Family Secrets as a production of I Heart Radio Morning. This episode contains discussion of abuse and suicide. Listener discussion is advised. My childhood was very difficult. I share. One of my first memories with my mother is sitting on our knees by the sofa and my stepdad told me to watch your fingernails and if our fingernails turned blue, to call on one one. So it was very traumatic. It's one of my early memories. I was in elementary school and I remember growing up and you know, I didn't want to invite friends over because I was ashamed of the way we lived and I didn't want anyone to know how my life really was. I just wanted to be normal and pretend everything was okay. And I didn't want them to come in the kitchen and turn on a light, because when you turn the lights on, you know, you see a gazillion roaches running everywhere, scattering. That's Venus Maurice Griffin, single mother of seven, award winning real estate agent and motivational speaker. Venuses is a story of almost superhuman resilience and discipline, an homage to the notion that where there's a will, there's a way. Away out a way through a harrowing childhood that threatened to repeat itself as such childhoods often do, often but not always. Above all, this is one woman's journey from violence, secrecy, and shame to a life filled with grace and love. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and this secrets we keep from ourselves. I had a stepfather who was a an alcoholic, very very scared of him, and um, he was very abusive in many ways to me and my siblings, have a half brother and half sister, and my brother ended up in a maximum security prison. You know, we all do with trauma differently, and he could never get past the cycle of abuse and poor choices which led him down this dark life of crime. And my sister, the last time I saw her, she was at the State Mental Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina, trying to convince me that she was walking there vertusipatient and lost her children very young age. Hasn't seen them, probably in twenty five plus years. And uh, she was a good soul, but just could not process everything that had happened to her. And you know, my mother was married prior to my stepfather, and I always thought he was my biological father, along with my half brother and half sister. I thought the three of us were all full siblings. And the trauma that we went through living with him, I don't I was young, but so I don't remember a lot of it. But I do remember one story in particular. My sister was telling me that, um, you know, he would throw them in the closet and threw firecrackers at I'm gonna hold the door. I mean he'd have ten locks on the door, like all the way down the doorway, and he'd locked on one, two or three, you know, for safety. Just those memories that are just burned into your mind that you can you can never forget. So I would say my childhood was very, very difficult, and you know the hardest part was sorting through, Like I really adored my mother. I loved my mother. I still love my mother. There's a lot of good about my mother, just telling what I went through and what I had to overcome to get to a good place to hopefully help others. But you know, just watching her go in and out of rehabs for alcohol abuse and prescription drug abuse, and being called to the principle's office when you're in grammar school and finding out that your mom's just been arrested and she tried to put her head in and told it to kill herself at the police station, and having people tell you that, and just you know, feeling alone and like you have no one, and and knowing that everyone around you has basically thrown the towel in on you. They just they're given up. They know you're going to be a stat just like my brother and sister. They know that your chances of getting out of this life are slender none. And my determination as a young child to not be like everyone around me was great. Venus makes the conscious decision during her adolescence to surround herself with good people. She studies the seemingly happy, healthy families around her and patterns her life after them. In the absence of role models within her family, she seeks her own. She and her friends don't drink or do drugs the way her mother and siblings do. She's creating a map for her future, or so she hopes. High school Sweetheart, his family was just so good. I just remember looking at them and going to their house and being so scared that they were going to find out what I came from. But watching them and how they genuinely loved each other and they respected each other, and they all went to church together, and then they actually practiced what they preached, and it just was my saving grace because I had to figure out a way to be like him. But I didn't know how to do that. But again, I knew what I didn't want to do, which is to be like my brother or my sister, or my or my mother. I wasn't like a straight A student by any means. I was probably a average say student. I never had someone to look at my grade, to my report carder to see how I was doing. I never had someone to care. Changed high schools I think six or seven times within three years, and I know I had to get out of my home life, um if I wanted to do better. And so I went to summer school to take an English class because I figured out I had enough credits that I could skip my senior year in high school and go straight to college. So that's what I did. You know, I've pretty much been on my own, I guess probably since I was fourteen, I say I was on the verge of homelessness because I was just living from you know, with friends and my sister