Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of my heart radio. When
Speaker 1: I wake up in baton rage after the accident, with
Speaker 1: a tube in my throat to help me breathe and
Speaker 1: my eyes burning, I will begin to learn. I will
Speaker 1: learn that love is not always allowed a parade of
Speaker 1: a thing. It can be strong and silent. It is
Speaker 1: not the throb of my name across the football field,
Speaker 1: but the low, tender call for me across the sterile room,
Speaker 1: a call from a person who knows they may never
Speaker 1: be heard, but chooses to speak anyway. It is not
Speaker 1: the presentation of shiny crowns and shiny roses. It is
Speaker 1: the table filled with wrinkled petals and dirty water, the
Speaker 1: flowers that people brought, not knowing if I would ever
Speaker 1: wait to see them. It is not sitting on the
Speaker 1: sidelines in a nice sweater watching me blossom. It is
Speaker 1: sitting by my side, disheveled and bare faced, watching me
Speaker 1: with her. I will learn that love is one person
Speaker 1: becoming undone for another. It is being stripped of the
Speaker 1: protective armor we've worked hard to fashion for ourselves to
Speaker 1: become the armor for somebody else. It's standing naked and shivering,
Speaker 1: or for what scares us the most to honor what
Speaker 1: it is that we love the most. This is the
Speaker 1: love that will transform me. That's Ruthie Lindsay Speaker, podcast host, activist,
Speaker 1: and author of the memoir There I Am. You know
Speaker 1: that expression, God doesn't give us more than we can handle.
Speaker 1: I've never liked that expression, and I don't really believe it.
Speaker 1: Some of us are given a lot just the way
Speaker 1: it is, and it's up to us to decide whether
Speaker 1: we can handle it. Ruthie's story is one of such courage,
Speaker 1: the deepest reservoirs of ridge that served to transform confounding
Speaker 1: pain and grief into something so bright it shines like
Speaker 1: a star. 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 grew up with older brothers on a farm in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, and I had an older brother
Speaker 1: that basically helped raise me, who just absolutely I was
Speaker 1: his adored me. I never went a day without knowing
Speaker 1: that I was loved and adored. And you know, my
Speaker 1: dad's eyes lit up when I would walk in the room.
Speaker 1: And I grew up on the land, which I was
Speaker 1: super extroverted. So there are parts of being out in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere that was really hard for me.
Speaker 1: I'd go to town at my friend's homes and like
Speaker 1: what I would do to be able to run next
Speaker 1: door and play with a friend Like that sound like
Speaker 1: the dream of dreams, But I'm so grateful to have
Speaker 1: grown up in the middle of nowhere on this farm,
Speaker 1: like my dad plowing our garden with a mule, and
Speaker 1: just freedom to run outside in the woods and in
Speaker 1: the creek all day long. I could run free and wild,
Speaker 1: and I think that's had such an impact on my
Speaker 1: life today, like my love for mother Nature and how
Speaker 1: much she has become just really she is my medicine,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think that was a gift given
Speaker 1: to me from such a get go. My dad loved
Speaker 1: the land so much. She loved working the land, and
Speaker 1: you know, we ate out of our garden all summer long.
Speaker 1: And this was in South Louisiana. Is all right in
Speaker 1: South Louisiana and tiny little town called Saint Francisville, but
Speaker 1: we were we were like fifteen minutes outside of San Francisville,
Speaker 1: so like the town's tiny with two red lights. But
Speaker 1: then we were fifteen minutes away from that just I mean,
Speaker 1: no neighbors, gravel road, you know. I was able to
Speaker 1: like jump in my dad's pickup truck in like fifth
Speaker 1: grade and drive it up and down the road, and
Speaker 1: I mean we were just we didn't own keys to
Speaker 1: our home, didn't own them, and I thought that was
Speaker 1: totally normal. When we'd go on vacation, we always left
Speaker 1: the keys in her car, and I thought, that's just
Speaker 1: what everyone did. You know, Tell me about your mother.
Speaker 1: We have gotten so much closer as I've gotten older.
Speaker 1: She was moved from New Orleans to the farm. It
Speaker 1: was not her dream. She's very much a city girl,
Speaker 1: and I think being out in the country was a
Speaker 1: bit difficult. And she had a really painful childhood. She
Speaker 1: was a child of alcoholics. Her mom died when she
Speaker 1: was very very young, and her dad married someone who
Speaker 1: had been in the Holocaust, and so of course had
Speaker 1: her own issues and was also an alcoholic. And so
Speaker 1: my mom was brought up with a lot of dysfunction,
Speaker 1: but was so beautiful. I mean, my mom still, she's
Speaker 1: in her seventies, and it's just the most stunning woman.
