Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. This January,
Speaker 1: Danny's taking Family Secrets on the Road. To get your tickets,
Speaker 1: visit Danny Shapiro dot com. I'm Danny Shapiro and this
Speaker 1: 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've heard from so many about your
Speaker 1: own family secrets and realize that what we are creating
Speaker 1: for each other on this podcast is a community, a
Speaker 1: community for those who are looking for a safe and
Speaker 1: supportive space to unburden themselves. To that end, we've created
Speaker 1: a number for listeners to call in to record stories
Speaker 1: to share here in this space. This week, I'd like
Speaker 1: to share a few of those stories from our community.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, Hi, I have loved listening to this
Speaker 1: podcast in it to really helped me process information that
Speaker 1: I learned about a year ago. I had done a
Speaker 1: DNA test to see my mother had always said that
Speaker 1: we were partner of amannequin, but never really would talk
Speaker 1: much about it, so I was just curious. So my
Speaker 1: DNA came back and I didn't have any Native Americans.
Speaker 1: No big deal. Um, I didn't see a lot of
Speaker 1: family connections. But then I knew as d N a
Speaker 1: knowledge approach, they're more able to specify where you come from.
Speaker 1: So I just thought maybe some of the people that
Speaker 1: I was connected to that was just a guess on
Speaker 1: their part. And I had written to some people who
Speaker 1: wrote me and asked like, do you know how you're
Speaker 1: related to me? We have these names, and I had
Speaker 1: written back and said, I don't have any names like
Speaker 1: that in my family. Jumped forward three years later, Um,
Speaker 1: I got my husband a DNA test and he was
Speaker 1: looking at all his great family connections. And I went
Speaker 1: back and read a response that I had gotten and
Speaker 1: it said, okay, so just hear me and look at
Speaker 1: your connections. I bet that if you look, you're going
Speaker 1: to have this person, this person, and this person as
Speaker 1: a connection. And that's my mother and my aunt and
Speaker 1: someone else. So anyway, lots of going back and forth
Speaker 1: with this person. I had no idea that he was
Speaker 1: trying to let me figure things out that I had
Speaker 1: a different biological father. I was fifty years old and
Speaker 1: my father that raised me is already gone, and I
Speaker 1: guess he had just gone in the year before. And
Speaker 1: then the man that's my biological father was dead as well. Now,
Speaker 1: my mother and father got divorced when I was four
Speaker 1: when she was caught having an affair, and that person
Speaker 1: she was having an affair with when I was four
Speaker 1: is the man that is my father, So their affair
Speaker 1: had been going on a long time. He died and
Speaker 1: the other man died so married to the woman that
Speaker 1: he was married to when I was conceived. He had
Speaker 1: two older children with that wife and a daughter that
Speaker 1: was put up for adoption when he was in high school.
Speaker 1: But that's how they found that connection of these two people.
Speaker 1: They didn't know that we're joined genetically to them. So
Speaker 1: now I'm training with how to approach my mother and
Speaker 1: asked her about this and what he knew. And so
Speaker 1: this hearing different people's stories has really helped me realize
Speaker 1: that it's okay for me to be able to ask,
Speaker 1: here's my family's secret. When I was about seven or
Speaker 1: eight years old, I found a document when I was
Speaker 1: in my mom's stewey and it was a document about
Speaker 1: my dad. Found out that before they had gotten married,
Speaker 1: he had gone to prison for robbing a bank. I
Speaker 1: never was told about this, and up until the day
Speaker 1: my dad died. He never told me. It was a
Speaker 1: secret HEAT kept from me, and he kept it from
Speaker 1: my brother until my brother was old enough. I guess
Speaker 1: that he felt he could tell them, but it was
Speaker 1: a big, you know thing, I guess for him. And
Speaker 1: then later on in life, I decided to research his
Speaker 1: name thanks to the Internet and found out she had
Speaker 1: a huge criminal background in history that he was from
Speaker 1: the time he was a teenager, he was in an
Speaker 1: avid jail. My family's secret is actually pretty much just mine.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm keeping it from my family. Uh. When
Speaker 1: I was younger, I was lected over a long period
Speaker 1: of time by a neighbor of mind, uh, a kid
Speaker 1: who was probably six or seven years older than it was.
Speaker 1: So uh, it's kind of a gad situation where I
Speaker 1: was still kid and I didn't tell anyone. No one
Speaker 1: knew to this day, most of my family doesn't know. UM.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was one of those things where people
Speaker 1: disagree with this concept. But a repressed memory is something
Speaker 1: that comes back your body forgets it's too traumatic. Your
Speaker 1: body forgets it and it can come back later in
Speaker 1: line with your body is in a place of safe
Speaker 1: or in your trauma. As Buss UH. And I lived
Speaker 1: in a different country and worked with a really hard
Speaker 1: group of refugees situations, and in some traumatic womans fact
Speaker 1: that came back to me and I realized what was
Speaker 1: going on and what had happened, and I went through
Speaker 1: I came back to the States and when there's some
Speaker 1: intensive counseling and got the truth of it actually out
Speaker 1: of my mind. And my family still doesn't know except
Speaker 1: for my mom Um two is a truly wonderful woman,
Speaker 1: but UH can kind of get towards my use of
Speaker 1: tendencies when she cares so deeply. She wants to get
Speaker 1: information from you to help, but it goes about in
Speaker 1: a way that's just not not conducive for healing. UH.
Speaker 1: And in a weak moment where I wasn't really ready to,
Speaker 1: I ended up telling her. I ended up already get out.
Speaker 1: It just came out of my body. So she knows.
Speaker 1: And I told her once and she didn't handle it well.
Speaker 1: It was her fault. Unless blame her. They never talked
Speaker 1: about it again after that, just because she broke down.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as we wasn't ready and I could tell
Speaker 1: but to this day and none of the rest of
Speaker 1: my family knows except for my mom, and we just
Speaker 1: pretend like it never happened. So that's my story. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to share your story, call one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight Secret zero and record your story. We won't be
Speaker 1: able to run all the stories, but we do want
Speaker 1: to shine a light on as many as we can.
Speaker 1: The number again is one eight eight secret and then
Speaker 1: the numeral zero. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.