and my mom and in between beinges. It was just it was just a tough life. But all at the same time, I was joyful. I was happy, I was grateful. I never looked at my life and thought what was me. I never looked at you know, many of my friends, a few of them were privileged. I never looked at them and wanted what they had. I just knew that I wanted something differently than I had. Venus is incentivized to emerge for her traumatic upbringing. Her hard work in school pays off, and she goes to college, the first two years at a private Baptist college, then she transfers to the University of South Carolina her junior year. There she meets Tripp, who was five years older and getting ready to graduate. They meet on a blind date, and about a year and a half later, they get married to No. Trip was to love Trip. He was dynamic, he was fun, he was smart, he was good looking. You know, he was president of his fraternity. They called him the Killer. That was his nickname. All of us her trinity brothers just really reveled around him. You walk in the room, he's the shining star. You know, he lit the room up. He gravitated to him. He was a great dancer, he was funny um, and he was so good to me. He made me feel like I was the only person in the world when we were together. He made everyone feel like that. He had a gift with children. You know, we would be around his family and his nieces and his nephews and he's pulling him on a tractor behind with you know, fifteen kids and a buggy behind it. He was just dynamic, and he had really great qualities that made people naturally gravitate towards him. This natural gravitation toward Trip happens just about everywhere with his family, his friends, and at school where he's on the football team. He's universally liked and likable. But on the night before Trip and Venus get married, an unsettling feeling sinks in. In addition to his effervescence, Trip has a dark side. He rages at Venus in front of the family, and she has a thought, a thought so many have had on the eve of their weddings. You know, you've got the dress and everything's been paid for in the band is coming, and you had the thought that you shouldn't marry him. Yeah, I knew that I should not marry him, and that was not normal behavior, but I just was so deep into it, and I thought, you know what, he's got stress on him, and I'm overreacting and like everybody's coming, and you know, I just tucked it underneath my stomach and I just said I'm gonna do this and pretendingly nothing happened. You would have looked at us and thought we were the happiest couple in the world. If Venus's childhood has prepared her for anything, it's to pretend everything is okay. So that's what she does when she has misgivings about the marriage, and over the next several years, the pretending becomes reality. Venus and Trip don't just look happy, they really are. Venus has always longed for unconditional love, a growing family. She has four kids within the first five years of her marriage, and a kind of familial stability, and now she has it. She's convinced that she's not repeating the history of her fraud childhood. She has a strong family unit, a strong faith and which he believes to be a strong, trusting partnership. Trip is a great father. He's super active in the church and in the kids schools and sports. He and Venus have lunch together every day. But something else is going on with Trip too. There's that dark side. Trip struggles with mental illness, and soon he becomes abusive. I think he was diagnosed with a polar disorder and maybe a few other things, and he was on medication, and he would have Tim's when he was medicated properly, that he would do really well, and it was like he was straight from heaven. And then he'd stopped taking his medicine or his medicine would need to be tweaked, and he would get really abusive and go under rages where he would threatened to kill himself. You know, he would. One time he said he tried to hang himself in the little cabin next door to ours, and he pushed me into a bathtub. I don't think he meant to hurt me hurt me, but um, you know, I just remember, like I thought I broke my back. I thought he'd really done some permanent like I couldn't walk, you know, I was like hunched over, and you know, he goes out in the yard and gets a gun and she said, I think he's killed himself. You know, I find him out in the yard. But he was so remorseful after, like just crying and begging and just please to help him, and just how much he loved me, and that I was the only person in the world he had. His dad is remarried and he has a wonderful stepmother, but his biological mother died in her late forties with clerosis of the liver, and she battled alcoholism and I think some mental issues and drugs, and you know, he would just say he had no one. You know, I was the only person he had, and and I wanted to keep my family together at all costs. You know, I wasn't I didn't intend on staying in an abusive marriage. I just thought that I could fix him, and you you can't fix someone else. And I know that now i'm which is part of the reason I share the story. You you can only fix yourself. You know, we had many good years and even when the times were really really bad, you know, whenever the abuse would get really really bad, he would always be remorseful and beg for forgiveness and tell me how much you loved me, and how much he wanted to keep our family together, and how he was going to be better, and he just he was mentally sick, and he was you know, if I would stand by him, that we had the best family ever, and I believed him. I believed him, and I did that. As bad as Trip was, it was