Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. That
Speaker 1: was it the anti climax of my whole parented life.
Speaker 1: Mom reacted as expected. She kicked her mistake under the
Speaker 1: couch and kept moving. If I wanted to keep a parent,
Speaker 1: I needed to forgive and accept her as she was
Speaker 1: a sixty year old woman with an enormous capacity to
Speaker 1: love in the present but never reconcile the past. I
Speaker 1: cut my losses and moved forward. That's Nicole J. George's.
Speaker 1: Nicole is an illustrator, writer, zinster, podcaster, and educator. She's
Speaker 1: also the author of the graphic memoir calling Dr Laura,
Speaker 1: a story about discovering a secret hidden from her all
Speaker 1: her life that had to do with the bedrock of
Speaker 1: her identity. I'm Danny Shapiro and this is family Secrets,
Speaker 1: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: I grew up everywhere. I was born in Ohio. I
Speaker 1: was raised with my mom's side of the family, which
Speaker 1: is all Syrian, and I had a Lebanese stepgrandmother, and
Speaker 1: so I grew up with a big family and a
Speaker 1: lot of Lebanese food. I lived with my mom, and
Speaker 1: I lived with my two sisters, who were ten and
Speaker 1: twelve years older than me, and we quickly moved from
Speaker 1: Ohio to Maryland, and then from Maryland we moved to Florida,
Speaker 1: and then we moved to Kansas. And so at a
Speaker 1: certain point, my sisters moved away and it was just
Speaker 1: me with my mom and at that point various step
Speaker 1: dads and I just really communed with animals. I stayed
Speaker 1: home all the time. I never went to school. I
Speaker 1: watched TV, made clothes for my stepped animals, trying to
Speaker 1: teach my turtle how to read, trying to you know,
Speaker 1: dress the dogs and clothes. I was like watching Phoebe's
Speaker 1: playhouse and then living my Pope's playhouse fantasy. What was
Speaker 1: the reason for all the moving? We moved a lot
Speaker 1: for men. My mom was always kind of orbiting around
Speaker 1: whatever man was my stepfather or was, you know, was
Speaker 1: auditioning to be my next stepfather, And so we moved
Speaker 1: for other people's jobs. Generally, my extended family all lives
Speaker 1: in Ohio, you know, so that's that was where we
Speaker 1: kept coming back to, or that's where and that's where
Speaker 1: I was born. But then everywhere else we moved was
Speaker 1: for a step dad or someone my mom was with.
Speaker 1: Tell me a bit about your mom of your childhood.
Speaker 1: What was she like. My mom's very charismatic, you know,
Speaker 1: she smiled all the time. She was a motivational speaker.
Speaker 1: At some point, she was also an eighties businesswoman. She
Speaker 1: had a huge life with a lot of things. When
Speaker 1: I was growing up, her temper to me was unpredictable,
Speaker 1: and she was always trying to keep it together and
Speaker 1: keep various secrets together from my stepdad's or whoever I
Speaker 1: was dating. There was always something that we had to
Speaker 1: be conspiring about to keep from people, whether it be
Speaker 1: something about money or like don't tell your stepdad you
Speaker 1: haven't been to school this week, or things like that.
Speaker 1: You know, my mom was very warm. I've never had
Speaker 1: a home where, you know, someone didn't say I love you,
Speaker 1: or didn't give me a hug, or didn't you know. Food,
Speaker 1: I think is one of my original love languages. My
Speaker 1: mom was like always like rolling grape leaves and making
Speaker 1: me food. And when I went vegan as a teenager,
Speaker 1: her trying to figure out how to make vegan food.
Speaker 1: She's always more than willing to do all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: and yet I always had this feeling of being de
Speaker 1: prioritized in favor of the men that were around, and
Speaker 1: feeling like I just really wanted some time alone with
Speaker 1: her and I couldn't get it. Her dance card was full.
Speaker 1: When she would ask you to keep her secrets or
Speaker 1: you know, not tell the truth in the service of
Speaker 1: some kind of secret, was it an attempt to kind
Speaker 1: of kind of bond with you, like you and she
Speaker 1: were this team. What do you think that was? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we were co conspirators. We were a team. There was
Speaker 1: some kind of the thing of, you know, us together.
Speaker 1: It was almost like we were embattled, like us together
Speaker 1: against Bill in the blank so against the truancy officer,
Speaker 1: against my stepdad, against whomever from the outside wanted to
Speaker 1: look into our home and we didn't want them to
Speaker 1: know what was going on. There was kind of like
Speaker 1: a best friend quality, and there was also a co
Speaker 1: conspirator bonding sort of vibe. And also some of these
Speaker 1: secrets were positioned to keep me safe or to keep
Speaker 1: me out of farms, like I had done something wrong,
Speaker 1: Like I had horrible stomach problems as a kid, and
Speaker 1: I had stomach problems in particular ways that like there
Speaker 1: was like I had the kinds of things that I
Speaker 1: feel I could have been cleared up very quickly, but
Speaker 1: lasted for a decade and I never went to school,
Speaker 1: And so my mom would basically be like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: well since you didn't go to school all week, we
Speaker 1: have to hide this from your step dad so you
Speaker 1: don't get in trouble or just it was like I
Speaker 1: had to keep myself as secret. I had to keep
Speaker 1: you know, the fact that I was like soiling myself secret,
Speaker 1: or the fact that this problem was happening secret. I
Speaker 1: had to keep like the financial situation of our home secret.
Speaker 1: There was just a lot of things is to keep
Speaker 1: track of. It isn't until Nicole is an adult that
Speaker 1: she comes to realize that there is a term, a
Speaker 1: true medical definition for the crushing symptoms that plagued her
Speaker 1: as a child, and co priceis which is often caused
Speaker 1: by emotional distress or separation anxiety. The hallmark of it,
Speaker 1: at least as I was understanding it, is, you know,
Speaker 1: you had this terrible stomach trouble and just trouble going
Speaker 1: to the bathroom. Really like serious stuff that seems like
Speaker 1: it comes up most often with children who are like
Speaker 1: really dealing with something that they don't understand. I don't
Speaker 1: mean the physical part. I mean the psychological and emotional part,
Speaker 1: Like there's something about what's going on that's just hidden
Speaker 1: and I don't know. I mean, does that make sense
Speaker 1: to you? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. It feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as I can tell, And from
Speaker 1: researching it and being in therapy for a very long
Speaker 1: time and talking to people, it feels like, either you
Speaker 1: know something, it seems like a psychological problem, and it
Speaker 1: was being treated like a physical problem. It was being
Speaker 1: treated unreliably, so we would never see the same doctor twice.
