Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. This
Speaker 1: episode contains discussions of suicide. Listener discussion is advised. If
Speaker 1: you are a loved one is struggling with suicidal thoughts,
Speaker 1: please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. At three at
Speaker 1: my desk, I sped my beer and straightened my back,
Speaker 1: suddenly aware that I am watching us as a family,
Speaker 1: that I'm about to see what we were like together
Speaker 1: before time had scattered us off into our separate lives.
Speaker 1: Playing on the screen in front of me is evidence
Speaker 1: that we've been together, proof that we existed, with clues
Speaker 1: to our disintegration, the possibility that my memories are to
Speaker 1: whatever degree, real and verifiable. So I watch, hoping to
Speaker 1: find answers to questions I hardly have language for about
Speaker 1: who we were during those years that shaped us. That's
Speaker 1: Margaret Kimball, illustrator, lettering artist, and writer, sir of the
Speaker 1: recent graphic memoir and now I spill The Family Secrets.
Speaker 1: Margaret's story is about silence and memory and the powerful
Speaker 1: need to peel back the layers of secrecy and shame
Speaker 1: in order to move forward with grace, strength, and dignity.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. We grew up
Speaker 1: in Connecticut and Glastonbury, which is a really cute suburb
Speaker 1: of Hartford, and we lived on this little street called
Speaker 1: Marthew Drive, and there are all these colonial houses and
Speaker 1: it was a safe street, so we could just kind
Speaker 1: of roam freely around. And there was a little side
Speaker 1: street called Little Acres and we could roam down there
Speaker 1: into the creek and there were some woods and there
Speaker 1: was a field beyond that. It felt infinite to me,
Speaker 1: like when I go back there now, it's like such
Speaker 1: a tiny little street, but as a kid, you can just,
Speaker 1: you know, walking up the entire street felt like this
Speaker 1: giant journey. There was one time where my brother and
Speaker 1: I tried to run away and we went literally, I
Speaker 1: mean probably thirty ft down the road, but we felt
Speaker 1: like we were, you know, miles from home, and my
Speaker 1: dad just stepped on the porch and screamed for us
Speaker 1: to come back home, and we immediately did. It felt
Speaker 1: like we had gone like really far. And it felt
Speaker 1: that way when we went to Little aakres we build
Speaker 1: forts there. There were all these twigs and branches, and
Speaker 1: I remember sitting in our woods actually kind of near
Speaker 1: the shed, and just dreaming of tree forts I could build.
Speaker 1: And I loved being in the really tiny woods. In
Speaker 1: the town, there was like a little downtown area so
Speaker 1: near our church, we could ride bikes and go get
Speaker 1: donuts at the little pharmacy. There was a cute restaurant
Speaker 1: called Lotties, which is still there, which I go do
Speaker 1: sometimes when I'm in Connecticut. You know, in many ways,
Speaker 1: it was a sort of visually idyllic childhood. And my
Speaker 1: mom was and is. She's like a very kind woman,
Speaker 1: but you know, I remember her as very tired and distracted,
Speaker 1: and I think she was just having three kids. And
Speaker 1: I remember, maybe a little when I was a little older,
Speaker 1: like maybe ten, her just constantly talking about this career
Speaker 1: she wanted to have. I think she wanted to be
Speaker 1: an English teacher, and that it made me feel guilty,
Speaker 1: like sorry that I exist, you know, I'm sorry for
Speaker 1: your career. So that's what I think of her. I
Speaker 1: just think of her as like really tired and nice,
Speaker 1: although sometimes very angry, but just like a tired person.
Speaker 1: Who kind of has limited resources to manage that exhaustion
Speaker 1: and her feeling of not having had the exact life
Speaker 1: she wanted. Was how I look at it now? And
Speaker 1: how about your dad? He is a workaholic. He was
Speaker 1: gone all week working, but he would play with us
Speaker 1: so much. So I remember on the weekends. There's two
Speaker 1: games that I remember really well. One was I think
Speaker 1: we called it monster, where he'd just like to sit
Speaker 1: on the living room carpet and we'd go near him
Speaker 1: and he'd grab one of us and then we'd have
Speaker 1: to try and escape. It would just go on for hours.
Speaker 1: The other game we called Jail, and we'd go to
Speaker 1: one of the local elementary schools. I think button Ball
Speaker 1: was the one that had the best playground, so he
Speaker 1: would chase us around playing tag around the elementary school
Speaker 1: or the playground, and then when we got caught, would
Speaker 1: have to go into jail, and all the kids, any
Speaker 1: kid that was on the playground would start playing, so
Speaker 1: he'd be, you know, chasing like ten kids. So I
Speaker 1: remember him playing a lot, which I also feel like
Speaker 1: it's probably not a super fair memory, Like my mom's
Speaker 1: exhausted and tired, and God's just so playful and great,
Speaker 1: but I think he was having his own struggles. But
Speaker 1: when we were with him, that's what I remember. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so much in your story that really illustrates the
Speaker 1: way that memory plays tricks on us, or sometimes lays
Speaker 1: down tracks like invisible tracks within us that we can't
Speaker 1: really access or don't really know what images or snippets
Speaker 1: of conversation or any of it means until way, way later,
Speaker 1: when the pieces of the puzzle sort of fall together.
