Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: This episode contains discussion of suicide and self harm. Listener
Speaker 2: discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: I wanted to forget all the places I had slept,
Speaker 1: no one knowing where I was, always one step away
Speaker 1: from tragedy. All I'd wanted growing up was to read
Speaker 1: books and study, but instead I learned how few acceptable
Speaker 1: ways there were to need help. You had to be perfect, deserving,
Speaker 1: hurt in just the right way. Even then, adults were
Speaker 1: so constrained in what they could offer. Everyone who dealt
Speaker 1: with disadvantaged kids, from therapists to college admissions officers, treated
Speaker 1: us as if we could overcome any abuse or neglect
Speaker 1: with sheer force of will.
Speaker 3: In the present tense, I was sick of pretending to
Speaker 3: be so resilient, so I preferred to keep my mouth shut.
Speaker 2: That's Emmy Neatfeld, software engineer and author of the recent
Speaker 2: memoir Acceptance, and Emmy's is, in fact a story of
Speaker 2: profound resilience, not the kind that is pretend or performed,
Speaker 2: but the real, true kind of inner compass that points
Speaker 2: again and again toward belief and hope and home. I'm
Speaker 2: Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets that
Speaker 2: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 2: and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 3: I was born in Minneapolis, and I lived in the.
Speaker 1: City for the first five years of my life, and
Speaker 1: then my parents and I moved to a suburb just
Speaker 1: outside the city, where we lived basically through elementary school.
Speaker 1: My mom was a crimecy photographer and my dad stayed
Speaker 1: at home with me.
Speaker 3: We were pretty really.
Speaker 1: I was a state Bible memorization champion, and I really
Speaker 1: loved going to school and reading and learning. And I
Speaker 1: didn't have that many friends. I was kind of a
Speaker 1: nerd and was often on keemps with like on brush hair,
Speaker 1: dirty sock. But I really loved school and studying and
Speaker 1: had all these big dreams for my future, mostly dreams
Speaker 1: that involved like glorifying God and disproving evolution.
Speaker 2: What did religion mean to you in those early years?
Speaker 1: It was a place where I felt like I could
Speaker 1: be myself. I did not have good social skill. I
Speaker 1: came from a very strict household, and so I feel
Speaker 1: like I was not having as much fun as other
Speaker 1: people my age were having. My dad had a pretty
Speaker 1: bad temper, but I felt like in religion. I could
Speaker 1: imagine this future in which I would be like the
Speaker 1: most about, the most pious, and would be really rewarded
Speaker 1: and seen by God for my devotion. I had an
Speaker 1: older half brother, and he was the son of my
Speaker 1: mom's first marriage. He really loved me. He is a
Speaker 1: great brother to me, but my dad felt a lot
Speaker 1: of hostility towards.
Speaker 3: Him, and starting around when I was.
Speaker 1: Around three years old, I was really prevented from seeing him.
Speaker 2: And you were described as an only child, right, I
Speaker 2: mean they wanted you to think of yourself as.
Speaker 3: An only child. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Even my mom, who would never say that my brother
Speaker 1: wasn't anything but kind and loving to me. She would say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're the prototypical only child. She would describe
Speaker 1: me that way in from other people, even though I
Speaker 1: had a brother who I lived with for the first
Speaker 1: years of my life.
Speaker 2: Any excels in school. She's a bit socially awkward, a
Speaker 2: self described nurse, very bookish. She loves to read and
Speaker 2: she loves to learn. One day, when she's nine years old,
Speaker 2: her dad picks her up from school and makes an announcement.
Speaker 2: He tells her something she's supposed to keep secret.
Speaker 3: When I was in fourth grade.
Speaker 1: My dad picked me up from school one day and
Speaker 1: told me I'm changing my name to Michelle. And I
Speaker 1: was a little bit shocked, but mostly I just wanted clarification.
Speaker 1: So I asked her, you know, does this mean you're
Speaker 1: going to be a woman now? And she said yes,
Speaker 1: and that I should you she her pronouns, but not
Speaker 1: tell my mom. It was still a secret from her.
Speaker 1: In Minnesota in two thousand and two, nobody around me
Speaker 1: had ever even heard of somebody being tramped, Like there
Speaker 1: was no kind of cultural touchstones. There was no like
Speaker 1: Caitlyn Jenner or Transparent or even Oprah featuring somebody trans.
Speaker 1: This is pretty new and not something that I that
Speaker 1: I really knew about.
Speaker 3: Like my church was very.
Speaker 1: Anti gay, and I had it ingrained in me that
Speaker 1: being gay was a sin from a very young age,
Speaker 1: but I didn't really know how being trans was related,
Speaker 1: if it was being gay, and even if we were
Speaker 1: going to stay in the church anymore.
Speaker 2: And so in Michelle asking you to not tell your mother,
Speaker 2: she was asking you to keep a secret.
Speaker 1: When she asked me not to tell my mom, I
Speaker 1: recognized it as Michelle will tell my mom. Eventually that
Speaker 1: she's not ready yet, And it made a lot of
Speaker 1: sense to me that it.
Speaker 3: Would be something where you wanted to be really prepared.
Speaker 1: But it did put me in an awkward position, especially
Speaker 1: because I grew up with this really strong sense of morality.
Speaker 1: And on one hand, I wasn't supposed to lie to
Speaker 1: my parents, and keeping a secret can easily feel like lying.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, I was supposed to obey
Speaker 1: my parents, especially my father, which is this role that
Speaker 1: Michelle had been playing. And luckily I only had to
Speaker 1: keep that secret for a couple months because Michelle did
Speaker 1: come out to my mom.
Speaker 3: In my head, I really imagined that.