better than when I came from My mother told me when I married Trip that I would be divorced within a year, and I was hell bent on proving her wrong. We'll be right back. In addition to the vile mood swings, there are other red flags. There's suddenly a lot of debt, Trip is overspending, and his financial decisions grand gestures included are draining the family income. Venus decides to get her real estate license so she can contribute financially. She begins selling houses, and her first commission check is around five thousand dollars. She's positioned to make about twenty dollars a year, so just enough to help bolster the family's finances, but not enough to support their large family. When Venus goes to real estate school, she's pregnant with their sixth child, I just wanted to be a mom. Prior to my first child, I wanted to be in an attorney and be in the corporate world. But once I had my first child, and that's a whole another story, we trip could not have children. He had um an undistended testicle that was a tumor, and so as a result, when we got married, I still at the hope, of course we could have children naturally, but we could not, and so we had a donor for the six alter in the same dinner. So my first child, it took me eight inseminations to to get pregnant, and the second one it took me. For the third one it took me too, and then um fourth, one, fifth, one, and six when I got pregnant on the first insemination. And so when I had my children, I had a whole different value system that I had grown up thinking I wanted to be this corporate person who was just knocking out of the business world. I wanted to be a mom. Like I realized how precious this life was. In that like, I just wanted to help these children have everything that I never had, which is a loving, stable family and a mom that was dependable, and that you know, had their back and that they could respect and look up to. And when I got my license, it wasn't long after that, but my life can crumbling down. But I just remember telling the broker when I interviewed at may Bam, which is the company I'm slant, I said, listen, don't pressure me to make a lot of money. I'm here to make the minimum this company requires for me to keep my license here, which was twenty dollars a year. That's all I'm gonna make. And I didn't know the storm. I was about the weather. I never in a million years dreamed that I would need to take over my husband's role as the financial breadwinner in the house. But soon she will be solely responsible financially and otherwise for herself and her six children. One night, shortly after she has sold a few properties, she's at home nursing her youngest. Trip is away, trip is often away, and she received the phone call from a woman at a hotel. So the phone rings, and I'll never forget this girl was on the line and she Sabrina's, my name is Jamie, and I'm calling to tell you what an awful man you're married to. And she went on to tell me other stuff, and I was like, I didn't believe her. I was in shock. And she said enough things where I'm like, okay, I need to meet her. And so I woke my son up and I said, you know, John, can you watch her siblings? Listen up for your other ones? And I gotta go meet with this lady. So I got up and I'll never forget. I was driving on Washington Road, which is where the hotel was at, and I was thinking that she was lying. You know, I was making every excuse for my husband like I always did with everything, because there had been no signs of him being unfaithful. And um, I get to the hotel, I'll turn in there. I knock on the door and I'll never forget. She comes to the door and she's kind of fidgeting, and she's younger than me, and you know, I'm pretty small and and she was, I mean, she was very small and just looked fragile. And so she opens the door and I come in and sit on the bed and she's using the very descriptive language how awful trip is and everything that he's done, and you know, telling me he was a big man on campus all these women, you know, pretty much taken everything we had and the credit card. She said, these women want to go to Walmart with it, and just Trip was a big man, and they just cleaned us out and like all the kids to count. Everything we had was gone, and we didn't have a lot of money, but what we had was gone. So then she starts showing me photos on her phone. At that point I knew she was not lying, because she's telling me things that Trip was actually doing to me when he would get in his rages, that he was doing to her. And I think maybe she fell in love with him, because she said towards the end she wasn't even charging him per sect. But she showed me his phone and you know pictures Trip and compromise positions and naked without clothes. You know, one particular photo was driving on the road like with his pants down with an erection and just like smiling for the picture. I'm like what, And so then I knew she was honest. And and I tell this, people are amazed. But I just looked in her eyes and I just felt this connection to her. You know, I didn't hate her. I was just trying to get out of my tragedy, and she had not figured out how to get out of her tragedy, and I guess I hadn't either, but I was trying. I just connected with her, and um, she wanted to me to give her money for a bus to get thinking back to it ly, and I think and because the trip was supposedly starting to kill her, which I believe. And so I wrote her a check for like a hundred dollars and I told her, Sai, Jamie, the money is not in the bank right now, I said, so give me a few days. I've got a close in this week, and once it's in the bank, then you can cash it. I