Speaker 1: Within the idyllic, sweet landscape of Margaret's childhood, there were
Speaker 1: indeed hidden struggles, but as a small child, of course,
Speaker 1: she doesn't see them, even though perhaps she intuits them.
Speaker 1: She adores her older brother and wants to do everything
Speaker 1: he does. Not only do they get lost in the
Speaker 1: woods together and build forts, but when he starts to
Speaker 1: ride a bike, she wants to ride one too. When
Speaker 1: she's four, she misjudges a corner, falls down, and has
Speaker 1: a pretty bad accident. But this is just one of
Speaker 1: the seminal and destabilizing events that occurred that year. The
Speaker 1: other happens on Mother's Day. That morning, my mom asked
Speaker 1: my dad to take us to church as a Sunday,
Speaker 1: so he did I think I was four, and my
Speaker 1: youngest brother was ten months, and my older brother must
Speaker 1: have been six. So he took us to church, and
Speaker 1: she stayed home and I think kind of spun out
Speaker 1: of control and was looking in the mirror and having
Speaker 1: all these really negative thoughts about herself and finally decided
Speaker 1: that we would be better off if she was dead.
Speaker 1: And so she had been prescribed something like xanex. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was actually zanex or something like that,
Speaker 1: some anti anxiety medication. She went up to the shed
Speaker 1: in our backyard and she grabbed a belt to just
Speaker 1: planning to hang herself. But she went to the shed
Speaker 1: and took all the pills. I mean, I think there
Speaker 1: were eleven or thirteen something like that, and then down
Speaker 1: goes in vodka and then immediately became unconscious. And so
Speaker 1: that's where my dad found her after church. You were
Speaker 1: four years old, So what, if anything, do you remember
Speaker 1: about that day. Our shed was kind of up a
Speaker 1: little hill and there were these um stone steps that
Speaker 1: just were on a little path back into the woods.
Speaker 1: I remember this picture in my mind of my dad
Speaker 1: carrying my mom across his arms and bringing her into
Speaker 1: the house and kind of brushing past me. It was
Speaker 1: like an image in my mind that I just thought
Speaker 1: was maybe fake, or I had dreamed it or something.
Speaker 1: Margaret has a hazy memory of that image from mother's day,
Speaker 1: but never fully knows the context of what happened. The
Speaker 1: details about the pills and vodka and belt those were
Speaker 1: unknown to her childhood self. It isn't until fifteen years later,
Speaker 1: when she's nineteen years old, that she received a call
Speaker 1: from her brother who tells her he's just learned from
Speaker 1: their father that their mother had attempted suicide that day.
Speaker 1: And what does she do with that information, what so
Speaker 1: many of us do with what we can't yet handle,
Speaker 1: She files it away. You know, one of the things
Speaker 1: I often think about about secrets is that only part
Speaker 1: of the challenge when one finds out something that was
Speaker 1: a secret is the secret itself. It's also when we
Speaker 1: find out what we find out, and whether we have
Speaker 1: the the muscles or the ability psychologically, emotionally, spiritually to
Speaker 1: absorb what we're learning. And I mean, to me, so
Speaker 1: much of your story is about this very powerful need
Speaker 1: that comes over you over time to learn and excavate
Speaker 1: as much of the truth as you possibly can. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen right away, right. That doesn't happen when
Speaker 1: you're nineteen and you get that information, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love the way you're describing that, like the excavation,
Speaker 1: because as you were speaking and I'm thinking that, my
Speaker 1: brother's phone call was like the stone on a pile.
Speaker 1: I was so angry about my mom. When I'm sixteen,
Speaker 1: she attempts suicide again, and I was so angry about
Speaker 1: that because it just seemed like she didn't care about us.
Speaker 1: I don't feel that way anymore, for the record, but
Speaker 1: when he called and told me that, I just kind
Speaker 1: of put it on that pile of anger and just
Speaker 1: I didn't have any way to think about it other
Speaker 1: than to say, like, of course, of course that's what happened.
Speaker 1: And then it took me years. I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think fifteen or seventeen years or something to really unpack
Speaker 1: was your sense as you grew up that if someone
Speaker 1: had asked you, do you think is your mother depressed?
