Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. This
Speaker 1: episode contains descriptions of sexual assault listener discretion as advised.
Speaker 1: One of the things trauma took from me was the
Speaker 1: sweetness of the earth, and I longed for the world
Speaker 1: around me to come alive again. I ache to smell
Speaker 1: the bread baking in the oven, the soft, sticky wetness
Speaker 1: under my hands as I needed the dough the moment
Speaker 1: before it went into the loaf pan. To have noticed
Speaker 1: the fly buzzing around my head, fearing it would wind
Speaker 1: up in the bread and be mistaken for a reason.
Speaker 1: But if someone asked what I did over the weekend,
Speaker 1: I would most likely say I made bread. That's Michelle Bowdler,
Speaker 1: social justice activist, public health professional, and author of the
Speaker 1: recent book is Rape A Crime, A Memoir, an investigation,
Speaker 1: and a Manifesto, which was long listed for the National
Speaker 1: Book Award. Michelle's is a story of trauma and the
Speaker 1: long shadow of its aftermath, and the extraordinary healing power
Speaker 1: of giving voice and taking action. I'm Danny Shapiro, and
Speaker 1: this is Family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us,
Speaker 1: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from ourselves. I was born in a northern suburb
Speaker 1: of Chicago and grew up with a mother and a
Speaker 1: father in a townhouse village in that area. And when
Speaker 1: I was just barely seven years old, my father died
Speaker 1: of a fast moving cancer, and there was a lot
Speaker 1: that changed then. My mother was thirty three years old
Speaker 1: with two kids, two young children, and we were pretty
Speaker 1: lost without him. And about five years later she remarried
Speaker 1: and we moved to a small, very rural town in
Speaker 1: northeastern Ohio. It was an odd fit for me. Um
Speaker 1: We left behind our family and our friends and came
Speaker 1: to a place where many people actually had never even
Speaker 1: left the state of Ohio, and I felt really out
Speaker 1: of place. And I was very much looking forward to
Speaker 1: college and moved on to leave as soon as I could,
Speaker 1: and wound up in Massachusetts and haven't less since. Describe
Speaker 1: to me what you were like as a young woman
Speaker 1: heading into college. College was really transformed for me when
Speaker 1: I got to Brandeis University. People had read books I
Speaker 1: had never heard of. They had tasted foods I didn't
Speaker 1: even know that you know the names of, and I
Speaker 1: didn't really even know what I wanted to study. And
Speaker 1: within a semester, I had made friends for the first
Speaker 1: time in my life. I decided to be an English major,
Speaker 1: and I think probably by second semester I had come out,
Speaker 1: which was a big surprise for me at the time.
Speaker 1: And then as the four years of college went forward,
Speaker 1: I felt like I found a real footing in not
Speaker 1: only the love of reading and writing that I discovered,
Speaker 1: but also um in terms of feminist politics. And I
Speaker 1: was very active on the Brandeis campus and had just
Speaker 1: the most wonderful time just feeling like a head of
Speaker 1: voice that there wasn't anything I felt like I couldn't do.
Speaker 1: I couldn't wait to see what life had to offer
Speaker 1: after I graduated. So when you graduate from Brandeis and
Speaker 1: you've really that beautiful thing that can happen where you
Speaker 1: come into your own you move into an apartment not
Speaker 1: that far away I did. I moved into an apartment
Speaker 1: in Austin, which is right near Boston University and near
Speaker 1: ish to downtown, and lived with three of my dear friends.
Speaker 1: And it took me about a year to find a
Speaker 1: job that I felt I was interested and I worked
Speaker 1: at a circuit factory as a bookkeeper. I did all
Speaker 1: kinds of things until I found a job in editing.
Speaker 1: I was editing for a small man magazine, and that
Speaker 1: was when I really started to feel like, this is
Speaker 1: really great, paying my own rent, I'm learning how to cook.
