Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio, Mama,
Speaker 1: to get Away, Spits of a little Shame, just so
Speaker 1: not to give by, just enough to give bye. Oh
Speaker 1: a little Girl onto Vogue, Just not to give by,
Speaker 1: just not to give bye. That's Canein Pitkin of the
Speaker 1: Lone Bellow, a Brooklyn based band, singing a song she
Speaker 1: wrote straight from the Heart, a song about her mother,
Speaker 1: a song about a secret and it's aftermath. This is
Speaker 1: a story about the complex legacy of what we hide
Speaker 1: and the remarkable beauty that can emerge when what has
Speaker 1: been hidden is brought to light. 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. Tell me about the landscape of your childhood.
Speaker 1: Where did you grow up? What was it like. I
Speaker 1: grew up in Hardersburg, Virginia, which is a smallish town
Speaker 1: I would say midway between Washington, d c. And Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 1: We learned a lot of Civil War history. I used
Speaker 1: to do my cross country practices and trails that ran
Speaker 1: through the battlefield um because there was a lot of ghosts.
Speaker 1: I guess were you aware of that? Do you have
Speaker 1: that sense at the time? Oh? Absolutely, Virginia is just
Speaker 1: it'sincially a place. It's kind of a haunted place, and
Speaker 1: I think I was always really interested in history, not
Speaker 1: just American history, but world history in general, so it
Speaker 1: was a rich place to grow up. When I was
Speaker 1: about ten years old, my parents co founded UH, an
Speaker 1: intentionally cross cultural church that focused on and still focuses
Speaker 1: on racial reconciliation because at that point Frederick was still
Speaker 1: i would say fairly segregated culturally, especially, and I think
Speaker 1: some people just really wanted to do the work of listening.
Speaker 1: So I've been thinking a lot about that with recent
Speaker 1: events and just how when we started the church, we
Speaker 1: were singing, you know, gospel music in the attic of
Speaker 1: this bluegrass music shop. That is the landscape of my
Speaker 1: childhood right there, and I think a lot of how
Speaker 1: I became the kind of musician that I am today.
Speaker 1: Brothers and sisters, Oh yeah, I'm the fourth of five siblings,
Speaker 1: um five down a heat siblings, and there's kind of
Speaker 1: a big gap between me and my older brother, and
Speaker 1: so me and a younger brother were kind of like
Speaker 1: the little kids. And then the three older were like
Speaker 1: the older kids, And tell me about your mom. My mom.
Speaker 1: Her name is Sharon, She is be she little, she'd
Speaker 1: be fierce or whatever that Shakespeare line is. Um. She
Speaker 1: to teach, and she dresses in jewel tones. Um. But
Speaker 1: she grew up near St. Louis and then in Omaha,
Speaker 1: so she she was fishing in Omaha. Um. And she
Speaker 1: was the oldest of ten kids. Kind of a genius,
Speaker 1: so I would say, could beat anybody at trivial pursuit,
Speaker 1: could answer almost every jeopardy question immediately, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But definitely Shye Kennan's mom and dad met in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies. Her parents were pretty different from each other,
Speaker 1: a case of opposites attract Her dad was outgoing, extroverted,
Speaker 1: and had a gift for enthusiasm. He loved to travel,
Speaker 1: meet people, get to know people, and just kind of
Speaker 1: figure out what makes them tick. Canine's mom was much
Speaker 1: more introverted. As a child, Knine found her kind of opaque.
Speaker 1: She definitely got the sense that there was a lot
Speaker 1: about her mom that she didn't know. She didn't really
Speaker 1: talk to me about things the way that some of
Speaker 1: my other friend's moms would and some of my other
Speaker 1: friends would say that their moms were like their best
Speaker 1: friend or you know, their confidant, And I think I
Speaker 1: was got the impression that my mom was just like Dizzy.
