Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Most people in our community have no idea what's been
Speaker 2: going on with Danny. For years, we've brushed off the
Speaker 2: questions about what he is doing, where he is, He's
Speaker 2: in school, he's finding his way. My parents were resolute
Speaker 2: about preserving Danny's privacy. This is no one's business. We
Speaker 2: don't want people to look at Danny that way. It'll
Speaker 2: get better, and we don't want it to be held
Speaker 2: against him. Over time, people stopped asking. Years from now,
Speaker 2: it will be impossible not to question the real purpose
Speaker 2: our secrecy served. Who was protecting whom and why? Of course,
Speaker 2: we were worried about how people saw Danny. But were
Speaker 2: we keeping the
Speaker 1: Secret for ourselves too?
Speaker 2: In choosing silence? Were we also protecting our family from
Speaker 2: the stigma of mental illness? Were we hiding from our
Speaker 2: own shame and grief that a member of our quote
Speaker 2: unquote good family was so broken and lost? And what
Speaker 2: was the cost of our silence to Danny? What was
Speaker 2: it like for him to know that his life was
Speaker 2: a secret.
Speaker 3: That's Julie Fingersh, journalist and author of the recent memoir Stay,
Speaker 3: A Story of family, love and other traumas. Julie's is
Speaker 3: a story of not one, but two happy families. But
Speaker 3: coming from a happy family does not protect us from loss,
Speaker 3: from grief, from trauma so intense that it becomes buried
Speaker 3: within us. All we can do is attempt to make
Speaker 3: meaning out of what life hands us. And by the way,
Speaker 3: that's a lot. I'm Dani Shapiro, and this is family secrets,
Speaker 3: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
Speaker 3: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2: I grew up in Prarie Village, Kansas, in a Jewish
Speaker 2: community within a very non Jewish community, and.
Speaker 1: The landscape, the real landscape for me, was
Speaker 2: Just one of love and community and safety. My parents
Speaker 2: had and have a wonderful marriage. My dad was a lawyer,
Speaker 2: he worked very hard. My mom was a homemaker if
Speaker 2: they called it back then. And I was the middle
Speaker 2: child with an older brother, Paul, and a younger brother, Danny.
Speaker 2: It was a much simpler life than our kids have today.
Speaker 2: It was just homework and play and family time and
Speaker 2: friends time, and a very idyllic life in most ways.
Speaker 2: Paul's three years older than me, and Danny's was three
Speaker 2: years younger. Than me, and so I think part of
Speaker 2: what became so much part of the story was that
Speaker 2: Paul was the cool kid who was off doing his
Speaker 2: cool things with his cool friends. And Danny and I
Speaker 2: were very much a team and partners in play and
Speaker 2: always spent a lot of time together. Danny was the
Speaker 2: beautiful boy. He was shy. He had what I always
Speaker 2: think of as planet white eyes. He had these big
Speaker 2: brown eyes and bushy brown hair, and his physicality is
Speaker 2: so vivid.
Speaker 1: In my mind.
Speaker 2: He was always tan, he always was very lean, and he.
Speaker 1: Was just very sweet. He was very sweet, and we
Speaker 1: used to call him the noticer. He just noticed everything.
Speaker 2: We spent a lot of unstructured time together. We would
Speaker 2: often on weekends come together and be like what.
Speaker 1: Should we do?
Speaker 2: And we'd rip up little pieces of paper and write
Speaker 2: things like all the different ideas like lemonade stand and
Speaker 2: picnic in the park, and riding our bikes around the
Speaker 2: neighborhood and judging the houses of deciding which ones we'd want.
Speaker 1: To live in.
Speaker 2: We were really close and I think an anchor for
Speaker 2: each other. You know, have school and you go out
Speaker 2: into the world into school, and even though it was
Speaker 2: a small school and it was a Jewish day school actually,
Speaker 2: and reported to be very community oriented. There's still just
Speaker 2: the usual dynamics of classes and hierarchies and all that,
Speaker 2: and it was like always for me. I think about
Speaker 2: how coming home opening my front door. I can still
Speaker 2: hear the sound of my front door closing, and it
Speaker 2: was like you were home. It was a sanctuary and
Speaker 2: Danny was a part of that sanctuary for me.
Speaker 1: We just could be totally ourselves.
Speaker 2: I think as a kid, you're not really aware so
Speaker 2: much of all the dynamics the social stratus.
Speaker 1: But I was always very clear that.
Speaker 2: My family was part of a very strong and loving
Speaker 2: and safe community. My dad came from very modest beginnings
Speaker 2: and he became a very accomplished lawyer, and what I
Speaker 2: can remember, I would go to his office, his law
Speaker 2: office on weekends often, and one summer I worked there.
Speaker 2: And he was just very revered in our community and
Speaker 2: still is is just known to have a lot of integrity.
Speaker 2: He's just very honest and very straight up. And my
Speaker 2: mom is beautiful. She's beautiful, and she's dynamic, and she's
Speaker 2: a magnet for people. So in my mind, my parents
Speaker 2: were like giants in our community and whenever we were out,
Speaker 2: they would just be approached and it was just clear
Speaker 2: they were beloved. My family was really, I think, one
Speaker 2: of the families that was in the center of that
Speaker 2: Jewish community in lots of different ways.
Speaker 3: When Julie is a senior in high school, Danny is
Speaker 3: a freshman, their older brother, Paul is a junior in college.
Speaker 3: What's happening to Danny around this time? Begins? As Julie
Speaker 3: calls it, like a whisper.
