Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. When
Speaker 1: we talk about secrets, often we use the word buried.
Speaker 1: We discover a buried secret. We bury our own secrets
Speaker 1: in places where we think they'll never rise to the
Speaker 1: surface again. We go to the grave with our secrets.
Speaker 1: But what about when a secret actually is buried. Sylvia
Speaker 1: Borstein was born in Brooklyn, New York, in just so
Speaker 1: you don't have to do the math that makes her
Speaker 1: two years old. She's been married for fifty two years
Speaker 1: to her husband, Seymour. They have four children and seven grandchildren.
Speaker 1: Sylvia is one of our country's most beloved teachers of
Speaker 1: mindfulness meditation. Many of you may have heard of her,
Speaker 1: and if you haven't, trust me, you should download one
Speaker 1: of her audiobooks. Do that right now, just cause this
Speaker 1: podcast and download one of her books. You will say
Speaker 1: inked me later. She's also a very dear friend of mine,
Speaker 1: which makes me a very lucky person. In truth, Sylvia
Speaker 1: is the entire reason this podcast exists. As I was
Speaker 1: grappling with my own humongous family secret, I was on
Speaker 1: the phone with Sylvia one afternoon. As tends to happen
Speaker 1: when we share a family secret, it prompts the listener
Speaker 1: to think of family secrets of her own, and so
Speaker 1: Sylvia began to tell me the story of a secret
Speaker 1: that had haunted her for much of her life. As
Speaker 1: I sat in my little office with the phone glued
Speaker 1: to my ear, listening to my friend's story, I thought,
Speaker 1: I wish I was recording this. Hence this podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets. Secrets that are
Speaker 1: kept from us, secrets we keep from others, and secrets
Speaker 1: we keep from ourselves. Sylvia was raised in Coney Island,
Speaker 1: in an enclave of immigrant Jews. In her neighborhood, she
Speaker 1: was surrounded by relatives my parents met because they lived
Speaker 1: around the corner from each other. My grandparents were friends
Speaker 1: of each other, and my mother and father married. They
Speaker 1: moved in with my father's parents because my father didn't
Speaker 1: yet have a job, and I was born there a
Speaker 1: year later. A year after that, my grandfather died and
Speaker 1: my grandmother, who was my principal caretaker as I was
Speaker 1: growing up, lived with us for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: So I lived in a situation where I was the
Speaker 1: only child and the only grandchild of the three people
Speaker 1: who lived in my house with me and much loved
Speaker 1: by all three of them. Um. We lived within the
Speaker 1: wider community of a large family of cousins and aunts
Speaker 1: and uncle's and my mother, who was a wonderful storyteller,
Speaker 1: told me all the background about all these people, so
Speaker 1: and I loved them. They were my favorite kind of stories,
Speaker 1: how uncle Julius came to the United States, and how
Speaker 1: this one did that and that one did this. So
Speaker 1: I felt growing up that I knew most of the
Speaker 1: things about my family. But within all this closeness and happiness,
Speaker 1: Sylvia's mother was very sick. My mother's health was frail.
Speaker 1: My mother had rheumatic heart disease, the consequence of having
Speaker 1: had rheumatic fever as a child, And I was always
Speaker 1: alarmed because I really didn't understand that the consequences of
Speaker 1: what that meant for her, and I worried always because
Speaker 1: she was out of breath, she couldn't walk as fast
Speaker 1: as other people's mother's, she couldn't swim or play tennis. Um,
Speaker 1: And I think I know that I was always frightened
Speaker 1: that she would die. We didn't talk of that sickness
Speaker 1: in my house because I think in the end, maybe
Speaker 1: it was a good decision. My mother had this defective
Speaker 1: mitral valve that limited what she could do, but she
Speaker 1: was a cheerful person, so she wasn't totally undone by
Speaker 1: the illness, and she didn't mention it. We just knew
Speaker 1: about it. But then Sylvia learned that there was a
Speaker 1: story she didn't know, a painful story that wasn't part
Speaker 1: of the great and often joyous oral tradition of her family.