said, but if you try to cash it now, they're going to reject it. They're gonna balance it. And she called me like every day for the next week until I had the money in there, and then I told her, yes, she can cash it. So then of course she cashed it. And I've never heard from her again, but I'll look back now, and I think how I felt to her. I just felt compassion, and I felt really sorry for and and I don't understand really fully myself, because you just basically, you know what she told me, just stript my entire life for me, I guess in handsight, she did me a favor. She was a messenger. Yeah, so then my journey changed. And I remember leaving and driving back on Washington Road again to get that come to my children, and I just thinking, Okay, you know, I keep saying that I'm a Christian. What does a Christian mean? You know, just a Christian? Just stand by here? I am making excuses again because the Christians still stand by her husband during the good times, or do they like stand by them during the really hard times? And I said, you know what, I'm gonna stand by him. I said, because this is a mental disease like sexdiction. What he's done is terrible. It's violating. You know, you take it personal when there's intimacy involved with some But I knew that deep dealing his soul was good and that he had made some terrible choices. And I was going to be a Christian and I was going to help him get through this. And I was gonna show I told our kids, I'm gonna show our community, our friends for forgiveness really means. I was determined to have a stronger family and to learn from it, and how I could be a better wife to him too, you know, because again, nobody's perfect. So my role leaving there was not to crucify him or to leave him or divorce him. It was to help him and to live my faith out and to figure out how to keep my family together still and his parents, he has a great family and his parents, his step mom and his father sent him to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. There's a sex rehab clinic there. He was so remorseful, like, I'm gonna come out of here, I'm gonna be the best father, I'm gonna be the best husband, Like this is gonna make us stronger. I love you, you know, my childhood with my mother being an addict, and you know, I'm just messed up, and they're gonna help me get better. And if you stick by me, then then we're gonna have the best family ever. That's all I ever wanted, was the best family ever. So he immediately went there, and they actually put us in a hotel somewhere because we were, you know, scared for her safety that he might, uh, you know, our life might be in danger, and said they put us in a hotel until they could get him situated where he needed to be in Mississippi, and of course, you know, once he got there, and part of the recovery process for any kind of addict is, you know, coming clean. And he came clean about cheating on me for years with prostitutes and lying about the truly, basically his whole life was aligned and you know, still in money from his parents company. And I didn't realize, like he was so convincing, I did not realize that he never played football for the University of South Carolina until he was at the sexual rehab clinic. We've been married nearly twenty years, and I was on a plane with his stepmother and I didn't understand why they had no photos of him playing football, And so I said to her, I said, I've looked through all the photo albums. I said, I see the pictures of Tripp and a cheerleader. I said, I don't see any football pictures of him, and and she looked at me like I was crazy. And she's like me because I don't know what you're talking about. I said, you know when Tripp played football at Carolina And she said, um, he never played football at Carolina, And I'm like, yeah, he did. I mean he told us stories about you know, the coach saying, if you guys played with half the heart that Trip Moore has played with it, we we'd win the national championship. And he'd take my children in the locker room and show him everything and tell him stories about every place and the you know things that happened. And She's like, Venus, Trip never aid football ever in college. He was a cheerleader, you know. So when we we got to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, we sat down. A part of recovering from six addiction is kind of coming clean with everything that you've done. And and so I just asked him, I said, like, if you've been lying to me for twenty years about playing football and and he said yeah. So that's when I'm like, Okay, something is like really really wrong. Why does somebody make up something like that? And while he was there, some other things came out that he had done, and and that's when it became a deal breaker for me. And the things he had done compromised my children. I didn't really believe that either at first, but I was disturbed enough, and I was a good mother, I thought, and I would never let him come back in the home or around the children without knowing one way or the other. The possibility that Tripp had been sexually abusive to any of their children had simply never occurred to Venus, the handsome, charismatic All American football coach and churchgoer who people flocked to like he was the pied Piper. It couldn't be, or could it? There was only one way to find out. He agreed to take a lot of tector tests and they gave him too at the hospital. He failed the first one. In the second one that the polygraphic Samar said, you know, he was so nervous. He's like, can't can't even really get a result. He says, you need to there's something out, a specific issue, a lot of tector