Speaker 1: Michelle was going to come out and then my parents
Speaker 1: were going to stay together, and then it was going
Speaker 1: to take some time for Michelle to lay this groundwork
Speaker 1: so that we could continue being a family. And when
Speaker 1: Michelle did come out about two or three months after
Speaker 1: telling me, I was completely unprepared that my mom was
Speaker 1: not okay with it. My mom felt really betrayed, and
Speaker 1: I remember being in my bedroom and listening to my
Speaker 1: parents downstairs at the kitchen table, and Michelle was crying
Speaker 1: and telling.
Speaker 3: My mom, you know, Jesus would accept me.
Speaker 1: How I am, and my mom replied, I'm not Jesus
Speaker 1: and called my dad by her dead name. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I held out hope at that point that
Speaker 1: my parents were.
Speaker 4: Going to find a way to make it work and
Speaker 4: they were going to stay together, especially because the church
Speaker 4: we were in really thought of divorce as a sin,
Speaker 4: and so I thought, you know, how could it be
Speaker 4: worse for my parents to stay together than for them
Speaker 4: to get divorced. But my mom told me a few
Speaker 4: weeks later that she was going to move out and
Speaker 4: once again told me not to tell Michelle.
Speaker 3: After my parents separated.
Speaker 1: I continued living with Michelle in the same house where
Speaker 1: we'd been, and I really wanted to stay with her.
Speaker 1: My parents started going through this divorce process and they
Speaker 1: were not going to agree on anything. They'd had a
Speaker 1: very contentious relationship and it was going to be an
Speaker 1: even more conscientious divorce. So I remember being taken into
Speaker 1: all these offices with social workers who asked me what
Speaker 1: I wanted, and I said, you know, I want.
Speaker 3: To live with Michelle. She had been the person who
Speaker 3: was home with me, you know, every.
Speaker 1: Day after school. We had that relationship. She wasn't perfect,
Speaker 1: but she was there and then the same social workers
Speaker 1: would tell me that I was too young and it
Speaker 1: didn't matter what I wanted, they were going to figure
Speaker 1: it out. And I encountered again and again people would assume, like, oh, you.
Speaker 3: Must be really traumatized by the transition. It must have really.
Speaker 1: Screwed you up, and basically viewed Michelle as a bad
Speaker 1: parent for transitioning, or as a bad.
Speaker 3: Person or bad influence. And you know, it had been
Speaker 3: kind of little shocking, but I was nine, Like, I got.
Speaker 1: Used to it really quickly, and even though Michelle had
Speaker 1: been really harsh at times and a strict disciplinarian, I
Speaker 1: don't think that she was always a great parent to
Speaker 1: me before that, but it all made a lot more
Speaker 1: sense once she came out and she was, you know,
Speaker 1: kinder to me and nicer to me. But nobody around
Speaker 1: really seemed to recognize that, and instead I felt like
Speaker 1: everybody was just listening to my mom, and everyone had
Speaker 1: a lot of sympathy for my mom because her marriage
Speaker 1: had dissolved in this way, and you know, I think
Speaker 1: it is hard, but I think Michelle also deserves sympathy.
Speaker 1: Q It became extremely frustrating to me to feel like
Speaker 1: I was sharing what I wanted and it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: My mom was this super charismatic woman. She was really
Speaker 1: really smart. As a girl, she had dreamed about going
Speaker 1: to Stanford and she had not gotten in and felt
Speaker 1: like it was a really close call. And she told
Speaker 1: everyone who would listen about her high IQ and her
Speaker 1: SAT score. And this sounds like something that would be
Speaker 1: really annoying, but she was just so personable and so
Speaker 1: easy to talk to, very gregarious, so she could convince
Speaker 1: people of almost anything. And meanwhile, she from the time
Speaker 1: that I basically could remember.
Speaker 3: She was a big clearance shopper.
Speaker 1: I remember coming to her office at work and seeing
Speaker 1: all of these bags from Target that were filled with
Speaker 1: like dozens of watches Winnie the Pooh watches printed with
Speaker 1: a tigger character with the little orange tags them that
Speaker 1: showed the low price, and it was such a good
Speaker 1: deal that she bought one hundred and my dad would
Speaker 1: not have tolerated that, so instead she had these bags like.
Speaker 3: In her office at work, in her car, and it
Speaker 3: was something that.
Speaker 1: I knew I was not supposed to talk about, otherwise
Speaker 1: she'd get in trouble with my dad.
Speaker 2: So there was this contrast between this charismatic, articulate woman,
Speaker 2: very intelligent, you know, charming and seemingly together in some ways,
Speaker 2: and you know sort of the chaos that was lurking
Speaker 2: just beneath the surface of that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, I think my mom's chaos and her charm.
Speaker 1: Developed in pandem where the charm was a defense that
Speaker 1: she could use. It's somebody disagree with her or they
Speaker 1: tried to challenge her, she always had a respond and
Speaker 1: she could always justify what she was doing. So I
Speaker 1: don't remember her ever really admitting that she was wrong
Speaker 1: or imperfect, or that there was something that could change
Speaker 1: the weekend before I started sixth grade, Michelle came home
Speaker 1: from a hearing.
Speaker 3: And told me that my mom had one custody and
Speaker 3: that I.
Speaker 1: Was moving in with her, and that she was going
Speaker 1: to arrive any minute then. And then she went to
Speaker 1: her room and slammed the door, and I was sitting
Speaker 1: there just completely shocked.
Speaker 3: I had been.
Speaker 1: Prepared to start sixth grade at middle school with my
Speaker 1: best friends, and now is going to be in a
Speaker 1: different school district, living with my mom in a different
Speaker 1: part of the Twin Cities.
Speaker 3: And I went up to my room, you know, my
Speaker 3: space covered in tears.