Speaker 1: It was treated unliably as a physical problem or a
Speaker 1: failing on my part, like why don't you just go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom. But I think it was a psychological
Speaker 1: issue that started happening when I was a toddler. I
Speaker 1: mean it interests me in terms of the subject of
Speaker 1: this podcast two, because there's so much that I think
Speaker 1: happens to children when something really significant is being kept
Speaker 1: from them and they don't know it. You know, they don't.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say they, I should say we, you know,
Speaker 1: we we don't know it. But yet it's kind of
Speaker 1: in the air all around us, like some sort of
Speaker 1: like invisible poisonous gas. And when that happens and there's
Speaker 1: no ex pla nation for it, the child, even like
Speaker 1: really young children, just start feeling like there must be
Speaker 1: something really really wrong with them, and they turn it
Speaker 1: against themselves. And that's like it's one of the most
Speaker 1: toxic elements of a secret being withheld. Tell me also
Speaker 1: a little bit about your relationship with your too much
Speaker 1: older sisters, like both when you were a child and
Speaker 1: then once they left home and you were left to
Speaker 1: send kind of for yourself, was your mom, and they
Speaker 1: were out of the house by the time you were,
Speaker 1: you know what, like eight years old. Yeah, my sisters
Speaker 1: went to college when I was six, and then when
Speaker 1: I was eight, my middle sister, Meg, she pretty much
Speaker 1: raised me. It was kind of like my sisters had
Speaker 1: like a teen pregnancy. When my mom had me, she
Speaker 1: was very preoccupied with other things, and so my sister,
Speaker 1: who was ten years older than me, ended up, you know,
Speaker 1: taking me to the grocery store with her, picking me
Speaker 1: up from school, making sure I brushed my teeth, putting
Speaker 1: me to bed. She was entirely responsible for me more
Speaker 1: or less, and my mom kind of drilled into her
Speaker 1: that she was a big drag and drilled into me like,
Speaker 1: I just my mom will let me do whatever I wanted.
Speaker 1: So if I wanted to eat a bunch of candy,
Speaker 1: if I threw a fit, if I was being a
Speaker 1: brat about something, my mom would be like, oh God,
Speaker 1: just give it to me. Who wants to hear that.
Speaker 1: But my sister Meg was the one that had to
Speaker 1: be kind of the uptight one and be like, no,
Speaker 1: this is here structure, here's rules, here's boundaries. And so
Speaker 1: when my sister's left, it was devastating. It's actually something
Speaker 1: I'm still processing and therapy, is how heartbroken I was
Speaker 1: when my oldest sister Liz went to college and when
Speaker 1: my middle sister Meg went to college, and Meg had
Speaker 1: to be both of them had to be convinced to
Speaker 1: go to college. They both had survivor's guilt, and Meg
Speaker 1: in particular almost didn't go to college because she didn't
Speaker 1: want to leave me behind as I was. You know,
Speaker 1: at the time, I had a pretty horrible stepdad who
Speaker 1: was emotional, who was abusive to my mom, and my
Speaker 1: sister just couldn't bear to as my guardian, my longtime guardian.
Speaker 1: She couldn't bear to leave me there, but somebody convinced
Speaker 1: her that she needed to save herself. How many step
Speaker 1: dads did you have? In all you know, I only had.
Speaker 1: I had two step dads from what I can put together.
Speaker 1: My mom left my dad to date a Saudi Arabian prince.
Speaker 1: They did not get married. He was around for a
Speaker 1: couple of years with his entourage, and then she whenever
Speaker 1: he left. I had a stepdad in Florida, and then
Speaker 1: I had a stepdad directly after that, who my mom
Speaker 1: was still with to this day. Where was your father?
Speaker 1: What had happened to him? It was my understanding that
Speaker 1: he had died of colon cancer when I was a baby,
Speaker 1: and this kind of got fleshed out by my mom
Speaker 1: over the years that he died when I was a
Speaker 1: year and a half old. He was thirty three years old,
Speaker 1: and it was very sad. But side note, he was
Speaker 1: a con man, and he was very funny, and he
Speaker 1: came from maybe a bad home. Those are all the
Speaker 1: things I knew. So every time as a kid, when
Speaker 1: I had stomach problems and I would go see a gastronologist,
Speaker 1: I would lead with that. My mom wouldn't say it,
Speaker 1: but I would be like, oh, and by the way, yeah,
Speaker 1: my dad died of calling cancer. It's like a you know,
Speaker 1: an eight year old to be like, maybe that's what's
Speaker 1: wrong with me. That was my understanding for a very
Speaker 1: long time, and you're much older. Sisters also backed that
Speaker 1: story up. Yes, my sisters and my mom back that
Speaker 1: story up. And essentially people just really didn't talk about him.
Speaker 1: My mom once mentioned we were an a vintage store
Speaker 1: and she grabbed like a black hat with a veil
Speaker 1: and said, I wore a hat just like this to
Speaker 1: your dad's funeral. It was so sad. I think she
Speaker 1: was just freestyling there. And no one in my family
Speaker 1: ever mentioned my dad. Ever. There was one time I
Speaker 1: can remember in my entire life where anyone else mentioned him,
Speaker 1: and it was an old woman at my grandfather's birthday party,
Speaker 1: because ninetieth birthday party, and she came up to me
Speaker 1: and she said, oh, you're you're David's daughter. And I
Speaker 1: had not even heard his name come out of a
Speaker 1: different person's mouth aside from my mom pretty much ever,
Speaker 1: and so I was fascinated, and she quickly got shooed
Speaker 1: away from me. We'll be right back. When Nicole is
Speaker 1: twenty two years old, a woman she's dating named Verona
Speaker 1: gifts her as a belated birthday present with a palm
Speaker 1: reading with a psychic who she finds where all good
Speaker 1: psychics can be found in the back of the local newspaper.
Speaker 1: I went to the palm reader, and she said, you
Speaker 1: don't get along with your mother, I can tell from
Speaker 1: your hand, and you should talk to your father more often.