Speaker 1: Somewhere in my adolescence, but I think before I went
Speaker 1: to college, my mother mentioned in a conversation, maybe it
Speaker 1: was an overheard conversation, that she had a sister who
Speaker 1: was younger than she was, but not as younger as
Speaker 1: my aunt Marian, and that that sister had died. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about what you remember about that conversation, or
Speaker 1: whether it was something that you overheard. I think one
Speaker 1: of the really interesting things about those moments where one
Speaker 1: is discovering something or hearing something that is of incredible
Speaker 1: importance that maybe coming out in a kind of casual
Speaker 1: way or overheard or just slipped into conversation, and yet
Speaker 1: it lodges somewhere in the psyche, and it was some
Speaker 1: offend manner. I don't remember if she said it to
Speaker 1: me or to somebody else. There was no photograph as
Speaker 1: pictures of my mother as a child and our cousins
Speaker 1: as a as children. I think, now that you're asking
Speaker 1: me and I'm thinking about it, the best I remember
Speaker 1: is I thought. I remember thinking maybe I heard wrong.
Speaker 1: And I've asked myself, since I've known your story, and
Speaker 1: since I've learned stories of secrets from side of my friends,
Speaker 1: why is it that I wouldn't say the obvious, Hey,
Speaker 1: you had another sister. Sylvia had one aunt, her mother's
Speaker 1: younger sister, Miriam, and her father was an only child.
Speaker 1: So these adults comprise her entire immediate family. But now
Speaker 1: it seemed her grandparents had had three daughters, not too
Speaker 1: but Sylvia talks this information away to the point that
Speaker 1: she barely remembers it. It's a vestige, a mirage, not
Speaker 1: something tangible. She doesn't exactly forget all about it. It's
Speaker 1: more like she puts it off to the side, way
Speaker 1: off to the side. Sylvia grows up, attends Barnard College
Speaker 1: at the age of sixteen, miss her future husband, Seymour,
Speaker 1: a doctor. She's married by the time she's twenty, and
Speaker 1: eventually she and Seymour settle in northern California. Sylvia has
Speaker 1: all her children by the time she's twenty five, a
Speaker 1: span of years during which her mother dies, finally succumbing
Speaker 1: to her weak her During this time, it's almost like
Speaker 1: Sylvia is trying to cram it all in, get as
Speaker 1: much as she possibly can out of this life, since
Speaker 1: she's grown up with a powerful internalized message that life
Speaker 1: may be short, perhaps very short, there's always the possibility
Speaker 1: of loss. What happened is that after she died, years
Speaker 1: went by, during which time I became closer to her
Speaker 1: than I had been to her younger sister, Miriam. I
Speaker 1: think Miriam missed my mother very much, and I did too.
Speaker 1: And at that time I was married, I had my
Speaker 1: own family, was living in California, and I developed the
Speaker 1: habit of calling my aunt every Saturday afternoon and we
Speaker 1: will talk on the phone about everything. So we were
Speaker 1: really close. And at one point, oh, I know what happened.
Speaker 1: My grandfather came to spend time with me and lived
Speaker 1: with me in California. He was years old and in
Speaker 1: very good health and um sound memory, and we became
Speaker 1: very close, sharing old stories and one day just having
Speaker 1: a walk together. I said, by the way, I once
Speaker 1: heard that you actually had three daughters and that there
Speaker 1: was somebody born after Gladys and before Miriam. And I
Speaker 1: remember him looking at me and squinting over at me,
Speaker 1: say I could I could almost imitate his tone of voice.
Speaker 1: He would say, what wasn't matter with you? One word,
Speaker 1: wasn't matter with you? Why did you hear that story?
Speaker 1: That's not true, that never happened, that wasn't true. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: why did you get that? So it was the end
Speaker 1: of that. I let it go. Sometime later, after I
Speaker 1: developed this relationship with my with my aunt, I'm one
Speaker 1: of our Saturday phone calls, I said, by the way, Miriam, uh,
Speaker 1: I heard, and I told the whole story, And I said,
Speaker 1: I asked Grandpa, who had then by then died, said
Speaker 1: I asked Grandpa about it, and he said no. She
Speaker 1: said no, no, no, there was for any other child. No,
Speaker 1: never any other child. I said, Okay, time went by.
