1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:04,640
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. This January,

2
00:00:04,800 --> 00:00:07,720
Speaker 1: Danny's taking Family Secrets on the Road. To get your tickets,

3
00:00:07,840 --> 00:00:19,720
Speaker 1: visit Danny Shapiro dot com. I'm Danny Shapiro and this

4
00:00:19,880 --> 00:00:23,080
Speaker 1: is Family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,

5
00:00:23,480 --> 00:00:26,439
Speaker 1: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we

6
00:00:26,560 --> 00:00:31,080
Speaker 1: keep from ourselves. I've heard from so many about your

7
00:00:31,080 --> 00:00:34,360
Speaker 1: own family secrets and realize that what we are creating

8
00:00:34,400 --> 00:00:37,800
Speaker 1: for each other on this podcast is a community, a

9
00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:40,120
Speaker 1: community for those who are looking for a safe and

10
00:00:40,240 --> 00:00:44,720
Speaker 1: supportive space to unburden themselves. To that end, we've created

11
00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:48,320
Speaker 1: a number for listeners to call in to record stories

12
00:00:48,360 --> 00:00:52,440
Speaker 1: to share here in this space. This week, I'd like

13
00:00:52,479 --> 00:00:54,800
Speaker 1: to share a few of those stories from our community.

14
00:00:55,320 --> 00:00:59,200
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, Hi, I have loved listening to this

15
00:00:59,280 --> 00:01:01,760
Speaker 1: podcast in it to really helped me process information that

16
00:01:01,800 --> 00:01:04,320
Speaker 1: I learned about a year ago. I had done a

17
00:01:04,400 --> 00:01:07,160
Speaker 1: DNA test to see my mother had always said that

18
00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:10,039
Speaker 1: we were partner of amannequin, but never really would talk

19
00:01:10,120 --> 00:01:12,679
Speaker 1: much about it, so I was just curious. So my

20
00:01:12,760 --> 00:01:15,039
Speaker 1: DNA came back and I didn't have any Native Americans.

21
00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:18,040
Speaker 1: No big deal. Um, I didn't see a lot of

22
00:01:18,080 --> 00:01:22,160
Speaker 1: family connections. But then I knew as d N a

23
00:01:22,319 --> 00:01:24,960
Speaker 1: knowledge approach, they're more able to specify where you come from.

24
00:01:25,200 --> 00:01:26,880
Speaker 1: So I just thought maybe some of the people that

25
00:01:26,920 --> 00:01:29,679
Speaker 1: I was connected to that was just a guess on

26
00:01:29,720 --> 00:01:32,400
Speaker 1: their part. And I had written to some people who

27
00:01:32,400 --> 00:01:34,319
Speaker 1: wrote me and asked like, do you know how you're

28
00:01:34,319 --> 00:01:36,360
Speaker 1: related to me? We have these names, and I had

29
00:01:36,360 --> 00:01:37,920
Speaker 1: written back and said, I don't have any names like

30
00:01:37,959 --> 00:01:41,520
Speaker 1: that in my family. Jumped forward three years later, Um,

31
00:01:41,680 --> 00:01:43,400
Speaker 1: I got my husband a DNA test and he was

32
00:01:43,440 --> 00:01:45,360
Speaker 1: looking at all his great family connections. And I went

33
00:01:45,440 --> 00:01:47,800
Speaker 1: back and read a response that I had gotten and

34
00:01:47,800 --> 00:01:51,680
Speaker 1: it said, okay, so just hear me and look at

35
00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:53,960
Speaker 1: your connections. I bet that if you look, you're going

36
00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:56,200
Speaker 1: to have this person, this person, and this person as

37
00:01:56,200 --> 00:02:00,240
Speaker 1: a connection. And that's my mother and my aunt and

38
00:02:00,520 --> 00:02:04,520
Speaker 1: someone else. So anyway, lots of going back and forth

39
00:02:04,560 --> 00:02:08,280
Speaker 1: with this person. I had no idea that he was

40
00:02:08,320 --> 00:02:11,880
Speaker 1: trying to let me figure things out that I had