Speaker 1: I knew she loved us and she was an amazing mom,
Speaker 1: but she was busy, you know. But as I got older,
Speaker 1: I kind of perceived that there might be a little
Speaker 1: more to what I perceived as isolation. After she graduates
Speaker 1: from college, Canine makes plans to move to China and
Speaker 1: her parents take her to the airport to see her off,
Speaker 1: and her mother well, her mother just falls apart. I
Speaker 1: remember my mom at the airport, like at the Parcher's
Speaker 1: gate at Dullis, and she she just broke down. She
Speaker 1: was weeping, and honestly, I was pretty confused because I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't really think you needed me that much.
Speaker 1: And you know, we always had like a close relationship.
Speaker 1: I love my mom and she's really caring, but like,
Speaker 1: I never saw myself as that important, not in a
Speaker 1: bad way, but just I guess I just didn't think
Speaker 1: she would be that effective if I left. Had you
Speaker 1: gone away to college, yeah, I went to college, Jubilie
Speaker 1: and Mary, but It's only about at most a two
Speaker 1: hour drive, right, So the difference between being a two
Speaker 1: hour drive away and being on the other side of
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, and I think it was. And I
Speaker 1: had taken trips like I had gone. I've been to India,
Speaker 1: and I had done a summer in China the year before,
Speaker 1: and I'd always like to travel, and I had spent
Speaker 1: the entire summer before I moved to China, I did
Speaker 1: like a classic backpacking trip with my younger brother and
Speaker 1: two of my friends. So I was gone a lot.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't really spent significant time at home since
Speaker 1: I had graduated from high school. And so yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I was just confused. Like we didn't have long
Speaker 1: conversations on the phone ever. Um, I just felt like
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of openness or vulnerability in our relationship.
Speaker 1: So what did you make of it? At the time,
Speaker 1: it made me feel guilty for leaving, and it made
Speaker 1: me feel like maybe my mom needed me, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure why. Really it was confusing, but I just,
Speaker 1: you know, I had a lot on my mind. I
Speaker 1: was moving to Asia, and you know, I had a
Speaker 1: lot to get started. So I think I just kind
Speaker 1: of I buried it, and I tried to be as
Speaker 1: good as a long distance daughter as I could be.
Speaker 1: I tried to write long emails phone and this was
Speaker 1: way before zoom. This was the Skype days, so the
Speaker 1: Skype a lot, and you know, just trying to let
Speaker 1: them into my world. But it was just kind of surprising.
Speaker 1: So you go off to China and how long do
Speaker 1: you stay there before you return to the States. Well,
Speaker 1: they're off and on for about four years, I think.
Speaker 1: Came home for a few months to get married while
Speaker 1: having some visa trouble, and actually my mom was like,
Speaker 1: I was already engaged and we had been planning on
Speaker 1: being engaged for like a year and a half. Sounded
Speaker 1: like a good idea at the time, and then my
Speaker 1: mom was like, why don't you just stay here for
Speaker 1: a few months, stayn for a few months, and on
Speaker 1: the wedding and get married. So that's what we did.
Speaker 1: After they were married, Canine and her husband returned to China,
Speaker 1: but they started growing restless. They had good jobs that
Speaker 1: were paying the bills, but they found themselves wondering what
Speaker 1: their next step might be. They thought about graduate school
Speaker 1: coming to the States, but then Canine meets a family
Speaker 1: that had adopted five Chinese kids, all of whom had
Speaker 1: special needs. They ran an orphanage and supported the orphanage
Speaker 1: with a bread baking business. They also trained the kids
Speaker 1: who were able to bake so that they'd have skills.