Speaker 2: It was very subtle. As I remember it, everything changed
Speaker 2: when he changed schools and we all had gone to
Speaker 2: a Jewish day school and then we all transferred to
Speaker 2: a private high school. We were very much minorities in
Speaker 2: terms of our Judaism, and we really were from a
Speaker 2: different world. So we really were kind of worked out
Speaker 2: of a cocoon and thrown into this very status oriented,
Speaker 2: wealthy elitist place where socially it was really rough. And
Speaker 2: I would say it wasn't that rough for Paul. It
Speaker 2: was rough for me, and I think it was really
Speaker 2: rough for Danny. So what I recall the way it
Speaker 2: started was he started at the school and it was
Speaker 2: hard to distinguish. I think we all would assume that's
Speaker 2: a hard transition to make, but it was almost like
Speaker 2: he wasn't able to make it.
Speaker 1: He became with.
Speaker 2: John and all the things that he and I used
Speaker 2: to do together. We would often after school, we'd come
Speaker 2: together and just go take the dogs for a walk
Speaker 2: or hang out in the library. He didn't want to
Speaker 2: do those things anymore. And so I think at the
Speaker 2: time we thought, well, it's the new school, and then
Speaker 2: he's been not a lescent. This is just a hard time,
Speaker 2: and I certainly had a hard time, and I think
Speaker 2: then he just gradually retreated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the old sort of frog and boiling water
Speaker 3: in a way exactly.
Speaker 2: It was absolutely that, And I think that's an apt
Speaker 2: description because for so long we did not understand the
Speaker 2: line between adolescens and something much bigger.
Speaker 3: After she graduates from high school, Julie goes off to
Speaker 3: Swarsmore College, following in the footsteps of her older brother Paul.
Speaker 3: Now Danny is the only child at home. Julie doesn't
Speaker 3: share her worries about Danny with her new college friends,
Speaker 3: not because it's a secret, but because it's private. The
Speaker 3: men and women in Julie's family have different ways of
Speaker 3: dealing with the crisis. Julie and her mom do talk
Speaker 3: about it all the time, keeping it in the family.
Speaker 3: Julie's dad and Paul tend to keep their feelings to themselves.
Speaker 3: This split screen existence in Julie's early college life exacts
Speaker 3: a cost, and Julie begins binge eating.
Speaker 2: What's interesting is that at the time, we would never
Speaker 2: have considered it a secret. I think I was really
Speaker 2: raised in a culture of privacy, so that on one hand,
Speaker 2: we were very as a family, were outgoing and warm
Speaker 2: and embracing. But then there's a line. There's a line,
Speaker 2: and I think that when Danny started to retreat and
Speaker 2: really started to struggle, it was really intuitive to us
Speaker 2: that it just wasn't anyone's business and why would we
Speaker 2: share that, Like he wouldn't want that to be shared.
Speaker 2: And I think it's again, it's the frog in the
Speaker 2: boiling water. It's like along the way, it went from
Speaker 2: privacy to secrecy.
Speaker 1: And I almost don't.
Speaker 2: Know, I can't pinpoint when that happened, but I think
Speaker 2: it was probably when things went from just retreating to
Speaker 2: he was having a really hard time and things started
Speaker 2: happening and the binge eating. At the time, I had no,
Speaker 2: I made no connection between that and what was going
Speaker 2: on in home at all. And then in terms of
Speaker 2: the gender and the family dynamics, I think it was
Speaker 2: an extension of who we are as people. My mom
Speaker 2: and I are loquacious and we are big processors, and
Speaker 2: we spoke to each other about it primarily because we
Speaker 2: were preserving the family's privacy, and my dad and my
Speaker 2: brother they aren't big talkers about struggle at all, and
Speaker 2: so it was this natural rift between how we coped differently.
Speaker 1: And then in time, I think.
Speaker 2: The secrets and the privacy starts to do its insidious work.
Speaker 3: Danny's condition worsens. There are some good periods, bringing the
Speaker 3: family a modicum of hope, but the stretches of stability
Speaker 3: are rare, and in the wake of this hope comes
Speaker 3: fear and defeat. Danny decides to visit Israel, a huge
Speaker 3: relief to the family that he's up for such a trip,
Speaker 3: but it's also laced with dread. They all hold their breath,
Speaker 3: wondering is this going to help? Is he going to
Speaker 3: be okay?
Speaker 1: And he isn't.
Speaker 3: He comes home and starts exhibiting new levels of out
Speaker 3: of control destructiveness, smashing windows violent episodes. These episodes signal
Speaker 3: to the family that maybe his condition will require some
Speaker 3: sort of medical intervention. He does get medically assessed, but
Speaker 3: receives no diagnosis, aren't sure how to diagnose him. And
Speaker 3: then graduation comes along. High school graduation typically a joyous affair,
Speaker 3: but for Danny and his family, not so much.
Speaker 2: He walked across the stage with his gown unzipped, unlike
Speaker 2: anybody else, and with kind of the frozen look on
Speaker 2: his face. It was like this sense of foreboding of
Speaker 2: the future. Graduation is supposed to be this moment where
Speaker 2: you're there, you did it, You're ready to jump into
Speaker 2: the rest of your wonderful life that you've been working for.
Speaker 2: And the way that ended, where when we went back,
Speaker 2: when they filed off stage and all the parents and
Speaker 2: families got together to await the arrival of the graduates,
Speaker 2: and I'll just never forget that sense of dread and
Speaker 2: almost denial.
Speaker 1: Is he really not coming?
