Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that
Speaker 1: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. As I tore
Speaker 1: the nation from my book Inheritance, I've heard from so
Speaker 1: many about your own family secrets and realize that what
Speaker 1: we are creating for each other on this podcast is
Speaker 1: a community, a community for those who are looking for
Speaker 1: a safe and supportive space to unburden themselves. To that end,
Speaker 1: we've created a number for listeners to call in to
Speaker 1: record stories to share here in this space. This week,
Speaker 1: I'd like to share a few of those stories from
Speaker 1: our community. Thanks for listening. I just wanted to share
Speaker 1: a little glimpse of my family's secret um. Growing up,
Speaker 1: we always knew my mom had been married before, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I turned eighteen that she had revealed
Speaker 1: to me that she had a son that she had
Speaker 1: given up for adoption. My mom had always felt like
Speaker 1: she had lost a child before she had my brother
Speaker 1: and I, and that giving him up for adoption was
Speaker 1: kind of God's way of punishing her for for her choices,
Speaker 1: and so We tried to find out information about him
Speaker 1: as much as we could, but my mom just couldn't
Speaker 1: I don't think go down that route. And so about
Speaker 1: twenty years later, I finally got a Facebook request from
Speaker 1: some gal trying to find my mom, and through some
Speaker 1: Facebook stalking, found out that that was kind of her service,
Speaker 1: was helping adopted kids and families find each other. And
Speaker 1: lo and behold, we found the son that she had
Speaker 1: given up for adoption and started contacting him. Found out
Speaker 1: a lot of information about my mom that for about
Speaker 1: the first eight months of his life, with lots of
Speaker 1: adoption records and caseworker visits and that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that really painted a new picture of who my mom was.
Speaker 1: I started looking into my ancestry and decided to take
Speaker 1: an ancestry d n A test just to find out
Speaker 1: more information that I could pass on to him. And
Speaker 1: of course, low and Behold, Gal was on kind of
Speaker 1: the people that are closely related to you, so I
Speaker 1: think it was like a first cousin or closer and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, oh, now my dad has a son,
Speaker 1: or or my dad has a daughter, or maybe my
Speaker 1: aunt or something like that, And so I called my
Speaker 1: mom to find out that no, when she was eighteen,
Speaker 1: she had gotten pregnant and she had put another child
Speaker 1: up for adoption, and that I think hurt me more
Speaker 1: than all the other secrets I had found out up
Speaker 1: until that time, just because you know, she told me
Speaker 1: about her son, but not about this father. That I
Speaker 1: had a sister too out there, and UM, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been an interesting experience. My story is not really
Speaker 1: my story, it's my dad's story. Um. He was born
Speaker 1: in the UK. He was born in a mother maybe
Speaker 1: his home, which was like an unwite mother's home, and
Speaker 1: he had said and somehow ended up being raised by
Speaker 1: his grandmother. My story short, his grandmother died when he
Speaker 1: was thirteen and he was kind of left his own devices,
Speaker 1: and he has two or three gage memories of his
Speaker 1: mother coming in and out of his life, um, grandomly
Speaker 1: touching his life before the age of eight. And then
Speaker 1: other than that, she's kind of soft the face of
Speaker 1: the earth. And as I've grown out older, I had
Speaker 1: my own kids, I got really interested in finding her,
Speaker 1: and with the advent about the Internet, we were doing
Speaker 1: lots lots of searching, and you know, we found records
Speaker 1: of her from an early age but just what she
Speaker 1: reached the age of twenty one, she kind of just
Speaker 1: say fell off the face of the earth. And so
Speaker 1: I hired on a home professional searcher, one of those
Speaker 1: TV searchers. I caused many thousands of dollars a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago, and she found her. But she married
Speaker 1: in London, and she married in London in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and she married using a birthday that was ten years
Speaker 1: before her real birthday. Then she married this guy um
Speaker 1: who was from Ireland, and then she died in two
Speaker 1: thousand four living in London, which is really tragic because
Speaker 1: we lived in London until I was two or three,
Speaker 1: and we weren't that far away. So I guess it's
Speaker 1: a still developing story because there are people out there
Speaker 1: that now about her and they know why she loved.
