Speaker 1: Family Secrets as a production of I Heart Radio Morning.
Speaker 1: This episode contains discussion of abuse and suicide. Listener discussion
Speaker 1: is advised. My childhood was very difficult. I share. One
Speaker 1: of my first memories with my mother is sitting on
Speaker 1: our knees by the sofa and my stepdad told me
Speaker 1: to watch your fingernails and if our fingernails turned blue,
Speaker 1: to call on one one. So it was very traumatic.
Speaker 1: It's one of my early memories. I was in elementary
Speaker 1: school and I remember growing up and you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to invite friends over because I was ashamed
Speaker 1: of the way we lived and I didn't want anyone
Speaker 1: to know how my life really was. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to be normal and pretend everything was okay. And I
Speaker 1: didn't want them to come in the kitchen and turn
Speaker 1: on a light, because when you turn the lights on,
Speaker 1: you know, you see a gazillion roaches running everywhere, scattering.
Speaker 1: That's Venus Maurice Griffin, single mother of seven, award winning
Speaker 1: real estate agent and motivational speaker. Venuses is a story
Speaker 1: of almost superhuman resilience and discipline, an homage to the
Speaker 1: notion that where there's a will, there's a way. Away
Speaker 1: out a way through a harrowing childhood that threatened to
Speaker 1: repeat itself as such childhoods often do, often but not always.
Speaker 1: Above all, this is one woman's journey from violence, secrecy,
Speaker 1: and shame to a life filled with grace and love.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and this secrets we keep from ourselves. I had a
Speaker 1: stepfather who was a an alcoholic, very very scared of him,
Speaker 1: and um, he was very abusive in many ways to
Speaker 1: me and my siblings, have a half brother and half sister,
Speaker 1: and my brother ended up in a maximum security prison.
Speaker 1: You know, we all do with trauma differently, and he
Speaker 1: could never get past the cycle of abuse and poor
Speaker 1: choices which led him down this dark life of crime.
Speaker 1: And my sister, the last time I saw her, she
Speaker 1: was at the State Mental Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina,
Speaker 1: trying to convince me that she was walking there vertusipatient
Speaker 1: and lost her children very young age. Hasn't seen them,
Speaker 1: probably in twenty five plus years. And uh, she was
Speaker 1: a good soul, but just could not process everything that
Speaker 1: had happened to her. And you know, my mother was
Speaker 1: married prior to my stepfather, and I always thought he
Speaker 1: was my biological father, along with my half brother and
Speaker 1: half sister. I thought the three of us were all
Speaker 1: full siblings. And the trauma that we went through living
Speaker 1: with him, I don't I was young, but so I
Speaker 1: don't remember a lot of it. But I do remember
Speaker 1: one story in particular. My sister was telling me that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, he would throw them in the closet and
Speaker 1: threw firecrackers at I'm gonna hold the door. I mean
Speaker 1: he'd have ten locks on the door, like all the
Speaker 1: way down the doorway, and he'd locked on one, two
Speaker 1: or three, you know, for safety. Just those memories that
Speaker 1: are just burned into your mind that you can you
Speaker 1: can never forget. So I would say my childhood was very,
Speaker 1: very difficult, and you know the hardest part was sorting through,
Speaker 1: Like I really adored my mother. I loved my mother.
Speaker 1: I still love my mother. There's a lot of good
Speaker 1: about my mother, just telling what I went through and
Speaker 1: what I had to overcome to get to a good
Speaker 1: place to hopefully help others. But you know, just watching
Speaker 1: her go in and out of rehabs for alcohol abuse
Speaker 1: and prescription drug abuse, and being called to the principle's
Speaker 1: office when you're in grammar school and finding out that
Speaker 1: your mom's just been arrested and she tried to put
Speaker 1: her head in and told it to kill herself at
Speaker 1: the police station, and having people tell you that, and
Speaker 1: just you know, feeling alone and like you have no one,
Speaker 1: and and knowing that everyone around you has basically thrown
Speaker 1: the towel in on you. They just they're given up.
Speaker 1: They know you're going to be a stat just like
Speaker 1: my brother and sister. They know that your chances of
Speaker 1: getting out of this life are slender none. And my
Speaker 1: determination as a young child to not be like everyone
Speaker 1: around me was great. Venus makes the conscious decision during
Speaker 1: her adolescence to surround herself with good people. She studies
Speaker 1: the seemingly happy, healthy families around her and patterns her
Speaker 1: life after them. In the absence of role models within
Speaker 1: her family, she seeks her own. She and her friends
Speaker 1: don't drink or do drugs the way her mother and
Speaker 1: siblings do. She's creating a map for her future, or
Speaker 1: so she hopes. High school Sweetheart, his family was just
Speaker 1: so good. I just remember looking at them and going
Speaker 1: to their house and being so scared that they were
Speaker 1: going to find out what I came from. But watching
Speaker 1: them and how they genuinely loved each other and they
Speaker 1: respected each other, and they all went to church together,
Speaker 1: and then they actually practiced what they preached, and it
Speaker 1: just was my saving grace because I had to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to be like him. But I didn't
Speaker 1: know how to do that. But again, I knew what
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do, which is to be like
Speaker 1: my brother or my sister, or my or my mother.
Speaker 1: I wasn't like a straight A student by any means.
Speaker 1: I was probably a average say student. I never had
Speaker 1: someone to look at my grade, to my report carder
Speaker 1: to see how I was doing. I never had someone
Speaker 1: to care. Changed high schools I think six or seven
Speaker 1: times within three years, and I know I had to
Speaker 1: get out of my home life, um if I wanted
Speaker 1: to do better. And so I went to summer school
Speaker 1: to take an English class because I figured out I
Speaker 1: had enough credits that I could skip my senior year
Speaker 1: in high school and go straight to college. So that's
Speaker 1: what I did. You know, I've pretty much been on
Speaker 1: my own, I guess probably since I was fourteen, I
Speaker 1: say I was on the verge of homelessness because I
Speaker 1: was just living from you know, with friends and my
Speaker 1: sister and my mom and in between beinges. It was
Speaker 1: just it was just a tough life. But all at
Speaker 1: the same time, I was joyful. I was happy, I
Speaker 1: was grateful. I never looked at my life and thought
Speaker 1: what was me. I never looked at you know, many
Speaker 1: of my friends, a few of them were privileged. I
Speaker 1: never looked at them and wanted what they had. I
Speaker 1: just knew that I wanted something differently than I had.