Speaker 2: Is he really And just that failing of he didn't
Speaker 2: come and what did that mean?
Speaker 1: What did that mean? Where did he go? And what's
Speaker 1: going to happen next?
Speaker 2: It was this feeling of the hope that he was
Speaker 2: able to do these things, and then there would be
Speaker 2: like a dive that was deeper than where it had started.
Speaker 2: And it just was like this cycle of hope in
Speaker 2: psyching ourselves up, like he's going to be okay, and
Speaker 2: he went to Israel, but he'd made it through his graduation,
Speaker 2: and then when he didn't show up, there was just
Speaker 2: such a sense of I.
Speaker 1: Think fear, honestly fear.
Speaker 2: I think we all were just afraid of what that
Speaker 2: meant for all of us and for him, mostly in
Speaker 2: his future.
Speaker 3: And then that fear is just exacerbated dramatically when he
Speaker 3: gets into an altercation with your father. Your father characteristically
Speaker 3: loses his temper and out of just parental fear and
Speaker 3: huge worry for Danny, and Danny grabs a knife.
Speaker 2: It was surreal that could happen in our kitchen, which
Speaker 2: was the center of our home. My mom is an
Speaker 2: amazing cook. We all spent so much of our time
Speaker 2: in our childhoods around the family table, have bought holidays,
Speaker 2: doing arts and crafts together as kids, doing our homework,
Speaker 2: and the fact that we could be in that same
Speaker 2: space and that could happen.
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 3: Danny continues to spiral and is admitted to Meninger Psychiatric Hospital. Julie,
Speaker 3: in the meantime, is trying to reconcile her two realities,
Speaker 3: her brother's deteriorating health and her own bright future. She
Speaker 3: graduates from college and gets a job as an editorial
Speaker 3: assistant at BusinessWeek. She moves to New York City, meets
Speaker 3: the man who will become her husband, and locks into
Speaker 3: the beginnings of a rich and dynamic life, a burgeoning
Speaker 3: career as a journalist, a wonderful partner, and yet the
Speaker 3: other reality of her brother's condition is something that continues
Speaker 3: to plague her.
Speaker 2: On one hand, it was this double life of and
Speaker 2: in New York City, I'm living a dream. I'm going
Speaker 2: to be a journalist. I really just I just had
Speaker 2: that sort of naive idea of I'm just going to
Speaker 2: do it and I'm going to be successful, and it's
Speaker 2: that was the dream before going into it. And at
Speaker 2: the same time this was happening with Danny, and so
Speaker 2: there was just that double life. And then there was
Speaker 2: the double life of my life in front of the
Speaker 2: people I was living among and with, and then my
Speaker 2: life behind the scenes on the phone all the time
Speaker 2: with my mom and Danny and my dad and Paul too.
Speaker 1: That it was like there were these two double lives.
Speaker 2: And in some ways it was a refuge to be
Speaker 2: able to be out in the world and not have
Speaker 2: to have the people in my life know what was
Speaker 2: going on behind. There was a relief in that, but
Speaker 2: there was a cost to it too, and in many ways,
Speaker 2: like the artist part, I think for siblings, when there's
Speaker 2: a sibling that struggles, is that it's just impossible to
Speaker 2: believe that your life going well is not making their
Speaker 2: life worse. It was just impossible to not draw that line.
Speaker 2: And so in the back of my mind that pulled
Speaker 2: and pulled at me, and.
Speaker 1: It was like every success.
Speaker 2: I can remember my first National byline, I don't even
Speaker 2: know that.
Speaker 1: I want to tell Danny it was like he was
Speaker 1: in a mental.
Speaker 3: Hospital, and I want to say too, you include in
Speaker 3: your book some of Danny's notes and letters to you,
Speaker 3: and he was like, so your cheerleader and so seemingly
Speaker 3: without a malicious or envious bone in his body.
Speaker 1: You're right.
Speaker 3: So this wasn't coming from the kind of sibling thing
Speaker 3: where it might be like, oh, you're getting all the
Speaker 3: good stuff and look at me. It was the opposite
Speaker 3: of that, when there's that terrible cat of if this
Speaker 3: is going to be good for me, then somehow that
Speaker 3: means it's going to be.
Speaker 1: Bad for you.
Speaker 2: I think that the phrase the terrible calculus is so
Speaker 2: apt because in some ways to me, it was even
Speaker 2: more painful that he never led on that he was jealous,
Speaker 2: or that he looked at my life with envy, and
Speaker 2: that was such a reflection of him and how good
Speaker 2: he was and how sweet he was, And that just
Speaker 2: made it worse to me because I knew, or I
Speaker 2: thought I knew that. How could it not The contrast
Speaker 2: between our lives was just getting greater and greater.
Speaker 3: After a year's stay with no improvement at Menninger, Danny's
Speaker 3: doctors decided to try ECT electroconvulsive therapy, and scary as
Speaker 3: this is, there is again that hope that maybe this
Speaker 3: will be the thing that helps. Unfortunately it doesn't. Danny's
Speaker 3: deterioration accelerates. Now it's May fifteenth, nineteen ninety six. Julie
Speaker 3: and Dave are married and living in New York. They
Speaker 3: don't have kids yet. The phone rings at one in
Speaker 3: the morning and it's Julie's brother Paul.