Speaker 1: Or are you worried about your mother? What would you
Speaker 1: have said? As a kid, I would have said, what
Speaker 1: is depressed? Did you have a sense that something was amiss?
Speaker 1: You know, not until I was ten the first time
Speaker 1: that I was aware, she went to the hospital and
Speaker 1: my dad talked to me about it. That's when I
Speaker 1: first became aware of it. Before that, I knew she
Speaker 1: got mad, especially at me. By this time, Margaret's parents
Speaker 1: had been divorced for a couple of years. When Margaret's
Speaker 1: with her mom, she's also on the receiving end of
Speaker 1: her mother's anger. She sent to her room all the time.
Speaker 1: When she's with her dad, she struggles to communicate with him.
Speaker 1: She's pretty sure her dad has a girlfriend, and the
Speaker 1: way she eventually confirms this is by showing him a
Speaker 1: piece of paper on which she's written, Dad, do you
Speaker 1: have a girlfriend? Circle? Yes or no? So enough said,
Speaker 1: But in fact, the family's lack of communication stretches much
Speaker 1: further back, all the way back to her mom and
Speaker 1: dad's own secretive histories. You describe your father as someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't know how to put language to feeling, which
Speaker 1: really comes from his own history, and you know various
Speaker 1: difficult and even tragic things in his own history, his
Speaker 1: sister Peggy drowning at the age of thirteen in a
Speaker 1: lake while he was there, and the way that these
Speaker 1: things never got talked about. Now that there was this
Speaker 1: kind of silence on both sides of your family, and
Speaker 1: your mother came from a mentally ill mother, but that
Speaker 1: was never talked about. And there's a line in your
Speaker 1: book where you say your forebears want the secrets disappeared,
Speaker 1: Like if you don't, if you don't talk about it,
Speaker 1: then maybe it never happened. I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I think you know secrets sometimes. I think secret is
Speaker 1: another word for shame. And I just think my parents,
Speaker 1: in their own ways, feel so much shame over things
Speaker 1: that have happened, and so much disappointment about the way
Speaker 1: their lives have unfolded in some ways, and I think
Speaker 1: it's too much for them to talk about. Not long
Speaker 1: after Margaret's father circles yes on that slip of paper,
Speaker 1: he marries his then girlfriend Janice. At around the same time,
Speaker 1: Margaret's mother is hospitalized for a second time and diagnosed
Speaker 1: with manic depression. Just before her mother's hospitalization, Margaret notices
Speaker 1: that her mom is buying a ton of jewelry, but
Speaker 1: she can't remotely afford acting completely out of character. As
Speaker 1: time passes and her mom's behavior becomes more erratic, Margaret
Speaker 1: learns to read for signs like this, signs of her
Speaker 1: mother's instability. Her watchfulness becomes part of the texture of
Speaker 1: family life. I think it's it's an education you get
Speaker 1: really quickly. My mom was such a foundational figure for
Speaker 1: me at that point. She was still my best friend,
Speaker 1: and I suddenly realized, or thought I realized that she
Speaker 1: could disappear at any moment, and so I needed to know,
Speaker 1: like what would the signs be so I could help her.
Speaker 1: So I learned pretty quickly, and you know, they stuck
Speaker 1: with me, like later on when she would have an episode.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can recognize it immediately. I think it's
Speaker 1: just something that once you can see those signs, it's
Speaker 1: just it doesn't leave you, or at least it hasn't
Speaker 1: left me. We'll be back in a moment with more
Speaker 1: family secrets. When Margaret enters the sixth grade, she goes
Speaker 1: to a new school, and at first she clocks this
Speaker 1: as an ideal time for a fresh start, an opportunity
Speaker 1: to peel away from her complicated home life. But the
Speaker 1: complications persist, and now her mom is not the only
Speaker 1: one grappling with illness. Margaret herself develops a number of
Speaker 1: inexplicable physical ailments. In the meantime, perhaps not coincidentally, her
Speaker 1: parents are in a custody battle, which her father ultimately wins.
Speaker 1: I remember throwing up a bunch of times in Phitnancy's grade,
Speaker 1: and I remember those moments, but I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: they had had to end so close together and so
Speaker 1: consistently during that time period, during the gusty battle. So
Speaker 1: they seemed so strange. It wasn't like a headstrip throat like.