Speaker 1: Venus is incentivized to emerge for her traumatic upbringing. Her
Speaker 1: hard work in school pays off, and she goes to college,
Speaker 1: the first two years at a private Baptist college, then
Speaker 1: she transfers to the University of South Carolina her junior year.
Speaker 1: There she meets Tripp, who was five years older and
Speaker 1: getting ready to graduate. They meet on a blind date,
Speaker 1: and about a year and a half later, they get
Speaker 1: married to No. Trip was to love Trip. He was dynamic,
Speaker 1: he was fun, he was smart, he was good looking.
Speaker 1: You know, he was president of his fraternity. They called
Speaker 1: him the Killer. That was his nickname. All of us
Speaker 1: her trinity brothers just really reveled around him. You walk
Speaker 1: in the room, he's the shining star. You know, he
Speaker 1: lit the room up. He gravitated to him. He was
Speaker 1: a great dancer, he was funny um, and he was
Speaker 1: so good to me. He made me feel like I
Speaker 1: was the only person in the world when we were together.
Speaker 1: He made everyone feel like that. He had a gift
Speaker 1: with children. You know, we would be around his family
Speaker 1: and his nieces and his nephews and he's pulling him
Speaker 1: on a tractor behind with you know, fifteen kids and
Speaker 1: a buggy behind it. He was just dynamic, and he
Speaker 1: had really great qualities that made people naturally gravitate towards him.
Speaker 1: This natural gravitation toward Trip happens just about everywhere with
Speaker 1: his family, his friends, and at school where he's on
Speaker 1: the football team. He's universally liked and likable. But on
Speaker 1: the night before Trip and Venus get married, an unsettling
Speaker 1: feeling sinks in. In addition to his effervescence, Trip has
Speaker 1: a dark side. He rages at Venus in front of
Speaker 1: the family, and she has a thought, a thought so
Speaker 1: many have had on the eve of their weddings. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got the dress and everything's been paid for in
Speaker 1: the band is coming, and you had the thought that
Speaker 1: you shouldn't marry him. Yeah, I knew that I should
Speaker 1: not marry him, and that was not normal behavior, but
Speaker 1: I just was so deep into it, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, he's got stress on him, and I'm
Speaker 1: overreacting and like everybody's coming, and you know, I just
Speaker 1: tucked it underneath my stomach and I just said I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do this and pretendingly nothing happened. You would have
Speaker 1: looked at us and thought we were the happiest couple
Speaker 1: in the world. If Venus's childhood has prepared her for anything,
Speaker 1: it's to pretend everything is okay. So that's what she
Speaker 1: does when she has misgivings about the marriage, and over
Speaker 1: the next several years, the pretending becomes reality. Venus and
Speaker 1: Trip don't just look happy, they really are. Venus has
Speaker 1: always longed for unconditional love, a growing family. She has
Speaker 1: four kids within the first five years of her marriage,
Speaker 1: and a kind of familial stability, and now she has it.
Speaker 1: She's convinced that she's not repeating the history of her
Speaker 1: fraud childhood. She has a strong family unit, a strong
Speaker 1: faith and which he believes to be a strong, trusting partnership.
Speaker 1: Trip is a great father. He's super active in the
Speaker 1: church and in the kids schools and sports. He and
Speaker 1: Venus have lunch together every day. But something else is
Speaker 1: going on with Trip too. There's that dark side. Trip
Speaker 1: struggles with mental illness, and soon he becomes abusive. I
Speaker 1: think he was diagnosed with a polar disorder and maybe
Speaker 1: a few other things, and he was on medication, and
Speaker 1: he would have Tim's when he was medicated properly, that
Speaker 1: he would do really well, and it was like he
Speaker 1: was straight from heaven. And then he'd stopped taking his
Speaker 1: medicine or his medicine would need to be tweaked, and
Speaker 1: he would get really abusive and go under rages where
Speaker 1: he would threatened to kill himself. You know, he would.
Speaker 1: One time he said he tried to hang himself in
Speaker 1: the little cabin next door to ours, and he pushed
Speaker 1: me into a bathtub. I don't think he meant to
Speaker 1: hurt me hurt me, but um, you know, I just remember,
Speaker 1: like I thought I broke my back. I thought he'd
Speaker 1: really done some permanent like I couldn't walk, you know,
Speaker 1: I was like hunched over, and you know, he goes
Speaker 1: out in the yard and gets a gun and she said,
Speaker 1: I think he's killed himself. You know, I find him
Speaker 1: out in the yard. But he was so remorseful after,
Speaker 1: like just crying and begging and just please to help him,
Speaker 1: and just how much he loved me, and that I
Speaker 1: was the only person in the world he had. His
Speaker 1: dad is remarried and he has a wonderful stepmother, but
Speaker 1: his biological mother died in her late forties with clerosis
Speaker 1: of the liver, and she battled alcoholism and I think
Speaker 1: some mental issues and drugs, and you know, he would
Speaker 1: just say he had no one. You know, I was
Speaker 1: the only person he had, and and I wanted to
Speaker 1: keep my family together at all costs. You know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't I didn't intend on staying in an abusive marriage.
Speaker 1: I just thought that I could fix him, and you
Speaker 1: you can't fix someone else. And I know that now
Speaker 1: i'm which is part of the reason I share the story.