Speaker 1: And so that at the time, especially back then, like
Speaker 1: I mean now too, but that really got her out
Speaker 1: her beauty and that's what she knew, that's what everyone
Speaker 1: told her she was about, you know, And I think
Speaker 1: that's such a disservice to all humans, but to a woman,
Speaker 1: because it's harder to process that there's so much more
Speaker 1: to us, you know, when only praise you ever get
Speaker 1: is about how beautiful you are. And she is just
Speaker 1: she's such an amazing human and I feel so proud
Speaker 1: of her and to be her daughter, because she's just
Speaker 1: been on such a massive healing journey. I think because
Speaker 1: of all the trauma that she grew up with, we've
Speaker 1: just gotten closer and closer as I've become an adult.
Speaker 1: I think I was a lot harder on her when
Speaker 1: I was younger, because you know, we're all just doing
Speaker 1: the best we can, and she she didn't have a
Speaker 1: mom growing up, and what she was able to do
Speaker 1: with what she was given is pretty spectacular. But there
Speaker 1: was also a lot that was was hard, you know,
Speaker 1: because she was human and she was hurt. And how
Speaker 1: did your mom and your father meet? My dad was
Speaker 1: going to school to become an educator in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: and to make money. He was bartending at this like
Speaker 1: cool kid bar in New Orleans. Um. He was just
Speaker 1: this larger than life presence. Mr Extrovert knew everyone, very charming.
Speaker 1: And my mom was actually a flight attendant for Delta
Speaker 1: based in New Orleans, so she was very rarely at home.
Speaker 1: She was always flying all over the place. And they
Speaker 1: were in the sixties, I mean wild. They had a
Speaker 1: mutual friend and said they should meet and connected theme
Speaker 1: and so my mom said yes, which she was pursued
Speaker 1: by them all the time, I mean all the time.
Speaker 1: And when he was getting her address to come pick
Speaker 1: her up. They literally lived in the same house. She
Speaker 1: lived in the basement apartment of this house that was
Speaker 1: broken into like three or four apartments, and he lived downstairs,
Speaker 1: and they had different entrances, and because she always traveled,
Speaker 1: I mean, they never saw each other, but they lived
Speaker 1: in the same home in New Orleans. I can see
Speaker 1: like the movie version of this, right, her coming in
Speaker 1: the front is coming in the back exactly. And when
Speaker 1: she was pursued by so many that she just I
Speaker 1: think she was just kind of like whatever. And then
Speaker 1: one night, just being kind of a punk, she brought
Speaker 1: a guy to the bar that he was bartending, and
Speaker 1: my dad just went straight up to him and shook
Speaker 1: his hand and bought him a drink, and like was
Speaker 1: so unaffected by like, I mean also his pride. He
Speaker 1: would never let her know that he cared. And she
Speaker 1: started hanging out around the bar. And one night, she said,
Speaker 1: the shifting point for them was she saw my dad
Speaker 1: behind the bar get his eyes grow so big and
Speaker 1: just attack mode, almost and he jumped over the bar
Speaker 1: and went to the corner of the room. And there
Speaker 1: was this homeless guy that my dad loved, that he
Speaker 1: was always feeding and taking care of, and I guess
Speaker 1: his pants had fallen down or some idiot had maybe
Speaker 1: pulled his pants down, and all these guys were drunk,
Speaker 1: guys were sitting around like making fun of him, and
Speaker 1: my dad lost his mind and jumped over the bar
Speaker 1: and like pulled up the guy's pants and beat up
Speaker 1: the guys that were messing with him and kicked him
Speaker 1: out of the are And that was the turning point.
Speaker 1: She was like, that's the kind of man that I
Speaker 1: want to be with, and she fell in love with
Speaker 1: them that night. Ruthie grows up with her parents and
Speaker 1: her brothers on their patch of land, their farm in
Speaker 1: southern Louisiana. As she said, she could run free and wild.
Speaker 1: But then when she was seventeen, her life was changed forever.
