Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. As I tore the nation from my book Inheritance, I've heard from so many about your own family secrets and realize that what we are creating for each other on this podcast is a community, a community for those who are looking for a safe and supportive space to unburden themselves. To that end, we've created a number for listeners to call in to record stories to share here in this space. This week, I'd like to share a few of those stories from our community. Thanks for listening. I just wanted to share a little glimpse of my family's secret um. Growing up, we always knew my mom had been married before, but it wasn't until I turned eighteen that she had revealed to me that she had a son that she had given up for adoption. My mom had always felt like she had lost a child before she had my brother and I, and that giving him up for adoption was kind of God's way of punishing her for for her choices, and so We tried to find out information about him as much as we could, but my mom just couldn't I don't think go down that route. And so about twenty years later, I finally got a Facebook request from some gal trying to find my mom, and through some Facebook stalking, found out that that was kind of her service, was helping adopted kids and families find each other. And lo and behold, we found the son that she had given up for adoption and started contacting him. Found out a lot of information about my mom that for about the first eight months of his life, with lots of adoption records and caseworker visits and that kind of stuff that really painted a new picture of who my mom was. I started looking into my ancestry and decided to take an ancestry d n A test just to find out more information that I could pass on to him. And of course, low and Behold, Gal was on kind of the people that are closely related to you, so I think it was like a first cousin or closer and I was thinking, oh, now my dad has a son, or or my dad has a daughter, or maybe my aunt or something like that, And so I called my mom to find out that no, when she was eighteen, she had gotten pregnant and she had put another child up for adoption, and that I think hurt me more than all the other secrets I had found out up until that time, just because you know, she told me about her son, but not about this father. That I had a sister too out there, and UM, it's yeah, it's been an interesting experience. My story is not really my story, it's my dad's story. Um. He was born in the UK. He was born in a mother maybe his home, which was like an unwite mother's home, and he had said and somehow ended up being raised by his grandmother. My story short, his grandmother died when he was thirteen and he was kind of left his own devices, and he has two or three gage memories of his mother coming in and out of his life, um, grandomly touching his life before the age of eight. And then other than that, she's kind of soft the face of the earth. And as I've grown out older, I had my own kids, I got really interested in finding her, and with the advent about the Internet, we were doing lots lots of searching, and you know, we found records of her from an early age but just what she reached the age of twenty one, she kind of just say fell off the face of the earth. And so I hired on a home professional searcher, one of those TV searchers. I caused many thousands of dollars a couple of months ago, and she found her. But she married in London, and she married in London in the seventies, and she married using a birthday that was ten years before her real birthday. Then she married this guy um who was from Ireland, and then she died in two thousand four living in London, which is really tragic because we lived in London until I was two or three, and we weren't that far away. So I guess it's a still developing story because there are people out there that now about her and they know why she loved. Often it's and my dad's uncle is still alive and he won't share a lot of the details, and it is still developing because I really want to find her husband and asked him if he knows anything about her, But I can't find him because he's kind of flawen off the face of heres and I am not willing to send the dass to find him. Um, somebody who I'm not really related to. But but anyway, that's my story. There's a lot more, but it's just I thought that's the fun of the reason why I've feel interested in the podcast, because I have my own story. Um, that's kind of developing. I have quite the mixed bag of family secrets where instead of the my father being someone who went had children with a lot of different people, it was my mother. I didn't was not raised by my mother. She gave me to my grandparents, my maternal grandparents, and when I was around ten, she married and I had a little sister. So fast forward about another ten fifteen years and my sister sends me a picture of a little baby and everything's written in Spanish, but she thinks she sees our mother's name somewhere in there, and I she sends it to me and we find out that it's a picture of what appears to be a baby that my mother had given up for adoption when she lived in Mexico for a little bit. Right after I was born she moved there. I asked my mother and he was told it was none of my business. But we did figure out that it was our brother. Um, things were rather quiet for a long time. Yearest passed six years ago. I got a phone call