WEBVTT - A Message from Dani 0:00:01.600 --> 0:00:05.960 Hey, Family Secrets. Family, it's been a minute. The last 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:09.960 episode of the ninth season, dropped way back on January eleventh, 0:00:10.440 --> 0:00:14.480 was Alice Carrier's extraordinary story of growing up with her 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:20.640 mercurial mother, the famous painter Jennifer Bartlett. Last season was 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:24.280 my favorite season yet. I keep saying that each season 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:28.520 because it's true. The stories keep coming, each one as 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:32.840 individual as a snowflake. When it comes to family secrets, 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:36.320 every secret is unique and powerful in its own way, 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:40.600 and reckoning with those secrets is nothing short of liberating. 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:44.839 I've seen it again and again in my guest's lives 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:49.120 as well as in my own. Currently, we're hard at 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:51.839 work on the tenth season of this podcast, which will 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:55.720 drop in early June. We have an array of fantastic 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:59.120 guests lined up, and I've been inspired and provoked by 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:03.000 the conversations I've had thus far. Some of you may 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:05.679 have noticed that we haven't been dropping in our usual 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:10.640 bonus content, like conversations with great minds about prior episodes 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:15.160 of the pod, and there's a reason for that. One 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:19.080 of my favorite writers, Joan Didion, once wrote that life 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:25.479 changes fast. Life changes in an instant, the ordinary instant 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:29.880 in my life. That fast change came on an ordinary 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:35.360 day in the form of a frightening diagnosis. On January fifteenth, 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:38.199 just a few days after the last season of Family 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:42.240 Secrets ended, I learned that I had a rare cancer 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:45.240 in the back of my eye. It's hard for me 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:48.919 to even say these words. Only six in a million 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:53.280 people are diagnosed with this particular form of cancer. As 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:57.680 the days turned into a blur of doctors, hospitals, new words, 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:02.000 new terms, surgery and treat meant, I learned that I 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:05.480 was very lucky it had been caught early because it 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:09.720 was affecting my vision, something that doesn't always happen, and 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:12.840 so it was treatable. And the odds are tremendously in 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.280 my favor that I'm now on the other side of it, 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.400 and that it will have been a big old speed bump, 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:23.400 a chapter, a brief and brutal but ultimately survivable scare. 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:29.360 Why am I sharing this with you because my first instinct, 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:33.560 which lasted for over a month, was to tell almost 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:37.919 no one. My immediate family knew and my innermost circle 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:42.240 of friends. But I was hell bent on keeping this private. 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.200 I didn't think of it as keeping a secret. I 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.040 figured that Eventually I might write about it, as I 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:51.639 have written about so many other chapters in my life, 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:55.520 in the fullness of time. But while I was going 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:59.760 through it, I felt too vulnerable. I thought a lot 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:03.280 of about an episode I recorded last season titled Shanda, 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:07.640 in which the writer Letty Cotton Pogribin talked about a 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.440 benign brain condition that she kept secret for a long 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:13.040 time because she was worried that if people knew, they 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:15.840 would see her differently. They would see her as a 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.839 sick person, someone with something wrong with her, separate from 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:23.280 the herd of the healthy. It felt as Letty and 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:27.040 I discussed that illness is somehow a source of shame, 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:31.919 and as all of you Family Secrets listeners know, shame 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:37.520 leads to secrecy, and secrecy leads to toxicity and isolation, 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:42.520 and around and around we go. So I did something 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:46.280 that was hard and scary for me. I announced to 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:51.160 my diagnosis on social media, specifically on my public Instagram account, 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:54.720 so that I could own my truth rather than falling 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:59.280 victim to it. And in the flood of loving, kind, 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:06.560 compassion responses I received from friends, acquaintances, strangers, readers, listeners 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:10.560 of this podcast, I was reminded of something that I know, 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:13.320 but I had forgotten in the midst of my own 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:18.919 terror and reflexive self protection. I had forgotten that we 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:22.040 need one another, that we are part of a vast 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.160 tapestry a community, and that most of us are at 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:30.960 our corese kind and caring. And so I've been through 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:33.880 some hard things in the last bunch of weeks, but 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:36.640 I went through them with a sense of being carried, 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:40.040 being borne by so many humans who sent me their 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:44.280 good wishes in whatever ways they could. This has meant 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:49.000 the world, it continues to me in the world. There's 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:54.320 a profound difference between privacy and secrecy. I still feel 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.560 very much like a private person, even though I live 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:01.080 a somewhat public life. So when I realized that I 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.400 was harboring a secret, that I wasn't allowing people in, 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.000 that I wasn't allowing people to be their best selves 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.440 and to carry me through this time, I knew I 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:15.839 had to do it differently. And so, dear dear family, 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:19.960 secrets family, this is just me saying to you, I 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:23.119 love this community. I love the work I've been called 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:26.640 to do in life that so often involves breaking down 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:29.120 my own fears as a way of coming to a 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:34.440 deeper understanding. I really am going to be okay. Please 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:38.359 know that, And if you'd like to follow along between 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:41.800 now and June when the new season drops, come on 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:45.799 over to Instagram and say Hi, I'm at Danny writer. 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:51.960 That's da Ni writer. I even post cute puppy photos sometimes, 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:56.120 but I'm over there as I am over here trying 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:58.839 to make sense of what it is to be human. 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:01.359 Thanks for listening.