Speaker 1: I didn't have anything diagnosable. So I just wondered if
Speaker 1: they were related to the stress from, you know, going
Speaker 1: to psychologists and answering questions about my parents which were
Speaker 1: clearly going to put me into loyalty buyings, and going
Speaker 1: to therapists and talking to them about which house they
Speaker 1: felt safest at, or my issues with Janice. Now I
Speaker 1: just look at it and I'm like, oh, of course
Speaker 1: it was were related, like my getting sick and all
Speaker 1: the stress of trying to navigate my loyalty to both
Speaker 1: my parents. Your mother and Janice are about as different
Speaker 1: as two women could be in terms of the way
Speaker 1: that they live, the way that they run their households,
Speaker 1: um just their energy who they are. First, Janice seems
Speaker 1: really worldly. She read the New York or the New
Speaker 1: York Times. She lived in New York City for a while,
Speaker 1: and she loves art and she loves music, and so
Speaker 1: she seems very cultured and she's fun like she you know,
Speaker 1: immediately subscribed me teen Bop and all the like tween
Speaker 1: magazines that I thought were like amazing, and would buy
Speaker 1: me posters of celebrities like Jonathan Taylor Thomas to put
Speaker 1: on my wall. So she's like cultured, but also loves
Speaker 1: pop culture and so it's great. And she loves shopping.
Speaker 1: And she seemed to me like a breath of fresh
Speaker 1: air at the time, but soon that breath of fresh
Speaker 1: air feels more like a cold wind. Janice's attitude towards
Speaker 1: Margaret changes. Unlike Margaret's mother, who has a sort of
Speaker 1: anything goes approach to house rules, Janice runs a tight ship.
Speaker 1: Spills are not tolerated, some couches are off limits, and
Speaker 1: Margaret and her brothers are banned from the kitchen. I
Speaker 1: mean entirely. They are not allowed to enter the kitchen
Speaker 1: of their own home unless Janice is there. As the
Speaker 1: tensions build, Janice and Margaret's father have a child of
Speaker 1: their own, a daughter named Katie, and the divide widens further.
Speaker 1: When Margaret calls Katie her sister, Janice corrects her and
Speaker 1: says she's her half sister. Janice does everything she can
Speaker 1: to keep them apart. That was shocking, um, And you know,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that divide was sort of always there.
Speaker 1: Janice married my dad and they had never lived together
Speaker 1: until they got married, and we all had never lived together,
Speaker 1: and so I think she was kind of signing up
Speaker 1: for something and she just didn't have any clue what
Speaker 1: it might be like. And I think my dad didn't
Speaker 1: have any clue of what kind of person she was
Speaker 1: to live with. But you know, before Katie was born,
Speaker 1: when they lived there was a year. I think that
Speaker 1: they lived together before she was born for maybe two years,
Speaker 1: and the house was immediately filled with Janice's belongings. And
Speaker 1: my dad would say, oh, it's because know, I lost
Speaker 1: everything in the divorce or something like that. And I
Speaker 1: remember when she got pregnant, she just started snapping at us,
Speaker 1: and my dad kept saying, Oh, she's just pregnant, you know,
Speaker 1: she's just not feeling well. I wondered is it because
Speaker 1: she's pregnant or is it something else? And then when
Speaker 1: we all moved in together, became clear that she just
Speaker 1: you know, had her way of doing things and was
Speaker 1: not really interested in compromising. We weren't allowed to do
Speaker 1: our own laundry, which you know should sound like a dream,
Speaker 1: like I would love to not do my own laundry now.
Speaker 1: But it was weird because at my mom's house, you know,
Speaker 1: from the age of ten, she was like, you're going
Speaker 1: to do your own laundry. You're old enough, you know
Speaker 1: how to do it. And then we get to Janice's
Speaker 1: house and all the laundry runs through her. I can't
Speaker 1: use the book. I couldn't. I never once used the machines,
Speaker 1: and I don't even know what they looked like. And
Speaker 1: again the silence and the way that things don't get
Speaker 1: really talked about or get um sort of underplayed by
Speaker 1: your fathers like that's just how that's how she is,
Speaker 1: or making excuses until it reaches a point where you're
Speaker 1: a senior in high school and that's the year that
Speaker 1: your mom makes another suicide attempt, and it's also the
Speaker 1: year that your dad and Janice split up. Yeah, Janis
Speaker 1: and I thought almost the entire time. But the fights
Speaker 1: were never productive, and they, I don't think ever really
Speaker 1: addressed the underlying issues, which probably required a lot of therapy.
Speaker 1: For her to deal with her childhood is use whatever
Speaker 1: they might be, and then for me to try and
Speaker 1: understand why she was the way she was. So yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, eventually in that environment it reaches a fever
Speaker 1: pitch and then everybody disperses, and then my mom, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, I had become kind of distant
Speaker 1: from her. She moved a bunch of times in that
Speaker 1: time period. She moved two or three times, and I
Speaker 1: probably saw her or maybe every other weekend, and so
Speaker 1: I wasn't totally connected to what was happening in her life.
Speaker 1: And when I talked to her at one point and
Speaker 1: realized she was manic, I just said, you know, I
Speaker 1: think you're manic, and she just yelled at me, and
Speaker 1: I didn't agree. Now, Margaret is in her senior year
Speaker 1: of high school, a time usually filled with feelings of freedom, excitement, elation.