Speaker 1: This family and their enterprise really lights Kenin up, so
Speaker 1: she decides to go to culinary school and become a
Speaker 1: pastry chef. I knew a lot of people who were
Speaker 1: doing kind of microfinance job training, skill training type stuff
Speaker 1: for different populations, and so I had always loved baking,
Speaker 1: and I started to think about maybe going to chef
Speaker 1: school so I could come back and you know, teacher,
Speaker 1: I don't know see what happened with that, but I
Speaker 1: didn't want to rush into it. So my husband I
Speaker 1: both decided we would do this really long fast and
Speaker 1: I think it was either a thirty or forty days,
Speaker 1: just like a a juice fast thirty or forty day
Speaker 1: juice past. Yeah, you know, why not? I want to
Speaker 1: make sure I heard that right right. It just seems
Speaker 1: like such a huge decision, and I just wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure I was like emotionally and mentally and spiritually
Speaker 1: just clear to make it. So about halfway through that fast,
Speaker 1: her mom calls me. So, I'm already kind of on
Speaker 1: this like weird journey, this plane of existence that already
Speaker 1: feels kind of like Caigros time, just like this amplified
Speaker 1: time of importance. And my mom calls me kind of
Speaker 1: out of the blue, and she's like, hey, I need
Speaker 1: to tell you something, and like, they found my baby.
Speaker 1: Let's just stop there for a sec think about this.
Speaker 1: Imagine being in the middle of a month long juice
Speaker 1: fast and hearing these words they found my baby. I
Speaker 1: think you might feel like you're hallucinating. And obviously that
Speaker 1: tendance didn't make any sense to me at the time,
Speaker 1: and I asked her to explain, like what do you mean?
Speaker 1: And she went on to tell me that my aunt
Speaker 1: had been googling their maiden name, which is kind of
Speaker 1: a unique name, and had found someone posting on a
Speaker 1: site of people trying to find their birth parents, um
Speaker 1: that this was their birth name, and she just knew
Speaker 1: it was my my mom's child. I remember my mom
Speaker 1: called me. She was calling all of her kids to
Speaker 1: kind of ask our permission to get in contact with
Speaker 1: her her child, and I just remember being like, you
Speaker 1: obviously don't need my permission, but I mean, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you are telling us this. And I remember my mom
Speaker 1: not being able to say the word rape when she
Speaker 1: was telling me about the child. She she told me
Speaker 1: she had been assaulted, and all this was kind of
Speaker 1: coming out as I'm kind of the way I'm telling
Speaker 1: it to you now, just lots of random details. She
Speaker 1: had not dealt with the trauma of it. And then
Speaker 1: so I was able to find a piece together that
Speaker 1: she had been raped and had gotten pregnant from the
Speaker 1: encounter and then had kind of been sent away to
Speaker 1: have my half sister. And I'm still not totally sure
Speaker 1: as to why. So Canine is halfway around the world
Speaker 1: in Beijing. She's twenty five years old, she hasn't eaten
Speaker 1: solid food in a while, and now she discovers the
Speaker 1: source of that opacity she had always sensed in her mother,
Speaker 1: the source of her mother's slight remove. So you're years old,
Speaker 1: what you making of this as she's you're getting these
Speaker 1: disjointed details. I mean, it's completely overwhelming. I immediately I'm
Speaker 1: starting to think about different things from my past, the
Speaker 1: ways that I was raised, the ways that my parents
Speaker 1: would react to certain things that would happen, or things
Speaker 1: in the news, or just as I was growing older,
Speaker 1: the way they would deal with me, and just the
Speaker 1: way that my mom was. It felt like a lot
Speaker 1: of things started to make sense. But also, you know,
Speaker 1: my mom was barely able to even tell me what
Speaker 1: had happened at this point, and so I felt very overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: But I felt really grateful that I had randomly read
Speaker 1: Alice Siebold's memoir called Lucky, which is about when she
Speaker 1: was raped as a young college student, and she kind
Speaker 1: of goes into the gritty detail right off the bat
Speaker 1: of like everything that happens, and then the whole book
Speaker 1: is her dealing with it. And so I had just
Speaker 1: read this book really by chance, and I felt like
Speaker 1: I had been prepared for this phone call um in
Speaker 1: a strange way, and I was able to kind of
Speaker 1: care for my mom a little bit better, I think,
Speaker 1: and ask better questions. Did your mind go back to
Speaker 1: that moment in the airport when you were this very
Speaker 1: young woman leaving and going, you know, halfway across the world.