from a gentleman who said, I think I'm your brother, and we compared notes and we were talking, and then you know, I thohen he was the two years younger than me, and well and behold, he's six years older than me. He was actually my mother his first child. But long story short, it's now uh my brother who was six years older be than our sister who's ten years younger than not than me. But all of us have UH fathers from different countries. No one was from America. We won't find the Mexican one because I think that was so well hidden with adoption. But we also are wondering who we're going to find anything else out about other children that might have popped up along the way. Our mother passed away three years ago and was tight lipped to the end, denying everything. My mother had a big, loud, Jewish family, and my dad had a family that was darker and a little more confusing. My aunts were married to very strict Roman Catholic men, and I don't know, there was always something a little off. My dad was Jewish too, and then I think I was eleven or twelve when we started saying, well, where's your parents, because we didn't know our grandparents on that side at all. And it took a while, probably a year, from my father to finally tell us that my grandfather had gone out to get a pack of cigarettes. My grandmother was home with her seven children and he never came back. And I don't know if she suffered from mental illness before that, but she sort of became catatonic and took to her bed. And the way that it all came out in public was that my father was found roaming in the street in his dirty diaper, and the butcher recognized him and took him home, and all the kids got taken away to the Jewish orphanage, which was a wonderful place, actually, so my father said. But this secret of my grandmother being mentally ill was was just like the thing we never talked about. She lived for another thirty five forty years in an institution, but she didn't know who anybody was, and I never met her, and my sister never met her. So we understand your family secrets. Thank you. If you'd like to share your story, call one eight eight eight secret zero and record your story. We won't be able to run all the stories, but we do want to shine a light on as many as we can. The number again is one eight eight eight Secret and then the numeral zero. Just a brief housekeeping note for those of you in and around New York City. On June three, I'm gonna be with the awesome Nora mcinnerney, host to the podcast Terrible. Thanks for asking who will be joining me for a live Family Secrets event at Rizzoli Books which is and Broadway. Will be there at six pm on June three, and we would love to see m For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. As I tore the nation from my book Inheritance, I've heard from so many about your own family secrets and realize that what we are creating for each other on this podcast is a community, a community for those who are looking for a safe and supportive space to unburden themselves. To that end, we've created a number for listeners to call in to record stories to share here in this space. This week, I'd like to share a few of those stories from our community. Thanks for listening. I just wanted to share a little glimpse of my family's secret um. Growing up, we always knew my mom had been married before, but it wasn't until I turned eighteen that she had revealed to me that she had a son that she had given up for adoption. My mom had always felt like she had lost a child before she had my brother and I, and that giving him up for adoption was kind of God's way of punishing her for for her choices, and so We tried to find out information about him as much as we could, but my mom just couldn't I don't think go down that route. And so about twenty years later, I finally got a Facebook request from some gal trying to find my mom, and through some Facebook stalking, found out that that was kind of her service, was helping adopted kids and families find each other. And lo and behold, we found the son that she had given up for adoption and started contacting him. Found out a lot of information about my mom that for about the first eight months of his life, with lots of adoption records and caseworker visits and that kind of stuff that really painted a new picture of who my mom was. I started looking into my ancestry and decided to take an ancestry d n A test just to find out more information that I could pass on to him. And of course, low and Behold, Gal was on kind of the people that are closely related to you, so I think it was like a first cousin or closer and I was thinking, oh, now my dad has a son, or or my dad has a daughter, or maybe my aunt or something like that, And so I called my mom to find out that no, when she was eighteen, she had gotten pregnant and she had put another child up for adoption, and that I think hurt me more than all the other secrets I had found out up until that time, just because you know, she told me about her son, but not about this father. That I had a sister too out there, and UM, it's yeah, it's been an interesting experience. My story is not really my story, it's my dad's story. Um. He was born in the UK. He was born in a mother maybe his home, which was like an unwite mother's home, and he had said and somehow ended up being raised by his grandmother. My story short, his grandmother died when he was thirteen and he was kind of left