Speaker 1: I packed all my stuff into these black plastic trash
Speaker 1: bags before my mom arrived, and that night I moved
Speaker 1: in with her.
Speaker 3: Before the custody evaluators came to do a home visit.
Speaker 1: She had cleaned out her apartment by moving all of
Speaker 1: these boxes of stuff into an adjacent apartment. We lived
Speaker 1: in a duplex, and during that time, the top floor,
Speaker 1: which she normally rented out, became a storage facility for
Speaker 1: her junk. But by the time that I moved in,
Speaker 1: there were boxes of photo albums, receipts, packaging, empty water bottles,
Speaker 1: already kind of encroaching on our living area, you know.
Speaker 1: And I had hoped that my parents really split custody.
Speaker 1: But a few weeks after my mom won custody, Michelle
Speaker 1: came to see me at school and she was moving
Speaker 1: across the country. And that was the last time that
Speaker 1: I ever saw her. And you were how old I
Speaker 1: was ten, about the turn eleven.
Speaker 2: Suddenly, Emmy is living a whole new life. She's in
Speaker 2: a new place, in a new neighborhood, in an entirely
Speaker 2: new family dynamic. She's alone with her mother, whose chaos
Speaker 2: is tangible. Emmy's mom is hoarding amassing all sorts of
Speaker 2: stuff that spills into every corner of Emmy's world.
Speaker 1: At first, I was really lonely and sad, and I
Speaker 1: did my best to move forward and to make new friends,
Speaker 1: make new hobbies. But as the year went on, it
Speaker 1: became increasingly difficult to live with.
Speaker 3: My mom in her house.
Speaker 1: Almost every night after school, she would pick me up
Speaker 1: and we would go shopping, and we had a rotation
Speaker 1: of the late local drug store, target, the grocery store,
Speaker 1: home depot, and we would stay out at these places,
Speaker 1: laid into the night. My mom had legal debt from
Speaker 1: the divorce, and then pretty soon she had these big
Speaker 1: credit card bills from shopping, and the piles of stuff
Speaker 1: in our home were just closing in on me and
Speaker 1: my mom. Maybe she saw that I was struggling, and
Speaker 1: she took me to therapy. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of parents in her position they would take their kids
Speaker 1: the therapy if they could, but it was not really
Speaker 1: a place for me.
Speaker 3: To talk about how I was feeling.
Speaker 1: Instead, we went to the family therapy and my mom
Speaker 1: told the therapist like, there's something wrong with Emmie, And
Speaker 1: her first complaint was telling him I think Emmy has
Speaker 1: add and my mom had attention deficit disorder, and she
Speaker 1: thought maybe my brother had to and so she told
Speaker 1: the doctor, you know, she's disheveled, she's chronically late, and
Speaker 1: you know, I was ten, right, how can a ten
Speaker 1: year old be chronically late? But he gave my mom
Speaker 1: a questionnaire and my teacher a questionnaire, and after cube appointments,
Speaker 1: I was diagnosed and.
Speaker 3: Referred for medication.
Speaker 1: I was perscribed concerta and my first week taking it,
Speaker 1: I hit a kid over the head with a textbook.
Speaker 1: And then I was given Vanak to help me deal
Speaker 1: with the panife that I felt from the concerta, and
Speaker 1: my mom gave me her leftover adderall and the doctor
Speaker 1: prescribed me adderall on the condition that my mom would
Speaker 1: stop giving me.
Speaker 3: Medication that wasn't prescribed.
Speaker 1: And it just went from like one medication to another,
Speaker 1: and after a while I believed that I was really.
Speaker 3: Sick because I believe what the doctor.
Speaker 1: Said, like, oh, this medication is going to fix me.
Speaker 1: It's going to make me feel better, and that the
Speaker 1: problems that I'm feeling are all in my head and
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with me. And when the drugs weren't working,
Speaker 1: it felt like it was just confirmation that I was
Speaker 1: messed up and that nothing was going to help me,
Speaker 1: and then I was never going to be happy.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. In addition to feeling unwell and unhappy,
Speaker 2: Emmy is also feeling frustrated nobody is listening to her.
Speaker 2: She wants the medical professionals to actually evaluate her. She
Speaker 2: wants them to pay attention to her mom's disposition too,
Speaker 2: to come see where and how they live.
Speaker 1: In my house, there was one rule where which was
Speaker 1: don't let people inside, especially not people from the government.
Speaker 1: And even though we had that rule, when my mom
Speaker 1: took me to the doctor, I told them, I said,
Speaker 1: you need to come see our house, see how we're living.
Speaker 1: For months, we didn't have hot water and we couldn't
Speaker 1: take a shower. It was the winter Minnesota, and it
Speaker 1: was all because the pilot light was off on the
Speaker 1: water here, but we legitimately couldn't get access to it
Speaker 1: for six months because that's how bad the boarding was.
Speaker 1: And I told all of these professionals, therapists, doctors, social workers,
Speaker 1: and nobody came or even treated it like there was
Speaker 1: a possibility that something real was going on at home
Speaker 1: that was responsible for the way that I was feeling,
Speaker 1: and nobody flagged either that it was weird that my
Speaker 1: mom was taking me to the doctor, first because she
Speaker 1: thought I had add and then adding on other problems
Speaker 1: that she thought I was having, like seizures or eating disorder.
Speaker 1: Just one thing after another. She was taking me to
Speaker 1: the doctor, sometimes two or three times a week.
Speaker 3: And even though the doctors could be how many times
Speaker 3: I've been in, nobody seems.
Speaker 1: To pull the alarm or come to interview or even investigate.
Speaker 2: This is all taking a serious toll on Emmy. The
Speaker 2: myriad medications are basically fighting with each other in her system,
Speaker 2: and she begins to exhibit a number of alarming symptoms,
Speaker 2: both physical and psychological.