Speaker 1: How did you feel during the time that was going by?
Speaker 1: Did you accept that was it? Was it a sense
Speaker 1: of maybe I was wrong, maybe I misheard. Did you
Speaker 1: doubt yourself? Well? It was really it was like maybe
Speaker 1: I had a dream. Maybe I had a dream. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know that any one of the things about me,
Speaker 1: because I don't like to be wrong. So if I,
Speaker 1: if I, if I had developed something which was so
Speaker 1: to speak, quote unquote stupid, I wouldn't have admitted it
Speaker 1: to people. I've had this idea, and I'm sure of
Speaker 1: it from my grandfather had said, it's not true. I've
Speaker 1: never seen any artifact of that. Time went by. My
Speaker 1: grandfather had died. I was in New York, and of
Speaker 1: course my mother had died long before I was in
Speaker 1: New York, probably somewhere in my late fift these early sixties,
Speaker 1: and my husband's Seymore was with me. I think I
Speaker 1: was teaching and I had a day free, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd like to go out to the cemetery.
Speaker 1: I'd like to go to the cemetery where my mother
Speaker 1: was buried. And so he said okay, and we went out.
Speaker 1: Then anybody who knows cemeteries in Queens knows that there's endless,
Speaker 1: endless acreage of cemeteries and Queens. But I had the
Speaker 1: name of the cemetery, and what was the cemetery called?
Speaker 1: Do you remember Mount Hebron? Mount Hebron so it was
Speaker 1: a Jewish cemetery. Was absolutely a Jewish cemetery, which brings
Speaker 1: me back to buried secrets. I know these cemeteries on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of New York City. My dad's family plot,
Speaker 1: the Shapiro family plot, is in one of them. They
Speaker 1: aren't pastoral final resting places, you know, with pretty benches
Speaker 1: and shady trees. They tend to be massive, crumbling places
Speaker 1: to stones crammed up against one another, like crooked teeth
Speaker 1: in the mouth of the world. And I knew that
Speaker 1: my mother was buried in a burial area that was
Speaker 1: bought by the first men's Atonia Society of my grandfather's
Speaker 1: Austrian town. What people did is they came as immigrants
Speaker 1: and among other things, they pulled their money and they
Speaker 1: bought acreage or acreage, they bought a plot in Jewish cemetery,
Speaker 1: and you paid your cemetery dues to pay for the plot,
Speaker 1: and then whenever you died twenty or thirty or forty
Speaker 1: years later, you have placed in that plot. So that
Speaker 1: so it's like the village from the old country was
Speaker 1: transported to this cemetery plot where you would all be
Speaker 1: together again, no kidding, and there's a there's anyway story
Speaker 1: never want comes to visit a friend of his who
Speaker 1: is in the hospital, and very we ill apparently in
Speaker 1: the conversation in Yiddish is about how you're doing and
Speaker 1: whether or not you might die, and he the visitor
Speaker 1: tells the patient in the hospital, you know who died
Speaker 1: last week, so and so and tells him. And this
Speaker 1: person's response is not I'm sorry that so and so died,
Speaker 1: but oh dear, if I die now, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to lie next to so and so forever. Uh so
Speaker 1: all the jokes that they made about that, but that's
Speaker 1: what you did. My mother is not, so to speak,
Speaker 1: lying next to my grandparents. She is in the order
Speaker 1: that she died as part of the village, as part
Speaker 1: of the village. It's not even my mother is village.
Speaker 1: It's my father's parents village. An irresistible side note here.
Speaker 1: My dad died in a car crash when I was
Speaker 1: twenty three, and my mom died almost two decades later.