Speaker 1: And I said, I can't talk to him more often
Speaker 1: because he's dead. And she said, maybe the man you
Speaker 1: think is your father is dead, but your real father
Speaker 1: is very much alive. And everything else she had said
Speaker 1: had been such nonsense. She had said so many things
Speaker 1: about me marrying an older man and having three pregnancies
Speaker 1: with two children, and she said, all this stuff, that's
Speaker 1: it seems fantastical, like you would imagine. And then she
Speaker 1: said this thing, and it just rung a bell that
Speaker 1: I couldn't unring. All the pieces, all the things that
Speaker 1: I had worked so hard in my life to kind
Speaker 1: of try and figure out, like why is everyone kind
Speaker 1: of looking at each other over my heads? Why is
Speaker 1: everyone talking around something? Is there something wrong with me?
Speaker 1: There were so many things that I had supposed that
Speaker 1: it was that people weren't telling me that this Tom
Speaker 1: Reader saying this, it felt entirely plausible, Like it was
Speaker 1: crystal clear that I was like, this is very possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such an amazing that's such an amazing thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's you know, you grew up in a house
Speaker 1: where there were all of these secrets, but they were
Speaker 1: like secrets in a minor key. They were not big,
Speaker 1: gigantic secrets. They were don't tell your stepfather this, or
Speaker 1: tell the truant officer that, or they were not like
Speaker 1: the secret. And and then suddenly, now there's this possibility
Speaker 1: that I guess really only occurs to you for the
Speaker 1: first time. I mean, why would one ever have the thought,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe my father, who I've been told died
Speaker 1: of colon cancer when I was a year and a
Speaker 1: half old, is really alive. You wouldn't have that thought.
Speaker 1: Because we believe what we're told as children, then that
Speaker 1: forms our identity, Like those just become the tent poles
Speaker 1: and the pillars of the way that we grow up,
Speaker 1: and we sort of form ourselves around that, even if
Speaker 1: it doesn't really make sense. The fortune teller also tells
Speaker 1: you two not tell anyone, to keep it to yourself,
Speaker 1: right m hm? She said, yeah, whatever I tell you
Speaker 1: in this room, it's nothing personal, and you need to
Speaker 1: keep it to yourself for twenty four hours. And that
Speaker 1: my friend and I we kind of exploded out the
Speaker 1: door of this woman's place. It was a two for one.
Speaker 1: So my friend also got her palm read and we
Speaker 1: exploded out the door, and just as soon as we
Speaker 1: hit the street, we were like, oh my god, what
Speaker 1: does she tell you? And we told each other everything,
Speaker 1: all of her like funny predictions about us being straight
Speaker 1: and marrying these men and all this stuff. But I
Speaker 1: didn't tell her. I didn't tell Verona about my dad.
Speaker 1: I didn't tell anybody about it for a really long time.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. It was too big. It was what was
Speaker 1: like a Shortinger's cat. It was just like that box.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't touch it right away. How did that
Speaker 1: sit with you during that like nearly a year where
Speaker 1: you didn't tell anyone that this had happened. Were you
Speaker 1: thinking about it? Were you like lying awake at night
Speaker 1: and wondering about it? Or did you kind of pack
Speaker 1: it away a little bit? Of both. I kind of
Speaker 1: would only allow myself to entertain it here and there,
Speaker 1: because you know, I had just started going to therapy
Speaker 1: I think the year before for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, and I had even started I had only
Speaker 1: even started acknowledging that my upbringing was not normal very recently.
Speaker 1: I was very young, and so I would think about
Speaker 1: it sometimes at night or when I was alone. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: I just kept myself very busy. I kept I felt
Speaker 1: very busy with a lot of friends. I lived in
Speaker 1: a house with a lot of roommates. I did volunteer work.
Speaker 1: I had like two jobs at nonprofits. I hosted karaoke,
Speaker 1: I just did There were so much I just packed
Speaker 1: my days so full that there I really only processed
Speaker 1: it a little bit in my diary. I've always kept
Speaker 1: a diary, and sometimes it's the only place where my
Speaker 1: reality has been reflected back to me. Especially when I
Speaker 1: was growing up in such a chaotic way, that was
Speaker 1: the only place where I dared to even talk about it.
Speaker 1: Did you go back and revisit that diary later? I have, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, a weird thing about me is that I
Speaker 1: have the compulsion to publish everything, and so at that point,
Speaker 1: I was doing a zine that was essentially just photocopy
Speaker 1: diary entries. So I actually was just looking the other
Speaker 1: day back at a zine I did in my early twenties,
Speaker 1: like a fancy and a diary comic, and it has
Speaker 1: me writing kind of cryptically about this secret and kind
Speaker 1: of this like deep melancholy I felt. And everything was cryptic,
Speaker 1: everything was kind of vague, everything was kind of sad.
Speaker 1: But it just was like past, present and future, like
Speaker 1: all here in the same moment as how I felt
Speaker 1: about it. I felt overwhelming. And I had drawn some
Speaker 1: picture of a vintage like a woman from the forties
Speaker 1: that I had found in a magazine. I had drawn
Speaker 1: this picture of her with kind of like a like
Speaker 1: a scar across her head. I was very into drawing
Speaker 1: people with like scars across their heads, like visible scars,
Speaker 1: visible sewn up wounds. And that's how I expressed it
Speaker 1: at the time. Wow, that's so interesting without knowing that
Speaker 1: that's what you were doing, right, Yeah, it was the
Speaker 1: you know, the outer expression of something that was so
Speaker 1: internal that you couldn't really touch it, sort of like
Speaker 1: a live wire inside of you. So you then end
Speaker 1: up as happens like as one does when a secret
Speaker 1: has been Like in this kind of pressure cooker of
Speaker 1: being unspoken, you end up blurting out the story to
Speaker 1: pretty much a stranger. Yeah. I didn't talk to anyone
Speaker 1: in my life about I didn't talk to my sisters
Speaker 1: about it. I didn't talk to my closest friends who
Speaker 1: had known me. I just I was on essentially a
Speaker 1: first date with a stranger, and I it was so
Speaker 1: awkward that I just and I just was looking for
Speaker 1: something to say, and so I told her this. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a crazy story. A poem reader
Speaker 1: told me my dad was alive what I've been told
Speaker 1: he was dead my whole life, and she was like, what,
Speaker 1: I feel like I told her almost to avoid emotional accountability,
Speaker 1: because it's the kind of thing if I told one
Speaker 1: of my friends, they would pause and reflect back how
Speaker 1: hard they must be, and I would have to have
Speaker 1: a feeling and before very vulnerable. And so it was
Speaker 1: telling a stranger who doesn't have that relationship or reflection
Speaker 1: of you. There was something about it that felt like
Speaker 1: I was I don't know if I if I I
Speaker 1: was almost removed from it, like trying to use it
Speaker 1: as like a parlor trick instead of a very deep,
Speaker 1: sad possibility. So how how long is it then before
Speaker 1: you end up approaching one of your sisters and asking,
Speaker 1: you know, so his dad really dead? And it was
Speaker 1: at least another year, I think. So that person and
Speaker 1: I ended up dating seriously, and she kept urging me
Speaker 1: to ask about it. She was holding me accountable to
Speaker 1: ask about it and to think about it, and that,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it was something I should consider finding
Speaker 1: out if it was nagging at me that it might
Speaker 1: be true, which it was, and so I asked my sister.