Speaker 1: I did become really depressed, and I started hurting myself,
Speaker 1: mostly scratching myself To say to him, I did start
Speaker 1: making myself pro love and not eating and abusing adderall
Speaker 1: that was left over from the medication and all this
Speaker 1: stuff was expected of me, and I felt like I
Speaker 1: was doing what people expected. And also it helped me
Speaker 1: try to deal with the feeling of not having any
Speaker 1: control over my life and just feeling so bad that
Speaker 1: I had to do something to make myself feel better.
Speaker 1: And when I was thirteen, I was going off of
Speaker 1: one medication and having really bad withdrawal, and I had
Speaker 1: been suicidal for a while, just feeling like there was
Speaker 1: really no way out and that the medication wasn't going
Speaker 1: to help me, adults weren't going to help me, and.
Speaker 3: I really thought it's going to be like this for
Speaker 3: the rest of my life. So that summer I overdosed
Speaker 3: and tried to kill myself.
Speaker 2: After Emmy's suicide attempt, she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Speaker 2: There she encounters the first medical professional who truly listens
Speaker 2: to her, who recognizes that perhaps Emmy isn't the troubled
Speaker 2: one here, perhaps it's her mom.
Speaker 1: When there was finally one psychiatrist who thought, Okay, my
Speaker 1: mom is the.
Speaker 3: Problem, my mom got really.
Speaker 1: Suspicious of him, and she took me out of the
Speaker 1: hospital against medical advice. He had contacted Hennepin County where
Speaker 1: I lived, and I had then referred to a social worker.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't like a Child Protective Services complaint. She
Speaker 1: was a case for her who worked with teenage girls
Speaker 1: who were deemed thick.
Speaker 3: Enough to be their own problems.
Speaker 1: But finally she wasbody who my Mom was not able
Speaker 1: to shake, like she could not just make this woman
Speaker 1: go away. Ingrid had been working as a social worker
Speaker 1: for a number of years and she came to my
Speaker 1: house one afternoon. And I had been begging people for years,
Speaker 1: you know, come.
Speaker 3: See how we live.
Speaker 1: And then she was finally there. And it was a
Speaker 1: summer afternoon when my mom was at work, and she
Speaker 1: probably knew this, and she asked me, would you let
Speaker 1: me inside?
Speaker 3: Can I just come in?
Speaker 1: I immediately recognized that, you know, it felt like a trap, right.
Speaker 1: She didn't have a warrant to come in or anything
Speaker 1: like that, and so if I let her in, it
Speaker 1: was going to be my choice. And even though I'd
Speaker 1: wanted people to come, I could imagine what was going
Speaker 1: to happen if Ingrid did come inside. And I just
Speaker 1: I kept looking at her car, which was this white
Speaker 1: like government looking forward, and I knew that if I
Speaker 1: opened the door, I would be taken away and I
Speaker 1: would be placed in Child protectives and Services again involved,
Speaker 1: I would be placed in the foster care system, and
Speaker 1: my mom's house would probably be condemned. And even though
Speaker 1: my mom had so many.
Speaker 3: Challenges and was doing things that really really hurt me.
Speaker 1: She was also my biggest advocate and I couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: hurting her like that. You know, when the social worker
Speaker 1: when Ingrid came to my house, I felt completely hopeless
Speaker 1: about my future. But I thought, at least if I
Speaker 1: stay with my mom, I can kill myself, because she
Speaker 1: wasn't supervising me to twenty four to seven, and.
Speaker 3: She opened doors that otherwise wouldn't be open.
Speaker 1: She had just proven her power by signing me out
Speaker 1: of the hospital against medical advice, and that gave me
Speaker 1: the sense of there's certain things that parents can do
Speaker 1: that nobody else in the world can do for me.
Speaker 1: And at the time, it made me feel hopeless in
Speaker 1: a way because it's like this is the parent that
Speaker 1: I'm stuck with, right and she is my only hope.
Speaker 1: Shortly after that, I was hospitalized again, and from there
Speaker 1: I was sent to a residential treatment center. But when
Speaker 1: I was in the hospital, something unexpected happened, which is
Speaker 1: that I was sent to a even disorder unit in
Speaker 1: the suburbs. And before that, I I've been in psych
Speaker 1: words in the city filled with kids who were a
Speaker 1: lot like me, who were working class like I was,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't a lot of like talk about our future.
Speaker 1: But at this hospital eating disorder unit, the doctor asked
Speaker 1: me where do you want to go to college? And
Speaker 1: it was the first time anyone in a medical capacity
Speaker 1: had taken such a serious interest in my future. And
Speaker 1: even though I ended up being taken from that place
Speaker 1: in restraints in an ambulance and taken.
Speaker 3: To this locked facility, I had.
Speaker 1: This sense of purpose for my life that I wanted
Speaker 1: to go to college, and I wanted to go to college.
Speaker 1: Early I was living in this facility that was locked
Speaker 1: three times by three different doors. There were bars are
Speaker 1: over the windows, and we spent hours a day in
Speaker 1: quiet time, just sitting alone in our room. But when
Speaker 1: I got an act test prep book, I felt like,
Speaker 1: for the first time my life had this purpose and
Speaker 1: that if I could just study and I get a
Speaker 1: good act score, I might be able to go to
Speaker 1: college in the next few.
Speaker 3: Years and have the escape that I was looking for, the.
Speaker 1: Escape that really didn't feel possible when I was living
Speaker 1: with my mom, and so I put really all of
Speaker 1: my hope into this idea of going to college, and
Speaker 1: it was for me a reason to live. But the
Speaker 1: adults who were who were watching me and the other kids.