Speaker 1: You you can only fix yourself. You know, we had
Speaker 1: many good years and even when the times were really
Speaker 1: really bad, you know, whenever the abuse would get really
Speaker 1: really bad, he would always be remorseful and beg for
Speaker 1: forgiveness and tell me how much you loved me, and
Speaker 1: how much he wanted to keep our family together, and
Speaker 1: how he was going to be better, and he just
Speaker 1: he was mentally sick, and he was you know, if
Speaker 1: I would stand by him, that we had the best
Speaker 1: family ever, and I believed him. I believed him, and
Speaker 1: I did that. As bad as Trip was, it was
Speaker 1: better than when I came from My mother told me
Speaker 1: when I married Trip that I would be divorced within
Speaker 1: a year, and I was hell bent on proving her wrong.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. In addition to the vile mood swings,
Speaker 1: there are other red flags. There's suddenly a lot of debt,
Speaker 1: Trip is overspending, and his financial decisions grand gestures included
Speaker 1: are draining the family income. Venus decides to get her
Speaker 1: real estate license so she can contribute financially. She begins
Speaker 1: selling houses, and her first commission check is around five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. She's positioned to make about twenty dollars a year,
Speaker 1: so just enough to help bolster the family's finances, but
Speaker 1: not enough to support their large family. When Venus goes
Speaker 1: to real estate school, she's pregnant with their sixth child,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be a mom. Prior to my
Speaker 1: first child, I wanted to be in an attorney and
Speaker 1: be in the corporate world. But once I had my
Speaker 1: first child, and that's a whole another story, we trip
Speaker 1: could not have children. He had um an undistended testicle
Speaker 1: that was a tumor, and so as a result, when
Speaker 1: we got married, I still at the hope, of course
Speaker 1: we could have children naturally, but we could not, and
Speaker 1: so we had a donor for the six alter in
Speaker 1: the same dinner. So my first child, it took me
Speaker 1: eight inseminations to to get pregnant, and the second one
Speaker 1: it took me. For the third one it took me too,
Speaker 1: and then um fourth, one, fifth, one, and six when
Speaker 1: I got pregnant on the first insemination. And so when
Speaker 1: I had my children, I had a whole different value
Speaker 1: system that I had grown up thinking I wanted to
Speaker 1: be this corporate person who was just knocking out of
Speaker 1: the business world. I wanted to be a mom. Like
Speaker 1: I realized how precious this life was. In that like,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to help these children have everything that
Speaker 1: I never had, which is a loving, stable family and
Speaker 1: a mom that was dependable, and that you know, had
Speaker 1: their back and that they could respect and look up to.
Speaker 1: And when I got my license, it wasn't long after that,
Speaker 1: but my life can crumbling down. But I just remember
Speaker 1: telling the broker when I interviewed at may Bam, which
Speaker 1: is the company I'm slant, I said, listen, don't pressure
Speaker 1: me to make a lot of money. I'm here to
Speaker 1: make the minimum this company requires for me to keep
Speaker 1: my license here, which was twenty dollars a year. That's
Speaker 1: all I'm gonna make. And I didn't know the storm.
Speaker 1: I was about the weather. I never in a million
Speaker 1: years dreamed that I would need to take over my
Speaker 1: husband's role as the financial breadwinner in the house. But
Speaker 1: soon she will be solely responsible financially and otherwise for
Speaker 1: herself and her six children. One night, shortly after she
Speaker 1: has sold a few properties, she's at home nursing her youngest.
Speaker 1: Trip is away, trip is often away, and she received
Speaker 1: the phone call from a woman at a hotel. So
Speaker 1: the phone rings, and I'll never forget this girl was
Speaker 1: on the line and she Sabrina's, my name is Jamie,
Speaker 1: and I'm calling to tell you what an awful man
Speaker 1: you're married to. And she went on to tell me
Speaker 1: other stuff, and I was like, I didn't believe her.
Speaker 1: I was in shock. And she said enough things where
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I need to meet her. And so
Speaker 1: I woke my son up and I said, you know, John,
Speaker 1: can you watch her siblings? Listen up for your other ones?
Speaker 1: And I gotta go meet with this lady. So I
Speaker 1: got up and I'll never forget. I was driving on
Speaker 1: Washington Road, which is where the hotel was at, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking that she was lying. You know, I
Speaker 1: was making every excuse for my husband like I always
Speaker 1: did with everything, because there had been no signs of
Speaker 1: him being unfaithful. And um, I get to the hotel,
Speaker 1: I'll turn in there. I knock on the door and
Speaker 1: I'll never forget. She comes to the door and she's
Speaker 1: kind of fidgeting, and she's younger than me, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty small and and she was, I mean, she
Speaker 1: was very small and just looked fragile. And so she
Speaker 1: opens the door and I come in and sit on
Speaker 1: the bed and she's using the very descriptive language how
Speaker 1: awful trip is and everything that he's done, and you know,
Speaker 1: telling me he was a big man on campus all
Speaker 1: these women, you know, pretty much taken everything we had
Speaker 1: and the credit card. She said, these women want to
Speaker 1: go to Walmart with it, and just Trip was a
Speaker 1: big man, and they just cleaned us out and like
Speaker 1: all the kids to count. Everything we had was gone,
Speaker 1: and we didn't have a lot of money, but what
Speaker 1: we had was gone. So then she starts showing me
Speaker 1: photos on her phone. At that point I knew she
Speaker 1: was not lying, because she's telling me things that Trip
Speaker 1: was actually doing to me when he would get in
Speaker 1: his rages, that he was doing to her. And I
Speaker 1: think maybe she fell in love with him, because she
Speaker 1: said towards the end she wasn't even charging him per sect.
Speaker 1: But she showed me his phone and you know pictures
Speaker 1: Trip and compromise positions and naked without clothes. You know,
Speaker 1: one particular photo was driving on the road like with
Speaker 1: his pants down with an erection and just like smiling
Speaker 1: for the picture. I'm like what, And so then I
Speaker 1: knew she was honest. And and I tell this, people
Speaker 1: are amazed. But I just looked in her eyes and
Speaker 1: I just felt this connection to her. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't hate her. I was just trying to get out
Speaker 1: of my tragedy, and she had not figured out how
Speaker 1: to get out of her tragedy, and I guess I
Speaker 1: hadn't either, but I was trying. I just connected with her,
Speaker 1: and um, she wanted to me to give her money
Speaker 1: for a bus to get thinking back to it ly,
Speaker 1: and I think and because the trip was supposedly starting
Speaker 1: to kill her, which I believe. And so I wrote
Speaker 1: her a check for like a hundred dollars and I
Speaker 1: told her, Sai, Jamie, the money is not in the
Speaker 1: bank right now, I said, so give me a few days.