Speaker 1: In an instant, I pulled out on a major highway
Speaker 1: in front of an ambulance and he hit me on
Speaker 1: my car door going sixty five and broke three ribs
Speaker 1: and puncture my lungs and my lungs collapse and my
Speaker 1: spleen ruptured. And then I broke the tops vertebrae in
Speaker 1: my next see one and C two. But the ambulance
Speaker 1: driver actually knew how to stabilize my neck and not
Speaker 1: pull me out of the car, which I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no telling what would have happened. I should not
Speaker 1: be here. I mean literal percent chance to live, one
Speaker 1: percent chance to walk. And they were able to get
Speaker 1: me to the hospital and had to pretty immediately put
Speaker 1: me on life support after they got the chest tube
Speaker 1: in and got my screen removed. After I was in
Speaker 1: the hospital about a week and off life support, they
Speaker 1: went in and did my spinal cord surgery where they
Speaker 1: took bone from my hip and fused it into my
Speaker 1: neck and back. Then they used wire in spinal cord fusion,
Speaker 1: so they wrapped so you want to see two with
Speaker 1: wire with the bone. I was so lucky. I was
Speaker 1: young and healthy. I was a senior in high school.
Speaker 1: It happened on my dad's birthday. I left there with
Speaker 1: a big neck grace walking after about a month able to,
Speaker 1: you know, go back to school after Christmas. You would
Speaker 1: never know anything had happened to me. All my scars
Speaker 1: are hidden from clothing, in my hair and besides this
Speaker 1: neck brace. I mean, you'd never know. And I at
Speaker 1: the time didn't really have any residual effects, like I
Speaker 1: would get sore her if I danced too much. But
Speaker 1: outside of that, I was very disassociated. I would talk
Speaker 1: about it in third person like it had happened to
Speaker 1: someone else, and I always say, oh, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: way harder on my family and my friends than it
Speaker 1: was on me. I don't even remember it. I was
Speaker 1: on life support and I love telling stories, so it
Speaker 1: was just a fun, crazy story to tell that I
Speaker 1: felt very disconnected from. So Ruthene daunted a pretty big bullet. Right,
Speaker 1: She's fine, she goes on with her life. She's lucky,
Speaker 1: she's in one piece. She isn't traumatized. She's just going
Speaker 1: to move on and dance and grow and enter the
Speaker 1: next phase of her life. She doesn't go to therapy.
Speaker 1: I mean, why would she. She's lucky. She develops an
Speaker 1: eating disorder in college, her way of pushing the big
Speaker 1: feelings down with food, but she really doesn't think anything's wrong.
Speaker 1: There's this psychological term dissociation. Rucie will learn this later,
Speaker 1: in which we flow to away from ourselves, numb ourselves
Speaker 1: so that we don't feel whatever it is that we're
Speaker 1: not ready to feel. Ruthie checks all the boxes. She
Speaker 1: graduates from college and gets married a few years later
Speaker 1: to a musician, a drummer. She's mad for I just
Speaker 1: believed everything was gonna work out great. You know. We
Speaker 1: bought our little home, We had all these dreams, all
Speaker 1: these plans, all the children we're going to have, all
Speaker 1: the children we would adopt. And one day, about a
Speaker 1: year into our marriage, I was walking in front of
Speaker 1: the store in this crazy, gnarly shooting. Pain went up
Speaker 1: my neck and I remember thinking, either I've been electrocuted
Speaker 1: or the shot, or you know, was I struck by lightning.
Speaker 1: I mean it was that severe and that debilitating, and
Speaker 1: it dropped me to my knees, where I blacked out
Speaker 1: for a second, and then I was left with black
Speaker 1: inky spots in my eyes and horrible, horrible migraine and
Speaker 1: terrified me, of course, and I started it going to
Speaker 1: see doctors because that shooting pain started happening regularly and
Speaker 1: more and more frequently. And every time I go to
Speaker 1: a doctor, they'd have me do an m R. And
Speaker 1: when the film would come back, there would be this
Speaker 1: black spot on the film and they'd say, oh, that's
Speaker 1: just the magnet and the machine interacting with the wire
Speaker 1: from your spinal cordfusion, because it would be directly where
Speaker 1: the surgery was, and they be like, everything around it
Speaker 1: looks fun. They started me in all these different therapies
Speaker 1: and nothing was helping, So then they started me on
Speaker 1: narcotics because you know, I was not functional. I was
Speaker 1: in such severe pain, and of course I just didn't
Speaker 1: want to hurt all the time, so I took anything
Speaker 1: they recommended. And that's just sent me on a very
Speaker 1: slowly darker and darker path. Like I stopped being able
Speaker 1: to function, I stopped showing up for work. I eventually
Speaker 1: had to quit working. Um I was spending all of
Speaker 1: my time in bed, I stopped showing up as a partner,
Speaker 1: as a daughter, as a sister, as an aunt, as
Speaker 1: a friend. And that was the gist of my life
Speaker 1: for about four and a half years before we finally
Speaker 1: figured out what was causing the pain. I saw a
Speaker 1: new doctor. I've seen so many at this point, and
Speaker 1: finally this one doctor said, Ruthie, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: what's going on until I see what's underneath that spot.