Speaker 1: When my mother was dying, she informed me that she
Speaker 1: was not going to be buried in my father's family
Speaker 1: plot in one. Instead, she planned to be buried in
Speaker 1: southern Jersey. I mean way down the Jersey Turnpike, which,
Speaker 1: if you don't know it is one of the least
Speaker 1: fun roads in the country, with her family and away
Speaker 1: from all of those people who she had fought with
Speaker 1: her whole married life. I feel sorry for you, she said,
Speaker 1: though I knew she didn't. You'll have to visit your
Speaker 1: parents in two different cemeteries. Any who, Charle malecham Irene Shapiro.
Speaker 1: Generations come and go and not much changes. We're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break. We'll be back in a moment.
Speaker 1: It's a miserable day, cold and wet when Sylvia and
Speaker 1: Seymour make the swept from Manhattan to the cemetery in Queens.
Speaker 1: So we win. And we found those two tombstones, and
Speaker 1: I looked at them, and you know, I put a
Speaker 1: requisite rock on the top of each one, which signifies
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, but the people going by it
Speaker 1: means someone was there and someone visited. And then we
Speaker 1: walked back to the entrance and there's a little hot
Speaker 1: or a house or very small office at the bottom
Speaker 1: of them where you can go in and ask where
Speaker 1: it is so and so buried, and they give you
Speaker 1: the plot map. And when we went in there, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I said to see more on the way back.
Speaker 1: You know, this was my father's father's plot. My mother's
Speaker 1: family also had a plot in this cemetery. Um, and
Speaker 1: my grandmother's Trasia and must be buried there. Let's find
Speaker 1: out where. So we go into the cemetery. I'm all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, really, I seem that as I'm telling
Speaker 1: you the story, I'm a little choking up about it.
Speaker 1: So we take your breath and out, getting a little
Speaker 1: bit teary about it. We go into this office and
Speaker 1: I said, my grandfather's last name, and and then just
Speaker 1: suddenly I'm kind of a whim. I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm also interested in a child that might be buried
Speaker 1: in that same community's burial place. And I know that
Speaker 1: she was a child about five years old, and that
Speaker 1: she died in about Remember this is the mid nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: The small cemetery office is not equipped with WiFi or internet.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're in the midst of transferring all their
Speaker 1: files from a rolodex a rolodex to a computer. So
Speaker 1: finding a child with Sylvia's grandfather's name Fuchs is slow going,
Speaker 1: if not impossible. He looked and looking through names, says,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of folks this here. What was
Speaker 1: her first name? Uh, what was the first name? And
Speaker 1: of course Sylvia doesn't know the child's first name because
Speaker 1: the child was a secret. And I said, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I think maybe it was Sylvia. He looks, he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is Sylvia. Folks that died in nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I go back, show me on
Speaker 1: the map where to look and know what to say. Really,
Speaker 1: he said, well, you would be able to find it
Speaker 1: because um children were buried not in a regular plot.
Speaker 1: They were buried in a corner of plot that their
Speaker 1: community owned, and they were just buried next to each other.
Speaker 1: When they have young children, they're buried next to each other.
Speaker 1: And they didn't have granite headstones. They had limestone headstones.
Speaker 1: The children. Yeah, they just the oral grouped in the corner.
Speaker 1: There's a children's area for young children and newborns. And
Speaker 1: they're just limestone. Marco's mounds name. And it's been so
Speaker 1: many years in the rains, the limestone washes off. You'll
Speaker 1: never find it. So we walk out of that place
Speaker 1: and I say more, says, let's go back. Meantime it's
Speaker 1: the end of the long day, and it's a long
Speaker 1: walk up there, and I'm kind of blown away by
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and it's becoming overcast and it looks
Speaker 1: like it's going to rain, and I said, well, he says, well,
Speaker 1: we won't find it. He said, let's go. We're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break. Sylvia is overcome with a
Speaker 1: desire to flee the cemetery. She's suddenly exhausted. It has
Speaker 1: been a very long day. But Seymour and this totally
Speaker 1: gets to me. Seymour pushes her. He knows it's probably
Speaker 1: the only time she'll ever be able to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of this question she's always had, so, he insists.