Speaker 1: I've got a close in this week, and once it's
Speaker 1: in the bank, then you can cash it. I said,
Speaker 1: but if you try to cash it now, they're going
Speaker 1: to reject it. They're gonna balance it. And she called
Speaker 1: me like every day for the next week until I
Speaker 1: had the money in there, and then I told her, yes,
Speaker 1: she can cash it. So then of course she cashed it.
Speaker 1: And I've never heard from her again, but I'll look
Speaker 1: back now, and I think how I felt to her.
Speaker 1: I just felt compassion, and I felt really sorry for
Speaker 1: and and I don't understand really fully myself, because you
Speaker 1: just basically, you know what she told me, just stript
Speaker 1: my entire life for me, I guess in handsight, she
Speaker 1: did me a favor. She was a messenger. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: then my journey changed. And I remember leaving and driving
Speaker 1: back on Washington Road again to get that come to
Speaker 1: my children, and I just thinking, Okay, you know, I
Speaker 1: keep saying that I'm a Christian. What does a Christian mean?
Speaker 1: You know, just a Christian? Just stand by here? I
Speaker 1: am making excuses again because the Christians still stand by
Speaker 1: her husband during the good times, or do they like
Speaker 1: stand by them during the really hard times? And I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna stand by him. I said,
Speaker 1: because this is a mental disease like sexdiction. What he's
Speaker 1: done is terrible. It's violating. You know, you take it
Speaker 1: personal when there's intimacy involved with some But I knew
Speaker 1: that deep dealing his soul was good and that he
Speaker 1: had made some terrible choices. And I was going to
Speaker 1: be a Christian and I was going to help him
Speaker 1: get through this. And I was gonna show I told
Speaker 1: our kids, I'm gonna show our community, our friends for
Speaker 1: forgiveness really means. I was determined to have a stronger
Speaker 1: family and to learn from it, and how I could
Speaker 1: be a better wife to him too, you know, because again,
Speaker 1: nobody's perfect. So my role leaving there was not to
Speaker 1: crucify him or to leave him or divorce him. It
Speaker 1: was to help him and to live my faith out
Speaker 1: and to figure out how to keep my family together
Speaker 1: still and his parents, he has a great family and
Speaker 1: his parents, his step mom and his father sent him
Speaker 1: to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. There's a sex rehab clinic there. He
Speaker 1: was so remorseful, like, I'm gonna come out of here,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be the best father, I'm gonna be the
Speaker 1: best husband, Like this is gonna make us stronger. I
Speaker 1: love you, you know, my childhood with my mother being
Speaker 1: an addict, and you know, I'm just messed up, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna help me get better. And if you stick
Speaker 1: by me, then then we're gonna have the best family ever.
Speaker 1: That's all I ever wanted, was the best family ever.
Speaker 1: So he immediately went there, and they actually put us
Speaker 1: in a hotel somewhere because we were, you know, scared
Speaker 1: for her safety that he might, uh, you know, our
Speaker 1: life might be in danger, and said they put us
Speaker 1: in a hotel until they could get him situated where
Speaker 1: he needed to be in Mississippi, and of course, you know,
Speaker 1: once he got there, and part of the recovery process
Speaker 1: for any kind of addict is, you know, coming clean.
Speaker 1: And he came clean about cheating on me for years
Speaker 1: with prostitutes and lying about the truly, basically his whole
Speaker 1: life was aligned and you know, still in money from
Speaker 1: his parents company. And I didn't realize, like he was
Speaker 1: so convincing, I did not realize that he never played
Speaker 1: football for the University of South Carolina until he was
Speaker 1: at the sexual rehab clinic. We've been married nearly twenty years,
Speaker 1: and I was on a plane with his stepmother and
Speaker 1: I didn't understand why they had no photos of him
Speaker 1: playing football, And so I said to her, I said,
Speaker 1: I've looked through all the photo albums. I said, I
Speaker 1: see the pictures of Tripp and a cheerleader. I said,
Speaker 1: I don't see any football pictures of him, and and
Speaker 1: she looked at me like I was crazy. And she's
Speaker 1: like me because I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I said, you know when Tripp played football at Carolina
Speaker 1: And she said, um, he never played football at Carolina,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, he did. I mean he told
Speaker 1: us stories about you know, the coach saying, if you
Speaker 1: guys played with half the heart that Trip Moore has
Speaker 1: played with it, we we'd win the national championship. And
Speaker 1: he'd take my children in the locker room and show
Speaker 1: him everything and tell him stories about every place and
Speaker 1: the you know things that happened. And She's like, Venus,
Speaker 1: Trip never aid football ever in college. He was a cheerleader,
Speaker 1: you know. So when we we got to Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: we sat down. A part of recovering from six addiction
Speaker 1: is kind of coming clean with everything that you've done.
Speaker 1: And and so I just asked him, I said, like,
Speaker 1: if you've been lying to me for twenty years about
Speaker 1: playing football and and he said yeah. So that's when
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, something is like really really wrong. Why
Speaker 1: does somebody make up something like that? And while he
Speaker 1: was there, some other things came out that he had done,
Speaker 1: and and that's when it became a deal breaker for me.
Speaker 1: And the things he had done compromised my children. I
Speaker 1: didn't really believe that either at first, but I was
Speaker 1: disturbed enough, and I was a good mother, I thought,
Speaker 1: and I would never let him come back in the
Speaker 1: home or around the children without knowing one way or
Speaker 1: the other. The possibility that Tripp had been sexually abusive
Speaker 1: to any of their children had simply never occurred to Venus,
Speaker 1: the handsome, charismatic All American football coach and churchgoer who
Speaker 1: people flocked to like he was the pied Piper. It
Speaker 1: couldn't be, or could it? There was only one way
Speaker 1: to find out. He agreed to take a lot of
Speaker 1: tector tests and they gave him too at the hospital.
Speaker 1: He failed the first one. In the second one that
Speaker 1: the polygraphic Samar said, you know, he was so nervous.