Speaker 1: And I had never asked, you know, I didn't even
Speaker 1: think to ask, but definitely was not an advocate for
Speaker 1: myself at the time. And basically, this fifty X ray
Speaker 1: showed that one of the wires from my previous final
Speaker 1: corn fusion had broken and pierced into my brainstem. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's take a breather. Two Here a wire had broken
Speaker 1: and pierced Ruthie's brainstem. I mean, which is like your
Speaker 1: reptile brain. If you're a I support, they're keeping your
Speaker 1: reptile brain alive. It's like the basic functions of organs
Speaker 1: and breathing. And I shouldn't be alive. I should not
Speaker 1: have brain functioning. I should not be speaking, I should
Speaker 1: not be walking. And I'm the only human that's ever
Speaker 1: had that that we've can find any record of. So
Speaker 1: I'm so lucky to be here. So lucky. It's you know,
Speaker 1: not once but twice, right, Yeah, had it not been
Speaker 1: an ambulance, you know, had there not been someone at
Speaker 1: the scene who knew what to do, had after all
Speaker 1: those years you not have found the doctor who just
Speaker 1: had the most practical let's do an X ray, you know,
Speaker 1: after all this, So this is around two thousand nine
Speaker 1: when you have the knowledge of Okay, now this is
Speaker 1: what's been causing this excruciating pain, and there's a surgery.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was essentially a taking time bomb. Right.
Speaker 1: They couldn't believe that I was breathing, functioning, walking alive.
Speaker 1: But insurance it was a pre existing injury and so
Speaker 1: insurance wasn't going to cover it. And my dad, who
Speaker 1: we called Papa, he I told my mom and my
Speaker 1: godfather that he was going to come see me to
Speaker 1: tell me that he was going to sell our farm
Speaker 1: so I could have this surgery because insurance wouldn't cover it.
Speaker 1: And he, on his way to visit me, stopped to
Speaker 1: visit our Amish friends because we have Ammishers. He did
Speaker 1: everything the way the Amish did with his garden. They
Speaker 1: had raised his barns. He would get his animals from them,
Speaker 1: and he went every two to three months to just
Speaker 1: work the land with them. And they became one family
Speaker 1: down and it was just his heaven, his happy place.
Speaker 1: And we don't know exactly what happened because no one
Speaker 1: was with him at the moment, but we get a
Speaker 1: phone call that he ended up falling down a flight
Speaker 1: of stairs into the basement. It was just the craziest,
Speaker 1: just most freak accident. And I was already you know,
Speaker 1: on so many drugs and so shut down and on
Speaker 1: the highest level of finnel patch and taking all the drugs,
Speaker 1: and I just I had no capacity. I just shut
Speaker 1: down even more so. And I remember at the time,
Speaker 1: I did not know how to process hard things, so
Speaker 1: I just numb myself even more. I just remember, you know,
Speaker 1: I would pinch myself until I would believe because I
Speaker 1: would just think, like, this is a nightmare. Wake up, Ruthie,
Speaker 1: wake up. And now I can hear myself and the
Speaker 1: privilege and the thing that I'm about to stay. But
Speaker 1: I would say, this can't be your life. This can't
Speaker 1: be your life, This isn't your life, which you're also saying,
Speaker 1: this could be for someone else, you know, like this
Speaker 1: could be someone else's life, but it can't be mine.
Speaker 1: Not Ruthie, lindsay, this is a nightmare. Ruthie, Wake up,
Speaker 1: Wake up. Ruthie is twenty nine years old. She's spent
Speaker 1: years in excruciating pain, unnecessarily so, and is facing terrifying
Speaker 1: expensive surgery and now her beloved dad he dies of
Speaker 1: his injuries. He had been on his way to try
Speaker 1: to save her, literally to sell the farm to pay
Speaker 1: for her operation. Was this going to be more than
Speaker 1: she than anyone could handle? But then because of the
Speaker 1: kind of guy her dad had been, his goodness and
Speaker 1: kindness comes back a hundredfold. The whole community rallies and support.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a loss for me and my family
Speaker 1: he walked in the door. I'm telling you you would
Speaker 1: just want to be drawn into his presence because it
Speaker 1: felt so good. He made everyone feel like they were
Speaker 1: the most special person that he knew. And when he
Speaker 1: would leave us, when he'd leave my brothers and all
Speaker 1: and her children, you say, I love you so much.