Speaker 1: They did not approve of this ambition, and they told me,
Speaker 1: you know, you're avoiding your problems.
Speaker 3: You're not still busing on treatment.
Speaker 1: And they took away the Act book.
Speaker 3: And all my other books and said that.
Speaker 1: From then on, I was only allowed to read appropriate
Speaker 1: teen fiction that they had specifically approved. And when they
Speaker 1: did this, my mom was the person who advocated on
Speaker 1: my behalf, and they didn't listen to her, and they
Speaker 1: didn't give me the books back. But she was the
Speaker 1: person who was there saying, you know, my daughter's smart,
Speaker 1: she can go to college. You should honor that about
Speaker 1: her and let her read the book.
Speaker 2: What do you make of that, Emmy, That particular way
Speaker 2: of your mother advocating for you, as you say, it's
Speaker 2: one thing that you really shared and were kind of
Speaker 2: aligned with her about, was that that you could have
Speaker 2: that kind of ambition and that you could end up
Speaker 2: going to you know, prestigious university, and that you were
Speaker 2: that smart.
Speaker 1: My mom really believed in me. She had so much
Speaker 1: face that I was brilliant, I was a genius, that
Speaker 1: I was destined to do great things. And when she
Speaker 1: talked like this in front of doctors, it made her
Speaker 1: sound crazy, Like I could tell that something was changing
Speaker 1: in the eyes of the medical professionals when they heard
Speaker 1: her speak about me like this, almost like they wanted
Speaker 1: to prove her wrong. And in hindsight, I do think
Speaker 1: that a lot of my mom's faith in me was irrational.
Speaker 1: And I grew up with this narrative for my mom
Speaker 1: of her saying all the time, I almost got into Stanford,
Speaker 1: you know, I almost got into Stamford. And that was
Speaker 1: how she interpreted a rejection from Stanford, was I almost
Speaker 1: got in. But you know, as a kid, and I
Speaker 1: believed it because she was really smart, you know, even
Speaker 1: though she didn't go to Stanford. And if one of
Speaker 1: the smartest people I knew was telling me that I
Speaker 1: was smart, I was like, okay, I better.
Speaker 3: Believe in this, you know. And it didn't really matter
Speaker 3: to me as.
Speaker 1: A kid if it was rational or not, because I
Speaker 1: felt that warmth of having someone believe in me. And
Speaker 1: how even though there were all these ways in which
Speaker 1: she was failing me, there was this one really important
Speaker 1: way in which she had my back. After I got
Speaker 1: out of the residential treatment center, I went into foster care.
Speaker 1: And most kids who are going into foster care it's
Speaker 1: after an investigation from child Protective Services where they deemed
Speaker 1: the parent unfit because of abuse or neglect, and there's
Speaker 1: a court proceeding and the parents have their rights taken away.
Speaker 3: And that was not what happened in my case.
Speaker 1: Instead, I was deemed to need extra emotional support that
Speaker 1: my mom couldn't give, and so it went through another
Speaker 1: channel where basically I was placed with a foster home
Speaker 1: without really an investigation or looking into my mom, and
Speaker 1: she maintained the power to agree to let me go
Speaker 1: to foster care and also to remove me at any time.
Speaker 1: I was placed with a family I called the foster parents,
Speaker 1: Dave and Jan, and they lived in a suburb about
Speaker 1: an hour away from Minneapolis, in the big mcmmansion on
Speaker 1: a cul de sac and in a really good school district.
Speaker 1: I had been afraid that foster here was going to
Speaker 1: be like this place where there were a million kids
Speaker 1: being neglected. It wasn't bad at all in my case,
Speaker 1: and I had pretty much the best case scenario, but
Speaker 1: it was not easy. Dave and Jan were taking me
Speaker 1: in trying to do a good thing. It's really hard
Speaker 1: to find homes for teenagers, and they were offering that,
Speaker 1: but we quickly ran into conflict, especially around school, where
Speaker 1: I wanted to be studying and doing homework, and Dave
Speaker 1: and Jan were convinced that I was miserable and depressed,
Speaker 1: not because I was in foster care or because my
Speaker 1: family was spelling apart, but because I was too ambitious
Speaker 1: for my own good, and they wanted to help me
Speaker 1: by teaching me that I was normal like everybody else,
Speaker 1: not special, and have a normal life, which was a
Speaker 1: life just like there. And all of this was made
Speaker 1: worse by conflict with my mom, who was constantly pushing
Speaker 1: their boundaries and being critical of them. But she wasn't
Speaker 1: the bad guy. There was no bad guy besides me
Speaker 1: because there had never been an investigation or a trial
Speaker 1: or anything like that.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: Emmy's time with Dave and Jan is made fraught and
Speaker 2: complicated by the fact that her mother is always late,
Speaker 2: very late whenever she comes to see Emmy or drop
Speaker 2: her off after a visit. She's constantly impinging on their plans,
Speaker 2: which is ironic because Emmy's mother had identified Emmy as
Speaker 2: the one who had issues with chronic lateness. Emmy has
Speaker 2: also started a new high school, which she loves, but
Speaker 2: her schoolwork becomes a point of friction with Dave and jam.
Speaker 1: At my new high school, I really flourished, especially in
Speaker 1: art classes, and one of the early big conflicts that
Speaker 1: I had with Dave and Jan was over my advanced placement.
Speaker 3: Art history homework.
Speaker 1: I had to print out pictures of famous artwork and
Speaker 1: attach them to note cards. And one day, after I
Speaker 1: sent my images to the family printer, I was intercepted
Speaker 1: by Dave, and that night Jan called me down to
Speaker 1: the TV room and asked me what I was doing
Speaker 1: with the pictures and that they did not want to
Speaker 1: have pornography in their home.