Speaker 1: He's like, can't can't even really get a result. He says,
Speaker 1: you need to there's something out, a specific issue, a
Speaker 1: lot of tector tests and and you need there's a
Speaker 1: gun at Leona, and he gave me the name of
Speaker 1: the person and you need to call him and set
Speaker 1: an appointment up and you know he'll be able to
Speaker 1: give you assurance one way or the other. And so
Speaker 1: of course I immediately called him, and you know, the
Speaker 1: guy's explaining the process and he's like, it's pretty full proof.
Speaker 1: When when he lives here, you'll know if he did
Speaker 1: these things. And Trip was very good at storytelling, as
Speaker 1: you see what the stories I've told you. And I
Speaker 1: think he really thought he could beat it. In Claire
Speaker 1: his name in that VI it us reconcile, and he
Speaker 1: went there took the test and I'll never forget that
Speaker 1: guy called him and he's like, you know what he said,
Speaker 1: I can tell you he's done these things. And he
Speaker 1: said something like you'd be an unfit mother at best
Speaker 1: if you did nothing about this. And so that was
Speaker 1: it for me, Like there was no can I help
Speaker 1: him anymore? Cannot? That was it. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment with more family secrets. When Venus thought it
Speaker 1: was sex addiction and mental illness that was causing trips behavior,
Speaker 1: she was gutted, but she had been seriously considering supporting
Speaker 1: him through it for the sake of their family. But
Speaker 1: when she learned the trip has violated one of her
Speaker 1: daughters and is in fact a direct threat to their family,
Speaker 1: she absolutely will not stand by him, no way, no how.
Speaker 1: All she's ever wanted to do was create a sense
Speaker 1: of stability and safety for her children, to give them
Speaker 1: childhoods better than hers had been. This this is devastating,
Speaker 1: but she springs into action a foul for divorce immediately,
Speaker 1: because I would never bring someone like that around my children.
Speaker 1: And you know, callna pediatrician who had been my pediatrician
Speaker 1: for twenty years, fifteen years traveling was at the time,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, Venus, He said, You've got
Speaker 1: to take your daughter to the hospital to be examined.
Speaker 1: He says, I don't do that type of exam here,
Speaker 1: he said, but I do have to tell you I
Speaker 1: would lose my medical license about a report this. So
Speaker 1: I've got to call the Department of Social Services and
Speaker 1: make them aware of what's been said. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is this is a serious business. And of course
Speaker 1: I knew that, and I was devastated, and I agree
Speaker 1: with him. So then at that point the Department of
Speaker 1: Social Services came in and interviewed everybody and felt probable
Speaker 1: calls and went to the district attorney, and Trip agreed
Speaker 1: to come down to testify. And again, Tripp was so
Speaker 1: nice and vaivable and likable. I think he just thought
Speaker 1: he could talk his way out of it, like he'd
Speaker 1: done his whole life. And it was really ultimately his
Speaker 1: own testimony that that put him away. But um, they
Speaker 1: arrested him right after the grand jury issued an indictment
Speaker 1: and they didn't even give him parole because of the
Speaker 1: risk they felt like he posed to me and the children.
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to forty five years in prison and
Speaker 1: just been there like eleven years now, ten or eleven years,
Speaker 1: and he um, I think he has to start twenty
Speaker 1: one years before he can get pro all Venus also
Speaker 1: tells her Chidren that while she doesn't know what the
Speaker 1: future will hold, she is their mother and she's going
Speaker 1: to do everything in her power to be a good
Speaker 1: mother to them. They're going to weather this storm together
Speaker 1: and not be defined as a family by the terrible
Speaker 1: things their father did. I was struck by your fact
Speaker 1: that you didn't have a lot of support from the
Speaker 1: community that you've been a part of for all these years. Well,
Speaker 1: it was interesting. It is interesting looking back now, because
Speaker 1: people that were barely my friends stepped up to the
Speaker 1: plate and became really, really just amazing friends. I mean,
Speaker 1: one lady who barely knew knocked on my door and
Speaker 1: basically told me she could organize people to sew cartons,
Speaker 1: you know, And I'm like, listen, I appreciate that, but
Speaker 1: I'm fine without curtains. If I sell my house and
Speaker 1: I'm living in a tent, then I'll take it, you know,
Speaker 1: But let let me do what I gotta do first.
Speaker 1: And I'm not above getting help, but let me try
Speaker 1: to take of business at home before I reach out
Speaker 1: and get other people to do these things. But it
Speaker 1: was amazing. It's a beautiful gesture. And then I had
Speaker 1: another friend who I was friends with, but we weren't
Speaker 1: by any means really close friends or best friends. And
Speaker 1: she started working for me and just walked the fire
Speaker 1: with me and became my very best friend and she's
Speaker 1: still my very best friend, and we will die being
Speaker 1: best friends. And the first year I was so broke
Speaker 1: I could not even pay her, like for a whole year,
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget her telling me. She's like, nas,
Speaker 1: don't worry about me. I'm okay, Um, you know, her
Speaker 1: husband worked and support of the family, and she said,
Speaker 1: you do what you need to do to take care
Speaker 1: of you kids. You can catch me up. And she
Speaker 1: would tell me like, I'm putting up billboards on Washington
Speaker 1: Road and not knowing how I'm going to even pay
Speaker 1: for him. But I knew I had to do something
Speaker 1: dramatic and drastic to be successful and make a statement.
Speaker 1: And she's like, you put the billboards up, and I'll
Speaker 1: feed your family if I need to feed your family.
Speaker 1: I believe in you. You get out there and you
Speaker 1: do it. And I did, and I was s scessful
Speaker 1: in on her second year. I paid her back for
Speaker 1: the first year in full, and then I started paying
Speaker 1: her for the second year. And she was faithful to me.
Speaker 1: But not everyone remained faithful to Venus. Some turned on
Speaker 1: her and blamed her for her husband's actions as well
Speaker 1: as her own. She had been part of a prayer
Speaker 1: group with five other couples. They had met every Wednesday
Speaker 1: for ten years. They were, up until trips imprisonment, the
Speaker 1: best friendships Venus had ever had. I had never really
Speaker 1: had friends like that, you know, because I had moved
Speaker 1: so much, I've been so much just function. I had
Speaker 1: been in hiding my whole life. I didn't want anybody
Speaker 1: to who I really was. I wanted to pretend like
Speaker 1: I was normal and my cup as everybody else. And
Speaker 1: so when I met these ladies, I mean they all
Speaker 1: came from well, two of them came from extremely good families.