Speaker 1: Remember your manners and always look out for the little
Speaker 1: guy and his whole thing is he wanted us to
Speaker 1: look out for the person that everyone else was missing
Speaker 1: and to enter in and like love them and serve
Speaker 1: them and honor them, not just notice, you know. And
Speaker 1: that's how he lived his life. What was so beautiful
Speaker 1: in that time was my godfather ended up setting up
Speaker 1: this medical fund in my daddy's honor so that I
Speaker 1: could have the surgery because he knew that that was
Speaker 1: his last wish, and checks and let her started coming
Speaker 1: in out the wazoo because people would be like, your
Speaker 1: dad bought my prom dress, your dad sent me on
Speaker 1: my senior trip. Your dad bought our Christmas tree, your
Speaker 1: dad paid my rent, your dad got me into my
Speaker 1: first year of college. I mean, I'm telling you, this
Speaker 1: list went on and on, and we did not have
Speaker 1: much growing up. It's not like we were in this
Speaker 1: wealthy family at all. My godfather, who was the president
Speaker 1: of the bank, is like, yeah, he would take out
Speaker 1: loans so that he could do these things and to
Speaker 1: help other people, and that's just the kind of guy
Speaker 1: he was. And so because he had shown up and
Speaker 1: loved so many people so well, the full amount of
Speaker 1: money was raised for me to have this surgery. And
Speaker 1: it's because of his love, his love for others, and
Speaker 1: his love for me, I was able to do this
Speaker 1: life altering surgery that I had to do to keep living.
Speaker 1: And it just felt like such a honor to be
Speaker 1: his daughter, you know, Like it's such a privilege to
Speaker 1: be Lloyd Lindsay's daughter. Like I feel so grateful to
Speaker 1: have gotten to be raised, to have chosen him. I
Speaker 1: am such a weirdo, and I believe in past lives
Speaker 1: and all the things that I really believe. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I was so wise to choose that man to be
Speaker 1: my father. What a gift, you know. No, there's this
Speaker 1: moment in your book where you write about the last
Speaker 1: time that your father saw you. You were consumed with pain,
Speaker 1: living in your bed, hopeless, And I so identified with
Speaker 1: that because my dad died when I was young as well,
Speaker 1: and I was a mess. I was a complete mess
Speaker 1: when he died, and I adored him. And there's there's
Speaker 1: something about honoring a person by becoming the person, you know.
Speaker 1: I've often written and often said that my dad became
Speaker 1: my north star and really has guided me ever since
Speaker 1: my asking him, what would you do? You know? How
Speaker 1: should I be? How do I get through this and
Speaker 1: internalizing that yeah, yeah, we'll be back in a moment
Speaker 1: with more family secrets. As a result of all the
Speaker 1: years Ruthie had been on pain killers, her tolerance for
Speaker 1: medication was off the charts. It took a lot of
Speaker 1: heavy duty drugs to make her even slightly comfortable. After
Speaker 1: she's successfully operated on at the Mayo Clinic, she's experiencing
Speaker 1: a whole new level of pain. The goal was to
Speaker 1: get her living, breathing, walking, but she's sustained severe nerve
Speaker 1: and spinal cord damage and feels a constant, burning pain
Speaker 1: like half of her is on fire. She walks out
Speaker 1: of the hospital a titanium screw where the broken wire
Speaker 1: had once been, holding that piece of wire in her hand,
Speaker 1: but then she goes straight back to bed and feels
Speaker 1: more hopeless than ever before. Ruthie spends years years in
Speaker 1: that bed, in terrible pain, medicated and then with sedith,
Speaker 1: a nasty bacterial infection. On top of everything else, her
Speaker 1: husband's away on tour more often than not, and their
Speaker 1: marriage is coming apart, and she breaks. Finally, she has
Speaker 1: a breakdown and moves back with her family, this time
Speaker 1: into her brother's house. She needs help badly. They all
Speaker 1: know it. But instead of going away to a rehab,
Speaker 1: Ruthie decides that she's going to do it. She's going
Speaker 1: to wean herself off narcotics because she can't bear the
Speaker 1: thought of being sent away. What would people think? Speaking
Speaker 1: of the you know, the what will people think sort
Speaker 1: of mentality I'm thinking about, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: family secrets, there really are two that I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about. And one is that during some
Speaker 1: of this period of time, you had fixed up your
Speaker 1: house and you had this incredible knack with design, and
Speaker 1: some photographs were taken and you made everything really gorgeous
Speaker 1: and like this beautiful interior, and you became this Instagram darling,
Speaker 1: suddenly having this world of people seeing your beautiful life,
Speaker 1: everything perfect. And I think that that's such an important
Speaker 1: thing for people to hear and to think about, because
Speaker 1: so much of social media, Instagram in particular, is about
Speaker 1: comparing our insides with other people's outside or what we
Speaker 1: think other people's outsides are, you know, the various personas
Speaker 1: that all of us, in some way or another project
Speaker 1: on social media, even when we're trying not to. And so,
Speaker 1: when was the moment that you sat down and opened
Speaker 1: your Instagram account and posted the truth and just like
Speaker 1: shared it in all of its complexity with the people
Speaker 1: who were following you. I actually didn't start my Instagram
Speaker 1: account until after I'd wean myself off all the drugs.