Speaker 1: I I'm responsible for what happens to me, and it
Speaker 1: was just a wonderful, magical time for me. Walk me
Speaker 1: through what happened on the first night of summer in. So,
Speaker 1: the first night of summer in I had dinner and
Speaker 1: went to a concert with a friend of mine, and
Speaker 1: during I think intermission, a friend from Brandis came up
Speaker 1: to us and she had a big pile of flyers
Speaker 1: in her hands, and she said, you know you live
Speaker 1: in Austin, don't you Have you heard about the fact
Speaker 1: that there's been a series of rapes that's been on
Speaker 1: the news. And we put these flyers together because we
Speaker 1: don't think enough people know about it. Could you perhaps
Speaker 1: take some and put them up? Would you be willing
Speaker 1: to do that? And I was all too happy to
Speaker 1: do that. I felt like I had lost a little
Speaker 1: bit of my political will over the last two years
Speaker 1: because I was just busy trying to find a job.
Speaker 1: And I was so happy to feel like I could
Speaker 1: do something meaningful. So I took a big bunch of
Speaker 1: flyers and I put them on my table out in
Speaker 1: our hallway, and I remember thinking to myself, Gee, I'll
Speaker 1: have to see if my roommates can help me put
Speaker 1: these up tomorrow. And then I went to bed, and
Speaker 1: for some reason, none of them were home, which was unusual,
Speaker 1: but I was the only one home, and I I
Speaker 1: looked at those flyers, and when I thought about it later,
Speaker 1: I never, even for a second I thought about the
Speaker 1: fact that this was happening and that it could happen
Speaker 1: to me. It was more about how I could help
Speaker 1: other people. And I never thought for a minute that
Speaker 1: I was in any danger. And I went to bed,
Speaker 1: and a few hours later I felt my door open,
Speaker 1: and I thought, maybe it's one of my roommates coming
Speaker 1: home and they want to say good night. I hadn't
Speaker 1: really no idea what time it was, and it was
Speaker 1: two strangers, and so I sort of felt the light
Speaker 1: come in and was waiting to hear my friend's voice
Speaker 1: and realized in that moment that there were two people
Speaker 1: in my apartment. And they rushed over and it was
Speaker 1: clear that this was a home invasion, and that was
Speaker 1: the beginning of the night that really you have changed
Speaker 1: my life. Did you connect in your mind the home
Speaker 1: invasion with those fires? No, you're so frozen in a
Speaker 1: moment like that, and I I just felt like I
Speaker 1: went into a different mode of let me see what
Speaker 1: I can figure out is happening here so that I
Speaker 1: can keep myself safe. And so I worked really hard
Speaker 1: to let them know that I wasn't a threat. When
Speaker 1: I was spoken to, I tried to speak in very
Speaker 1: measured tones to be reassuring. One of them said, We're
Speaker 1: not going to hurt you. We're just here to rob
Speaker 1: the house. You know, it's the economy. We need money
Speaker 1: or something something like that, and so I decided, maybe
Speaker 1: for some self preservation, to just believe what they said.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until the night progressed where I realized, oh, no,
Speaker 1: these are the men on the fire that they're talking about,
Speaker 1: and I am going to be raped. And then I
Speaker 1: also sort of went into a frozen mode where I
Speaker 1: had to again figure out what do I need to
Speaker 1: to survive this. How many hours in all were these
Speaker 1: strangers in your apartment? It felt like it was about
Speaker 1: two hours, and I'm not sure that that's the truth,
Speaker 1: because it might have been less. But the night seemed
Speaker 1: to just go on and on, and one of them
Speaker 1: stayed with me, and while the other one ransacked a
Speaker 1: post college apartment where there was nothing of value. It
Speaker 1: felt like that process just went on, and then there
Speaker 1: was a lot of back and forth about what else
Speaker 1: should we do? Should we leave? Do you have money?
Speaker 1: Do you have a car? That just seemed endless, It
Speaker 1: was prolonged. One of the split second decisions Michelle makes
Speaker 1: is to not tell these two men that she's a lesbian.
Speaker 1: This is a knee jerk in stinct contrary to her values.
Speaker 1: All she's thinking about is getting to the next minute.
Speaker 1: The men bind Michelle's hands and feet, then blindfold her.
Speaker 1: They place a gag around her face, and she's terrified
Speaker 1: that they're going to strangle her, but instead the gag
Speaker 1: goes over her mouth and they tell her to keep calm. Finally,
Speaker 1: they leave. I waited until they left and made sure
Speaker 1: that they were gone, because they didn't want to have
Speaker 1: any reason for them to harm me more. I just
Speaker 1: worked to loosen my self and was able to untied
Speaker 1: myself eventually, and then I couldn't find my glasses and
Speaker 1: I am very, very site impaired without my glasses, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't find and was very disoriented. But there was
Speaker 1: no question that I would have to go to the hospital.