his own devices, and he has two or three gage memories of his mother coming in and out of his life, um, grandomly touching his life before the age of eight. And then other than that, she's kind of soft the face of the earth. And as I've grown out older, I had my own kids, I got really interested in finding her, and with the advent about the Internet, we were doing lots lots of searching, and you know, we found records of her from an early age but just what she reached the age of twenty one, she kind of just say fell off the face of the earth. And so I hired on a home professional searcher, one of those TV searchers. I caused many thousands of dollars a couple of months ago, and she found her. But she married in London, and she married in London in the seventies, and she married using a birthday that was ten years before her real birthday. Then she married this guy um who was from Ireland, and then she died in two thousand four living in London, which is really tragic because we lived in London until I was two or three, and we weren't that far away. So I guess it's a still developing story because there are people out there that now about her and they know why she loved. Often it's and my dad's uncle is still alive and he won't share a lot of the details, and it is still developing because I really want to find her husband and asked him if he knows anything about her, But I can't find him because he's kind of flawen off the face of heres and I am not willing to send the dass to find him. Um, somebody who I'm not really related to. But but anyway, that's my story. There's a lot more, but it's just I thought that's the fun of the reason why I've feel interested in the podcast, because I have my own story. Um, that's kind of developing. I have quite the mixed bag of family secrets where instead of the my father being someone who went had children with a lot of different people, it was my mother. I didn't was not raised by my mother. She gave me to my grandparents, my maternal grandparents, and when I was around ten, she married and I had a little sister. So fast forward about another ten fifteen years and my sister sends me a picture of a little baby and everything's written in Spanish, but she thinks she sees our mother's name somewhere in there, and I she sends it to me and we find out that it's a picture of what appears to be a baby that my mother had given up for adoption when she lived in Mexico for a little bit. Right after I was born she moved there. I asked my mother and he was told it was none of my business. But we did figure out that it was our brother. Um, things were rather quiet for a long time. Yearest passed six years ago. I got a phone call from a gentleman who said, I think I'm your brother, and we compared notes and we were talking, and then you know, I thohen he was the two years younger than me, and well and behold, he's six years older than me. He was actually my mother his first child. But long story short, it's now uh my brother who was six years older be than our sister who's ten years younger than not than me. But all of us have UH fathers from different countries. No one was from America. We won't find the Mexican one because I think that was so well hidden with adoption. But we also are wondering who we're going to find anything else out about other children that might have popped up along the way. Our mother passed away three years ago and was tight lipped to the end, denying everything. My mother had a big, loud, Jewish family, and my dad had a family that was darker and a little more confusing. My aunts were married to very strict Roman Catholic men, and I don't know, there was always something a little off. My dad was Jewish too, and then I think I was eleven or twelve when we started saying, well, where's your parents, because we didn't know our grandparents on that side at all. And it took a while, probably a year, from my father to finally tell us that my grandfather had gone out to get a pack of cigarettes. My grandmother was home with her seven children and he never came back. And I don't know if she suffered from mental illness before that, but she sort of became catatonic and took to her bed. And the way that it all came out in public was that my father was found roaming in the street in his dirty diaper, and the butcher recognized him and took him home, and all the kids got taken away to the Jewish orphanage, which was a wonderful place, actually, so my father said. But this secret of my grandmother being mentally ill was was just like the thing we never talked about. She lived for another thirty five forty years in an institution, but she didn't know who anybody was, and I never met her, and my sister never met her. So we understand your family secrets. Thank you. If you'd like to share your story, call one eight eight eight secret zero and record your story. We won't be able to run all the stories, but we do want to shine a light on as many as we can. The number again is one eight eight eight Secret and then the numeral zero. Just a brief housekeeping note for those of you in and around New York City. On June three, I'm gonna be with the awesome Nora mcinnerney, host to the podcast Terrible. Thanks for asking who will be joining me for a live Family Secrets event at Rizzoli Books which is and Broadway. Will be there at six pm on June three, and we would love to see m For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows