speaker 1: which my mom is you know, we're going through the
Speaker 1: Castor and my mom is just seeing things that she's
Speaker 1: never seen before, including two men and leather chaps with
Speaker 1: their bare behind hanging out, and she presses her cheek
Speaker 1: to the window and points at them. And she turns
Speaker 1: to me and she says, put, put that to gay.
Speaker 1: And I said, Mom, yes, that's the gay. Stop pointing
Speaker 1: so embarrassed, And in my very naive mind, I thought,
Speaker 1: she gets it. She knows who I am now, and
Speaker 1: so I thought, Oh, we're done. Don't need to say
Speaker 1: anything else more about who I am. She's accepted me.
Speaker 1: She has seen what what gay life or gay culture is.
Speaker 1: In this one short drive we took down the castro.
Speaker 1: But actually we weren't done. We were very far from
Speaker 1: being done on the topic of me being gay. Flash
Speaker 1: forward to two and Put and Ma still aren't done
Speaker 1: getting to know one another on a deeper level. They're
Speaker 1: not estranged exactly, but they're not sharing intimate details about
Speaker 1: their lives either. Then, in this same year, gets a
Speaker 1: call from her mother a has had a heart attack.
Speaker 1: Put puts her work on hold and rushes back to
Speaker 1: Oregon to help her mother to protect her. When she's there,
Speaker 1: her mother begins to tell her stories she's never heard before,
Speaker 1: stories about whom was before she was mom before she
Speaker 1: was married and had children. When I think back on
Speaker 1: my life, I always think about it in terms of
Speaker 1: these moments where there's a before and then after, and
Speaker 1: very clearly my father's heart attack was one of those moments.
Speaker 1: There was the mother I knew before my father's heart attack,
Speaker 1: and then the mother I knew afterwards when she began
Speaker 1: to share stories about her life, and an interesting thing happened.
Speaker 1: The more she began to share stories of her life,
Speaker 1: the more I began to reflect on my own, and
Speaker 1: also that sort of magnified my own need to want
Speaker 1: to live as I am and to have much more
Speaker 1: clarity around the fact that I could try all I
Speaker 1: could to find and marry at least a man, if
Speaker 1: not a comman man, but know that in the end
Speaker 1: that would not have been my true self, that would
Speaker 1: not have been the true put rain. So I think
Speaker 1: that I did enter relationships with men trying to convince
Speaker 1: myself that I could do one last thing for my mother,
Speaker 1: which is to marry it Matt. But in the end
Speaker 1: of the day, I couldn't do it. That just wasn't me.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been happy, he wouldn't have been happy.
Speaker 1: I could tell it what you know would have been
Speaker 1: a miserable life, because who wants to live in a
Speaker 1: cage when you already know who you are? And so
Speaker 1: I think that that's when I was got back into
Speaker 1: a corner and I really had to reckon with myself
Speaker 1: and what was I going to do? How was I
Speaker 1: going to live my life? And how was I going
Speaker 1: to live it? For me? No longer for her? And
Speaker 1: it's so interesting you know what happens when finally there's
Speaker 1: no place else to go but the truth. M hmm,
Speaker 1: that's right. And by being backed into that corner, and
Speaker 1: by ironically by your mother letting you see her in
Speaker 1: more layers of her complexity, that just liberates something in you.
Speaker 1: Doesn't make it any less tortured, but it's just it
Speaker 1: liberates it, that's right. Absolutely. It's only then that put
Speaker 1: finds herself falling head over heels in love with a
Speaker 1: woman that she'd met years before, but the timing hadn't
Speaker 1: been right. Her name is April, and now they begin
Speaker 1: a relationship. They move in together, and they plan to
Speaker 1: get married, but will not be marrying a command man
Speaker 1: or a man at all. She will marry April. Finally,
Speaker 1: Put feels aligned with her identity. She and April begin
Speaker 1: to plan a large and celebratory wedding. Friends will be
Speaker 1: coming from all over the world. Puts siblings will come,
Speaker 1: but at a certain point in the planning, but realizes
Speaker 1: that her parents are not planning to be present. They
Speaker 1: know she's gay by now, but they just cannot accept
Speaker 1: the finality of her marriage to a woman. Oh, that
Speaker 1: moment left a hole in my heart. It still does.