Speaker 2: At this point, Danny had been struggling since he was
Speaker 2: fourteen and now he was twenty seven. And so at
Speaker 2: the time, I was on the phone with a friend
Speaker 2: of mine late and it was call waiting back then,
Speaker 2: and I saw it was my brother's number, and I thought,
Speaker 2: oh my god. I mean, it was like I just
Speaker 2: there was nothing else that could have been. And I
Speaker 2: think that's one of those moments in your life where
Speaker 2: it's like a before and after and you just go
Speaker 2: into this state of unreality. And I clicked over and
Speaker 2: my brother told me, just like that, Danny's going to die.
Speaker 2: And I can just remember people talk about out a
Speaker 2: body experience, and that is how it was, and this
Speaker 2: feeling of my mind refused to hold it, even though
Speaker 2: in some ways it was like your nightmare coming true
Speaker 2: and all those years of imagining it and like suddenly
Speaker 2: you're standing in it.
Speaker 1: And yeah.
Speaker 2: We talked for a few minutes, and I asked where
Speaker 2: my parents, like if they knew what had happened, And
Speaker 2: what I remember is just that he said.
Speaker 1: You got to convince them not to go there.
Speaker 2: At that time, he was at a halfway house and
Speaker 2: he actually was doing really well. He had a job
Speaker 2: and he was really optimistic and things were looking up.
Speaker 2: And he came home one day and greeted the guys
Speaker 2: that he lived with and said, I in it hanging
Speaker 2: to go upstairs and take a shower before dinner. And
Speaker 2: he went up and what the fireman said was, you know,
Speaker 2: he shared a bathroom and there was an aerosol can
Speaker 2: Deodora and Danny had always I mean, it was sort
Speaker 2: of poetic because he had always played with fire. He'd
Speaker 2: always been fascinated with that. It was something like we
Speaker 2: did as kids.
Speaker 1: We would use.
Speaker 2: Magnifying glasses in the sun and burn sticks with it.
Speaker 2: And then later on there was that Saint Elmo's Fire,
Speaker 2: that movie that you may remember where Rob Low sprays
Speaker 2: aerosol and then lights it.
Speaker 1: And so what happened was Danny was playing with.
Speaker 2: It and he lit it with a lighter and the
Speaker 2: cant exploded and because it was.
Speaker 1: A spray, it just exploded on him.
Speaker 2: And what the fireman said is that they didn't think
Speaker 2: it was a suicide. They didn't think he could have
Speaker 2: known that was going to happen. But I think that
Speaker 2: for us there was some comfort in that but I
Speaker 2: think there was also or I'll speak for myself, not
Speaker 2: my rest of my family. It was a feeling of like,
Speaker 2: I know that in some recess of his mind, and
Speaker 2: particularly since he had attempted taking his life before that,
Speaker 2: in some recess of his mind, that he was capable
Speaker 2: of that and certainly capable of tempting it, and I
Speaker 2: think had attempted it, and that day it was a calculation.
Speaker 2: I think he couldn't have known. But he was taken
Speaker 2: to the hospital and he said to the guys that
Speaker 2: were his housemates were out there with them, and he
Speaker 2: was still conscious, and he said, oh, hey, we'll see
Speaker 2: you guys later.
Speaker 1: He didn't think he was going to die.
Speaker 2: And I think that once he got to the hospital
Speaker 2: it was clear that the Barns were too severe to
Speaker 2: save him.
Speaker 3: Described to me the landscape of the family that you
Speaker 3: and Dave made together in those years following this staggering loss.
Speaker 2: So we had moved, we'd moved from Boston to San Francisco.
Speaker 2: Dave was doing a fellowship to be a doctor, a specialist,
Speaker 2: and it was supposed to be for a year, and
Speaker 2: Danny had died three years before, and it was before
Speaker 2: our daughter was born that he died, so our daughter Jesse.
Speaker 2: When we moved it was a year and a half,
Speaker 2: and I would say, for me the landscape, the feeling
Speaker 2: I had was I came to California giddy, Yes, so
Speaker 2: happy to be somewhere new, and happy to be somewhere
Speaker 2: exotic and foreign and beautiful. Most of all, happy to
Speaker 2: move to a place where no one knew about Danny
Speaker 2: or what had happened. And it was an amazing relief
Speaker 2: and joy to start our family, to grow our family there.
Speaker 2: And it's crazy because when I line my childhood up
Speaker 2: with our kids, it's so much the same. It was,
Speaker 2: though idyllic. We just had so much fun. Our son
Speaker 2: Sam was born three years later. We ended up staying.
Speaker 2: In part it was supposed to be for a year,
Speaker 2: but I think we ended up staying because life was
Speaker 2: so joyous there, and I'm sure no small measure, because
Speaker 2: it was light without history, without other family there as
Speaker 2: a reminder or as just a network. It was just
Speaker 2: like we were reinventing ourselves. But it was so much
Speaker 2: the same in the sense of what a loving and happy,
Speaker 2: an idyllic childhood our kids had and we had as
Speaker 2: new parents and young parents.
Speaker 1: That was a landscape.
Speaker 4: It was just a happy, safe, revelatory, light, beautiful life
Speaker 4: we created as a young family.
Speaker 3: Though Julie relishes in this revelatory and beautiful family life,
Speaker 3: she also runs up against feelings of despair, wondering if
Speaker 3: she did the right thing by choosing to stay home
Speaker 3: when her kids were born. She writes, I've been spearheading
Speaker 3: community projects, meeting with CEOs, sharing an events stage with
Speaker 3: Secretary of State Colon Powell, fielding questions from the press.