Speaker 1: It took me about four months to get off all
Speaker 1: of the narcotics, and I had my brother was like,
Speaker 1: you can lay in your bed and hurt, or you
Speaker 1: can get up and be with people and try to
Speaker 1: love people and serve people and live life and hurt.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, so much trying to live and hurt,
Speaker 1: you know. And once that happened, and you know, my
Speaker 1: marriage did end, and I was like, if I get
Speaker 1: back in that bed, I will die. I will die.
Speaker 1: So Instagram it became a part of my life joy journal.
Speaker 1: It was like all I thought about all these drugs
Speaker 1: was my pain and my trauma. And as I weaned
Speaker 1: myself off the drugs, I was you know, you can't
Speaker 1: feel joy and goodness if you don't allow yourself to
Speaker 1: build darkness and pain and loss. You known one, you've
Speaker 1: known the other. And so all of a sudden I
Speaker 1: was able to see sunsets for the first time. I
Speaker 1: was able to see my nieces and nephews I had
Speaker 1: not knows them. Allowing myself to feel my pain gave
Speaker 1: me my eyes to actually see to experience joy on
Speaker 1: this like profoundly different level. And so what ended up
Speaker 1: happening is I wasn't giving people the full context. I
Speaker 1: was only giving them the beauty, the joy, the goodness.
Speaker 1: I did not give them the context of my joy.
Speaker 1: And after about eight or nine months of doing that,
Speaker 1: I had people that didn't know me following along on
Speaker 1: social media, and I started getting these messages of like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I want your life, what a dream life.
Speaker 1: This is so beautiful. I wish that was my dining room.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, all these crazy messages, and it
Speaker 1: made me nauseous because I'm like, I remember looking on
Speaker 1: social media and just I would have paid so much
Speaker 1: money to have been able to be outside playing with
Speaker 1: the children that I was dreaming of having instead of
Speaker 1: just laying in my bed hurting all the time and
Speaker 1: out doing these adventures, you know. And the idea that
Speaker 1: I could conjure up those feelings and someone else without
Speaker 1: them getting the full picture made me so sad. I
Speaker 1: grew up. It's like my mom was a child of alcoholics.
Speaker 1: You show up, you you know everything could be chaos
Speaker 1: in the house, but you walk outside and you smile,
Speaker 1: and you'd be pretty, and you be kind and you
Speaker 1: act like everything for this tidy bow. And this when
Speaker 1: the first time when I shared my message, stared my
Speaker 1: story of what was really happening. Was really the first
Speaker 1: time that I had publicly ever shared how bad things were.
Speaker 1: I wrote about my divorce. I wrote about c diff
Speaker 1: and like ship my pants all day every day. I
Speaker 1: wrote about my husband leaving with a dear friend of mine.
Speaker 1: I wrote about losing my daddy. I wrote about chronic,
Speaker 1: debilitating pain that I lived in with every day of
Speaker 1: my life. I wrote about being dependent on all those
Speaker 1: narcotics all of those years. And I remember when I
Speaker 1: had published, thinking, oh my god, people are going to
Speaker 1: want to run for the hills, like this is the
Speaker 1: opposite of what they've been following before. And of course
Speaker 1: it does the exact opposite. I mean, my inbox just
Speaker 1: flooded with people because we're so longing to not feel alone,
Speaker 1: We're so longing to feel connection and authenticity. That's beautiful, Rizzi,
Speaker 1: and it it reminds me of this line from a
Speaker 1: poem of Elizabeth Barrett brownings, I can't quote the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but the phrase I'm thinking of is a gauntlet with
Speaker 1: a gift in it, and all gauntlets have gifts in them,
Speaker 1: but we don't necessarily find them. Yeah, we'll be right
Speaker 1: back now. It's just after the Christmas holidays. In very
Speaker 1: early January twenty nine, Team Ruthie has become an Instagram sensation.