Speaker 3: And I was so confused.
Speaker 1: About what they were talking about until she showed me
Speaker 1: a sheet that had to print it out black and
Speaker 1: white picture of Michelangelo's David. That was what she meant
Speaker 1: by pornography. It was just such a different culture than
Speaker 1: the way that I was raised. It was just a
Speaker 1: completely different attitude towards life, which peeped into all of
Speaker 1: our interactions.
Speaker 2: As a result of yet another tenuous home dynamic, Emmy
Speaker 2: is backed even further into a corner. She continues to
Speaker 2: self harm. She cuts herself and makes herself throw up.
Speaker 2: She believes there's nothing else to do and nowhere else
Speaker 2: to go until there is summer camp.
Speaker 3: When I was in foster hair my photography feature miss Day.
Speaker 3: She was one of the few people who.
Speaker 1: Knew about my living situation, and she would ask me
Speaker 1: if I miss my mom.
Speaker 3: She knew about my visits.
Speaker 1: With her because my mom and I would take photos together,
Speaker 1: and she suggested that I applied.
Speaker 3: To summer camp.
Speaker 1: She wrote me a letter of recommendation and I got
Speaker 1: into this photography camp at interlock In in Michigan.
Speaker 3: It was very complicated for me to actually go.
Speaker 1: My foster parents did not support the plan, and going
Speaker 1: to camp meant that I would give up my foster
Speaker 1: care placement and I would have to find a new
Speaker 1: home if I came back to foster care. But while
Speaker 1: I was at summer camp, I was recruited for the
Speaker 1: boarding school that interlock In ran, and I ended up
Speaker 1: getting a scholarship to attend for my junior year of
Speaker 1: high school. I said that I was able to leave
Speaker 1: foster care and really focus on my dream, which was
Speaker 1: to attend in Ivy League college.
Speaker 2: How were you mentally and emotionally during that time, you know,
Speaker 2: once you're closer to your dream. You're living away from home,
Speaker 2: you're living away from your mother, you're no longer in
Speaker 2: foster care, You're at this prestigious and very art centered
Speaker 2: and academically challenging place. How were you when, for the
Speaker 2: first time in your life, you were in a place
Speaker 2: that sort of matched up with who you were.
Speaker 1: When I got to camp, I was so amazed by
Speaker 1: just how happy I was. I had felt for so
Speaker 1: many years like an outcast or unwanted or bad, and
Speaker 1: suddenly I was just the thousands of other teenage artists,
Speaker 1: and we were all aware the same uniform, which feels
Speaker 1: like such a small thing, but for once I actually
Speaker 1: fit in. And a few days into summer camp there
Speaker 1: was a barbecue, and afterwards I went to go make
Speaker 1: myself grow up, just because, you know, a routine that
Speaker 1: I had, And before I did it, I really stopped
Speaker 1: to ask myself why, and I found that I no
Speaker 1: longer really had a reason that for once in my life,
Speaker 1: I felt happy, And once I got to boarding school,
Speaker 1: distresses of my life outside did not go away, and
Speaker 1: it was a stressful time, in part because the Great
Speaker 1: recession was really at its full swing, and I worried
Speaker 1: about my financial future, but I just had so much
Speaker 1: more emotional stability being in.
Speaker 3: This place where I felt supported.
Speaker 1: And I was free in many ways from my mom
Speaker 1: and from my foster parents at some of these adults
Speaker 1: who are well meaning but were not able to actually
Speaker 1: help me.
Speaker 2: Interlockn is finally a place where no one is stopping
Speaker 2: Emmy from dreaming big. She begins to look at colleges
Speaker 2: and wants to aim sky high. She discovers a college
Speaker 2: counselor based in New York City, a woman named Kat Cohen,
Speaker 2: who runs a company called Ivy Wise. Emmy notes on
Speaker 2: doctor Kat's website that she does some pro bono work,
Speaker 2: so she does what she's always done. She asks for help,
Speaker 2: and this time she gets it. Doctor Kat takes Emmy on.
Speaker 2: She believes in her. Emmy begins the college application process,
Speaker 2: applying pretty much exclusively to Ivy League universities. But then
Speaker 2: the thin letters of rejection begin to drift in, and
Speaker 2: when she receives these we regret to inform you letters,
Speaker 2: she resorts to old behaviors. She starts cutting herself again.
Speaker 1: When I applied to college, I had so much riding
Speaker 1: on the decisions. I thought, if I get in, my
Speaker 1: life is going to be totally different.
Speaker 3: I'm going to have stability.
Speaker 1: I'm going to continue to be in this place free
Speaker 1: from my mom's influence, where I can be myself and
Speaker 1: I can be stable. And so when I applied to
Speaker 1: Yale early and then I was rejected, I was completely
Speaker 1: crushed because I had really let myself hope that the
Speaker 1: waiting would be over and that my future would be set.
Speaker 1: It became clear that things were not going to be
Speaker 1: that easy for me. And so I did the only
Speaker 1: thing that I could think of, and I went and
Speaker 1: I taught myself. And I hadn't done it for a
Speaker 1: year and a half at that point, but I reverted
Speaker 1: to it and it made me feel calm, And then
Speaker 1: I also felt dumb. I felt like it was a
Speaker 1: melodramatic thing to do.
Speaker 2: Emmy ends up completely revising her applications and essays to
Speaker 2: better reflect her truth. She writes what is known in
Speaker 2: the world of academic admissions as a letter of extenuating circumstances.
Speaker 1: Writing my college applications felt like the hardest thing that I.
Speaker 3: Had ever done.