Speaker 1: I asked my oldest sister, Liz. She had been kind
Speaker 1: of cryptically telling my girlfriend that she had something she
Speaker 1: really wanted to tell me and that she loved me
Speaker 1: a lot. This was happening simultaneously. She didn't know that
Speaker 1: I knew, but she was like, I love Nicole so much.
Speaker 1: I have something I really need to tell her, and
Speaker 1: I was giving me a lot of anxiety, and so
Speaker 1: I really just I blurted it out. I went to
Speaker 1: visit her in San Francisco on tour with my band,
Speaker 1: and after our show, you know, it was probably like
Speaker 1: twelve thirty in the morning, and I had like one
Speaker 1: sip of one beer and was like, oh, so was
Speaker 1: my dad really dead? And she just immediately broke and
Speaker 1: was like, no, no, he's not. And she immediately just
Speaker 1: dissolved into tears, and I was like, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: I you know, please don't hate me. I've always wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you, and I you know, I it really
Speaker 1: never crossed my mind to hate my sisters. It had
Speaker 1: crossed my mind to hate my mom over the secret,
Speaker 1: but I knew that they were hostages basically to my
Speaker 1: mom's reality, just like I was. And it was so
Speaker 1: hard to see how much pain the secret had caused
Speaker 1: them to keep all this time. What did it feel
Speaker 1: like at that moment to have that confirmation there was
Speaker 1: really overwhelming. I mean every step of this process has
Speaker 1: just completely, um like overwhelmed my nervous system. I felt
Speaker 1: very sad for my sisters, and I felt it kind
Speaker 1: of just blew my mind that it was true. And
Speaker 1: I think on some level I knew it was true,
Speaker 1: or else I wouldn't have asked. But I think part
Speaker 1: of the reason it felt overwhelming is because there wasn't
Speaker 1: a place in my household for that kind of emotional
Speaker 1: raw vulnerability and honesty. That wasn't how our house was
Speaker 1: where we grew up, and so I was really we
Speaker 1: were both very vulnerable of each other for my whole life.
Speaker 1: So us just communing in this way felt very particular. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's also being an unwilling secret keeper is
Speaker 1: its own kind of hell. I can only imagine because
Speaker 1: now as an adult, any time I have a secret
Speaker 1: from somebody, any kind of secret, even if I only
Speaker 1: keep it for ten minutes, it will give me a migraine.
Speaker 1: It will tear me, it will eat me up. It
Speaker 1: makes me so uncomfortable. So to think about, like my
Speaker 1: sister Meg, being ten years old or eleven and a half,
Speaker 1: you know, raising an infant, and then having your mother
Speaker 1: implicate you in this secret and having to hold it
Speaker 1: for your whole life from somebody who you care about
Speaker 1: that much. I feel devastated for both of them that
Speaker 1: they had their child, that piece of their childhoods and
Speaker 1: that ability to bond with me taken away. Regular listeners
Speaker 1: of this podcast, no that trauma lives in the body.
Speaker 1: Just listen to my bonus episodes with Dr Bessel vander
Speaker 1: Kolk and Dr Rachel Yehuda for starters. Seriously, if you
Speaker 1: haven't listened to those, I hope you will. Trauma lodges
Speaker 1: itself within us and becomes, in a very real physical sense,
Speaker 1: like a slumbering giant. In her graphic memoir calling Dr
Speaker 1: Laura Nicole illustrates this with the story of fainting goat syndrome. Yes,
Speaker 1: you heard that right. You've probably heard of fight or
Speaker 1: flight as a response to a fearful situation. Well, there's
Speaker 1: also freeze, and there is apparently faint and it's not
Speaker 1: just for goats. There's something that I call fainting goat syndrome,
Speaker 1: and I've heard some other people call it this too,
Speaker 1: But basically, there's this kind of goat where if they
Speaker 1: get scared or overwhelmed, like if a predator is coming
Speaker 1: at them, they will freeze up. Their bodies will completely
Speaker 1: freeze up, and they'll have a temporary paralysis and just
Speaker 1: fall over. And so they're called fainting goats. And I
Speaker 1: felt like I had this anytime somebody wanted to process,
Speaker 1: or lesbian process as I call it, basically just sitting
Speaker 1: down and talking about our feelings, talking about hard feelings.
Speaker 1: It was so overwhelming to me that I would get
Speaker 1: so tired and just fall asleep. And as a kid,
Speaker 1: my mom would joke to like, oh, my little narcaleptic,
Speaker 1: because I would I would just fall asleep all the time.
Speaker 1: I would fall asleep in the car, I would fall
Speaker 1: asleep during a hard conversation. I would just it overwhelmed
Speaker 1: my whole body. And so around this time, when I
Speaker 1: was dealing with this with my sister and with my
Speaker 1: partner at the time, I would sometimes get so overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by all the information I would just start kind of
Speaker 1: nodding off or getting very drowsy. That's something I've outgrown
Speaker 1: with time. I mean it just as a it's a
Speaker 1: it's been a actice of getting used to being vulnerable,
Speaker 1: saying my feelings, understanding that like criticism isn't the worst
Speaker 1: thing in the world, and that being accountable is okay.