Speaker 1: I was physically hurt, and I I didn't know how badly.
Speaker 1: I thought that I should have a medical exam, and
Speaker 1: I never thought maybe I should wait. I just felt
Speaker 1: like I needed help right away. I walked across this
Speaker 1: little apartment hallway to neighbors that I had never met.
Speaker 1: It was probably about three or four in the morning,
Speaker 1: and I knocked on their door and I just I said,
Speaker 1: I need to use your phone. And at the time,
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen eighties, the Boston Mary Rape Crisis
Speaker 1: Center was in place, but it had started just a
Speaker 1: few years before. It's one of the oldest rape crisis
Speaker 1: centers in the country. And then Beth Israel Hospital had
Speaker 1: a victim services program which still exists to this day.
Speaker 1: They call it a violence prevention recovery now, but at
Speaker 1: the time they were known for being able to help
Speaker 1: people who have been raped get the care that they needed.
Speaker 1: So there was no questions that that was where I
Speaker 1: would go. You knew where to go. I did. I
Speaker 1: don't know how I did. Maybe because of the political
Speaker 1: work that I did in college. I really I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: You know, it never ceases to amaze me the way
Speaker 1: that in the midst of severe trauma, the mind of
Speaker 1: the brain, you know, just the survival instinct can become
Speaker 1: so incredibly sharp. I mean, of all the hospitals in Boston,
Speaker 1: Boston is a city of hospitals that you shuffled through,
Speaker 1: you know, in some way your mental rolodex, and knew
Speaker 1: where to take yourself. I just find that fascinating and
Speaker 1: such resilient see of the human spirit, even in a
Speaker 1: moment like that. I think the thing that stands out
Speaker 1: for me the most about being at the hospital and
Speaker 1: awaiting an exam was how clear it was to me
Speaker 1: in some part of my brain that I was suddenly
Speaker 1: a different person. I had now had this experience, and
Speaker 1: I felt like I was utterly changed. I think during
Speaker 1: the attack, I became quite dissociated, and in order to survive,
Speaker 1: I sort of wasn't there. I was there, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't there, and I still had that feeling when I
Speaker 1: was at the hospital, I even in moments, felt like
Speaker 1: maybe I died because it just seemed so unreal and
Speaker 1: so impossible. And so I was in the emergency room.
Speaker 1: I had a friend with me, and somebody came out
Speaker 1: and asked me. They said, we usually have women who
Speaker 1: can do the exam, but we don't right now. We
Speaker 1: only have men in the e R. Do you want
Speaker 1: to wait and we can get somebody? And I said
Speaker 1: I would wait and rape exams, rape evidence collection exams.
Speaker 1: At a time, it was it was at least a
Speaker 1: four hour exam. Now I think that's the maximum that
Speaker 1: it would be, but back then it could be four
Speaker 1: to six hours. It really is unlike any other exam.
Speaker 1: And what I've heard people say, and what I've said myself,
Speaker 1: is that in essence, your body is a crime scene,
Speaker 1: and that the forensic evidence that lives on your body
Speaker 1: is the thing that they have to extract in order
Speaker 1: to even have the possibility of moving forward to identify
Speaker 1: the perpetrators. They come you in every possible place they
Speaker 1: can comb you, and they they have a silhouet of
Speaker 1: of a human that's on a piece of paper and
Speaker 1: I think this is still true. And they mark we're bruised,
Speaker 1: They mark anything that is relevant to the assault. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's even as I'm saying, and I just think it
Speaker 1: is really so intrusive after you've just had a violation
Speaker 1: and intrusion that defies description. But some people do go
Speaker 1: through a rape kit, and I felt like I I
Speaker 1: felt obligated to because if this was clearly a case
Speaker 1: of serial perpetration, and I I didn't want anybody else
Speaker 1: to have to go through this. If we could find
Speaker 1: the men who had done it, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Following her medical ordeal at the hospital, Michelle is back
Speaker 1: at her apartment when two detectives arrived, presumably to ask
Speaker 1: her questions about the assault and to collect more evidence
Speaker 1: for her case. A few hours after being at the hospital,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was even several hours later, um, there
Speaker 1: were detectives who wanted to interview me to see if
Speaker 1: I could help them in what I thought was going
Speaker 1: to be an investigation. And we sat down and started
Speaker 1: talking and they kept asking me, did you see them?