Speaker 1: So we walk back up, we find that plot. Then
Speaker 1: we see in the corners there are these like clumps
Speaker 1: of limestone. Marker's all very washed off, so you really
Speaker 1: can't read the names. And by this time I'm really
Speaker 1: feeling undone in the weather, and I just I said,
Speaker 1: let's go. That can't do this anymore. And sans, I know,
Speaker 1: keeping looking, with keeping looking, this is making me cry
Speaker 1: as well. And all of a sudden, he said, here
Speaker 1: it is. And it isn't limestone. It's a dark gray,
Speaker 1: beautiful granites down and it says Sylvia folks daughter official folks.
Speaker 1: It's my grandfather's child. So when we came over from
Speaker 1: the trip, I called my aunt Miriam. You know, as
Speaker 1: I'm telling you the story, it's not easy. I have
Speaker 1: all goose pimples all over me. I called my aunt Miriam,
Speaker 1: and we talked about one thing or another. And I said, Miriam,
Speaker 1: I was in New York. Yeah I know, I said, Merriwell,
Speaker 1: I was in New York. I went to the cemetery
Speaker 1: and I went to look at graves, my mother's grave,
Speaker 1: and then I went over to where your mother is
Speaker 1: buried with Rajah is buried, and I found the gravestone
Speaker 1: for Sylvia folks. And she didn't say anything, so I said,
Speaker 1: I was I was really upset, Miriam. I said, it's
Speaker 1: really upset because I thought I had such a close
Speaker 1: relationship with with myanpa official. You know, we were so close,
Speaker 1: and he lied to me. And she said, you know
Speaker 1: he didn't lie to Merriam. What do you mean you
Speaker 1: didn't lie? I found with toolstone. She said, you forgot.
Speaker 1: I said, Marriam, you don't forget it if you have
Speaker 1: a six year old child that dies. She said, if
Speaker 1: it's too horrible for you, you forget it. And you know,
Speaker 1: I thought it'd be easier to tell this story, but
Speaker 1: it's not. It's a very loving thing that Seymour did.
Speaker 1: It was it was I think about it now, I
Speaker 1: think about it in that moment, and I was that
Speaker 1: really it was he who said no, no, we're here,
Speaker 1: let's go. No, no, no, not finished looking the look.
Speaker 1: And after we discovered it, I remember, you know, I
Speaker 1: was physically upset and crying, I think, but I remember
Speaker 1: he was saying to me, tell me what's so upsetting,
Speaker 1: and I said, um, they lied to me, all those people.
Speaker 1: The end of the phone call with Aunt Miriam is
Speaker 1: he forgot as this said, Miriam, tell me, did you
Speaker 1: forget you? Did you remember her at all? Uh? Because
Speaker 1: Miriam was between two and three when her sister Sylvia died,
Speaker 1: she said, you know, I only have one memory. I
Speaker 1: remember I was sitting on the floor in the sun
Speaker 1: porch of the apartment where I lived with my parents.
Speaker 1: I was sitting on the floor and watching the light
Speaker 1: patterns of sunshine on the wooden floor of that sun porch,
Speaker 1: and my mother was sitting in a rocking chair behind me,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden I heard my mother crying,
Speaker 1: and I became upset because she was crying. And my
Speaker 1: mother picked me up right away, and she said, mine, dish, fine, dish,
Speaker 1: mine kin, don't cry my child, And room said, I
Speaker 1: never saw her cry again, and we don't. Don't tell
Speaker 1: you that story. I'm thinking how painful it is to
Speaker 1: not be able to talk about it ever, not be
Speaker 1: able to cry to your children, or cry to anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it never goes away if you have a
Speaker 1: child who's six years old and dies. One thing I
Speaker 1: find myself wondering. Sylvia is a person who has spent
Speaker 1: much of her adult life coming to know the inner
Speaker 1: workings of her own mind. She's gone on silent meditation
Speaker 1: rich treats for months, months at a time. She's taught
Speaker 1: mindfulness all over the world. I remember when I was
Speaker 1: first getting to know her work. I read a few
Speaker 1: sentences from one of her books. Allowed to my husband.