Speaker 1: But it's been a long it's been a long road well,
Speaker 1: And it seems like you learned that sort of at
Speaker 1: your mother's feet. You know, you describe what it was
Speaker 1: like to ever have any kind of confrontation with your
Speaker 1: mother or a fight with your mother, and you didn't
Speaker 1: grow up learning that it was okay to be emotionally vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. I mean I I learned to come at
Speaker 1: any kind of confrontation or uncomfortable conversation to get in
Speaker 1: a defensive crouch, to be just like all horns and thorns,
Speaker 1: and just like clowse out like everyone defend themselves. Because
Speaker 1: I mean also when I grew up, if there was
Speaker 1: a vulnerable conversation, if there was a conversation with my
Speaker 1: mom that took a turn through outsized responses or anger
Speaker 1: or name calling, we're so unpredictable that I think it.
Speaker 1: You know, I feel like my brain was always trying
Speaker 1: to find an order to it or a reason and
Speaker 1: being like, oh, well, maybe if she disunderstands that I
Speaker 1: didn't mean to hurt her, or maybe this, or I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure what set her off, my brain will
Speaker 1: be working so fast trying to find reason in order
Speaker 1: to the chaos that was in front of me. But
Speaker 1: I think it just overwhelmed my whole system, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't a place where I could take vulnerable, soft feelings
Speaker 1: and get any kind of have anybody emotionally meet me
Speaker 1: there or reflect back to me like oh that seems
Speaker 1: really hard or I'm so sorry that happened, you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that. It was either like somebody hurt you.
Speaker 1: Now there our enemy, or I hurt you. No, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I'll give you something to cry about. What are you
Speaker 1: crying like? I got? I got the very soothing I'll
Speaker 1: give you something to cry about. That's kind of how
Speaker 1: my feelings were held when I was young. So Nicole
Speaker 1: is understandably terrified and resistant about the idea of confronting
Speaker 1: her mother. It's nearing the holidays, and her mother's spidy
Speaker 1: sense kicks into gear. She starts calling more than usual,
Speaker 1: stalking Nicole. The more Nicole keeps her at a distance,
Speaker 1: the more her mother pursues. Nicole is also hiding from
Speaker 1: her mother the fact that her roommate, a woman named Radar,
Speaker 1: is actually her girlfriend. It's around this time that Nicole
Speaker 1: decides to reach out to Dr Laura. Yes, that Doctor Laura,
Speaker 1: the famous radio personality known for dolling out harsh advice.
Speaker 1: Nicole's mom has been a fan of Doctor Laura's for
Speaker 1: many years, and Nicole grew up stuck in the car
Speaker 1: listening to her, So it seems somehow logical that she
Speaker 1: a left leaning lesbian who has recently learned that she's
Speaker 1: been lied to all her life about her dad called
Speaker 1: the conservative super hetero radio shrink whose m o is
Speaker 1: just plain mean. It's strange. I I didn't think about
Speaker 1: my mom here in the episode. I thought if she
Speaker 1: did hear the episode, it was a little bit like
Speaker 1: I was like an edgewalker or something. I didn't imagine
Speaker 1: she was going to hear the episode because she had
Speaker 1: decided at some poy that Dr Laura was too mean
Speaker 1: and had stopped listening to her. Yet I her, you know,
Speaker 1: radical feminist gay daughter had continued to listen to Dr Laura.
Speaker 1: So I didn't think my mom would listen to it.
Speaker 1: But I did think if she did. Dr Laura felt
Speaker 1: like an adult in the room. It felt like a
Speaker 1: different adult giving a perspective on something. I started listening
Speaker 1: to Dr Laura with my mom and I thought she
Speaker 1: I also thought she was mean. I was like, who
Speaker 1: is this evil woman yelling at people? And then something
Speaker 1: turned and I you know, it kind of went from
Speaker 1: me turning off the radio, to um suffering through it,
Speaker 1: to then actually preferring it. And I liked I like
Speaker 1: to formulate quality, and I like somebody who just feels
Speaker 1: like there's a plan for life, and they know what
Speaker 1: to do, and they know what to tell you to
Speaker 1: do that there's like a lot of boundaries. She doesn't
Speaker 1: like the word boundaries, Dr Laura, but she is like
Speaker 1: nothing but rules. She loves rules. And I realized at
Speaker 1: some point that actually I appreciated that she was telling
Speaker 1: people to choose their children over themselves or over their
Speaker 1: romantic relationships, and so I at some point started I
Speaker 1: just I think that I really enjoyed that element. You know,
Speaker 1: there's so many other parts. I'm so used to the
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's cognitive distance or what, but
Speaker 1: you know, growing up as like a gay, radical feminist
Speaker 1: in a home where my mom had just converted to Catholicism,
Speaker 1: and there were so many things about her that didn't
Speaker 1: align with me, there were so many things I had
Speaker 1: to take with a grain of salt at all times
Speaker 1: that I was used to that grain of salt, and
Speaker 1: I just applied it to Dr Laura, where I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: she's very pro life, she's very anti feminist. She has
Speaker 1: questionable views about gay people. However, I appreciate that she's
Speaker 1: yelling at these people to choose their children because your
Speaker 1: mother did not choose you. I didn't feel chosen. No,
Speaker 1: so you called Dr Laura. You're actually thinking of what
Speaker 1: pseudonym you're going to use, and then you just is
Speaker 1: your real name? Yeah, I was. I was practicing in
Speaker 1: my head. I was like, are you going to say
Speaker 1: your name is Amber? They're twenty two, you know your
Speaker 1: name Stacy. You live in Palm Springs. And I just
Speaker 1: was like, oh, Nicole, Nicole, here's my exact dature's exactly
Speaker 1: where I lived. I froze and I was like, my
Speaker 1: name is Nicole. And then I was compulsively honest and
Speaker 1: just rattled off my story. And Dr Laura got mad
Speaker 1: at me, even though I tried to follow the rules
Speaker 1: that I know. She doesn't want too many details. She
Speaker 1: wanted to know why I was mad at my mom
Speaker 1: for keeping this man from me, who probably could have
Speaker 1: found me if he wanted to anyway. So that was
Speaker 1: Dr Laura's main takeaway. Oh yeah, she said, you've suffered enough,
Speaker 1: go have Christmas. She basically said that my mom had
Speaker 1: created stability for me today and I should appreciate that
Speaker 1: instead of bringing up the past and sing it all up.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: M Nicole goes home and heeds Dr Laura's advice. She
Speaker 1: doesn't talk to her mom about any of it, not
Speaker 1: the massive lie about her dad, not the fact of
Speaker 1: her sexuality, none of the secrets. Meanwhile, Radar has made
Speaker 1: her promise that she'd confront her mom by saying, all
Speaker 1: in one go, I'm gay, who's my dad? I've decided
Speaker 1: to stay closeted. And I just had an incredible migraine
Speaker 1: the whole time. You know, my mom at by this point,
Speaker 1: had reached substability with my you know, she had been
Speaker 1: with my current stepdad for many years. They had the
Speaker 1: same house that I was in from high school forward.