Speaker 3: And now now I sat cross legged in a circle
Speaker 3: of new mothers, singing, ring around the rosie, with a
Speaker 3: drooling baby on my lap. Now I was Jesse's mom,
Speaker 3: walking around with little cascades of dry vomit down my shirt.
Speaker 3: It was clear before I was many things. Executive director, writer,
Speaker 3: strategic partner, program developer, fundraiser, community leader. Now I was
Speaker 3: one thing. I lived in, a seven day a week
Speaker 3: world of sing songy, high pitched tones. Conversations were limited
Speaker 3: to baby talk, days of all the same thing caregiving.
Speaker 3: No matter how I sliced it or how much I
Speaker 3: loved being with Jesse, a stay at home mom was
Speaker 3: a fraught designation.
Speaker 2: It was a big decision for me to stay at
Speaker 2: home because I had always envisioned myself I.
Speaker 1: Say, worshiped at the altered productivity.
Speaker 2: That was what I longed to value and achievement, and
Speaker 2: that is also a very Jewish thing, and so the
Speaker 2: idea of giving that up, it was like, then, who
Speaker 2: am I going to be.
Speaker 1: Like besides a mom?
Speaker 2: And I had this one seminal conversation with my brother
Speaker 2: who basically said, you have your whole life to work,
Speaker 2: and you have the privilege of being able to raise
Speaker 2: your kids.
Speaker 1: Why would you say no to that? You could always
Speaker 1: go back to work.
Speaker 2: And I think at the time I remember this sense
Speaker 2: of he's right. On a logistical level, he's right. It
Speaker 2: was also really hard for me to justify staying working
Speaker 2: as a writer. At that time when I left, I
Speaker 2: was running a nonprofit agency, but I assumed I would
Speaker 2: go back to being a writer at some point and
Speaker 2: the money I made it would cover a fraction of
Speaker 2: what childcare was going to be. So it was to
Speaker 2: me it felt like, if I stay at work, that
Speaker 2: is a pure indulgence that is for my own development
Speaker 2: and self actualization, and how can I put that in
Speaker 2: front of our children's welfare, and so that is what
Speaker 2: drove the decision.
Speaker 1: And I think at the beginning it was such a joy.
Speaker 2: It was like this guilty relief of, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I'm Jesse's a baby, Jesse's a toddler. Life is so
Speaker 2: crystal clear that days were structured, the priorities were clear.
Speaker 2: You feed them, you burp them, you poop them, you
Speaker 2: go to the playground. It was a relief, and I
Speaker 2: think what happened was it became fraught the older the
Speaker 2: kids got, the more I immersed myself in that California world,
Speaker 2: which was a lot of moms who had given up
Speaker 2: their careers to be home with their kids. It was
Speaker 2: just hard to imagine going back. But I think inside
Speaker 2: there was always this voice that was saying, what are
Speaker 2: you doing? Why are you giving everything up?
Speaker 1: Who was I?
Speaker 2: What happened to that crazy, like ambitiously obsessed person that
Speaker 2: I had been for the first thirty years in my life.
Speaker 2: So then fast forward, Jesse was a senior in high
Speaker 2: school and Sam was a freshman in high school, and
Speaker 2: Jess started feeling this incredibly intense feeling of dread and
Speaker 2: anxiety and grief. For the longest time, I thought well,
Speaker 2: this is just this is what it is. It's like
Speaker 2: any parent of a child leaving the nest is going
Speaker 2: to be sad, but it felt like so much.
Speaker 1: More than that.
Speaker 2: And the day that it came to a head for
Speaker 2: me was Jesse was a senior in high school. Like
Speaker 2: I was saying, is like she was headed for the stars.
Speaker 2: At that age. She had not gone through the Ringers. Socially,
Speaker 2: she had really made her way with a lot of ease.
Speaker 2: There had been terrible things that had happened at her
Speaker 2: school outside of her, but in terms of who she
Speaker 2: was and how she did. Sue was storing and one
Speaker 2: day she came in to our house and I was
Speaker 2: cooking chicken soup, and she tossed her wallet on top of.
Speaker 1: My onions and said, guess who called? And I said who?
Speaker 1: She said, the Secret Service.
Speaker 2: And at that time it was actually that summer, the
Speaker 2: summer after her senior year, the summer right before she
Speaker 2: was supposed to go to college, she was interning for
Speaker 2: the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Speaker 1: So she'd come home from her internship and said that.
Speaker 2: And I said, what Secret Service? Yeah, So it turns
Speaker 2: out she said she was one of two interns chosen
Speaker 2: to be part of Hillary's motorcade to take her around
Speaker 2: to Tim Cook's house and all big wigs to fundraise,
Speaker 2: and I was so proud and I just was looked
Speaker 2: at her and she was shining and so happy, and.
Speaker 1: I was so proud.
Speaker 2: And then it was like I can so vividly feel
Speaker 2: that underneath there was like this crest, like this wave
Speaker 2: of envy.
Speaker 1: That I had for her.
Speaker 2: And as a parent, you're allowed to feel a lot
Speaker 2: of things, but you're definitely not allowed to feel jealous
Speaker 2: of your own kid. This is not something we talk about.
Speaker 2: We can stay jokingly I want to come back as
Speaker 2: my kid in my next life. Okay, that's one thing,
Speaker 2: but you're not really allowed to say I am jealous
Speaker 2: of my child. And that is what I was feeling.
Speaker 2: And that's when I knew something was very wrong, as
Speaker 2: that feeling kept coming up more and more as it
Speaker 2: like the march of time towards one shoes leaving for college.
Speaker 1: So that was the stage for our leaving and me feeling.