Speaker 1: It definitely did. And I was able to talk to
Speaker 1: my mom about that later when talking to her about
Speaker 1: her own past, and she She just said that I
Speaker 1: had always been just a calming presence to her and
Speaker 1: she could just really feel that I cared about her
Speaker 1: and then I loved her and that I was for her.
Speaker 1: And she said sometimes that was just like difficult for
Speaker 1: her to feel about most people. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's just my style of communicating or something else,
Speaker 1: but I felt like a gift. You know, when someone
Speaker 1: tells you that they really feel loved by you, that's
Speaker 1: a special thing because that's something that you can't really control.
Speaker 1: I'm gathering that she made that same phone quality each
Speaker 1: one of your siblings. And it also it's interesting because
Speaker 1: it sounds like she didn't have to. I've heard a
Speaker 1: lot of stories where in a way, someone's hand is
Speaker 1: forced because you know someone has come forward and made
Speaker 1: themselves known and the story is going to come out.
Speaker 1: This wasn't a story that was going to come out.
Speaker 1: You know, your aunt doing that research and finding that
Speaker 1: name and seeing that it must be your mother's child.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it opened something up in your mother
Speaker 1: of I can't just put this back in the bott
Speaker 1: x mm hmm. Yeah. I mean she was definitely offered
Speaker 1: the can of worms and given the choice open order don't,
Speaker 1: And I'm really proud of her that she did. I
Speaker 1: think she thought, for what it was an opportunity to
Speaker 1: heal and to deal with some things that had not
Speaker 1: been dealt with, and to connect with someone that she
Speaker 1: thought she had lost. It was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: closed adoption, but they mistakenly put my mother's maiden name
Speaker 1: on the file, and so that was how my half
Speaker 1: sister found her. So I think my mom really had
Speaker 1: never thought it would be a possibility, and then I
Speaker 1: think it just felt like a second chance against all
Speaker 1: the odds. When your mom told you, it was with
Speaker 1: a sense that she was interested in knowing more, reaching out.
Speaker 1: I mean, what happened next, so like it happened pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: I think they had a phone call and then I
Speaker 1: remember I got to the stage maybe a month or
Speaker 1: two later, and my little brother and I and my
Speaker 1: mom and dad went to Omaha to meet Dory, my
Speaker 1: half sister and her family, and my dad and mom
Speaker 1: went and had dinner with her one night, and then
Speaker 1: my little brother and I joined the next day and
Speaker 1: we went to the to the zoo with Doria and
Speaker 1: her family. She has three kids. Imagine walking past, a
Speaker 1: group of people at the zoo, an older couple, several
Speaker 1: younger women and men, some kids, just a family having
Speaker 1: an outing, just like everybody else, right, except all families
Speaker 1: have stories, and sometimes these stories are secrets and require love, patients, care,
Speaker 1: compassion when these stories begin to be told. It was
Speaker 1: a lot for them both, and I think it was
Speaker 1: just the beginning of what ended up being a really
Speaker 1: long process for both of them. And I know a
Speaker 1: lot more about my mom's side of the process and stories,
Speaker 1: but the beginning of kind of being able to go
Speaker 1: back and work through the trauma. It was amazing because
Speaker 1: it was it was this opportunity to meet her and
Speaker 1: see her as was fully formed, like beautiful woman. She
Speaker 1: looks more like my mom than any of the siblings do,
Speaker 1: any like me or any of my siblings do. And
Speaker 1: she has this beautiful family. She had just had these
Speaker 1: two twin boys, and I don't know. She was a real,
Speaker 1: like concrete person with the life, and I think that
Speaker 1: was incredibly helpful for my mother to see. And then
Speaker 1: once she could see that, she could go back and
Speaker 1: deal with the pain that was the genesis of this
Speaker 1: this beautiful life, you know, the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: we are not the pain that has formed us. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Had your mother told your father about her history? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had known, but he doesn't really like to talk
Speaker 1: about stuff. He had a pretty rough upbringing, so he's
Speaker 1: a very he's very sensitive, he's very sweet, but he
Speaker 1: can be a little inaccessible as well emotionally sometimes. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't a surprise to him. No, he knew about it,
Speaker 1: because that would have been an even more different story. Right. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. Now.