Speaker 1: But Margaret's senior year is instead weighed down by the
Speaker 1: heft of Janice leaving her father and her mother's ongoing
Speaker 1: struggles with mental illness. But here is where her resilience
Speaker 1: begins to really take form and shape. She finds comfort
Speaker 1: and therapy where she can safely examine the troubles of
Speaker 1: her family. In addition, she sets off on a number
Speaker 1: of healing expeditions too far away places through landscapes, which
Speaker 1: allow her to physically, psychologically, and spiritually distance herself from
Speaker 1: her family in order to turn inward to heal and
Speaker 1: to grow. I was angry, and I was just trying
Speaker 1: to be okay. So I did a bunch of backpacking trips.
Speaker 1: I took a backpacking trip in high school out to
Speaker 1: around moab Utah for three weeks with Howard Bound, and
Speaker 1: that helped me kind of center myself and feel capable.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're hiking and they say like, well,
Speaker 1: if you break your leg, you're still gonna have to
Speaker 1: hike yourself out of here, you know, You're like, okay,
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna really focus. And then the other thing
Speaker 1: during that first backpacking trip was that I realized this
Speaker 1: sounds really morbid, but it was really helpful to me,
Speaker 1: which I was, you know, hiking in the mountains and
Speaker 1: the canyons and feeling like it doesn't matter if I
Speaker 1: die if I fall off the side, because at first
Speaker 1: it was really hard to kind of walk because there
Speaker 1: was like loose rock and it was hurting my ankles
Speaker 1: and I was carrying like a six pound backpack and
Speaker 1: I was really scared. And then I was like, if
Speaker 1: I fall up this mountain and die, the earth doesn't care.
Speaker 1: It just like absorbs my body. And that made me
Speaker 1: feel somehow calmer, Like my life is small and so
Speaker 1: I can figure out what my priorities are and what
Speaker 1: I want to focus on and try and aim for
Speaker 1: that I'm just like a blip and the history of
Speaker 1: the earth, and that smallness made me feel safe and
Speaker 1: like centered. So I took another backpacking trip to Alaska
Speaker 1: in college in a summer between years, I think after
Speaker 1: my freshman year. So that helped me a ton, just
Speaker 1: to kind of feel calm um. And then you know,
Speaker 1: I ignored it until I took a class with Lynn Bloom.
Speaker 1: She's retired now, but she was professor at the University
Speaker 1: of connectict It and she taught the autobiography class there.
Speaker 1: I read all these memoirs and I suddenly was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, these books are teaching me how to
Speaker 1: live or like giving me guidance that I don't have otherwise.
Speaker 1: And so from there I started writing kind of lightly
Speaker 1: about my mom and what had happened, and it just
Speaker 1: built up over time, and I took more independent studies
Speaker 1: with her and read more memoirs and just kind of
Speaker 1: slowly chipped away at that until I got to grad school,
Speaker 1: and then I really tried to unpack the story as
Speaker 1: much as I could. We'll be right back. So Margaret
Speaker 1: begins to unpack. She's moved by the art of memoir,
Speaker 1: and we realize is that this will be the way
Speaker 1: to ask and hopefully answer the questions that so defined
Speaker 1: her childhood, namely the nature of her mom's illness and
Speaker 1: the reason behind her multiple attempts to take her own life.
Speaker 1: But as is the case when we grapple with family secrets,
Speaker 1: it's a slow and rocky journey. Remember that call Margaret
Speaker 1: receives when she's nineteen and her brother tells her he's
Speaker 1: learned about their mom's first suicide attempt on Mother's Day. Well,
Speaker 1: it takes five years, and it isn't until Margaret's twenty four,
Speaker 1: when she's actively writing the story of her family, that
Speaker 1: she decides to directly ask the questions she needs to ask.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the wherewithal too articulate a question, and
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like I had one. I was angry,
Speaker 1: and I was just kind of like, oh, of course
Speaker 1: she did that. I wasn't empathetic. I wasn't really thinking
Speaker 1: about what it must have been like for her. I
Speaker 1: was just sort of shoving it away and not thinking
Speaker 1: it was anything I had to address or that there
Speaker 1: was any way to address it because it was so
Speaker 1: far in the past. And I'm like, while we survived,
Speaker 1: we're fine. She survived, it's fine, it doesn't matter. While
Speaker 1: also I think always in the back of your mind
Speaker 1: is like, for me is probably fear and maybe shame
Speaker 1: of like why did that happen? Did she not love us?