Speaker 2: Very like tortured and guilty and not able to talk
Speaker 2: about I mean talk about secrets.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: That was a secret.
Speaker 2: I told my one of my best friends, my running partner,
Speaker 2: and I think that's it for a long time, not Dave.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think I did.
Speaker 2: I think it was a long time before I told
Speaker 2: Dave because I was ashamed.
Speaker 1: I was horrified.
Speaker 2: This is like the antithesis, and not to mention like,
Speaker 2: I am so close to my daughter. We were one
Speaker 2: of the mother daughters who people looked at as people
Speaker 2: would always say, oh my god, you and Jesse.
Speaker 1: You're so lucky, so lucky.
Speaker 2: How she talks to you, and how you guys have
Speaker 2: such a close relationship, which I always felt so then
Speaker 2: to feel this feeling of envy.
Speaker 1: For her was just so awful.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. Jesse goes off to Northwestern, but
Speaker 3: before she does, she turns to Julie one day and asks, mom,
Speaker 3: how are we going to do this? They're so close,
Speaker 3: so used to knowing the daily minutia of each other's lives,
Speaker 3: how literally, Jesse wonders, how are they going to navigate
Speaker 3: being so far apart phone calls, texts, FaceTime. This is
Speaker 3: always a huge moment between parents and their kids going
Speaker 3: off to college, but in the case of Jesse and Julie,
Speaker 3: it looms particularly large.
Speaker 2: The weekend we got to Northwestern for her orientation. She
Speaker 2: started having stomach pain and having to go to the
Speaker 2: bathroom a lot, and it got dramatically worse within a
Speaker 2: couple of days, to the point where on moving day,
Speaker 2: which is supposed to be this very classic iconic day
Speaker 2: of the first day of the rest of your life,
Speaker 2: this new phase, she had to stay in the hotel
Speaker 2: because she just couldn't get out of bed, and Dave
Speaker 2: and I and Sam helped to set up her room
Speaker 2: and did it on her own.
Speaker 1: And then what happened is.
Speaker 2: That the day before we left her there, they have
Speaker 2: this ceremony called the March through the Arch and all
Speaker 2: the kids walk through this and we saw her and
Speaker 2: it was so clear that she was in pain, but
Speaker 2: the health services had said it was gastronritis and that
Speaker 2: was going on. And then we met at the field
Speaker 2: and her fists were bald up, and I just remember
Speaker 2: thinking like, oh my god, are we really going to
Speaker 2: leave her like this?
Speaker 1: We're really leaving her like this?
Speaker 2: And we just gently said, Jess, are you sure you
Speaker 2: don't want.
Speaker 4: Us to stay for a couple extra days just to
Speaker 4: help you.
Speaker 2: No, I don't want you to just go and fine,
Speaker 2: and so we did. And it's funny because, honestly, like
Speaker 2: until this moment, it's such a bizarre parallel that never
Speaker 2: occurred to me that just in the way that it
Speaker 2: was Danny's graduation and this thing happened that was so
Speaker 2: it was like foreboding. It was like a foreshadowing of
Speaker 2: what was going to happen in the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: It was the same thing on that orientation day. It
Speaker 2: was such an emblematic moment standing in a hot field
Speaker 2: and seeing that she was sick and feeling should we
Speaker 2: stay or should we go? And the tension with adult
Speaker 2: children that all they want is to be independent in
Speaker 2: that moment, and you, as a parent, your job is
Speaker 2: to support that.
Speaker 1: And yet when your child is clearly.
Speaker 2: Something has gone wrong, your instinct is you can't leave them.
Speaker 2: And it's like there's no playbook for that. When they're sick,
Speaker 2: you know, when they're fine, you just know you leave.
Speaker 2: Doesn't matter that they're sad, doesn't matter that you're sad.
Speaker 2: But when they're sick, do you leave?
Speaker 1: But we did.
Speaker 3: It's so interesting to me that to me those parallels,
Speaker 3: whether or not that was something that you were conscious of,
Speaker 3: is that there was this kind of weird foreshadowing parallel.
Speaker 3: You weren't conscious of it, but it was there, and
Speaker 3: in a way like its own secret, it was present.
Speaker 2: I am so freaked out by that discovery right now.
Speaker 2: I can't believe I never saw that.
Speaker 3: It's a secret you were keeping from yourself, because the
Speaker 3: only reason why I know it is because you wrote it,
Speaker 3: and you wrote it in a way that allowed me
Speaker 3: to see it.
Speaker 1: It's so weird.
Speaker 3: Just a week after arriving at Northwestern, Jesse calls her
Speaker 3: mom with an update. Things have worsened.
Speaker 2: She called me and she said there was blood in
Speaker 2: the toilet, and so I went back, I got on
Speaker 2: the planet, went to the hospital, and she was diagnosed
Speaker 2: with ulterative colitis and they put her on a medication.
Speaker 2: You seem to respond to it, and then that was
Speaker 2: it for a while. We went back to our roles of.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're independent, and wow, look at you.
Speaker 2: You made it through your first hurdle, and we made
Speaker 2: it through your first hurdle, and now we're going to
Speaker 2: let you live your life. And Jesse was very clear
Speaker 2: she didn't really want us to be asking her about
Speaker 2: it all the time. She wanted to focus on her
Speaker 2: new life. But it was really interesting though that when
Speaker 2: she was in the hospital. When I think about secrets
Speaker 2: and I think about how different this.
Speaker 1: Current family of mine handled.