Speaker 1: Kenine is back in the States. She's training to be
Speaker 1: a chef. She's singing on the side. She's always been
Speaker 1: a singer, and one day she feels in for a
Speaker 1: friend who needs help with a gig, and something happens,
Speaker 1: some kind of kismet, some kind of magic, when their
Speaker 1: voices blend together. You can't force this stuff, you can't
Speaker 1: make it happen, but when it does, it's unmistakable. The juice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the juice. So at that point you started loan Bellow
Speaker 1: and you we were like, this is a thing, and
Speaker 1: we're doing this. It took a little while for to
Speaker 1: kind of solidify into the format it is today. And
Speaker 1: my bandmates are named Zack and Brian, and they had
Speaker 1: both been pursuing their own music careers for a long time,
Speaker 1: and my husband and I had done my husband's names Jason.
Speaker 1: Jason and I had done a lot of gigs when
Speaker 1: we were in China Um and we had an agent
Speaker 1: who would get us these like bonkers gigs that like
Speaker 1: I don't know, the opening of a future apartment complex,
Speaker 1: and like super bizar Jason wants to march in the
Speaker 1: parade wearing a Swedish flag. It was very strange, and
Speaker 1: we we had a lot of our own music and stuff,
Speaker 1: but we had never really thought about doing professionally. It's
Speaker 1: always a lot of fun in the hobby, something we
Speaker 1: love doing. So when I got to New York and
Speaker 1: I was going to pastry Chef School in Manhattan, I
Speaker 1: ended up singing with Zack filling in for somebody, and
Speaker 1: he just like knew immediately he was like coming to
Speaker 1: be in abandon me. And then randomly, one day when
Speaker 1: I was filling in at a show of his, Brian
Speaker 1: or other bandmate got on stage and it was when
Speaker 1: three of us sang together, we all just felt it.
Speaker 1: I love singing with them. And it's it's so much fun,
Speaker 1: but it really hijacked my plan of going back to
Speaker 1: China and becoming a pastry chef. And there was a
Speaker 1: kind of a moment where Jason and I had to
Speaker 1: decide if we were going to try to day in
Speaker 1: the States and do the band, or if we're going
Speaker 1: to move back. And you know what I always say
Speaker 1: is no one ever gets that opportunity and says I'll
Speaker 1: be in a band when I'm older. Um, we decided
Speaker 1: to go for it. We recorded our first record Summer
Speaker 1: of two thousand eleven, and it came out January two.
Speaker 1: So it was about, you know, a couple of years
Speaker 1: in the making, I find myself connecting that, Like that's
Speaker 1: sort of that magic that happened on on stage and
Speaker 1: the sort of accidental random nature of like the three
Speaker 1: of you ending up on the same stage at the
Speaker 1: same time, singing with your reading the alice eye bold,
Speaker 1: you know, random, um, and yet totally shapes what happens next. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things that I was really
Speaker 1: struck by is your song just enough to get by.
Speaker 1: There's this lyric, it's the chorus if Silence is Golden,
Speaker 1: I know a lot of wealthy women buying what's sold
Speaker 1: to them, buying anything but freedom. And I understand it
Speaker 1: to be a song that you wrote about your mother's experience,
Speaker 1: maybe for your mother. How has this discovery in your life,
Speaker 1: How has it played into your artistic process, the expression
Speaker 1: that you do as a songwriter, as a musician. You
Speaker 1: know that song, it was really a long time coming.