Speaker 1: Was she okay? Like? What happened? What happened? Indeed, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, it isn't just Margaret's mom's mental state
Speaker 1: in question. At around this time, Margaret invites her siblings
Speaker 1: to a family reunion of sorts in Kentucky, where she's
Speaker 1: living with her boyfriend, Christian. It's supposed to be a
Speaker 1: fun weekend of bourbon tastings and card games, though Margaret
Speaker 1: and her brothers have always been sort of rough and
Speaker 1: tumble with each other. This time, her brother Ted seems off.
Speaker 1: He punches a table violence, catching everyone off guard, and
Speaker 1: the darkness doesn't subside. The next day, Ted is still
Speaker 1: deeply and inexplicably distraught, and the weekend is ruined. So
Speaker 1: we all go to bed angry. And then the day
Speaker 1: after that he just refuses to come with us. We
Speaker 1: had like some stuff planned, I think a bourbon tour,
Speaker 1: and he skipped it. He just stayed home and I
Speaker 1: didn't speak to anybody. So finally in the evening, Christian
Speaker 1: just looked at him and said, are you okay? And
Speaker 1: he just burst into tears. And I went out and
Speaker 1: talked to him, and he just was like, no one
Speaker 1: listens to me, no one understands me. And I was
Speaker 1: kind of like, what are you talking about? Like it
Speaker 1: just seemed like such a big reaction for such a
Speaker 1: small thing. How many times have we yelled at each other?
Speaker 1: How many times have we just been like piss off?
Speaker 1: We're like a little rough with each other all the time,
Speaker 1: and so none of us think anything of it. And
Speaker 1: then he said, I don't know what's happening to me.
Speaker 1: And I was trying of taken aback. I just like
Speaker 1: sort of noted it. I didn't say anything at the time,
Speaker 1: but I was like, what does that mean? And it
Speaker 1: just sounded a lot bigger. Remember, Margaret has had some
Speaker 1: early life training in this reading the signs. She's developed
Speaker 1: her hyper vigilance skills with regard to her mother. Now
Speaker 1: it appears that the same level of watchfulness she practiced
Speaker 1: as a child is needed for her brother. He's been
Speaker 1: acting paranoid, calling himself a targeted individual and ascribing to
Speaker 1: out their ideas and conspiracy theories. Did alarm bells go
Speaker 1: off for you at all in terms of his behavior,
Speaker 1: which had, you know, kind of a paranoid aspect to it.
Speaker 1: You eventually look up the phrase targeted individual, and you
Speaker 1: know it takes you to this is something that people
Speaker 1: who are schizophrenic often say. Yeah. So I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that until I think sixteen, a couple of years later.
Speaker 1: I didn't put any of the pieces together any Like,
Speaker 1: nothing was flagged for me except for his comment like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's happening to me, And I just
Speaker 1: thought that sounds really big and scary, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what he means. But he's always been unconventional. I
Speaker 1: remember in high school, like he would do weird stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, like, for example, he wanted a parking spot
Speaker 1: in the senior lot and there weren't any. He got
Speaker 1: one in a side lot, and so he went in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night and painted an additional parking
Speaker 1: spot and started parking there, you know, which is funny.
Speaker 1: But he did a million things like that, and then
Speaker 1: would just be a jerk to the principle when you'd
Speaker 1: get called in and get in trouble, you'd just be
Speaker 1: like what and he'd be really belligerent, and I just
Speaker 1: remember thinking, like, why are you so weird? Like somebody
Speaker 1: wanted to fight him once and he bought boxing gloves
Speaker 1: and it's like what a box in a ring? Like
Speaker 1: what are you doing? So he just always seems so
Speaker 1: unconventional to me, and it was funny until it wasn't.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's still moving in your story
Speaker 1: is the way in which you put all these pieces
Speaker 1: together in your mom gives you videos that were transferred
Speaker 1: from film to c D family footage, family videos, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, a treasure trove for anyone who is ever
Speaker 1: trying to understand anything about their family, the role of
Speaker 1: of film, of photographs, of being able to just see
Speaker 1: with your own eyes certain things that happened or didn't happen.
Speaker 1: So it's when you when you head home, which is
Speaker 1: when you get you know, all of this like download
Speaker 1: of information. You get the films and you get the
Speaker 1: you know, you you go searching through the attic, you
Speaker 1: find all this stuff. Yeah, when I sat down to
Speaker 1: watch those videos, it just unlocked a whole world for me.
Speaker 1: Like I just was shocked to see us as a family,
Speaker 1: which it sounds so mundane, but I just hadn't I mean,
Speaker 1: we have photographs, but I hadn't seen any footage at
Speaker 1: least not in the decade or two. I just don't
Speaker 1: even remember like footage of us interacting. And so I
Speaker 1: was just struck. And then realizing the time frame of
Speaker 1: the video because I saw attention between my parents in
Speaker 1: the video, and I'm like, so when was this taken?