Speaker 1: She really, you know, she said at the guest room.
Speaker 1: She put her dogs in jingle bell collars, She made
Speaker 1: me all my favorite foods. She was really trying to
Speaker 1: host me. And I grew up feeling an allegiance to
Speaker 1: her that she instilled in me. So it felt like anything.
Speaker 1: I felt like a little bit like don't go against
Speaker 1: the family. It felt like a betrayal. I felt like
Speaker 1: not telling her I knew this information, and actually me
Speaker 1: even discovering her secret, I felt like I had somehow
Speaker 1: betrayed her or I was feeling shame. Instead of me
Speaker 1: being like, oh, this is someone's going to be accountable
Speaker 1: to me, it just was like me feeling like I
Speaker 1: had betrayed her. And then I was like, and now
Speaker 1: I have this secret that I'm gay and I can't
Speaker 1: tell her, and it's going to disappoint her, and everything's
Speaker 1: going to disappoint her or betray her. And you, Wilso,
Speaker 1: had the additional pressure of the fact that you knew
Speaker 1: that Radar was going to be really pissed if you
Speaker 1: came home and you hadn't told your mother the truth,
Speaker 1: particularly about being gay. Yeah, it was you know, Radar
Speaker 1: somebody who had come out really young and who was
Speaker 1: butch in a way where she couldn't hide that she
Speaker 1: was gay, and so it fell to her like a
Speaker 1: betrayal to our relationship and also like me using a
Speaker 1: kind of privilege as a betrayal to her to like
Speaker 1: go and just you know, pass as a straight person
Speaker 1: and pretend like she was my roommate and pretend like
Speaker 1: this whole life we had built together with like too
Speaker 1: many dogs in a band and a house, you know,
Speaker 1: we were partnered, and to pretend like that person was
Speaker 1: my roommate felt like a betrayal to her. She's somebody
Speaker 1: who had no choice but to live in her honesty,
Speaker 1: and she was seeing me make a different choice. Nicole
Speaker 1: returns home, back to her life with Radar, all the
Speaker 1: unsaid words and feelings still stuck inside of her. What's more,
Speaker 1: now her romantic relationship is on the rocks. So I
Speaker 1: came home from Kansas, and shortly thereafter, you know, I
Speaker 1: had kind of been able to get away with not
Speaker 1: thinking about the dad issue because I had built a
Speaker 1: chosen family, you know, as a queer person and a
Speaker 1: person who came from a fraud household. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of stock in chosen family and my community, my
Speaker 1: artistic community, and then my relationships with my queer friends
Speaker 1: and with my partner. And when I got home, I
Speaker 1: found out pretty soon after that my partner, Radar, had
Speaker 1: been cheating on me and then replaced me in our
Speaker 1: band with someone that she had been cheating on me with.
Speaker 1: And so all at once it was like my chosen
Speaker 1: family of the person who I lived with, who I
Speaker 1: had partnered with, whose dogs I had taken care of,
Speaker 1: who I had let room my house, this person had
Speaker 1: left me, and not only that, she had implicated community
Speaker 1: members like people who I trusted with my creative projects
Speaker 1: and friends of mine. They knew about it or they
Speaker 1: were part of it. And it just I felt like
Speaker 1: the rug was pulled out from under me and I
Speaker 1: hit what at that time was my complete rock bottom,
Speaker 1: and I just felt like I had nothing left to lose.
Speaker 1: I felt so low that it didn't matter to me
Speaker 1: what my mom said. I just already like the worst
Speaker 1: heartbreak I could possibly handle happened. And so I just
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, I'm almost again aggressively wanting
Speaker 1: to come visit Portland's. And I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: if this lady wants to come visit Portland's so bad,
Speaker 1: she needs to know everything before she buys a ticket,
Speaker 1: because I don't want her to buy a ticket under
Speaker 1: false pretenses. And so I just emailed her and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, Radar was not my roommate. She was my girlfriend.
Speaker 1: We were in love and now we're not very sad,
Speaker 1: and that's the secret I've been keeping from you. But
Speaker 1: I know that you have a secret to I found
Speaker 1: out that my dad was alive. Nobody told me. I
Speaker 1: found out from a psychic and um, I just want
Speaker 1: you to know that. And she didn't respond for a
Speaker 1: few days, but she later told me that she cried
Speaker 1: for three days and three nights and her husband almost
Speaker 1: took her to the hospital because she couldn't stop crying,
Speaker 1: which I I don't even know if that's the thing.