Speaker 1: Why is this so good? I asked him. He answered,
Speaker 1: because it's the product of an unconfused mind. How was
Speaker 1: it that the original conversation or overheard moment way back
Speaker 1: when with her mother never drifted into Sylvia's unconfused mind
Speaker 1: in all those periods of silence and contemplation. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that's interesting to me is there
Speaker 1: was that overheard conversation or she or she straight out
Speaker 1: told you and I don't know, and you put it somewhere.
Speaker 1: I think this is what we do. Um. I'm understanding
Speaker 1: that more and more as I'm in my own process
Speaker 1: of discovering what I knew, what I didn't know. You
Speaker 1: know about my own family secrets. Um, but where do
Speaker 1: we put you? Know? You you have lived a very
Speaker 1: examined life more than most. You're you're a Buddhist, you're
Speaker 1: a teacher, you're a writer, you're a storyteller, you're a psychologist.
Speaker 1: For God to say, and so there was this this
Speaker 1: piece of knowledge that just kind of wedged itself somewhere
Speaker 1: while you were busy becoming a psychologist and getting a
Speaker 1: doctorate and going to school and having four children and
Speaker 1: raising a family and living a life and going on
Speaker 1: you know, month long meditation retreats, and it never emerged again.
Speaker 1: I've thought several times, and often I think in my
Speaker 1: life that there's been something very dependable about my psyche,
Speaker 1: depending on what situation I would be in, I would
Speaker 1: say about my psyche or about my heart, but where
Speaker 1: my psyche or my heart did not let me know
Speaker 1: things at a time that I couldn't have handled them well.
Speaker 1: And later on I thought to myself, that was so
Speaker 1: really thoughtful of my mind and my heart to tell me, well,
Speaker 1: you don't have to take care of this now, we'll
Speaker 1: be back when you can handle it. I don't know
Speaker 1: that you ever finished Anny when I told you that
Speaker 1: story before. I was surprised to find that still gives
Speaker 1: me goose pet flush and I still feel like crying
Speaker 1: about it. So here's a question for you. In that
Speaker 1: moment in the in the cemetery office, when you were
Speaker 1: asked the question what was her first name? And out
Speaker 1: of your mouth came maybe it was Sylvia. Where did
Speaker 1: that come from? You know, I don't know you were
Speaker 1: named for her. I don't know that's what I figured,
Speaker 1: but you know, um, that's why I offered the name.
Speaker 1: Had you ever had that thought before before that moment
Speaker 1: that it came out of your mouth? I think I
Speaker 1: must have known, really on some level, and I think
Speaker 1: I'm on the spot there. I don't remember thinking beforehand
Speaker 1: that she would be Sylvia. But phasebook, what do you
Speaker 1: think her name was? Coming from Jews who named for
Speaker 1: people who died. I figured I must be Sylvia and
Speaker 1: she must be Sylvia. I mean, this is on the
Speaker 1: one hand, it's a doozy of a secret. It's also
Speaker 1: very far back in the reaches of history in terms
Speaker 1: of a life you know, um, and yet there's some
Speaker 1: way in which it seems like it has hovered over
Speaker 1: the course of of your life without knowing it. Um.