Speaker 1: The truth really does set her free, and she's writing
Speaker 1: what will become her memoir There I Am. She's with
Speaker 1: her mom, and her mom asks Ruthie if she's ever
Speaker 1: done one of those DNA ancestry tests. Her mom muses
Speaker 1: about her old hippie days, both she and Ruthie's dad.
Speaker 1: She says she wouldn't be surprised if maybe there was
Speaker 1: another kid out there, No big deal. Just like that.
Speaker 1: Ruthie didn't think anything more of it. It was presented
Speaker 1: in such a casual way. But then a few months later,
Speaker 1: woo woo alert. Rusie speaks with an intuitive guide and
Speaker 1: the guide says that she keeps seeing another brother. Ruthie
Speaker 1: still sort of files us away, but then when she's
Speaker 1: back home in Nashville, she sees a healer she trusts
Speaker 1: and has gone to for years. Ruthie brings up the question,
Speaker 1: not expecting to hear anything really, but then something happens
Speaker 1: that rocks her world. By the way, side note woo
Speaker 1: woo very often ends up being world rocking. She goes, yes, Reefee,
Speaker 1: you do you have a missing brother? Your mom is
Speaker 1: very intuitive and I was like what. She goes yeah,
Speaker 1: and I go, well, how am I going to find him?
Speaker 1: She says, you don't have to. He's going to find
Speaker 1: you and very soon. So about three weeks later, I
Speaker 1: get a message one morning on Facebook and it says, hi, Ruthie,
Speaker 1: my husband doesn't have Facebook. He recently matched with you
Speaker 1: on ancestry and I believe he's your relative. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, here it is. So I give her
Speaker 1: my number and tell her to have him call me,
Speaker 1: and I get a phone call and he said, um, hi, Reethee,
Speaker 1: this is David McGhee. Do you know why I'm calling?
Speaker 1: I go because you're my brother. He goes, how did
Speaker 1: you know? I feel? I've just been waiting for your
Speaker 1: call and I'm so excited. So when my dad was
Speaker 1: in college, he was like a sophomore junior in college.
Speaker 1: Nineteen David's mom was a senior in high school, went
Speaker 1: to l A. S U for a weekend, met my dad.
Speaker 1: They ended up cooking up. She went back home months
Speaker 1: later found out she was pregnant. Back then, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're pregnant, you get sent away, especially in the South.
Speaker 1: So she got sent away to have this baby. No
Speaker 1: one knew about it, and he was adopted by this
Speaker 1: couple in Oxford, Mississippi. He was a professor at All
Speaker 1: miss which is where I went to college. And when
Speaker 1: he had his first son, he started looking for his parents.
Speaker 1: He wanted to find out, especially his dad. He hired
Speaker 1: two private detectives, looked for almost twenty seven twenty eight years,
Speaker 1: and never found anything because it's a closed adoption state.
Speaker 1: And finally, so his family got together on the six
Speaker 1: year anniversary of his son's untimely passing. He had passed
Speaker 1: of an accidental overdose when he was twenty three years old.
Speaker 1: He has two children, both have partners and babies, and
Speaker 1: the whole family got together to celebrate William's life and
Speaker 1: his wife was like, you know, you can't give up.
Speaker 1: I know you've been looking forever. She had made him
Speaker 1: spit into a tube. Also like two years before, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to sign into your ancestry account because who
Speaker 1: knows signs in there's my name. She's like, there's a
Speaker 1: match and it's so high it has to be your sister.
Speaker 1: But there's no profile. But there's this girl named Ruthie
Speaker 1: Lindsay and his daughter in law goes Ruthie Lindsay. I
Speaker 1: follow her on Instagram. I followed her for years and
Speaker 1: he's like, now, slow down, I'm sure there's more than one.
Speaker 1: She was like, no, that is your sister. I know.
Speaker 1: And she pulls up my website and there's a video
Speaker 1: of my dad. David is the only one that looks
Speaker 1: like him. He's the only one that hunts and fishes
Speaker 1: and gardens. He does similar work. He works in education
Speaker 1: at all miss he is like this larger than I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the craziest where then it gets even crazier. My
Speaker 1: full brother that I was raised with. Every summer he
Speaker 1: is the camp doctor at this summer camp called Camp
Speaker 1: Alpine for boys. Well, David's daughter, my niece, grew up
Speaker 1: going to the sister camp that I also went to,
Speaker 1: and she was a counselor. When my nieces were there
Speaker 1: and they all fell in love with her well. This
Speaker 1: summer in particular, she was the camp director at the
Speaker 1: boys camp, and my brother and his family were all
Speaker 1: there because he was the camp doctor, and they all
Speaker 1: just fell in love with her even more, and my
Speaker 1: brother and my sister in law met her. She ended
Speaker 1: up getting really sick, having to go to the infirmary.