41
00:02:11,919 --> 00:02:15,120
Speaker 1: a different biological father. I was fifty years old and

42
00:02:15,240 --> 00:02:19,000
Speaker 1: my father that raised me is already gone, and I

43
00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:20,600
Speaker 1: guess he had just gone in the year before. And

44
00:02:20,639 --> 00:02:24,880
Speaker 1: then the man that's my biological father was dead as well. Now,

45
00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:27,359
Speaker 1: my mother and father got divorced when I was four

46
00:02:27,400 --> 00:02:30,000
Speaker 1: when she was caught having an affair, and that person

47
00:02:30,040 --> 00:02:31,639
Speaker 1: she was having an affair with when I was four

48
00:02:32,200 --> 00:02:34,760
Speaker 1: is the man that is my father, So their affair

49
00:02:34,840 --> 00:02:37,639
Speaker 1: had been going on a long time. He died and

50
00:02:37,919 --> 00:02:40,480
Speaker 1: the other man died so married to the woman that

51
00:02:41,320 --> 00:02:43,520
Speaker 1: he was married to when I was conceived. He had

52
00:02:43,560 --> 00:02:46,720
Speaker 1: two older children with that wife and a daughter that

53
00:02:47,040 --> 00:02:49,360
Speaker 1: was put up for adoption when he was in high school.

54
00:02:49,639 --> 00:02:53,160
Speaker 1: But that's how they found that connection of these two people.

55
00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:56,800
Speaker 1: They didn't know that we're joined genetically to them. So

56
00:02:56,919 --> 00:03:00,160
Speaker 1: now I'm training with how to approach my mother and

57
00:03:00,240 --> 00:03:03,120
Speaker 1: asked her about this and what he knew. And so

58
00:03:03,280 --> 00:03:07,280
Speaker 1: this hearing different people's stories has really helped me realize

59
00:03:07,320 --> 00:03:11,080
Speaker 1: that it's okay for me to be able to ask,

60
00:03:11,520 --> 00:03:16,240
Speaker 1: here's my family's secret. When I was about seven or

61
00:03:16,320 --> 00:03:20,400
Speaker 1: eight years old, I found a document when I was

62
00:03:20,480 --> 00:03:25,360
Speaker 1: in my mom's stewey and it was a document about

63
00:03:25,400 --> 00:03:29,079
Speaker 1: my dad. Found out that before they had gotten married,

64
00:03:29,600 --> 00:03:33,520
Speaker 1: he had gone to prison for robbing a bank. I

65
00:03:33,639 --> 00:03:37,320
Speaker 1: never was told about this, and up until the day

66
00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:40,200
Speaker 1: my dad died. He never told me. It was a

67
00:03:40,280 --> 00:03:43,160
Speaker 1: secret HEAT kept from me, and he kept it from

68
00:03:43,160 --> 00:03:45,520
Speaker 1: my brother until my brother was old enough. I guess

69
00:03:45,560 --> 00:03:49,480
Speaker 1: that he felt he could tell them, but it was

70
00:03:49,560 --> 00:03:53,360
Speaker 1: a big, you know thing, I guess for him. And

71
00:03:53,400 --> 00:03:57,080
Speaker 1: then later on in life, I decided to research his

72
00:03:57,200 --> 00:04:00,240
Speaker 1: name thanks to the Internet and found out she had

73
00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:05,400
Speaker 1: a huge criminal background in history that he was from

74
00:04:05,400 --> 00:04:07,600
Speaker 1: the time he was a teenager, he was in an

75
00:04:07,600 --> 00:04:13,920
Speaker 1: avid jail. My family's secret is actually pretty much just mine.

76
00:04:14,080 --> 00:04:18,320
Speaker 1: I guess I'm keeping it from my family. Uh. When

77
00:04:18,440 --> 00:04:24,799
Speaker 1: I was younger, I was lected over a long period

78
00:04:24,839 --> 00:04:29,960
Speaker 1: of time by a neighbor of mind, uh, a kid

79
00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:32,680
Speaker 1: who was probably six or seven years older than it was.