Speaker 1: What can you tell us about them? What did they
Speaker 1: look like? And I must have said several times I
Speaker 1: did see them. I was I was blindfolded, and I
Speaker 1: could feel them getting frustrated they would be able to
Speaker 1: get some DNA evidence and also fingerprint evidence, but it
Speaker 1: would be important to them that they had a description,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I was letting them down. And
Speaker 1: at one point one of the detectives reached into his
Speaker 1: satchel and pulled out a gallant sized baggy and there
Speaker 1: was a knife in it, and he held it up
Speaker 1: and said to me, does this look familiar? And even
Speaker 1: as I say it now, it creates like a lump,
Speaker 1: a lump of fear in my throat. And this is,
Speaker 1: you know, over thirty five years later, And I said,
Speaker 1: did you find that in my bedroom? And then it
Speaker 1: started to come back to me that they had a knife,
Speaker 1: and that I saw it for that split second before
Speaker 1: they put the blindfold on me. They did have a knife.
Speaker 1: I didn't make the up in my head. I did
Speaker 1: see it, and I was terrified, and I just said, well,
Speaker 1: I assume that was from my kitchen. And then there
Speaker 1: were a lot of questions about my kitchen knives, Well
Speaker 1: could you identify this to are you sure? And I
Speaker 1: didn't know, and I didn't understand why that mattered. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of questions that of a lot of
Speaker 1: detail that didn't really matter to me. And I will
Speaker 1: say that in the work that I do now, trying
Speaker 1: to be more of an advocate. I think a lot
Speaker 1: about what didn't happen, and what didn't happen was they
Speaker 1: didn't say, is this too early for us to talk
Speaker 1: to or have you had a chance to get some sleep,
Speaker 1: or I know this is hard, but time is of
Speaker 1: the essence. I felt like I was just a bad witness.
Speaker 1: They did say, you know, I guess that's about it,
Speaker 1: and we'll be on our way. We'll get back to
Speaker 1: you if we have any more questions, and it was
Speaker 1: very strongly stated. So I thought we were done and
Speaker 1: that I would wind appearing from them in about three
Speaker 1: or four weeks. I guess I was naive about how
Speaker 1: quickly things take. The detectives asked Michelle to come down
Speaker 1: to the Boston Police station to give her fingerprints so
Speaker 1: they'd be able to distinguish her fingerprints from the rapists
Speaker 1: when dusting the apartment. I went to the police station
Speaker 1: and got my fingerprints taken, which was also a very
Speaker 1: strange experience where I felt like I was a criminal,
Speaker 1: that I was somehow being booked. You know, they turn
Speaker 1: your hands over and the ink and get your fingerprints,
Speaker 1: and there's not a lot of words that are exchanged
Speaker 1: while it's happening. And then the ink stayed on my hand.
Speaker 1: And this was I think, less than twenty four hours
Speaker 1: after I had been attacked, and it was a lot
Speaker 1: of police contact and in an environment I had never
Speaker 1: been in. And at the very end of our exchange
Speaker 1: and having the fingerprints done, there was a a dog
Speaker 1: barking somewhere. I don't know if it was a police
Speaker 1: dog was right outside and the windows were open, but
Speaker 1: the dog was barking and barking and barking, and policewood
Speaker 1: people were like, oh, not again, and oh this dog.
Speaker 1: And finally the officer looked at me and said that dog,
Speaker 1: just like a woman, can't keep her mouth shut. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. And it was also the moment where
Speaker 1: I thought, Oh, this last twelve hours or whatever it's been,
Speaker 1: has all been a waste of time. That somebody who
Speaker 1: could say something like that made me feel like, Oh,
Speaker 1: if he is at all reflective of this group of officers,
Speaker 1: then why did I even bother? I bet they won't
Speaker 1: even look. It was devastating, And it was also devastating
Speaker 1: was that I didn't have my old self that I
Speaker 1: could conjure in any way to basically say, listen to you,
Speaker 1: and what I would have said, you know, two days before,
Speaker 1: like I can't believe you just said that that is
Speaker 1: so not okay, you know, and really talked to him
Speaker 1: about misogyny and walked out with all this swagger that
Speaker 1: I didn't have anymore. How quickly our sense of self
Speaker 1: can be taken from us. The nature of trauma, I think,
Speaker 1: is that it robs us of our voice, Its silences us.