Speaker 1: Um that whole is still there. I've reconcile that whole
Speaker 1: and I have filled that void in other ways and
Speaker 1: with other love. But it's hard when your own mother
Speaker 1: is the one who is absent at your wedding. For me,
Speaker 1: it was the most important day of my life because
Speaker 1: it was the proudest moment of my life. I had
Speaker 1: finally met somebody who I love and who I was
Speaker 1: in love with, who I felt saw me for who
Speaker 1: I am and accepted me for who I am. And
Speaker 1: what happens when you meet that person. You want to
Speaker 1: share that person with your family, you know, with your parents,
Speaker 1: and in my case, I wanted to share that joy
Speaker 1: and happiness I had with my mother and it she
Speaker 1: couldn't be happy for me. And that's when I knew.
Speaker 1: I talked about this and I and I and I
Speaker 1: still think about it, that a part of me had
Speaker 1: to die so that the rest of me could live.
Speaker 1: The part of me that had to die was the
Speaker 1: baby on the boat finally had to die, the story
Speaker 1: of the baby on the boat and what that baby represented.
Speaker 1: That part had to die so that the rest of
Speaker 1: me could live, and I could finally live for myself
Speaker 1: and find joy and happiness for myself, and not live
Speaker 1: for my mother and because of my mother. After it
Speaker 1: Puts wedding to April, she and Ma rarely speak. BA
Speaker 1: will occasionally fill her in on news when it's necessary,
Speaker 1: but in general there is very little contact for quite
Speaker 1: a while. And then in puts beloved father in law,
Speaker 1: April's father, Jimmy, is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Shortly
Speaker 1: before he dies. Put In April throw him a party
Speaker 1: at one of his favorite restaurants, a celebration of his
Speaker 1: life where he can be surrounded by family and friends.
Speaker 1: When my father in law was dying and insisted on
Speaker 1: having a party to say goodbye to people in person,
Speaker 1: um while he was still standing and walking and talking.
Speaker 1: We ended up inviting my parents. I was skeptical that
Speaker 1: they would come. My wife wanted to add minimum at
Speaker 1: least just invite them, because I had told my wife April,
Speaker 1: and only her and the subsequent years after we got married,
Speaker 1: that I would never forgive my mother if she did
Speaker 1: not meet April's father before he passed away. I could
Speaker 1: not forget that. I could forgive my parents for not
Speaker 1: coming to our wedding, but I would not forgive them
Speaker 1: if they didn't meet your dad. That's what I told April,
Speaker 1: And so April kind of took the initiative and she
Speaker 1: emailed my mom and told my mom that her father
Speaker 1: was dying and he was going to have a party
Speaker 1: and would they come um And the most surprising thing happened.
Speaker 1: I got a phone call on my cell phone the
Speaker 1: next day and it was my mom. We hadn't talked
Speaker 1: in months, and she said, April sent an email and
Speaker 1: let me know that her dad is dying. We want
Speaker 1: to join the party, but we don't know how to
Speaker 1: get to the restaurant in Portland. Even though my mom
Speaker 1: did say she wanted to go, I still wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if she was going to show, whether she and my
Speaker 1: dad were going to show up, and so similar to
Speaker 1: what happened at my wedding. UM, I sort of glanced
Speaker 1: up now and again to look at the door to see, if,
Speaker 1: you know, they were going to walk through. And at
Speaker 1: just the moment when I was going to give up
Speaker 1: and think, oh, you know, they're not gonna They're going
Speaker 1: to be no shows, just as they were at my wedding, UM,
Speaker 1: there was a bit of a fuss at the foyer,
Speaker 1: and I saw April over at the foyer of the restaurant,
Speaker 1: and then I quickly saw, you know, I saw my
Speaker 1: father in law quickly making his way over with my
Speaker 1: mother in law, and next thing I knew, my parents
Speaker 1: and my in laws were all hugging. And it's a
Speaker 1: moment that when I think back over the course of
Speaker 1: the years and the moments, the hard moments, and the
Speaker 1: and the tender moments, that single moment of tenderness did
Speaker 1: so much to call me and soothe me and kind
Speaker 1: of rekindle the compassion I have for my mother, because
Speaker 1: I also have to think about what it took for
Speaker 1: her to make the decision to come, knowing that we
Speaker 1: had been in conflict over me marrying a woman that
Speaker 1: she did not accept having a gay daughter, and yet
Speaker 1: here she was meeting my in laws. It was a
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable moment. It's so astonishing when I think about it.