Speaker 1: What's going on in her lives? I called my mom.
Speaker 1: I just started talking to her more and asking her
Speaker 1: more questions and coming up with questions that I could
Speaker 1: think about, you know, like, because you don't know what
Speaker 1: you don't know and I just had no idea what
Speaker 1: to even ask, and so my mom would always say,
Speaker 1: you can ask me anything, but it's like, what do
Speaker 1: you ask when the question is not even clear in
Speaker 1: your mind and the problems that I'm clearing your mind.
Speaker 1: So that video really helped give me a starting point
Speaker 1: anyway for asking her questions about that year in particular.
Speaker 1: And then from there, you know, more questions than raveled
Speaker 1: as we as we spoke. That's such a great and
Speaker 1: interesting point, the idea of not knowing the questions. It's
Speaker 1: often you know someone will get to a point of saying,
Speaker 1: ask me anything, but if you don't know, you can't.
Speaker 1: And you write, you write in the book while you're
Speaker 1: watching the films, you write a familiar feeling bloomed in
Speaker 1: my chest, that wide eyed desperation of wanting to hold
Speaker 1: us all together. And I thought that was really moving
Speaker 1: because it was like you were accessing your child's self.
Speaker 1: You know that that even the language bloomed in my chest.
Speaker 1: But the wide eyed desperation of wanting to hold us
Speaker 1: all together is probably something that you felt as a child,
Speaker 1: without even knowing what that meant. And then one of
Speaker 1: the really beautiful things about being able to go back
Speaker 1: as as an adult who's done a lot of work
Speaker 1: and sort of reach a hand out in a way
Speaker 1: to that child is to kind of intervene in that
Speaker 1: after the fact. Yeah, I you know, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a lovely way to put it. Um, My therapist would
Speaker 1: really like that. It was kind of a surprising feeling
Speaker 1: because I think I told myself a story after their
Speaker 1: divorce about like, yeah, they weren't good for each other,
Speaker 1: they needed to be a part best for everybody. I
Speaker 1: still don't remember wanting them to stay together, but I
Speaker 1: remember being sad when they told us they were separating.
Speaker 1: And when I watched that and I felt that feeling.
Speaker 1: It was such a child feeling, like a childhood feeling
Speaker 1: of like thinking, that's something in my behavior, just like
Speaker 1: I'm watching it in my thirties. In my mind, I'm like,
Speaker 1: if I do something different, I can help them, like
Speaker 1: I can keep them together. But I think I must
Speaker 1: have just wondered that a lot to myself. How do
Speaker 1: I help them or would I do differently? You know,
Speaker 1: when I think about getting sent to my room all
Speaker 1: the time, I think, sometimes, oh, well, if I didn't
Speaker 1: make my mom so mad, maybe things would have been
Speaker 1: different or something. When there is a record of some
Speaker 1: sort um like those films were for you, you look
Speaker 1: for evidence. You know, this sort of unlocks, you know,
Speaker 1: the sluice in you. And you go to the attic
Speaker 1: and and go through photos and diaries and videos and
Speaker 1: notes and just anything that you can get your hands on,
Speaker 1: and you even you make a pilgrimage back to the
Speaker 1: old house and the shed where your mother had gone
Speaker 1: that day. In the current owners are oblivious about history,
Speaker 1: which of course is always the case. They've strung up lights,
Speaker 1: and there are these lime green chairs, and it's all
Speaker 1: kind of festive and and pretty and and of course
Speaker 1: they don't know the history. But you're there to try to,
Speaker 1: you know, dig in and find out as much as
Speaker 1: as much as you can. Ye. It's during this pivotal
Speaker 1: trip home when Ted's worrying behaviors begin to crystallize from
Speaker 1: Margaret that she's also immersing herself and the family artifacts
Speaker 1: and memorabilia. She's at a point of readiness to know more,
Speaker 1: to take in more, to know what questions to ask,
Speaker 1: what to look for in terms of signs and patterns.
Speaker 1: She and Ted are in the car together and he's
Speaker 1: acting really fearful and on edge, and so she digs
Speaker 1: into that too and begins to research what might be
Speaker 1: going on with Ted. I mean he helped me with
Speaker 1: that by seeing things like targeted individual and gain stocking.