Speaker 1: In this way, It's like a secret that we keep
Speaker 1: from ourselves because the self that would have been confronting
Speaker 1: that police officer has gone a wall. That self is
Speaker 1: not available in the inner swirl of shame, self blame, inadequacy,
Speaker 1: Michelle worries about being a bad witness, and she does
Speaker 1: not yet have access to the range of her oceans.
Speaker 1: I began to feel angry when I was moving. I
Speaker 1: was staying with a friend of mine, and I was
Speaker 1: moving about six weeks later, and I still hadn't heard anything,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have a cell phone that I could
Speaker 1: give the detective, and so I thought, Oh, I better
Speaker 1: let him know I'm moving. I tried saying that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm moving and I thought I should let you know
Speaker 1: so that you would know how to get in touch
Speaker 1: with me. And then that was when he got dismissed
Speaker 1: of like where the police we know how to find
Speaker 1: people and did, And I said I would let you
Speaker 1: know if I had any news, because at some point
Speaker 1: I said, well, I thought, maybe you know, do you
Speaker 1: have an update? Another one on the phone. No, I
Speaker 1: said I'd call you if I had any news, and
Speaker 1: it was clear that me calling was annoying. You're right,
Speaker 1: I can never again be a person who does not
Speaker 1: have this story chasing me. And so there's this period
Speaker 1: of time in the immediate aftermath, meaning you know, the
Speaker 1: initial weeks and months and then extending into years, where
Speaker 1: the whole question of talking about it, not talking about it,
Speaker 1: telling not telling is very prevalent. And the first place
Speaker 1: that that arises is when you think about telling your
Speaker 1: mother and you think, I can't tell my mother. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to tell my mother, and your mother is told.
Speaker 1: I imagine there are people who don't and who never
Speaker 1: tell their parents. But then your mother doesn't come to
Speaker 1: visit right away, and you tell her not to and
Speaker 1: she doesn't. When your mother finally does come to visit.
Speaker 1: You're furious at her because she didn't come and you
Speaker 1: needed her, and she didn't come that she should have
Speaker 1: known that you needed her and come. There's a term
Speaker 1: called to ross that I read about, and it's something
Speaker 1: that's particular to the Iranian culture. The example that I've
Speaker 1: heard of is you're taking a taxi ride and you're done,
Speaker 1: and you get your destination, and you say how much
Speaker 1: do I owe you? And the taxi driver says, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, you don't pay me. The pleasure of your
Speaker 1: company was enough. I couldn't possibly take your money. And
Speaker 1: then you, of course argue, and then they insist no,
Speaker 1: and then but ultimately both parties in this the cultural exchange,
Speaker 1: know that at the end the driver is to be paid,
Speaker 1: but the back and forth is considered a politeness of
Speaker 1: courtesy and somehow a recognition of I don't want to
Speaker 1: bother you, but of course you must. And but you
Speaker 1: know it goes on like that, and that is known
Speaker 1: as tarros. And of course if the you didn't pay
Speaker 1: the taxi driver, he'd be very upset and he would
Speaker 1: want to be paid. The dance of taraff has prevented
Speaker 1: Michelle and her mother from having an honest conversation. Michelle
Speaker 1: had told her mother not to come, and her mother
Speaker 1: had taken her at her word. Over years, this misunderstanding
Speaker 1: calcified into resentment that Michelle carried with her like a
Speaker 1: stone in her pocket. Years later, years later, when my
Speaker 1: mother was dying and my sister and I were talking
Speaker 1: about it, I brought that up somehow because my sister
Speaker 1: had asked me a question and I said, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was really hard that she didn't come. And I know
Speaker 1: I told her not to, but it was still hard
Speaker 1: for me. And she explained that when I said don't come,
Speaker 1: they had actually called a rape crisis center in one
Speaker 1: of their towns, and the person at the other end
Speaker 1: of the line said, if she tells you not to
Speaker 1: do what you must listen because a rape victim loses
Speaker 1: all sense of control, and even if what she's asking
Speaker 1: you seem so outlandish, you have to respect it. And
Speaker 1: yet we never had that conversation. We lost the opportunity
Speaker 1: to have that conversation. And the secret that I was
Speaker 1: holding was that I had a resentment even though I
Speaker 1: was so distraught that I couldn't ask for anything different.
Speaker 1: And she never said to me. Years later, here's why
Speaker 1: I listened, and to this day I regret it. There's
Speaker 1: a lot that we lose by being afraid to say
Speaker 1: the thing that we think will hurt somebody's feelings because
Speaker 1: we love them, because we don't want them to feel
Speaker 1: shame or guilt. But what happened instead of what happened
Speaker 1: to me, was that there was a real lost opportunity
Speaker 1: to have closure that I think we all, all the
Speaker 1: whole family could have benefited from. That's so poignant and
Speaker 1: and so universal I think in families. And then it's
Speaker 1: gone right. You've lost it, and you have to live
Speaker 1: with the choice that you made not to say, not
Speaker 1: to confront, for whatever the reasons were, there's a choice
Speaker 1: I made and and I regret it. I wish that
Speaker 1: I could talk to her about it. We'll be back
Speaker 1: in a moment with more family secrets. In the aftermath,
Speaker 1: I quit my job, which is actually really common. I
Speaker 1: didn't know it's time, but to calm a phenomenon, I
Speaker 1: left my job and I wound up working temp for
Speaker 1: three or four years because I didn't feel like I
Speaker 1: had the wherewithal to commit to a job. I was
Speaker 1: afraid of being fired, so I did temp work, and
Speaker 1: at some point I was, you know, at a placement
Speaker 1: at a doctor's lab for about a year, and the
Speaker 1: person I was working was she knew something was going
Speaker 1: on with me. She helped me move on after I
Speaker 1: told her what happened. So I told her and she said,
Speaker 1: let's let's help you leave. It was a gift, really.
Speaker 1: Then I worked at a methodon clinic. That's where I
Speaker 1: met my wife, who was a nurse there. I started
Speaker 1: liking work again. I started feeling like I was using
Speaker 1: my brain and I liked my job a lote. By
Speaker 1: that point, I was in my late twenties. Michelle returns
Speaker 1: to school and get some master's in public health at Harvard.
Speaker 1: This is the time when she begins to feel she's
Speaker 1: coming back to herself. She loves studying and learning. She's
Speaker 1: in love with the woman who will become her wife.
Speaker 1: She gets a job doing meaningful work in healthcare and
Speaker 1: mental health at Tufts University, a job she still holds
Speaker 1: to this day. She also makes the decision to stay
Speaker 1: quiet about her history. She doesn't share the full story
Speaker 1: with Mary, her partner. At one point, Mary says, to you,
Speaker 1: it's so apparent, how keeping silent doesn't serve you. She
Speaker 1: knew that something had happened, and she knew that I
Speaker 1: had been assaulted. She knew the broad brush of it all,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to talk about the details. I
Speaker 1: kind of wanted a new start, and I felt like
Speaker 1: it had been enough years that I didn't have to
Speaker 1: go back. It's almost ten years, well seven to ten
Speaker 1: years later, and I wanted to feel like I was
Speaker 1: past it, and so I was keeping a secret from myself,
Speaker 1: which was that I wasn't past it. And and many
Speaker 1: years later it was clear that I still had some
Speaker 1: work to do. But at the time, I felt, well,
Speaker 1: you know this is I'm ready to move on. I've
Speaker 1: moved on. I'm I'm studying at Harvard and I'm doing
Speaker 1: something I love, and I don't want to feel like
Speaker 1: when I get to know people that I have to
Speaker 1: say that I can talk about other things. And it
Speaker 1: didn't really work for me. I mean, I did it,
Speaker 1: but I just felt like it was time. And the
Speaker 1: people I told in the intervening years were really few
Speaker 1: and far between. Mary and Michelle have two children, a
Speaker 1: son and a daughter. Born in the profound vulnerability of
Speaker 1: motherhood awakes the sleeping giant of her silenced story. I
Speaker 1: think there were two things. I think that to risk
Speaker 1: loving them as much as I did, I felt like
Speaker 1: that was reignited, like I am going to be more
Speaker 1: vulnerable than I like being. But I'm going to do
Speaker 1: it and I want to do it. But I knew
Speaker 1: that it was going to be hard to feel afraid
Speaker 1: all the time. And you know, when I say that
Speaker 1: out loud, I think, isn't that a shame? Because in
Speaker 1: fact I didn't plan to be afraid, and I didn't
Speaker 1: want my children to experience the impact of trauma, of
Speaker 1: my trauma. I didn't want to. It's still fear in
Speaker 1: them now. I still think about my daughter could climb
Speaker 1: the playground equipment like in the most incredible way, and
Speaker 1: and you know, walk across a ladder that's eight feet
Speaker 1: off the ground on a on a playground equipment that
Speaker 1: I would want to just the whole time, you saying careful, careful,
Speaker 1: and Mary would sort of say she's she's okay. And
Speaker 1: if she falls, Actually, kids know how to fall and
Speaker 1: the playground is made for them to have a soft
Speaker 1: fall if they fall. So I was with somebody who
Speaker 1: was not a daredevil, but who understood that kids have
Speaker 1: to take risks to grow, and that it wasn't serving
Speaker 1: them if I was always like, oh, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you know, like wait, wait, be careful. So I tried
Speaker 1: to hide it. I think what happens when you try
Speaker 1: to hide your nature or especially trauma, it probably is
Speaker 1: in the air somewhere. I really had to reckon with
Speaker 1: my anxiety and my worries about their safety and just
Speaker 1: about what it meant to raise children and have them
Speaker 1: live in a world where awful things happened. They also
Speaker 1: grew up in a home that was full of joy
Speaker 1: and full of love and full of silliness. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't just one sided. But that other part was still
Speaker 1: with me, and it was with me more than I
Speaker 1: was comfortable with. And you also reach a point, I
Speaker 1: think when they're in middle school where telling them it's
Speaker 1: one of those great By great, I mean huge parental dilemmas,
Speaker 1: which is, if there's something that is from a parent's
Speaker 1: own experience that's really really hard, you know, all we
Speaker 1: want to do is protect our children from that knowledge
Speaker 1: and the realization that we can't. Yes, I do believe
Speaker 1: that we should give our children more credit than sometimes
Speaker 1: we do, and so it always struck me that when
Speaker 1: kids are really little and they say things like tell
Speaker 1: me a story, what what did you what was your
Speaker 1: favorite at age growing up, or whatever the questions are,
Speaker 1: and then it's what did you do after college? And
Speaker 1: why did you do that? And then it started to
Speaker 1: feel like I was not being truthful because the questions
Speaker 1: were about my post college life, and I didn't like that.
Speaker 1: And then my daughter, also as a young child, exhibited
Speaker 1: a lot of anxiety. And at one point she was
Speaker 1: running into our room every night. She was probably three
Speaker 1: or four years old, and she was running into our
Speaker 1: room saying she was having nightmares that the bears were
Speaker 1: going to come into her room and steal her. And
Speaker 1: that was when I said to Mary, I feel like
Speaker 1: she must be picking up on something I've never talked
Speaker 1: about what happened to me in front of her, But
Speaker 1: my goodness, she thinks someone's going to come through a
Speaker 1: window and hurt her, Like I totally felt like I
Speaker 1: had somehow she had absorbed that, somehow, in some strange way.