Speaker 1: Doctor Kat told me that I had to be completely
Speaker 1: straightforward with colleges about my parents, about what they did,
Speaker 1: about my background, and I didn't even know where to
Speaker 1: art because even though I had been through all of
Speaker 1: this therapy and quote unquote treatment, I had never really
Speaker 1: talked frankly about my parents' problems. It was always I'm
Speaker 1: the problem, or I did something bad and I need
Speaker 1: to confess.
Speaker 3: And so I found myself trying.
Speaker 1: To write these essays basically telling colleges everything I had
Speaker 1: ever done wrong because I didn't have another model for
Speaker 1: looking at the world, and doctor Kat told me, you
Speaker 1: have to just say I was in foster care, I
Speaker 1: was sleeping in my car during school breaks, I was homeless,
Speaker 1: and that felt like such a betrayal to my parents.
Speaker 1: It felt like, even though it was actually accurate, it
Speaker 1: felt untrue because I was so used to taking responsibility
Speaker 1: that laying out what had happened to me just felt
Speaker 1: completely wrong. But at the same time, I knew that
Speaker 1: my future depended on it, so I.
Speaker 3: Really had no choice but to do it.
Speaker 1: After a few excruciating months of waiting, not being able
Speaker 1: to sleep, really engaging in bad habits, I finally on
Speaker 1: April first, twenty ten, got the email from Harvard saying
Speaker 1: that I had gotten in. I was at the public
Speaker 1: library on spring break, all alone, and my scream just
Speaker 1: builled up the atrium of the library and I ran outside, just.
Speaker 3: Screaming yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: And I knew that my life was going to change,
Speaker 1: even though I could only begin to imagine the ways
Speaker 1: that that it would be. After I graduated from Harvard,
Speaker 1: I was working as a software engineer at Google, and
Speaker 1: I lived in Silicon Valley and then in New York
Speaker 1: with a guy that I met while I was an intern.
Speaker 3: His name is Byron, and he was one of the few.
Speaker 1: People who I told about my past, only really the
Speaker 1: broad stroke, but he still loved me, and I had
Speaker 1: been really worried that I wasn't going to be able.
Speaker 3: To have a normal relationship.
Speaker 1: But we were really happy together and set up our
Speaker 1: first apartment together in Manhattan, which had been a dream
Speaker 1: of mine for years.
Speaker 3: And I was getting promoted at work.
Speaker 1: And just had the type of life that I had
Speaker 1: fantasized about when I was a teenager and that I
Speaker 1: never really believed could be mine or that I could
Speaker 1: be capable of enjoying.
Speaker 2: And where was your mother during this period of time.
Speaker 1: My mom texted me a lot, especially once Tyne and
Speaker 1: I got engaged. She took it upon herself to help
Speaker 1: with our wedding by buying me things like, you know,
Speaker 1: two thousand candles for a daytime wedding in a venue
Speaker 1: that didn't allow eplain. Her texts were super well meaning,
Speaker 1: but they really highlighted for me all that we hadn't
Speaker 1: been talking about, both between us and for me.
Speaker 3: And other people in my life.
Speaker 1: And so, six weeks before the wedding, Byron and I
Speaker 1: were going out to Minnesota to finalize our preparations, and
Speaker 1: Byron's parents decided that they were going to come out
Speaker 1: to because they wanted to meet my mom.
Speaker 3: And that was.
Speaker 1: When I realized, you know, maybe I needed to tell
Speaker 1: them something, because even though I'd been dating Byron for
Speaker 1: four years and spent all those holidays with his family,
Speaker 1: I had only told them that I went to boarding school,
Speaker 1: and that was really all that they knew about my past.
Speaker 2: And Byron as well.
Speaker 1: Byron knew a little bit more. He knew that I
Speaker 1: had been in foster care and that I had self harmed,
Speaker 1: but he didn't really know all the details either, and
Speaker 1: so suddenly I was confronted with the decision of how
Speaker 1: much am I going to tell these people in my
Speaker 1: life and how are they going to treat me after
Speaker 1: they know. I called Iron's mom before our parents met,
Speaker 1: and I did tell her that my mom was a
Speaker 1: hoarder and that I'd been with foster care. And when
Speaker 1: she came to meet them, it went as well as
Speaker 1: it possibly could have, but I was really shaken by
Speaker 1: the experience. I felt like, you know, there's more there
Speaker 1: that I'm not talking about, and I wanted more than
Speaker 1: anything to have a normal relationship with my mom. I
Speaker 1: still hadn't spoken to Michelle in many, many years, like
Speaker 1: since I was eleven, and I had come to accept
Speaker 1: that Michelle we couldn't really be in contact. So my
Speaker 1: mom almost the one the one parent that I still.
Speaker 3: Had, and I.
Speaker 1: Had been in denial about the nature of our relationship
Speaker 1: until I really got married and started to have this
Speaker 1: this family of my own and had someone who could
Speaker 1: notice how I felt after my mom texted me or
Speaker 1: after our rare phone calls, and could see the way
Speaker 1: that all that we weren't talking about was weighing me down.
Speaker 3: Even so many.
Speaker 1: Years later, about a year after I got married, I
Speaker 1: started calling my mom and asking to talk about what
Speaker 1: she remembered, and I really believed that she would tell
Speaker 1: me her set of the story and we would find
Speaker 1: a middle ground that we could agree on and that
Speaker 1: would be kind of the foundation for our relationship moving forward.
Speaker 3: One evening, I called.
Speaker 1: Her and I asked her about a family therapy session
Speaker 1: that we'd had back when I was an eating disorder treatment,
Speaker 1: and she immediately shut it down and said that never happened.
Speaker 3: We never had family therapy there. It's impossible.
Speaker 1: And I was left totally stunned because I remembered this
Speaker 1: conversation so clearly, where she had told the therapist Emmy's
Speaker 1: really lost her breath and that that was what concerned
Speaker 1: her about my eating disorder. And it was so shocking.