Speaker 1: One of them had a really great mom and a
Speaker 1: divorce situation. But she she was actually my very best friend.
Speaker 1: And then there's another couple in the prayer group who
Speaker 1: I was friends with, but I wasn't real close with them,
Speaker 1: but um, and that couple actually was the nicest to me.
Speaker 1: But the the other three couples in there, I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: My husband's put in prison, and like they don't speak
Speaker 1: to me from that point out. And the friend who
Speaker 1: was my best friends, she says to me, I asked
Speaker 1: her to go out to dinner with me and said, listen,
Speaker 1: like we had to talk, like did I did I
Speaker 1: do something wrong? I mean, like tell me. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're like my best friend in the world. My husband's
Speaker 1: just going to prison for six kids. Like what did
Speaker 1: that do? And she said to me, she said, you know,
Speaker 1: I am very Catholic and I'm very black and white,
Speaker 1: and what you did was wrong conceiving your children with
Speaker 1: a dinner and you didn't just do it one time.
Speaker 1: You had six children by the dinner and you lied
Speaker 1: to us and you didn't tell us this. And I'm
Speaker 1: black and white and I just can't. I can't be
Speaker 1: friends with you. The children were also paying for trips
Speaker 1: behavior ostracized and judged. Other kids weren't allowed to come
Speaker 1: to their home. They weren't invited to birthday parties in
Speaker 1: a family that had been injured enough, the injuries piled
Speaker 1: on my son Neil. He was only one when his
Speaker 1: father went away, and he came home last week and said, Mom, like,
Speaker 1: he doesn't even really know trips in prison or for
Speaker 1: what anything about it, because he's never really been a
Speaker 1: father figure. But he said, Mom, like this girl in
Speaker 1: my class, like if I come into class irritated, or
Speaker 1: if I say something to or she'll look at to
Speaker 1: me and she'll say, are you in a bad mood? Charles?
Speaker 1: Because your dad's in jail. I'm just like, what's wrong
Speaker 1: with these kids? Like what is wrong with these kids?
Speaker 1: And you know, like one of my kids came home devastated, like, Mom,
Speaker 1: they want to die God mother you There're all these
Speaker 1: people sing terrible things and they'll laugh and say where's
Speaker 1: your adt yet today? And I'm like like, who are
Speaker 1: these Christian people? Like what the hell? And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a little fighter, so I'm just like putting my
Speaker 1: box in gloves on, just you know, if I weren't
Speaker 1: grounded in myself and and my faith. I would have
Speaker 1: left my faith because I'm sitting here thinking how to
Speaker 1: I forgive my husband for having a sex addiction and
Speaker 1: committed to trying to find a way. And they're never
Speaker 1: speaking to me because my husband is going to prison
Speaker 1: for cald molestation and they're thinking I knew something, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is wrong with you? People? But I'll
Speaker 1: forgive them. And one of the people I never mentioned names,
Speaker 1: and I would never do that, but she sent me
Speaker 1: this really ugly text message, and you know, I just said,
Speaker 1: I can't believe what you're trying to do for fame
Speaker 1: and for money and and I've told you to leave
Speaker 1: my family out of your drama. And I was like,
Speaker 1: Number one, I'm a self made millionaire. Nothing am I
Speaker 1: am doing except with the intent of helping other women
Speaker 1: or in extremely dark places, not go through what I've
Speaker 1: gone through, to see their value, to see the word
Speaker 1: In Number two, it's really hard to look at yourself
Speaker 1: and this story. I know it is, but as Christians,
Speaker 1: we all mess up. We're all sinners, so you know
Speaker 1: you need to just own it and know that I
Speaker 1: don't pass judgment. I forgive you, but this is my
Speaker 1: story and it's a big part of it, because you know,
Speaker 1: that's why people go into depression and anxiety, because you know,
Speaker 1: something shameful like this happens and everyone turns it back
Speaker 1: on you. And I've had women tell me until they
Speaker 1: heard my story, they were on the verge of suicide,
Speaker 1: and after hearing my story that I've given them hope
Speaker 1: and they can get through what they're going through, and
Speaker 1: that that their commitment is to be in the best
Speaker 1: moment they can be. And to me, like this is
Speaker 1: embarrassing the stuff I share. I'm getting a lot of support,
Speaker 1: but I'm also getting a tremendous amount of criticism within
Speaker 1: the community for for putting my stuff out there. But
Speaker 1: you can get goodness out of bad and light out
Speaker 1: of darkness if you do you let it, if you're
Speaker 1: not ashamed of what's happened. Because we all mess up.
Speaker 1: And I say, my pain, it is terrible, My story
Speaker 1: is heartwrenching, but my pain really is no different than
Speaker 1: the next person's pain. It's just different and it's all relative,
Speaker 1: which brings me to talking to you. There's another embedded
Speaker 1: secret at the core of this family dynamic. Are you
Speaker 1: ready for this one? The children don't know that Trip
Speaker 1: is not their biological father. Yes, you heard that right.
Speaker 1: And since his arrest, Trip has been telling people the
Speaker 1: secret that he and Venus planned to take to their
Speaker 1: graves together. So I got um. I got a phone
Speaker 1: call from someone who said, oh my god, Venus, I
Speaker 1: just heard this terrible rumor, and I wanted to call
Speaker 1: you because you know, I don't think it's true, but
Speaker 1: I think you should know about it, just because I
Speaker 1: think you should know about I'm like, what is it. Well?