Speaker 1: Those aren't words or terms I ever would have known
Speaker 1: to look up or think about. And he was so
Speaker 1: distraught in that car ride, like he he was wearing
Speaker 1: this hoodie and covering his face. It was just like
Speaker 1: so odd. He just looked really distressed. And so when
Speaker 1: he started using those terms, I just like walcked them
Speaker 1: in my mind and was like, I need to figure
Speaker 1: out what's going on. And that's yeah. When I started
Speaker 1: looking that scared me. And I didn't want to frighten him,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to like judge him, and I
Speaker 1: didn't quite know how to approach him with empathy. And
Speaker 1: it took me a while to figure that out. Margaret
Speaker 1: continues her immersion into the family history to work on
Speaker 1: her book, and eventually she meets up with Ted for
Speaker 1: a somewhat official interview at a coffee shop. He knows
Speaker 1: she's writing this book, and she makes the generous move
Speaker 1: as the memoirist to give him the opportunity to tell
Speaker 1: his own story, to convey his experiences in his own words.
Speaker 1: How could I possibly describe his experiences as thoroughly as
Speaker 1: he could. I wanted to give him space to do
Speaker 1: that and to feel safe about the book since he
Speaker 1: was going to be in it. After a few years
Speaker 1: has and Margaret has asked all the questions she can ask,
Speaker 1: mind all the footage and data she possibly can. It's
Speaker 1: and the book is coming out. She shares it with
Speaker 1: her mother, her father, her siblings. In a way, the
Speaker 1: very act of writing the graphic memoir is what gives
Speaker 1: both Margaret and her family the chance to excavate and
Speaker 1: dissect their memories. In the end, Margaret's family has a
Speaker 1: very loving response to the book and the awareness that
Speaker 1: for each of them the story is different and uniquely
Speaker 1: their own. I feel like the book ultimately put language
Speaker 1: to all these experiences and all these things that had happened.
Speaker 1: And I had just hours and hours and hours of
Speaker 1: conversations with my mom about her experiences, and the book
Speaker 1: gave us this space to do that. And I don't
Speaker 1: think we would have had an opportunity otherwise, because it's
Speaker 1: hard to just go to somebody's house and be like,
Speaker 1: tell me about the darkest periods of your life for
Speaker 1: no reason at all. Um. So I think everything was
Speaker 1: said that could be said, and it kind of allowed
Speaker 1: us to move on. I think from all of our
Speaker 1: anger and sadness about and maybe shame, I hope about
Speaker 1: what had happened for my dad. He you know, I
Speaker 1: asked him a few questions throughout the process, like about
Speaker 1: my grandparents, and I wasn't sure if my grandfather's thinking
Speaker 1: ted had really happened or if I had imagined that,
Speaker 1: and my dad was like, no, that absolutely happened. I
Speaker 1: would say, like, this is specifically for the book. I'm
Speaker 1: specifically asking this question for this reason, and he needed
Speaker 1: that information upfront. But he said, I want you to
Speaker 1: write whatever you want to write, but I'm not going
Speaker 1: to read it because I lived it and I don't
Speaker 1: need to go back there and I don't want and
Speaker 1: he didn't want to influence me. He's like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to read it and then change what you've said
Speaker 1: about it through my own memory, and so he just didn't,
Speaker 1: but has been really supportive. I don't feel upset about it.
Speaker 1: I feel sad that he's so sad about the past.
Speaker 1: I wish you could, you know, I'll be okay talking
Speaker 1: about it, but that might not just not happen for him.
Speaker 1: How does it feel now you're a brand new mother yourself,
Speaker 1: You just had a baby, and you've birthed this book
Speaker 1: into the world. How does it feel to have finally
Speaker 1: been able to assemble the shards of this story so
Speaker 1: that it makes something that's whole and that's coherent. And
Speaker 1: is this something you feel that you can now move
Speaker 1: on from. Is they're moving on? I think so. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel incredibly calm, Like I feel like the book
Speaker 1: gave me solace about everything that happened, the suicide attempts
Speaker 1: and my mom's mental illness and just mental illness in
Speaker 1: our family. Like there was a long period where I
Speaker 1: didn't talk about it, and then I would kind of
Speaker 1: dole it out as like a little party trick, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: my mom is bi polars, you know, like just to
Speaker 1: get attention or something. And now it feels complicated, and
Speaker 1: I feel like I have empathy for everyone in my family.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was thinking the other day looking
Speaker 1: at my baby, and I was thinking, like, I wonder
Speaker 1: if he'll want to write about whatever torments we do
Speaker 1: to him as he grows up, and I hope he
Speaker 1: feels free too, And the same with my stepdaughter, Like
Speaker 1: I just want them to feel like they can say
Speaker 1: anything they want to say about their Childhood's not perfect,
Speaker 1: you know, like no childhood is perfect, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I think it's really hard for everyone, And I hope
Speaker 1: they feel free to, like, ask us questions and talk
Speaker 1: to us about their experiences and hell in whatever ways
Speaker 1: they need to when they're older. M M Family Secrets
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly z Achor
Speaker 1: is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 1: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 1: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 1: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 1: Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find
Speaker 1: me on Instagram at Danny writer. And if you'd like
Speaker 1: to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 1: check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.