Speaker 1: But she finally wrote me back at a camera, which
Speaker 1: she basically spun it as he was a bad guy
Speaker 1: and he abandoned you and I was protecting you. She
Speaker 1: basically I'm sorry, you're heartbroken, and basically, you know, in
Speaker 1: her classic fashion of people becoming the enemy. Then Radar
Speaker 1: became her enemy for breaking my heart, and she came
Speaker 1: to visit. And the way that my mom is, I
Speaker 1: had known that if I came to her with this,
Speaker 1: she would defend herself. She would get in that low
Speaker 1: defensive crouch and find a way to spin it so
Speaker 1: that she didn't have to acknowledge blame or that she
Speaker 1: had made this decision out of shame and then really
Speaker 1: had to stick with it for so long. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. So it was a rather anticlimactic series
Speaker 1: of events. You're you know, you're finally coming out and
Speaker 1: telling your mother that you know about your father. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was almost like I was telling her that I
Speaker 1: was bad, like I had to steal myself. I had
Speaker 1: tried to say, like, you know, let's just clear the
Speaker 1: board and just start from scratch, and she was like,
Speaker 1: we are not equals. I am your mother, so we
Speaker 1: couldn't start from scratch. And it wasn't a moment in
Speaker 1: which I was parented. It was this anti climactic moment
Speaker 1: where I had to kind of put on my old
Speaker 1: armor from when I was a kid and was vulnerable. Um,
Speaker 1: but now I wasn't adult. And she was sitting in
Speaker 1: my living room and she was like, yeah, he abandoned you,
Speaker 1: he didn't want you. But I'm essentially the hero because
Speaker 1: I did want you. And guess what, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make a big deal out of you being gay, basically,
Speaker 1: like she was like, I'm not going to abuse emotionally
Speaker 1: abuse you for being a homosexual. So you're welcome, and
Speaker 1: I saved you from your debt. You're welcome. It was
Speaker 1: kind of like that. It was kind of like, you're welcome,
Speaker 1: and then I had to forge this path on my own.
Speaker 1: So there it all is. Or so Nicole thinks the
Speaker 1: information about David, her father. She occasionally does half hearted
Speaker 1: Google search that leads to a dead end. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: nothing more to know. Maybe she should leave well enough
Speaker 1: alone now, maybe this David really is a bad guy.
Speaker 1: But eventually she gets serious she wants to know more.
Speaker 1: I honestly only did it at that moment for the
Speaker 1: sake of my art in my book. There was something
Speaker 1: in me that felt so compelled to tell people about
Speaker 1: this story within the Kookie framework of I called Dr
Speaker 1: Laura that I toured the country with this story, and
Speaker 1: I got a literary agent who was like, will you
Speaker 1: would you consider doing a graphic memoir about this? And
Speaker 1: I always wanted to do that because I've always been
Speaker 1: drawing comics and doing diaries. And I got, you know,
Speaker 1: a few years into this graphic memoir, and it just
Speaker 1: felt like I needed to do it in service of
Speaker 1: the book and in service of my art. What's so
Speaker 1: interesting to call is that I think sometimes that for
Speaker 1: those of us who are artists and writers, that we
Speaker 1: actually kind of need the permission that the making of
Speaker 1: the work grants us in a way, like it's too
Speaker 1: scary to anxiety producing. There's too much resistance to it
Speaker 1: to just go ahead and do it. But if you're
Speaker 1: doing it for the book, you know, or you're doing
Speaker 1: it for the story, then suddenly there's just more permission.
Speaker 1: There's a feeling of like, well, I have a job
Speaker 1: to do and so I have to do it, when
Speaker 1: in fact, really deep down on some level, I think
Speaker 1: we really want to do it. Does that resonate at
Speaker 1: all completely? And it's not like I been paid like
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars for this book and I had an
Speaker 1: editor saying you better find him, like it was none
Speaker 1: of that. It really was me. You know, there was
Speaker 1: a draft of the book that existed where I don't
Speaker 1: find him, but it just, yeah, there was something that
Speaker 1: compulsed me to do it. But it feels like doing
Speaker 1: it in service for my art, like my art maybe
Speaker 1: exists for some other kind of soul piece of me
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't acknowledge otherwise for whatever reason. So I
Speaker 1: put some money into a detective website and I found
Speaker 1: David with He has a very common last name, and
Speaker 1: I found him connected to my mom, and then I
Speaker 1: saw him connected to another woman named Tina and some kids.
Speaker 1: And what my sister Mega told me that he had
Speaker 1: a couple of sons named Brendan and Jason. So I
Speaker 1: went on Facebook again with this new information and I
Speaker 1: found Brennan and Jason, and then I found my dad's
Speaker 1: name and I clicked on it. But the person I
Speaker 1: was very young. The person looked like they were maybe
Speaker 1: like in their mid to late twenties, and he was
Speaker 1: very handsome, but he was connected to all these people
Speaker 1: I had seen on that detective website. I liled him
Speaker 1: right away. As soon as I found him, I just said,
Speaker 1: you know, this is probably gonna sound crazy, but I
Speaker 1: think I might be your sister. Is your dad's name, David.
Speaker 1: I was told he was dead my whole life. I
Speaker 1: found out he was alive through a psychic and I
Speaker 1: just wanted to know. I think we might be related,
Speaker 1: and if you have any information, I would really love it,
Speaker 1: but if not, I understand. And he wrote me back
Speaker 1: right away. He brought me back within a day and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did know David. I you know, I did know him,
Speaker 1: and I actually have heard about you. He said he
Speaker 1: was heartbroken that your mom told him she was going
Speaker 1: to tell you that he was dead. And I said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know you're talking about in the past. Tense. I
Speaker 1: heard he was a dead beat. He must have left
Speaker 1: you too. Do you know if there's any way I
Speaker 1: can find him? You know, how long was he in
Speaker 1: your life? And he said, oh, you know, he was
Speaker 1: around for my whole life. He was a great dad.
Speaker 1: He was not a con man or a dirt bag
Speaker 1: at all. He was my football coach. And I'm so
Speaker 1: sorry to tell you, but you he died like a
Speaker 1: year ago. He missed him by just about year ago,
Speaker 1: and um, it's too bad. I heard that he had
Speaker 1: your baby picture in his wallet for his entire life.
Speaker 1: I felt the weight of my mom's secret hit me.
Speaker 1: I've been missing the point all this time, um, because
Speaker 1: I just never really understood what a dad was for.
Speaker 1: But there was something about hearing that he wasn't a
Speaker 1: dirt bag and that he had always wanted to find me,
Speaker 1: or that he had always thought about me, And I
Speaker 1: just felt the full implication of everything, and also the
Speaker 1: implication of them telling me he was a dirt bag,
Speaker 1: which is what led me to stall for so long
Speaker 1: that I missed him by a year. Did now meeting
Speaker 1: a new half sibling, you know, this half brother, has
Speaker 1: that been something that has been healing in any way
Speaker 1: to have like some some connection to David through through
Speaker 1: his son. Yeah, you know, A couple of things happened
Speaker 1: after that where I went to Texas and I met
Speaker 1: David Jr. I also have a sister named Summer in
Speaker 1: my dad's widow, Tina, and they are so warm and
Speaker 1: they're so close, and they were so excited to tell
Speaker 1: me about my dad, who they still I mean, you
Speaker 1: know currently it's been a long time since he died,
Speaker 1: and they will still tear up to this day because
Speaker 1: they miss him so much and they loved him so much,
Speaker 1: and so they have such a It really helps fill
Speaker 1: out the picture of who I was told he was needing.