Speaker 2: The situation differently than we did with Danny, is that
Speaker 2: I can remember her being in the hospital and she
Speaker 2: was missing her first week of college, and these people
Speaker 2: didn't know her.
Speaker 1: This was a whole new world.
Speaker 2: And so listen to her talking on the phone to
Speaker 2: herra and to her new roommate and to the new
Speaker 2: people she met before orientations started.
Speaker 1: And the way she was already.
Speaker 2: Integrating this new part of her life and being droll
Speaker 2: about it with a sense of humor, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I just figured my first week of college, I just
Speaker 2: might as well start off in the hospital. And this
Speaker 2: feeling of not really wanting to show or feel or
Speaker 2: own or tell what was like the severity of what
Speaker 2: had just happened and what was ahead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's another beautiful passage from your book that I
Speaker 3: just want to read here, because from this point on,
Speaker 3: as the months go by and you're not talking about
Speaker 3: it out of respecting her independence and young adulthood, and
Speaker 3: she's got under control, her condition worsens takes a real turn,
Speaker 3: and there's this passage that you wrote, which is for
Speaker 3: months now, she'd carried out our family legacy of pursuing, prevailing, achieving,
Speaker 3: but the family legacy had failed to win this one,
Speaker 3: and a new teacher, the teacher of illness, was about
Speaker 3: to prevail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly true.
Speaker 3: Perhaps partly in preparation for this next chapter in her life,
Speaker 3: Julia signed up for a writing retreat in Montana. She's
Speaker 3: thinking that it might be just what she needs, a push,
Speaker 3: a deadline, a community of other writers to help her
Speaker 3: get started again.
Speaker 1: And so I signed up.
Speaker 2: My plan was, We're going to drop Jess off at
Speaker 2: school and a week later, I'm going to start over.
Speaker 2: I'm going to start a new part of my life
Speaker 2: and try to reconnect with the writer I used to be.
Speaker 1: And the irony of Jesse got thick.
Speaker 2: It was the week before I was supposed to go
Speaker 2: on that retreat, and I can remember feeling I was
Speaker 2: there in the hospital with her. The retreat was supposed
Speaker 2: to start four days later, and I thought, wow, I
Speaker 2: obviously I'm not going to go if she needs me here,
Speaker 2: And I remember that thinking for the first time, it
Speaker 2: was the first time I connected the story of Danny
Speaker 2: with Jesse and how the irony and that the inner
Speaker 2: conflict of my primary feeling was fear about Jesse and
Speaker 2: what would happen, and wanting to save her and wanting
Speaker 2: to make everything okay, and then this tiny voice in
Speaker 2: the back of my mind going, but what about the
Speaker 2: rest of your life? Are you putting that side?
Speaker 1: Again?
Speaker 2: I wasn't even conscious of it. It really didn't become
Speaker 2: conscious till much later, But I can see looking back
Speaker 2: that that got put in motion, and she responded to
Speaker 2: that medication and she was ready to go back to school.
Speaker 2: And I went to that retreat a couple days late,
Speaker 2: and then that was where that next part of my
Speaker 2: journey began, of just like the part of my life
Speaker 2: that was just for me, which I hadn't really touched
Speaker 2: since I was in my twenties, you know.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting, Julie, like, it's so easily could have
Speaker 3: been otherwise, the terrible calculus of basically, I don't get
Speaker 3: to have this, I don't get to have this. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to get to have my own identity that's
Speaker 3: just mine in a way, the parallels are really extraordinary.
Speaker 2: And I think the worst part is that I wasn't
Speaker 2: really conscious when Danny was sick or when Jesse got of.
Speaker 2: I didn't have the fully developed thought, Oh, I guess
Speaker 2: I'm never gonna have something on my own. All I
Speaker 2: felt was fear and dread for these two people I loved,
Speaker 2: and then this nagging feeling of guilt that I was
Speaker 2: even thinking about myself. It was that same thing with Danny,
Speaker 2: like how dare I think about my little writing career
Speaker 2: when he's failing it? And with Jesse it was like
Speaker 2: who cares about like my little writing retreat? But there
Speaker 2: is that tiny little part of you that wants that
Speaker 2: voice of don't forget me.
Speaker 3: A few months after the first incident of Jesse's bleeding,
Speaker 3: it seems the medication is working and that everything's under control.
Speaker 3: But then Julian Dave get another call. Jesse's ulcerative colitis
Speaker 3: has worsened again. She may be facing major surgery. That
Speaker 3: possibility quickly turns into an inevitability as Jesse undergoes an
Speaker 3: emergency procedure to remove her colon. This is a shocking development,
Speaker 3: destabilizing for anyone, but all the more so for a young,
Speaker 3: incredibly vital person. Jesse will then undergo two more reconstructive
Speaker 3: surgeries over time in order to allow her to have
Speaker 3: a quote unquote normal life. Jesse comes through these surgeries
Speaker 3: with flying colors. She is incredibly resilient and determined. She
Speaker 3: takes some time off from Northwestern to navigate her recovery,
Speaker 3: and the family is together once again. They even get
Speaker 3: a puppy that evergreen harbinger of joy and playfulness. But
Speaker 3: Julie has a lot of self examination to do. There
Speaker 3: has been so much trauma, trauma on top of trauma
Speaker 3: past seeping into the present. She begins a course of
Speaker 3: therapy called e MDR that has come up before on
Speaker 3: this podcast. It stands for eye movement, Desensitization and reprocessing.