Speaker 1: I've heard Brian singing this little melody just as a
Speaker 1: good book kind of lounge e and I think he
Speaker 1: was like thinking about drinking or smoking or something, and
Speaker 1: it was weird because it was kind of a jolly
Speaker 1: sounding melody. But as soon as I heard it, I
Speaker 1: thought about my mom. And I think at this point
Speaker 1: it had been a couple of years and she had
Speaker 1: been doing this work, and I've been keeping up with
Speaker 1: her progress, like going to a counselor and kind of
Speaker 1: trying to work through everything. And I was really proud
Speaker 1: of her for being willing to go back to that place.
Speaker 1: And she told me that her one counselor had her
Speaker 1: imagined when she had to walk through it, that someone
Speaker 1: was with her, and she said she always imagined it
Speaker 1: was me that I was like standing with her, walking
Speaker 1: with her through the experience. I felt very honored to
Speaker 1: be that kind of presence in my mom's life and
Speaker 1: in her recovery. And I think it just made me
Speaker 1: I want to put myself in her shoes and allow
Speaker 1: myself to kind of feel I feel my own feelings
Speaker 1: about all of it, and she was doing the work
Speaker 1: of going through all that emotional trauma, and I think
Speaker 1: it made me want to write about things in a
Speaker 1: way that would help other people who felt alone and
Speaker 1: who felt isolated by their own secrets and by the
Speaker 1: shame we put on herself when things be honor control
Speaker 1: have happened to us. And yeah, that song. I wrote
Speaker 1: it kind of all in an afternoon in the van,
Speaker 1: and I was just really in my feelings and it
Speaker 1: was a very cathartic, very like swift lyrical process. It's
Speaker 1: kind of just all came out, and my bandmates really
Speaker 1: liked it, but I just kind of I didn't feel
Speaker 1: ready to sing it. So Kenin puts the song away,
Speaker 1: just tucks it away, but of course it doesn't actually
Speaker 1: go away. She's a little afraid of it. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what to do with it. But a year later,
Speaker 1: during the start of the Me Too, movement. Suddenly she
Speaker 1: knows it's time. I was like, oh damn, I think
Speaker 1: I'm ready to sing this. I think I'm ready to
Speaker 1: do it, but I had to make sure that my
Speaker 1: mom was okay with it because I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: She was still pretty private about what had happened, and
Speaker 1: I was very sensitive, And I think that song, to me,
Speaker 1: is a very honest reflection that just because you're dealing
Speaker 1: with something doesn't mean it works out in a very
Speaker 1: neat and orderly way. It's not a Hallmark movie ending.
Speaker 1: It's a it's messy, you know, it's it's difficult, it's
Speaker 1: it's heartbreaking, and it's not just like I got raped
Speaker 1: and I had a child and now we're best friends
Speaker 1: and everything is great and I love talking about it.
Speaker 1: That's definitely not That's not how it works out. It's
Speaker 1: not how it shakes out. So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of frustration in me seeing that people were trying to
Speaker 1: get her to talk about it before she was ready
Speaker 1: and get her to kind of spin it into this
Speaker 1: thing that it wasn't. So I was very sensitive. We
Speaker 1: like neat and tidy narratives that we can tie up
Speaker 1: in a bow. Yeah, yeah, So I knew it wasn't that,
Speaker 1: so I wanted the song to kind of have this
Speaker 1: uneasy too. It kind of how could started healing, but
Speaker 1: also just an honest feeling of like I don't really
Speaker 1: know how to sense. What was your mother's response when
Speaker 1: you worked up the courage to, you know, take her
Speaker 1: the song and show her what you've written. She liked it.