Speaker 1: David Jr. In Summer. Of course I noticed, like we
Speaker 1: have the same eyes. My sister was like, you have
Speaker 1: the same nail beds. It was all these things. But
Speaker 1: I also after that, I was found via Facebook by
Speaker 1: my grandma, my dad's mom, because my book came out.
Speaker 1: My grandma found me and she had been looking for
Speaker 1: me my whole using telephone books. You know, I thought
Speaker 1: a piece of this feeling of comfort for meeting David Jr.
Speaker 1: And their side of the family, but also it was
Speaker 1: so different than how I had heard he was that.
Speaker 1: I had to take that with a grain of salt
Speaker 1: because I feel like the truth is probably somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle. But meeting my grandma was the feeling, like
Speaker 1: I heard you say that, you know, meeting your dad
Speaker 1: it felt like the country you were from. That's how
Speaker 1: it felt when I met my grandma. When I met
Speaker 1: David's mom is it felt like I understood biology for
Speaker 1: a second, and I understood that piece of it and
Speaker 1: finding people that spoke a language that was the same
Speaker 1: as mine that I had been born with. Where did
Speaker 1: this leave you in terms of your mom? And you
Speaker 1: know now that you know the depths and the breadth
Speaker 1: and the implications and the ripple effect of what she
Speaker 1: chose to do by keeping secrets and telling lies, what
Speaker 1: do you do with that? I still don't know. After
Speaker 1: calling Dr Laura came out, my mom gave it a
Speaker 1: one star Amazon review, and it's under her real name.
Speaker 1: She's very you know, she's a real anti fan. And
Speaker 1: after the book came out she wrote me and she
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I've heard you to head your book
Speaker 1: about your pitiful life, and you should write about how
Speaker 1: much the George's family loved you. Maybe I'll write a book.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll write a book about how much I loved
Speaker 1: how you were so loved. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: you can. And my stepdad started calling me, be like
Speaker 1: I forbid you to talk to your mother about your
Speaker 1: supposed father and your so called lifestyle, and they're really
Speaker 1: bullying me. She wrote all that without even reading. She
Speaker 1: wrote all that from the description, and then I think
Speaker 1: she read it, and she sent me a voicemail, and
Speaker 1: in that moment she really changed his moment to moment.
Speaker 1: But in that moment, she was teary and she just
Speaker 1: said I read your book. I'm humbled, I'm sorry, ye,
Speaker 1: And that voicemail was enough for me. It was a
Speaker 1: huge moment, you know, as you can imagine from everything
Speaker 1: I told you about how these things go and how
Speaker 1: vulnerability goes. Was huge. Had she ever apologized to you
Speaker 1: before about anything? Never in my life had I ever
Speaker 1: been apologized to buy her for anything she had done.
Speaker 1: The first time a friend apologized to me as an adult,
Speaker 1: when I was like twenty one or twenty two, I
Speaker 1: couldn't handle it and I burst into tears. I had
Speaker 1: never been apologized to I didn't even know that I
Speaker 1: deserved that, or I was worth that, or like that
Speaker 1: someone could be accountable to me, or acknowledge that they
Speaker 1: had hurt me. So basically, my mom and I live
Speaker 1: in different realities. She will refer to the book as
Speaker 1: a fairy tale. If it's in passing, she will jokingly
Speaker 1: refer to it to me as her favorite book. And
Speaker 1: recently on the phone, she went off the rails and
Speaker 1: called me a backstabber and said it was so backstabby,
Speaker 1: and said that, you know, she was the one who
Speaker 1: held me close, she was the one who wanted me,
Speaker 1: and how could I do this to her? And so
Speaker 1: we're just we're doing some different realities. And I just
Speaker 1: I'm trying to accept the love that she has right now,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to just give her love back. You know,
Speaker 1: she's in her seventies, she is mellowed. She just wants
Speaker 1: to tell me she's praying for me some mean religious
Speaker 1: medallions and like recipes. And I want to be able
Speaker 1: to accept that as much as I can. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just it's heart. It is what it is, and
Speaker 1: I understand some of this. It's just gonna be mine
Speaker 1: to deal with, Like Okay, I have forgiven her for
Speaker 1: keeping this secret about my dad. But as time goes
Speaker 1: on and I learned more information, I keep finding out
Speaker 1: new things that I have to forgive her for, you know,
Speaker 1: like meeting my grandma and having my grandma say, oh,
Speaker 1: I tried to keep in touch with you, and your
Speaker 1: mom told me I could only speak to you on
Speaker 1: the phone if I didn't say who I was, And
Speaker 1: I told you I was just a family, a friend,
Speaker 1: like my grandmother on her deathbed and tears saying I
Speaker 1: try to call you when you were five years old,
Speaker 1: and your mom said, you'll never talk to Nicole again
Speaker 1: unless you can only hear her voice right now if
Speaker 1: you tell her that you're a friend of the family,
Speaker 1: and like that kind of thing, and learning that it's
Speaker 1: just I feel like it's like I have a little
Speaker 1: backpack full of like you know, when you get to it,
Speaker 1: you know, forgive people for these things. Every time I've
Speaker 1: cleaned it out, something else gets dropped. In That Family's
Speaker 1: Secrets is a production of My Heart Media. Dylan Fagin
Speaker 1: and Bethman Mcalouso are the executive producers. Andrew Howard is
Speaker 1: our audio editor. If you have a secret, you'd like
Speaker 1: to share, leave us a voicemail and your story could
Speaker 1: appear on an upcoming bonus episode. Our number is eight
Speaker 1: Secret zero. That's secret and then the number zero. You
Speaker 1: can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer, Facebook
Speaker 1: at facebook dot com slash Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter
Speaker 1: at fami Secret Spot. And if you want to know
Speaker 1: about my family secret that inspired this podcast, check out
Speaker 1: my New York Times best selling memoir Inheritance. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,