Speaker 1: I remember when you first told me the story. What
Speaker 1: I was so struck by was that moment where you said,
Speaker 1: where you just decided today, I'm going to go to
Speaker 1: the cemetery. We're gonna go, We're gonna take buses and trains,
Speaker 1: We're going to get there in the rain. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have this kind of day. How did you reconcile? I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people who discover a secret well
Speaker 1: are are at the same time realizing that they were
Speaker 1: lied to. Um. There's a betrayal there in some way
Speaker 1: to exactly the word. I just was thinking that in
Speaker 1: the moment of finding out uh Semol was really asking
Speaker 1: me about what particularly was so upsetting to me, and
Speaker 1: I said, everybody lied, and I asked and they lied,
Speaker 1: So it was it was stricken from the record. I
Speaker 1: think my sense from Miriam, from friends of mine who
Speaker 1: have had similar stories is that they were so unable
Speaker 1: to even they were so frightened of even feeling the
Speaker 1: intensity of their distress. You know what else, I've seen
Speaker 1: Danny as a meditation guide and confidant for so many
Speaker 1: people people have come on retreat and uh, when I've
Speaker 1: seen them in an individual meetings during a retreat. Retreats
Speaker 1: are always silent, so they don't get to talk to
Speaker 1: each other, and since they're asked not to read or
Speaker 1: to write or two talk during the retreats, they have
Speaker 1: nothing but their own minds to pay attention to. And
Speaker 1: it's universally true that when people uh stop stimuli from
Speaker 1: coming in and spend a lot of the time sitting
Speaker 1: walking back and forth, trying to just be present in
Speaker 1: this moment, that they're herd of mind, of psyche or
Speaker 1: whatever tells them what they haven't heard before. For me, certainly,
Speaker 1: it presents a moral inventory. You know, you left this
Speaker 1: really undone, and you heard so and those feelings and
Speaker 1: you never such a really I'm happy for that, because
Speaker 1: h I feel like after the initial oh dear, my
Speaker 1: mind feels slightly unburdened because I had been keeping the
Speaker 1: secret from myself and I fixed it. My friend Donna Massini,
Speaker 1: a poet, wrote a beautiful poem years ago called I
Speaker 1: Have the Skull that I've Never forgotten. In it, the
Speaker 1: poem is a narrator. A woman has just visited the dentist.
Speaker 1: She said, cavities filled with novacaine. Obviously I As she
Speaker 1: walks down the street afterwards, she wonders, where does the
Speaker 1: pain go? She had been numbed, but did that mean
Speaker 1: she hadn't on some level felt the pain. So that
Speaker 1: the numbing or the the impossibility or the seeming impossibility
Speaker 1: of being able to handle something that that painful, doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that it disappears. You think of something that startles,
Speaker 1: hurts the mind that goes ah, I don't think that.
Speaker 1: And that's really what I'm teaching people these days. That's
Speaker 1: the all gis of what I'm teaching. It's not to
Speaker 1: be able to so calm your mind that you rise
Speaker 1: above your stuff, whether you actually see that it's ephemeral
Speaker 1: and it's empty and therefore really isn't significant. It's none
Speaker 1: of those things to be able to recognize this is
Speaker 1: what's happening. This is a feeling that's arising in me.
Speaker 1: This is either it's it's frightening, or it's startling, or
Speaker 1: it's this thing or it's stadding. And I see that
Speaker 1: that's happening, and I can stay here. I can stay
Speaker 1: here and I can know it, and it will pen
Speaker 1: that I can feel it. I love that you don't
Speaker 1: have to get out of the way, you can be here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that, as I remember years ago, I was
Speaker 1: saying to a psychotherapy pageant of mine, the same as
Speaker 1: I would say to a meditation student, don't duck, don't duck.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can do this, don't duck. I'd like
Speaker 1: to thank my guest, Sylvia Borstein, for sharing her words
Speaker 1: of wisdom with us today. You can find out more
Speaker 1: about Sylvia and her teachings at Sylvia borstein dot com.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets as an i Heeart Media production. Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: is the supervising producer, Andrew Howard and Tristan McNeil are
Speaker 1: the audio engineers, and Julie doug This is the executive producer.
Speaker 1: If you have a family secret you'd like to share.
Speaker 1: You can get in touch with us at listener mail
Speaker 1: at Family Secrets Podcast dot com. You can also find
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at Danny Ryder, Facebook at Family Secrets Pod,
Speaker 1: and Twitter at fam Secrets Pod That's FAMI Secrets Pod.
Speaker 1: For more about my book, Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot com.
Speaker 1: My last question is do you wish that you hadn't known?
Speaker 1: Do you wish that you would never have found out? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to say that, but I
Speaker 1: didn't want to answer it for you. Um oh no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: I like knowing. I like knowing