Speaker 1: She was very encouraging about it, and I was, I know,
Speaker 1: I was nervous as hell. I was like I was
Speaker 1: shaken in my boots taking it to her because I
Speaker 1: just didn't, you know, I didn't want to feel like
Speaker 1: I was like voyeuristic or I don't know, just being
Speaker 1: like I used your pain to make an apodoy. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think she recognized that I put a
Speaker 1: lot of myself into that song too, and she said
Speaker 1: it was a very accurate portrayal of of what she
Speaker 1: went through, and that took a lot of weight off
Speaker 1: my shoulders and it made me prepared to kind of
Speaker 1: go to bat for the song and make it as
Speaker 1: good as it could be. What's it been like to
Speaker 1: perform the song? It's been awesome. Is there anything different
Speaker 1: about it than performing your other songs that are maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit less loaded ha ha. I can definitely
Speaker 1: see some people getting a little uncomfortable. And I've had
Speaker 1: people right near people come up to me after the
Speaker 1: show and tell me their stories which are in some
Speaker 1: way similar to my mom. Um that's been, That's been everything,
Speaker 1: you know. That's all I've really desired is that it's
Speaker 1: just a helpful thing for people. We're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break here for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: If there's one thing I've learned from hosting this podcast,
Speaker 1: it's that when there are secrets, there is almost always shame,
Speaker 1: a drumbeat beneath. That's why the secrets being kept. And
Speaker 1: then the shame has its own legacy. It works on
Speaker 1: people we know something isn't right, but we can't put
Speaker 1: our finger on it. Then sometimes we have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to take that legacy of shame and make something that
Speaker 1: reaches and helps other people and explodes the shame by
Speaker 1: naming it. I'm just so indebted to my sister Dory.
Speaker 1: I have sister Dory and my mom. We're just really
Speaker 1: being willing to to do the work of bringing into
Speaker 1: the light talking about it, and I think their bravery
Speaker 1: and just willingness to go somewhere uncomfortable and willingness to
Speaker 1: to be honest and transparent has I feel like it
Speaker 1: really has unlocked something in me. And I think specifically
Speaker 1: growing up with that secret not knowing about it, my
Speaker 1: parents were pretty overprotective, I would say, and I think
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of shame, just like being a woman,
Speaker 1: and I kind of felt like I was suspect of
Speaker 1: a lot of things. And I think once I had
Speaker 1: known about my mom, it just made sense. It made
Speaker 1: sense where they were protected. But it also kind of
Speaker 1: freed me from thinking that I had something to do
Speaker 1: with it, you know what I mean. I was a
Speaker 1: good kid, you know, like boring that way, and so
Speaker 1: I always felt pretty frustrated that I felt like my
Speaker 1: parents didn't trust me. And I think now the lesson
Speaker 1: that has taught me is just with my own son,
Speaker 1: I think about ways that I can be honest and
Speaker 1: open with him, and that I can give him the
Speaker 1: gift of my transparency and my my story. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was going to ask you about exactly that, because I
Speaker 1: think becoming a mother, becoming a parent, tends to make
Speaker 1: us reflect back on how we were children and how
Speaker 1: we were parented and and the things that we carried
Speaker 1: or the legacy of that, and you know, the pendulum
Speaker 1: swings and swings again, and your son is held. He'll
Speaker 1: be three next week. So I have I guess one
Speaker 1: last question for you, as you think about this, as
Speaker 1: you think about everything that has transpired since that first
Speaker 1: phone call when you were in your mid twenties, are
Speaker 1: you glad that all this came out? Absolutely? Because I've
Speaker 1: you know, I've gained a sister, and I can see
Speaker 1: the freedom has brought my mom at a great cost,
Speaker 1: for sure. But there's something unspeakably good about a life
Speaker 1: and a beautiful person who you love coming out of
Speaker 1: such a a tragedy, And it just feels like a
Speaker 1: gift that there should be any any good that comes
Speaker 1: out of it at all. But I think it has
Speaker 1: helped me understand my mother and understand what a lot
Speaker 1: of women have been through so much more. And that's
Speaker 1: all I really want in life, to understand people better.
Speaker 1: You know. That's beautiful, Kenney, Thank you so much. Hello. Attle.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: is the supervising producer and Bethan Macaluso is the executive producer.
Speaker 1: We'd also like to give a special thanks to Tyler
Speaker 1: Klang and Tristan McNeil. If you have a family secret
Speaker 1: you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your
Speaker 1: story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight secret zero. That's secret and then
Speaker 1: the number zero. You can also find us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Danny Ryder and Facebook at facebook dot com slash
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