Speaker 1: Trip has gone around and he's telling some people that
Speaker 1: these aren't even his biological kids, and I'm like what,
Speaker 1: And I didn't know what what to say. You know,
Speaker 1: at that point it's like, okay, no one in the
Speaker 1: world do except for me and Trip. You know, at
Speaker 1: that point, what do you what do you say? And
Speaker 1: so I thought about it, and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I've got to go to all my kids because if
Speaker 1: I don't, if this person has heard it, my kids
Speaker 1: are going to hear it. And I don't want them
Speaker 1: hearing this from someone else. This is not a conversation
Speaker 1: that a stranger or you know, a friend or someone
Speaker 1: making fun of them needs to have, especially with all
Speaker 1: the scandal we're already going through, and so I just
Speaker 1: set them down individually and I just said, you know,
Speaker 1: you were conceived out of love, you were wanted, you
Speaker 1: were wanted more than you could possibly know, and I'm
Speaker 1: your mother and this is your father. But biologically, I said,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like you're half adopted because your father
Speaker 1: could not have children. And that's it. After trying for
Speaker 1: a few years, we wanted a family, and we decided
Speaker 1: getting a donor was the way we wanted to have
Speaker 1: our family. And so here you guys are, and you're
Speaker 1: all biologically related because we bought all of the sperm.
Speaker 1: It was at a corporation called zy Text. One of
Speaker 1: my children says, they were actually relieved, and they were
Speaker 1: happy in a sense because they said, we don't have
Speaker 1: his genes, meaning that they don't have whatever gene it
Speaker 1: is that that's made him a child. Lester doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that they don't want their grandfather and grandmother's geens, because
Speaker 1: they adore my husband's family and my husband's family is
Speaker 1: very good to them and they're still family. But they
Speaker 1: were relieved that they didn't have to wonder. You know,
Speaker 1: if you have a parent that has schizophrenia, you have
Speaker 1: a greater chance of having that, or if you're BiPOL
Speaker 1: and you have a parent, you have a greater chance
Speaker 1: of having that, you know. So they weren't upset like
Speaker 1: I thought they were going to be upset. They had
Speaker 1: a sense of relief because of what he was convicted of,
Speaker 1: that they didn't have to think, Okay, could this be
Speaker 1: a possibility? You know, I know with my own mother
Speaker 1: who struggles with whatever mental illness she has. You know,
Speaker 1: when I was in my twenties, I used to wonder,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, am I gonna end up like my mother?
Speaker 1: I struggled with that. It was trumpantizing what their father did,
Speaker 1: not only what he was convicted of, but the abuse.
Speaker 1: I mean, he would towards the end there like act
Speaker 1: like he was gonna kill himself in front of our children.
Speaker 1: And so they were happy to know that they had
Speaker 1: a better shot of not struggling with the same things
Speaker 1: that he struggled with. In the midst of all these struggles,
Speaker 1: Venus triumphantly pulls ahead in her career. She's really really good,
Speaker 1: I mean, like stupendously good at selling houses. In ten years,
Speaker 1: she does nearly five million dollars in real estate sales,
Speaker 1: staggering accomplishment of tenacity and hard work. Well, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you this. I'll tell you um, I never intended nor
Speaker 1: wanted to be as financially as successful as I've turned
Speaker 1: out to be. I have achieved a lot of financial success,
Speaker 1: and I believe I'm no one special. That I was
Speaker 1: put into a situation and I have six children depending
Speaker 1: on me, and I knew if I failed that they
Speaker 1: would fail, and that if I put my cross down,
Speaker 1: then they would carry the cross the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: I was determined. I was determined not to let that happen,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what that meant. But as far
Speaker 1: as my real estate success goes, I believe you can
Speaker 1: be successful at anything, anything, and you can achieve whatever
Speaker 1: you set your mind to. You just have to have
Speaker 1: the work ethic and determination. You've gotta have forgiveness. But
Speaker 1: I never set out, you know, to make seven figures
Speaker 1: every year. That was never my intent. My intent was.
Speaker 1: You know, money is nice. I like doing well, but
Speaker 1: money is a means to an end. And I tell
Speaker 1: my kids all the time, as long as you can
Speaker 1: financially support yourself and meet your basic needs and have
Speaker 1: a little extra for security, like your happiness. I don't
Speaker 1: believe goes up with what your bank account reflects. So
Speaker 1: again I tell people I'm nobody's special and they can
Speaker 1: do what I've done and probably more because they don't
Speaker 1: have seven children. I have seven children now because it's
Speaker 1: a lot. You know, I get up at five o'clock
Speaker 1: every morning, I go. You know, I put the oxygen
Speaker 1: mask on myself. I learned early on in my journey
Speaker 1: that you know, I couldn't take care of my six
Speaker 1: kids if I didn't make myself a priority. Well, there's
Speaker 1: no time when you're working seventy hours a week unless
Speaker 1: you get a little uncomfortable. That fund five miles every
Speaker 1: day because those in orphands going. So I could be
Speaker 1: present and deal with the stress that I was under,
Speaker 1: because you need some kind of outlet. So I researched
Speaker 1: to hold the outlets for anxiety and depression and stress
Speaker 1: and and exercise was it. So, you know, making myself
Speaker 1: a priority and letting my kids know that what I
Speaker 1: didn't want to do is become this real estate mongol
Speaker 1: successful person. And then my kids I think that the
Speaker 1: money was more important to them, and that I lost
Speaker 1: sight of them in order to achieve financial recognition and games.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I committed every every day when
Speaker 1: my husband went to prison that first year, I got
Speaker 1: up at five o'clock, I ran, I came home, I
Speaker 1: got all six children up. I took them to church
Speaker 1: every morning, but first school five days a week, and
Speaker 1: then we went on Sundays. And then I committed, no
Speaker 1: matter how long my work week was, to sitting down
Speaker 1: having family dinner with my children every night, because letting
Speaker 1: them know that, Okay, mom's got this crazy work schedule,
Speaker 1: but she's here with us, and we're gonna go around
Speaker 1: and we're gonna say a good thing and are not
Speaker 1: so good thing, and she hears us, she loves us.
Speaker 1: We matter. That's the life changing things. That's what you
Speaker 1: build your family on. That's why I have this unbreakable
Speaker 1: bond with my kids because they saw, no matter how
Speaker 1: tough things were, that I was committed first to being
Speaker 1: a mom to them, second taking care of them emotionally
Speaker 1: and financially. And they also saw my commitment to taking
Speaker 1: care of myself because I tell my kids, you've got
Speaker 1: to take care of yourself, because you teach other people
Speaker 1: how to treat you. So you've got to start with yourself.
Speaker 1: And it's taking me a lifetime to learn these things.