Speaker 1: Often it's and my dad's uncle is still alive and
Speaker 1: he won't share a lot of the details, and it
Speaker 1: is still developing because I really want to find her
Speaker 1: husband and asked him if he knows anything about her,
Speaker 1: But I can't find him because he's kind of flawen
Speaker 1: off the face of heres and I am not willing
Speaker 1: to send the dass to find him. Um, somebody who
Speaker 1: I'm not really related to. But but anyway, that's my story.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more, but it's just I thought that's
Speaker 1: the fun of the reason why I've feel interested in
Speaker 1: the podcast, because I have my own story. Um, that's
Speaker 1: kind of developing. I have quite the mixed bag of
Speaker 1: family secrets where instead of the my father being someone
Speaker 1: who went had children with a lot of different people,
Speaker 1: it was my mother. I didn't was not raised by
Speaker 1: my mother. She gave me to my grandparents, my maternal grandparents,
Speaker 1: and when I was around ten, she married and I
Speaker 1: had a little sister. So fast forward about another ten
Speaker 1: fifteen years and my sister sends me a picture of
Speaker 1: a little baby and everything's written in Spanish, but she
Speaker 1: thinks she sees our mother's name somewhere in there, and
Speaker 1: I she sends it to me and we find out
Speaker 1: that it's a picture of what appears to be a
Speaker 1: baby that my mother had given up for adoption when
Speaker 1: she lived in Mexico for a little bit. Right after
Speaker 1: I was born she moved there. I asked my mother
Speaker 1: and he was told it was none of my business.
Speaker 1: But we did figure out that it was our brother. Um,
Speaker 1: things were rather quiet for a long time. Yearest passed
Speaker 1: six years ago. I got a phone call from a
Speaker 1: gentleman who said, I think I'm your brother, and we
Speaker 1: compared notes and we were talking, and then you know,
Speaker 1: I thohen he was the two years younger than me,
Speaker 1: and well and behold, he's six years older than me.
Speaker 1: He was actually my mother his first child. But long
Speaker 1: story short, it's now uh my brother who was six
Speaker 1: years older be than our sister who's ten years younger
Speaker 1: than not than me. But all of us have UH
Speaker 1: fathers from different countries. No one was from America. We
Speaker 1: won't find the Mexican one because I think that was
Speaker 1: so well hidden with adoption. But we also are wondering
Speaker 1: who we're going to find anything else out about other
Speaker 1: children that might have popped up along the way. Our
Speaker 1: mother passed away three years ago and was tight lipped
Speaker 1: to the end, denying everything. My mother had a big, loud,
Speaker 1: Jewish family, and my dad had a family that was
Speaker 1: darker and a little more confusing. My aunts were married
Speaker 1: to very strict Roman Catholic men, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: there was always something a little off. My dad was
Speaker 1: Jewish too, and then I think I was eleven or
Speaker 1: twelve when we started saying, well, where's your parents, because
Speaker 1: we didn't know our grandparents on that side at all.
Speaker 1: And it took a while, probably a year, from my
Speaker 1: father to finally tell us that my grandfather had gone
Speaker 1: out to get a pack of cigarettes. My grandmother was
Speaker 1: home with her seven children and he never came back.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if she suffered from mental illness
Speaker 1: before that, but she sort of became catatonic and took
Speaker 1: to her bed. And the way that it all came
Speaker 1: out in public was that my father was found roaming
Speaker 1: in the street in his dirty diaper, and the butcher
Speaker 1: recognized him and took him home, and all the kids
Speaker 1: got taken away to the Jewish orphanage, which was a
Speaker 1: wonderful place, actually, so my father said. But this secret
Speaker 1: of my grandmother being mentally ill was was just like
Speaker 1: the thing we never talked about. She lived for another
Speaker 1: thirty five forty years in an institution, but she didn't
Speaker 1: know who anybody was, and I never met her, and
Speaker 1: my sister never met her. So we understand your family secrets.
Speaker 1: Thank you. If you'd like to share your story, call
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight secret zero and record your story.
Speaker 1: We won't be able to run all the stories, but
Speaker 1: we do want to shine a light on as many
Speaker 1: as we can. The number again is one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight Secret and then the numeral zero. Just a brief
Speaker 1: housekeeping note for those of you in and around New
Speaker 1: York City. On June three, I'm gonna be with the
Speaker 1: awesome Nora mcinnerney, host to the podcast Terrible. Thanks for
Speaker 1: asking who will be joining me for a live Family
Speaker 1: Secrets event at Rizzoli Books which is and Broadway. Will
Speaker 1: be there at six pm on June three, and we
Speaker 1: would love to see m For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows