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 want to say
Speaker 1: thank you for having this podcast. It's really really interesting
Speaker 1: and I'm not the only one that holds a secret.
Speaker 1: I am holding a secret from my daughter, myself, my family.
Speaker 1: I guess. UM. I don't know if my ex is
Speaker 1: my twenty year old daughters father. UM. We always said
Speaker 1: keep it as what it was. I had my daughter. UM,
Speaker 1: my husband took over the role. He doesn't even know.
Speaker 1: I just never told anyone. I looked at her. She
Speaker 1: looks like my husband. But the guy that I was
Speaker 1: with also looks like my husband. UM, just you know,
Speaker 1: different pigments UM in the skin talk the lighter and
Speaker 1: I've never talked about it, UM, but with one person,
Speaker 1: and it was him, the the one that I think
Speaker 1: is my daughter's father. At the time, he was going
Speaker 1: to do eight years and and and the penitential and
Speaker 1: UM be broken off. And back then it was something
Speaker 1: called Humphrey eleven pills and it wasn't the morning after
Speaker 1: UM and I took those and I ended up finding
Speaker 1: out I was partner and I kept my daughter. She's
Speaker 1: the love of my life. UM. But she would be
Speaker 1: devastated is she found out that her dad wasn't really
Speaker 1: her dad, which is Micaelspin. My husband would be deadist
Speaker 1: devastated as well. I would be devastated. I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: know what to do with myself. Mom. We've had a
Speaker 1: fabulous life. I just figured I would just botle degree
Speaker 1: about it, UM, write a letter and if they find
Speaker 1: it one day, they find it. If they don't, then
Speaker 1: it will be the way it will be for the
Speaker 1: rest of the life. UM. I thought about doing UM ancestry,
Speaker 1: but that just makes me want to vomit. I can't
Speaker 1: even bathom what I would do if I would find
Speaker 1: that out. But again, thank you so much. Have a
Speaker 1: great day, and thanks for listening to my story. Hi.
Speaker 1: I have two secrets. One is when I learned a
Speaker 1: while ago and another one that I learned more recently.
Speaker 1: And the first one is that UM, I have an
Speaker 1: aunt who was married to a man who um was
Speaker 1: actually probably a large percentage African American. But that was
Speaker 1: a big deal secret in the family, and um he
Speaker 1: told his wife, and his wife told her sister, who
Speaker 1: was my mom. And I only found out when I
Speaker 1: was maybe in my twenties, and it was a huge
Speaker 1: big deal for my mom to tell me this, and
Speaker 1: he forre me to secrecy. And I never told my cousins,
Speaker 1: and we're not close. There's been a lot of trouble
Speaker 1: in our family, and I don't I don't talk to them,
Speaker 1: but I know where they are and I know how
Speaker 1: to reach them, and I'm very tempted to call or
Speaker 1: to text member leave them an email or something and
Speaker 1: tell them. But if they were genetic testing, they'll find
Speaker 1: out on their own. But then the man was the
Speaker 1: father of my uncle was passing as why that he was.
Speaker 1: If you look at the pictures their wedding, you can
Speaker 1: really kind of thing that it wasn't he might have
Speaker 1: been myding Stern or whatever. But I know it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting to me. It's not a big deal, but
Speaker 1: it was like terribly shameful to my mom and apparently
Speaker 1: to her sister as well. The second secret is that
Speaker 1: I am a large percentage asking I'm Jewish, and my
Speaker 1: father and his first wife we're both um we're both
Speaker 1: a really large percentage Jewish. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: they ever even talked about to to each other, because
Speaker 1: it was kind of a thing that their families wanted
Speaker 1: to set um. Both sides came from Germany, and I
Speaker 1: think it had been it had been like a very
Speaker 1: difficult Jewish in Germany, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people just wanted to forget that they were. So I
Speaker 1: was surprised to find out that the percentage is so high,
Speaker 1: but that was it. So thank you. I'm really enjoying
Speaker 1: the podcast so much. Take care of why him. My
Speaker 1: family secret is that, Um, I grew up not looking
Speaker 1: like my dad. My dad is a very small, petite man.
Speaker 1: His dad was a jockey. I don't look anything like him.
Speaker 1: He had dark hair, dark guys, I'm flong with blue eyes.
Speaker 1: And Um, when I came home from college, I was
Speaker 1: watching one of those Maury Povich, you know, he's not
Speaker 1: my dad DNA testing shows, and I was joking with
Speaker 1: my mom and I said, oh, you know, like maybe
Speaker 1: I'm adopted, just joking around and or you know, I said, boy,
Speaker 1: I look like you, but not like dad. And she
Speaker 1: admitted to me that she had been married, UM in
Speaker 1: her early twenties. UM, she's been married to someone who
Speaker 1: was in the Coastguard and that the relationship wasn't working out,
Speaker 1: and while he was at see she wrote him a
Speaker 1: letter and packed up her things and moved back to
Speaker 1: the town that I live in now. UM immediately got
Speaker 1: together with my dad, who was her high school sweetheart
Speaker 1: and he raised me. On the age of five, he
Speaker 1: started really getting bad into drugs and he was a
Speaker 1: heroine at it. UM around the time that my mom
Speaker 1: told me that, you know, there's that she was married
Speaker 1: to another man, and there's a possibility that this man
Speaker 1: was my father. UM, my dad had recently gotten off
Speaker 1: drugs and we had started rebuilding our relationships so I
Speaker 1: didn't really look too much further into it. I did
Speaker 1: an ancestry DNA test um like so many other people,
Speaker 1: I did find out that I was not related genetically
Speaker 1: my father and instead was related to another man. I
Speaker 1: was linked to a first cousin. I reached out to
Speaker 1: that person um getting here back. I reached out to
Speaker 1: another person on Instagram of all things, who was an aunt,
Speaker 1: and she did get back to me UM and kind
Speaker 1: of confirmed things and let me know that my biological
Speaker 1: father is not interested in having a relationship with me.
Speaker 1: In fact, he UM is a very conservative Republican and
Speaker 1: I'm married to a woman, so I think that that
Speaker 1: would probably be a big issue. But you know, it
Speaker 1: was kind of hard for me, and it's still as
Speaker 1: hard to come to terms with the fact that this
Speaker 1: person that is my biological father is not even interested
Speaker 1: in meeting me. So that's my family's secret. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to share your story, call one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: Secret zero and record your story. We won't be able
Speaker 1: to run all the stories, but we do want to
Speaker 1: shine a light on as many as we can. The
Speaker 1: number again is one eight eight eight Secret and then
Speaker 1: the numeral zero For more podcasts, for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
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