Speaker 1: We've spoken before on this podcast about inherited or epigenetic trauma,
Speaker 1: the way trauma experienced by a parent can literally alter
Speaker 1: the DNA and impact the child. Michelle and Mary are
Speaker 1: very present parents, deeply conscious wanting to be upfront and
Speaker 1: honest with their children. They've talked to their kids from
Speaker 1: the time they were little about what it means to
Speaker 1: have two moms, what they might hear in school, and
Speaker 1: how their moms might help emotionally support them. But on
Speaker 1: the subject of Michelle's violent attack and how it happened,
Speaker 1: Michelle and Mary put that off. Maybe their kids didn't
Speaker 1: need to know. But once their son and daughter reached
Speaker 1: middle school and Michelle's profile has risen as an activist
Speaker 1: for law enforcement reform, she decides that it's time to
Speaker 1: tell them about her history. We decided to tell my
Speaker 1: daughter because I found out from Mary that my son
Speaker 1: already knew, and so I guess she had kept a
Speaker 1: secret from me that he had read an article I
Speaker 1: had been working on, and he told her, but he
Speaker 1: didn't want to tell men. And it was interesting. It
Speaker 1: was like we were all being guided by this silence.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't telling them what I was working on,
Speaker 1: and then he saw it, looked at it without me knowing,
Speaker 1: and then he didn't want to tell me. And and
Speaker 1: so when I tried to talk to him about if.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, I don't really want to talk
Speaker 1: about it. I'm just sorry that happened to you. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to respect how an adolescent boy might not
Speaker 1: know how to talk to his mother about it. So
Speaker 1: I said, okay, Ben, but we'll talk about it more
Speaker 1: when you're ready. And so we told our daughter. Mary
Speaker 1: told her and then I followed up, and she was shocked,
Speaker 1: she was upset. She, you know, had a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't not tell them that my father died or
Speaker 1: that Mary's father died when we were young, and that
Speaker 1: had a huge impact on us. And yet this was
Speaker 1: something I had held and it was a big relief,
Speaker 1: and it was something that I wrote about and labeled it,
Speaker 1: called it Eventually you have to tell your kids. And
Speaker 1: there were more people who were interested in wanting to
Speaker 1: talk to me about that, not because of my experience,
Speaker 1: but they said, I've wondered that question about my kids
Speaker 1: because I And then it might be something else. It
Speaker 1: might be abuse, it might be you know someone in
Speaker 1: the family who doesn't speak to them anymore for whatever
Speaker 1: the reason is, and they don't even know that person exists,
Speaker 1: Like all the all kinds of secrets. Michelle does a
Speaker 1: speech around this time in which the first sentence is
Speaker 1: I am a rape survivor. This is very deliberate on
Speaker 1: her part. After so many years of silence, She's going
Speaker 1: to name it, She's going to own it. In the
Speaker 1: wake of that speech, she feels more like her genuine
Speaker 1: self than she has in a very long time. And
Speaker 1: this makes so much sense, right. We don't choose our stories.
Speaker 1: As my dear friend Sylvia Borstein, the great Buddhist teacher
Speaker 1: who has been a guest on this podcast, often says,
Speaker 1: it's not what I wanted, but it's what I've got.
Speaker 1: The more we're able to own the totality of our
Speaker 1: life's experience, the more possibility there is for wholeness of
Speaker 1: self and with one's family as well. It's true that
Speaker 1: when you fight against what you can't escape, you can't
Speaker 1: be your true self. And I have figured that out
Speaker 1: over many years. And part of the reason I think
Speaker 1: people fight against that is that they think that if
Speaker 1: they accept that, they're accepting what happened to them. And
Speaker 1: I don't think the two have to go together. I
Speaker 1: think that you can say I'm not glad that's happened
Speaker 1: to me, And it did, and sure's what I'm going
Speaker 1: to try to make of my life, even though I
Speaker 1: wish it never happened. In Michelle visits the Boston Sexual
Speaker 1: Assault Unit for the first time. It's a unit that
Speaker 1: was created at almost exactly the same time as her rape.
Speaker 1: She's hoping to be able to identify her attackers now
Speaker 1: that tracing DNA is so much more prevalent, but her
Speaker 1: rape kit and evidence have been missing for many years,
Speaker 1: as is true horrifyingly true of thousands of women. She's
Speaker 1: looking for closure. She discovers while at the Boston Sexual
Speaker 1: Assault Unit that the detective who was so dismissive and
Speaker 1: insensitive thirty years earlier, that detective had never pursued her case.
Speaker 1: It was considered closed. But there are many different forms
Speaker 1: of closure, and the words finally come to Michelle, words
Speaker 1: that strike me as somehow sacred. Embrace your life fully,
Speaker 1: the one almost robbed from you. I was done feeling
Speaker 1: like I was looking backward to find a sense of peace,
Speaker 1: and I decided that I could look forward, and that
Speaker 1: I didn't want to waste any more time with people
Speaker 1: who weren't going to help me. Look, and that finding
Speaker 1: the answer wasn't going to give me the closure I thought.
Speaker 1: And that was when I really started to feel like
Speaker 1: things had changed in a way that I'm deeply grateful happened.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly
Speaker 1: Zachor is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the
Speaker 1: executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like
Speaker 1: to share, please leave us a voicemail and your story
Speaker 1: could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is one
Speaker 1: eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can
Speaker 1: also find me on Instagram at Danny writer. And if
Speaker 1: you'd like to know more about the story that inspired
Speaker 1: this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.