Speaker 3: One of the hallmarks of this therapy is that it
Speaker 3: allows the patient access to memory with no narrative. It's
Speaker 3: not about connecting the dots. It creates the possibility of
Speaker 3: a real breakthrough, and this happens for Julie. The dots
Speaker 3: connect tell me what Jesse had known about her uncle,
Speaker 3: who she never knew.
Speaker 2: Jesse and Sam both knew I had a brother. They
Speaker 2: knew Danny's name, and seeing lots of pictures and heard
Speaker 2: lots of stories about him. But what they knew was
Speaker 2: that he died in an accident, and that's really what
Speaker 2: they knew. We never talked about depression, We never talked
Speaker 2: about mental illness. And when I think about the architecture
Speaker 2: of family secrets and what drives it, what drives you
Speaker 2: to build them, and what drives you to have this
Speaker 2: engine behind them, the whole concept of a family secret,
Speaker 2: in some ways I recoil it that because it almost
Speaker 2: feels as if you really understood the implies patience. But
Speaker 2: for us, it was like, I didn't want my kids
Speaker 2: to know what happened because it was horrible, it was traumatic,
Speaker 2: and why they were kids? Why do they have to
Speaker 2: know that? Why do they have to be burdened? Why
Speaker 2: do they have to be scared to know that my brother,
Speaker 2: that this happened to someone so close to them. But
Speaker 2: I think what happened was this secrecy came to roost.
Speaker 2: And I think it's so interesting because Jesse in this
Speaker 2: story really became a teacher to me because she with
Speaker 2: her illness, she made a choice early on that she
Speaker 2: was not going to keep it a total secret, partially
Speaker 2: just because she physically couldn't. So you can't tell she's sick,
Speaker 2: but if you're close enough to her, you'll know by
Speaker 2: her behaviors that she needs certain accommodations. But I think
Speaker 2: that she taught me that it was just damaging. I
Speaker 2: was damaging to hide it from my kids. It was
Speaker 2: hard to know when they'd be ready to hear it.
Speaker 2: But I think when the moment came where we talked
Speaker 2: about her illness and she was saying, mom, please, it
Speaker 2: makes everything worse when you and dad are constantly looking
Speaker 2: for the solution and for the next big thing and
Speaker 2: it's all behind this wall. It adds this burden, and
Speaker 2: just let me have my illness, let me figure it
Speaker 2: out myself. I think for me understanding the cost of
Speaker 2: family secrets and understanding the cost of what happens to
Speaker 2: us when we keep them, and how we end up
Speaker 2: editing ourselves out of our own life in a certain way,
Speaker 2: it really came to roost for me during this time
Speaker 2: with Jesse when she very courageously.
Speaker 1: Did tell people.
Speaker 2: And one of the big moments in my life was
Speaker 2: being asked to speak at our high holiday services about something,
Speaker 2: and I made the decision right then. I made the
Speaker 2: decision that I was going to talk about Danny to
Speaker 2: a community that I had been in.
Speaker 1: For twenty five years, and.
Speaker 2: Maybe three or four or five people knew I even
Speaker 2: had a brother, And going back.
Speaker 1: To earlier in the story, like the giddy.
Speaker 2: Thing, it was like no one knew, no one knew,
Speaker 2: And on that day I did tell it, and what
Speaker 2: happened afterwards was so instructive, because what you hear anytime
Speaker 2: there's a story like this, anytime someone really tells the truth,
Speaker 2: they find out from everyone around them, me too, that
Speaker 2: they too.
Speaker 1: There were all the people.
Speaker 2: Who were coming and saying, oh my god, thank you
Speaker 2: for sharing your story.
Speaker 1: We had no idea. We can't believe that would be you.
Speaker 2: In the same way that like, oh, the perfect Hay family,
Speaker 2: how could that had been in your past? But it
Speaker 2: was also in the release in telling, like making it,
Speaker 2: like breaking through that secret and just making it information
Speaker 2: about the whole of me and the whole of Jesse.
Speaker 2: It was like the power of the secret evaporated. It's
Speaker 2: been really one of the biggest lessons of my life.
Speaker 2: How privacy turns into secrecy, and that secrecy and privacy
Speaker 2: turns into isolation and loneliness, and what has happened to
Speaker 2: all of us since we have come forward with call
Speaker 2: them secrets or breaking through the privacy or whatever, is
Speaker 2: that we are much more whole people. We don't have
Speaker 2: to hide anymore. And we also found out that it
Speaker 2: turns out not only does no one hold it against you,
Speaker 2: but it's like that vulnerability and honesty is the fastest
Speaker 2: path to connection. Like spose how we are all the same,
Speaker 2: that we all do have so much of the same pain.
Speaker 3: Here's Julie reading one last passage from her memoir Stay.
Speaker 2: I was finally coming to understand that our birthright is this.
Speaker 2: We are entitled to our own lives. No matter what
Speaker 2: happens to those we love. We are entitled and we
Speaker 2: don't have to be anything.
Speaker 1: Other than who we are.
Speaker 2: When the people we love struggle, we can love them
Speaker 2: and we can try our best to help them, but
Speaker 2: we cannot save them. It is enough to learn how
Speaker 2: to save ourselves.
Speaker 3: Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Zakoor is the
Speaker 3: story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If
Speaker 3: you have a family Secret you'd like to share, please
Speaker 3: leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on
Speaker 3: an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight eight
Speaker 3: Secret Zero. That's the number zero. You can also find
Speaker 3: me on Instagram at daniwriter and if you'd like to
Speaker 3: know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check
Speaker 3: out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or Everett you listen to your favorite shows