Speaker 1: It felt like this isn't the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: I would make up. But I found myself questioning my
Speaker 1: memory and my sense of reality. But I was an adult,
Speaker 1: and I had tools at my disposal that I hadn't
Speaker 1: had when I was a teenager, and I was able
Speaker 1: to get the insurance billing statements from my health insurance
Speaker 1: company back then and find the receipt for the therapy
Speaker 1: appointments that matched up with what I remembered, and that
Speaker 1: was how far I had to go in order to
Speaker 1: convince myself that my memory was accurate. And my mom
Speaker 1: refused to see my side of things or acknowledge that
Speaker 1: she could be wrong or that things could happen that
Speaker 1: she didn't remember. And I found as I was trying
Speaker 1: to talk about these very real memories that had shaped
Speaker 1: my life, that she was unwilling to engage.
Speaker 3: After I brought up some of.
Speaker 1: These things, my mom would punish me with her silence,
Speaker 1: sometimes not messaging me for months at a time.
Speaker 3: Once I started talking to other people from my.
Speaker 1: Past, I learned so much many things that had been
Speaker 1: kept from me When I was a teenager. I had
Speaker 1: assumed that my brother and sister in law didn't want
Speaker 1: to see me because they thought that I was crazy
Speaker 1: and was bad influence on their kids, and meeting up
Speaker 1: with them and asking them was one of the hardest conversations.
Speaker 3: That I've ever had, and I.
Speaker 1: Was totally stunned when they told me that they tried
Speaker 1: to have me move in with them instead of going
Speaker 1: into fostercare. They had told my mom that they had
Speaker 1: an extra bedroom My sister in law was a stay
Speaker 1: at home mom of two boys, and they had plenty
Speaker 1: of space and room in their family, and my mom.
Speaker 3: Completely goes to them.
Speaker 1: Kinship placements, where kids live with relatives are really common
Speaker 1: in foster care, and most eight and the federal government
Speaker 1: have laws that stayd kids have a right with the
Speaker 1: family first. But in my case, even though everyone knew
Speaker 1: that I had an older brother, nobody talked to him,
Speaker 1: and I discovered that there were other opportunities as well.
Speaker 1: I had other family members who, when they eventually learned
Speaker 1: about what was going on, expressed so much sadness that
Speaker 1: they hadn't known back then because they also had.
Speaker 3: Extra room in their house.
Speaker 1: And I had a mentor who was really essential to
Speaker 1: my life in high school, and I learned that even
Speaker 1: she had tried to take me in.
Speaker 3: In her case it wouldn't work out.
Speaker 1: But she had also filed multiple maltreatment reports with the
Speaker 1: Kinnecan County and it seemed like nothing had been done
Speaker 1: about them.
Speaker 3: This really shook my world because even as an adult.
Speaker 1: I had been living with this idea that I was
Speaker 1: bad and I was the problem, and then I was
Speaker 1: living with this really pessimistic idea that the way things
Speaker 1: unfolded for me was really the only way that they
Speaker 1: could have happened, and there was no use being upset
Speaker 1: because there were no better alternatives.
Speaker 3: But then all of that.
Speaker 1: Was challenged, and I was forced to confront how, you know,
Speaker 1: for all the ways that my mom loved me, she
Speaker 1: had made decisions that prevented me from having a relatively
Speaker 1: normal adolescent surrounded by my family. That was really, really hard,
Speaker 1: but it also helped me forgive myself for the suffering
Speaker 1: that I went through as a teenager and some of
Speaker 1: the unhealthy decisions that I made, and stop seeing myself
Speaker 1: as responsible for what happened when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and instead blamed the systems that really failed me and
Speaker 1: my family for keeping these secrets that prevented me from
Speaker 1: getting help.
Speaker 2: Here's Emmy reading from her moving memoir, A powerful testament
Speaker 2: to the tenacity that allows us to overcome secrets and
Speaker 2: betrayals and instead of turning against ourselves, facing outward bravely
Speaker 2: and meeting our true selves in the wider world.
Speaker 1: The more I researched, the more I realized how little
Speaker 1: I understood about my own adoleccums as a teenager. I'd
Speaker 1: only known what I was told, and many things had
Speaker 1: been kept from me. In the absence of all the
Speaker 1: facts and any larger context in which to understand them,
Speaker 1: I felt responsible for everything that transpire. Instead of making
Speaker 1: a life that would redeem the past an impossible feat, I.
Speaker 3: Thought out a life I could live with.
Speaker 1: For the first time, I felt lucky for the little things,
Speaker 1: to wake up in the morning in my own bed,
Speaker 1: to eat breakfast, to do my work. It was no
Speaker 1: longer so important to me to choose something great because
Speaker 1: I was happy to be alive, which.
Speaker 3: Had seemed impossible and tenuous.
Speaker 1: I became grateful for the passing of time, each milestone
Speaker 1: that brings me away from then into now, my marriage,
Speaker 1: buying an apartment, changing jobs one day, a child our own,
Speaker 1: for whom I swear I will not make the same mistake,
Speaker 1: so I know a fall short sum regard. On my wall,
Speaker 1: I have a poster that always reminds me of when
Speaker 1: I was growing up. A girl stares out the window
Speaker 1: at a city while a plane crosses.
Speaker 3: In front of the moon.
Speaker 1: Every time I see it, I say a prayer of
Speaker 1: gratitude for my younger felt for delivering me here into
Speaker 1: adulthood where I can bake biope with what I learned
Speaker 1: along the way.
Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacur is
Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 2: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
Speaker 2: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 2: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Speaker 3: Podcasts
Speaker 4: Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.