80
00:04:33,800 --> 00:04:38,600
Speaker 1: So uh, it's kind of a gad situation where I

81
00:04:38,720 --> 00:04:41,640
Speaker 1: was still kid and I didn't tell anyone. No one

82
00:04:41,720 --> 00:04:45,320
Speaker 1: knew to this day, most of my family doesn't know. UM.

83
00:04:45,360 --> 00:04:47,560
Speaker 1: In fact, it was one of those things where people

84
00:04:48,760 --> 00:04:52,239
Speaker 1: disagree with this concept. But a repressed memory is something

85
00:04:52,360 --> 00:04:55,440
Speaker 1: that comes back your body forgets it's too traumatic. Your

86
00:04:55,440 --> 00:04:57,760
Speaker 1: body forgets it and it can come back later in

87
00:04:57,839 --> 00:04:59,440
Speaker 1: line with your body is in a place of safe

88
00:04:59,520 --> 00:05:02,920
Speaker 1: or in your trauma. As Buss UH. And I lived

89
00:05:02,920 --> 00:05:06,039
Speaker 1: in a different country and worked with a really hard

90
00:05:06,080 --> 00:05:10,240
Speaker 1: group of refugees situations, and in some traumatic womans fact

91
00:05:10,240 --> 00:05:13,960
Speaker 1: that came back to me and I realized what was

92
00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:16,479
Speaker 1: going on and what had happened, and I went through

93
00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:18,320
Speaker 1: I came back to the States and when there's some

94
00:05:18,400 --> 00:05:22,320
Speaker 1: intensive counseling and got the truth of it actually out

95
00:05:22,320 --> 00:05:26,719
Speaker 1: of my mind. And my family still doesn't know except

96
00:05:26,800 --> 00:05:32,560
Speaker 1: for my mom Um two is a truly wonderful woman,

97
00:05:32,720 --> 00:05:36,359
Speaker 1: but UH can kind of get towards my use of

98
00:05:36,400 --> 00:05:40,920
Speaker 1: tendencies when she cares so deeply. She wants to get

99
00:05:40,960 --> 00:05:43,880
Speaker 1: information from you to help, but it goes about in

100
00:05:43,960 --> 00:05:47,160
Speaker 1: a way that's just not not conducive for healing. UH.

101
00:05:48,040 --> 00:05:50,840
Speaker 1: And in a weak moment where I wasn't really ready to,

102
00:05:51,080 --> 00:05:53,479
Speaker 1: I ended up telling her. I ended up already get out.

103
00:05:53,480 --> 00:05:57,720
Speaker 1: It just came out of my body. So she knows.

104
00:05:57,800 --> 00:06:02,800
Speaker 1: And I told her once and she didn't handle it well.

105
00:06:02,839 --> 00:06:07,440
Speaker 1: It was her fault. Unless blame her. They never talked

106
00:06:07,440 --> 00:06:09,839
Speaker 1: about it again after that, just because she broke down.

107
00:06:09,880 --> 00:06:11,520
Speaker 1: It wasn't as we wasn't ready and I could tell

108
00:06:12,120 --> 00:06:13,240
Speaker 1: but to this day and none of the rest of

109
00:06:13,279 --> 00:06:15,400
Speaker 1: my family knows except for my mom, and we just

110
00:06:15,440 --> 00:06:29,960
Speaker 1: pretend like it never happened. So that's my story. If

111
00:06:29,960 --> 00:06:32,560
Speaker 1: you'd like to share your story, call one eight eight

112
00:06:32,640 --> 00:06:37,240
Speaker 1: eight Secret zero and record your story. We won't be

113
00:06:37,240 --> 00:06:39,160
Speaker 1: able to run all the stories, but we do want

114
00:06:39,160 --> 00:06:41,000
Speaker 1: to shine a light on as many as we can.

115
00:06:41,480 --> 00:06:45,680
Speaker 1: The number again is one eight eight secret and then

116
00:06:45,760 --> 00:07:02,560
Speaker 1: the numeral zero. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the

117
00:07:02,600 --> 00:07:06,000
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your

118
00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:06,720
Speaker 1: favorite shows.