Speaker 1: But my goal is by sharing my story that I
Speaker 1: can help other women learn in a lot less time
Speaker 1: than I did their value and what they bring to
Speaker 1: the table and to get out of a bad relationship
Speaker 1: if it's not working. The rest is kind of history.
Speaker 1: I've remarried. I'm actually I've had a seventh child at
Speaker 1: forty four. It's my first unplayed pregnant saying we were
Speaker 1: married a few years and um, we were married eight years.
Speaker 1: We're actually going through divorced. And even with that, I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what has been married me and he had
Speaker 1: never been married. He was private, fifty years old, no children,
Speaker 1: and I'm like that tells you he's a saint just
Speaker 1: to try to marry me with all this craziness. But um,
Speaker 1: I'll look at the marriage with him and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, even though it didn't work, it still was
Speaker 1: a huge success because we've got this beautiful child together
Speaker 1: and we're going to raise together. You just have to
Speaker 1: look at what you have and focus on what you
Speaker 1: have versus what you don't have. And then I think
Speaker 1: that you can get through the ups and downs of
Speaker 1: life and overcome. Veniss kids have gone through these ups
Speaker 1: and downs in life, and they've overcome so much, particularly
Speaker 1: her eldest son, John, who was sixteen when his father
Speaker 1: went to prison. All of my kids are amazing, but John,
Speaker 1: and you know, he had to step up and be
Speaker 1: the dad in the family when his father went away,
Speaker 1: and he is very, very protective over his siblings. And
Speaker 1: you know, to this day, he's like, Mom, just if
Speaker 1: you helped Charles study for his reading test? Have you
Speaker 1: helped Charles is the youngest of the six children, and
Speaker 1: he's just this amazing soul. And he's just good. I
Speaker 1: asked him one time, I said, John, I said, like,
Speaker 1: why are you so good? I mean, because I'm like,
Speaker 1: there's no way I'm responsible for him being so good.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just I mean, I try to be
Speaker 1: a good mom, but like, he's just he's just good. Well,
Speaker 1: for example, like when he was a senior in high school,
Speaker 1: um he took his team, he was one of the captains,
Speaker 1: and took them to the state championship. They won for
Speaker 1: the first time and the last time in the history
Speaker 1: of their school. And later that year his team they
Speaker 1: have awards at the end of the year. They created
Speaker 1: a special award for John that they give away now
Speaker 1: every year and it's like just it's called the Heart
Speaker 1: and Soul because they say he embodies the heart and
Speaker 1: soul of what you want to see in a young athlete.
Speaker 1: And so fast forward, he goes to dental school. He
Speaker 1: had to get up and give a speech to everyone,
Speaker 1: and all the parents were there, um, all the students,
Speaker 1: the the whole faculty at the dental school. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a big deal. And he goes through and he
Speaker 1: thanks everyone, the faculty, and he recognizes a lot of
Speaker 1: the students and just you know, highlights what's so good
Speaker 1: about them and what they're achieving together. And and then
Speaker 1: he ends and he says, but I can't end this
Speaker 1: speech without I recognize in my mom. And so of
Speaker 1: course I had no idea that he was to do this.
Speaker 1: It's like, Mom, could you stand up? And I'm like what,
Speaker 1: And so I'm there. It just makes me crack, sir.
Speaker 1: Everyone in the whole place is like looking because a
Speaker 1: lot of people knew what our family had gone through.
Speaker 1: And he just basically said, he said, Mom, when the
Speaker 1: whole world through the towel in on us. You stepped
Speaker 1: up and you taught me to never quit. You taught
Speaker 1: me to never settle, and you taught me to persevere
Speaker 1: no matter what. And he said, for that, I will
Speaker 1: be Dr John Morris because of the example that you
Speaker 1: set for me and my siblings. You're the number one
Speaker 1: mom in the world, and everybody else is competing for
Speaker 1: a second place, and like the whole place was just
Speaker 1: That's when you know, like everything I've been through, everything
Speaker 1: is worth it, because when you have your children looked
Speaker 1: at you and they have this love and respect for you,
Speaker 1: even though again I am not the perfect mother. I
Speaker 1: want to say that a hundred times, and I failed
Speaker 1: and constantly, but when they look at you and they
Speaker 1: generally love and respect you, I mean there is nothing,
Speaker 1: no amount of success, no amount of money, nothing in
Speaker 1: the world that can ever give you happiness and peace
Speaker 1: in a sense of fulfillment as when you have your
Speaker 1: children one by one look at you and recognize that
Speaker 1: you know you've basically sacrificed yourself to try to be
Speaker 1: a good parent to them. And again, my advice to
Speaker 1: other people and what helped me when you go through
Speaker 1: tough times, don't look at what you can do big
Speaker 1: for your family. It's really the little things to having
Speaker 1: dinner with them, you know, taking them to mass or
Speaker 1: whatever your faith is, to go into their gains. Just
Speaker 1: you know, I'll be at their games working. They won't
Speaker 1: see me. I'll secretly have my phone hidden while they're
Speaker 1: on the field, but they see me there, you know,
Speaker 1: they see me there. And I'm producing sixty seventy million
Speaker 1: dollars a year in real estate. That's hard. But they
Speaker 1: see what you do and they love you for it,
Speaker 1: and you just, I don't know, that's happiness is you know,
Speaker 1: heard Oprah one time refer to m Martin Luther Keane
Speaker 1: got everybody can be famous, but everybody can be happiness
Speaker 1: because something like happiness is found in service. In service,
Speaker 1: it can be in many ways your family too, you know,
Speaker 1: to charity to other people that need you. You can serve.
Speaker 1: And that's God has put me on the serve to
Speaker 1: serve my children, to be a mom. And I just
Speaker 1: happened to be successful at the same time because I
Speaker 1: have to be successful to take care of them. Family
Speaker 1: Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly z
Speaker 1: A Core is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is
Speaker 1: the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd
Speaker 1: like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your
Speaker 1: story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
Speaker 1: one eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You
Speaker 1: can also find me on Instagram at Danny writer. And
Speaker 1: if you'd like to know more about the story that
Speaker 1: inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts.
Speaker 1: For my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.