Speaker 1: My brother held her hair back while she vomited. And
Speaker 1: this is her uncle. This is in fact her uncle,
Speaker 1: biological uncle. Then a year year or two later she
Speaker 1: got married. She invited my brother and his family of eight.
Speaker 1: So on the sixth anniversary of the tragic loss of
Speaker 1: his son, David, who's been searching fruitlessly for years, is
Speaker 1: matched with someone named Ruthie Lindsay as a sister. His
Speaker 1: daughter in law is a fan of Rusie's follows her
Speaker 1: on Instagram. The coincidences abound. So many of those close
Speaker 1: relatives have known each other, crossed paths, shared parts of
Speaker 1: lives together without ever knowing they were Kim. Last summer,
Speaker 1: everyone came down to the farm and got to be
Speaker 1: on this land where my nieces and nephews are the
Speaker 1: fourth generation that lived there. And he got to see
Speaker 1: this land that my daddy plowed with his garden, and
Speaker 1: he got to see the land that his granddad loved
Speaker 1: more than anything. And it's just it's just this full circle.
Speaker 1: You can't make this shift up like beautiful gift that
Speaker 1: we are just so blown away by. I just and
Speaker 1: the timing was perfect, just all of it. You know.
Speaker 1: As I'm listening to I'm just thinking, I've heard so
Speaker 1: many stories in the last few years of families who
Speaker 1: make a discovery and someone picks up the phone and
Speaker 1: calls and says, I think we're related. The very first
Speaker 1: impulse that many many people have in that situation is
Speaker 1: to feel threatened. You now, what do you want? You
Speaker 1: must want something? And I'm listening to your story and
Speaker 1: it's all about love and an open heartedness that then
Speaker 1: creates the beauty, allows for the beauty. You know. It's
Speaker 1: it's an open palm instead of a closed fist, it's
Speaker 1: an open heart instead of a shutdown heart, and it
Speaker 1: begets and begets the beauty that you're talking about. And
Speaker 1: even that you're talking about in the way that so
Speaker 1: much pain, the loss of a child and everything you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Rucie is just really, really beautiful. It's hard
Speaker 1: to remember life without him now, like he is just
Speaker 1: such a treasure and such a gift. Remember what I
Speaker 1: said at the beginning about courage. Ruthie's story is really
Speaker 1: at its core about the courage to heal, and part
Speaker 1: of that healing is not wishing or willing any of
Speaker 1: it away. Here's Ruthie with the last word. I think,
Speaker 1: if that first surgery when I had my wreck, everything
Speaker 1: had been great from them on, if you know that
Speaker 1: second surgery when they removed the wire, if that had
Speaker 1: fixed everything, quote unquote, and you know I didn't have
Speaker 1: the physical pain. If those things outside of me would
Speaker 1: have quote unquote cured me, I would have never woken up.
Speaker 1: I would have never had the breakdowns which eventually led
Speaker 1: to the breakthroughs. I would never have gotten there had
Speaker 1: I been quote unquote cured. It took all the trauma,
Speaker 1: all the pain, all the loss, all the heartache. Those
Speaker 1: experiences were the entry ways, the entry points, the invitations
Speaker 1: for me to ultimately come home to myself. And when
Speaker 1: we do this healing work that we're also deserving of,
Speaker 1: then we get to go out and be those mirrors,
Speaker 1: to be those safe containers, to be that light and
Speaker 1: that expansive like you spoke of abundant love, because there's
Speaker 1: always an abundance. There's always more. Every gift I have
Speaker 1: I can freely release. It's all energy because there's always more.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is an I Heeart Media production. Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: is the supervising producer and Bethan Mcaluso is the executive producer.
Speaker 1: We'd also like to give a special thanks to Tyler
Speaker 1: Klang and Tristan McNeil. If you have a family secret
Speaker 1: you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your
Speaker 1: story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
Speaker 1: one eight secret zero. That's secret and then the number zero.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Instagram at Danny Ryder
Speaker 1: and Facebook at facebook dot com slash Family Secrets Pod,
Speaker 1: and Twitter at fami Secrets Pod. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.