Speaker 1: They were so much emotion that went into that moment,
Speaker 1: both for my father in law and mother in law,
Speaker 1: as well as my parents and and everybody else. My
Speaker 1: wife and I continue to care for my father in
Speaker 1: law for another month. He passed one month after that party.
Speaker 1: And in the past, my mom was always the person
Speaker 1: that I would call if I had good news, up
Speaker 1: until the point of our rupture when I decided I
Speaker 1: was going to marry a woman. Up until that point,
Speaker 1: I always called my mom. If I got a promotion
Speaker 1: at work, if I got an award in journalism, any
Speaker 1: good news, I would call her. When my father in
Speaker 1: law passed, I picked up the phone and I didn't call,
Speaker 1: but I texted my mother. She was the first that
Speaker 1: I thought to contact, and all I texted her was
Speaker 1: he has gone and and she texted me back three words.
Speaker 1: She texted me Matt sorry. And so in that moment,
Speaker 1: I understood we can begin again. The old relationship that
Speaker 1: my mom and I had needed to die so that
Speaker 1: a new relationship could be reborn in its place, And
Speaker 1: that's sort of where I'm at now with her, is
Speaker 1: just trying to navigate a new relationship that's really beautiful. Put,
Speaker 1: really really beautiful. She had to be careful there. I
Speaker 1: felt the tears coming up. Yeah, and me too. Here's
Speaker 1: put reading one final passage from her resonant memoir, Ma
Speaker 1: and Me. As I drove north out of their subdivision,
Speaker 1: past the same farm fields I had come to know
Speaker 1: by heart, I felt a pounding between my ears. That
Speaker 1: pounding traveled down in my body like a shot, piercing
Speaker 1: that place in my heart. While had stockpiled pride, confidence
Speaker 1: and self acceptance to buffer against a perennial depression that
Speaker 1: always managed to sling me straight to the edge, the
Speaker 1: realization I had was so clear. I cried. I had
Speaker 1: lived my life a slave to sound good, but I
Speaker 1: could never repay my mother. There is a moment when
Speaker 1: you realize you are not the same person as your mother,
Speaker 1: and yet the things she taught you, the imprint she
Speaker 1: left remains. I no longer have moths food to go
Speaker 1: home too, because I no longer could go home. So
Speaker 1: back in Seattle, when I finally stopped crying, I went
Speaker 1: to the kitchen and started cooking and didn't stop for
Speaker 1: days and then weeks. Mats Montra repeated in my head
Speaker 1: as I chopped, diced, and stirred. Always have a hotmail
Speaker 1: ready for your husband. I substituted the word wife her husband,
Speaker 1: and flourished ahead. If I could no longer go home
Speaker 1: to eat moths food, I would make it for myself
Speaker 1: and the woman I loved. Family Secrets is a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Molly's Core is the story editor
Speaker 1: and Dylan Fagin is the executive producer. If you have
Speaker 1: a family secret you'd like to share, please leave us
Speaker 1: a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode.
Speaker 1: Our number is one eight Secret zero. That's the number zero.
Speaker 1: You can also find me on Instagram at Danny writer.
Speaker 1: And if you'd like to know more about the story
Speaker 1: that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.