tests and and you need there's a gun at Leona, and he gave me the name of the person and you need to call him and set an appointment up and you know he'll be able to give you assurance one way or the other. And so of course I immediately called him, and you know, the guy's explaining the process and he's like, it's pretty full proof. When when he lives here, you'll know if he did these things. And Trip was very good at storytelling, as you see what the stories I've told you. And I think he really thought he could beat it. In Claire his name in that VI it us reconcile, and he went there took the test and I'll never forget that guy called him and he's like, you know what he said, I can tell you he's done these things. And he said something like you'd be an unfit mother at best if you did nothing about this. And so that was it for me, Like there was no can I help him anymore? Cannot? That was it. We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. When Venus thought it was sex addiction and mental illness that was causing trips behavior, she was gutted, but she had been seriously considering supporting him through it for the sake of their family. But when she learned the trip has violated one of her daughters and is in fact a direct threat to their family, she absolutely will not stand by him, no way, no how. All she's ever wanted to do was create a sense of stability and safety for her children, to give them childhoods better than hers had been. This this is devastating, but she springs into action a foul for divorce immediately, because I would never bring someone like that around my children. And you know, callna pediatrician who had been my pediatrician for twenty years, fifteen years traveling was at the time, and he says, you know, Venus, He said, You've got to take your daughter to the hospital to be examined. He says, I don't do that type of exam here, he said, but I do have to tell you I would lose my medical license about a report this. So I've got to call the Department of Social Services and make them aware of what's been said. And you know, this is this is a serious business. And of course I knew that, and I was devastated, and I agree with him. So then at that point the Department of Social Services came in and interviewed everybody and felt probable calls and went to the district attorney, and Trip agreed to come down to testify. And again, Tripp was so nice and vaivable and likable. I think he just thought he could talk his way out of it, like he'd done his whole life. And it was really ultimately his own testimony that that put him away. But um, they arrested him right after the grand jury issued an indictment and they didn't even give him parole because of the risk they felt like he posed to me and the children. He was sentenced to forty five years in prison and just been there like eleven years now, ten or eleven years, and he um, I think he has to start twenty one years before he can get pro all Venus also tells her Chidren that while she doesn't know what the future will hold, she is their mother and she's going to do everything in her power to be a good mother to them. They're going to weather this storm together and not be defined as a family by the terrible things their father did. I was struck by your fact that you didn't have a lot of support from the community that you've been a part of for all these years. Well, it was interesting. It is interesting looking back now, because people that were barely my friends stepped up to the plate and became really, really just amazing friends. I mean, one lady who barely knew knocked on my door and basically told me she could organize people to sew cartons, you know, And I'm like, listen, I appreciate that, but I'm fine without curtains. If I sell my house and I'm living in a tent, then I'll take it, you know, But let let me do what I gotta do first. And I'm not above getting help, but let me try to take of business at home before I reach out and get other people to do these things. But it was amazing. It's a beautiful gesture. And then I had another friend who I was friends with, but we weren't by any means really close friends or best friends. And she started working for me and just walked the fire with me and became my very best friend and she's still my very best friend, and we will die being best friends. And the first year I was so broke I could not even pay her, like for a whole year, And I'll never forget her telling me. She's like, nas, don't worry about me. I'm okay, Um, you know, her husband worked and support of the family, and she said, you do what you need to do to take care of you kids. You can catch me up. And she would tell me like, I'm putting up billboards on Washington Road and not knowing how I'm going to even pay for him. But I knew I had to do something dramatic and drastic to be successful and make a statement. And she's like, you put the billboards up, and I'll feed your family if I need to feed your family. I believe in you. You get out there and you do it. And I did, and I was s scessful in on her second year. I paid her back for the first year in full, and then I started paying her for the second year. And she was faithful to me. But not everyone remained faithful to Venus. Some turned on her and blamed her for her husband's actions as well as her own. She had been part of a prayer group with five other couples. They had met every Wednesday for ten years. They were, up until trips imprisonment, the best friendships Venus had ever had. I had never really had friends like that, you know, because I had moved so much, I've been so much just function. I had been in hiding my whole life. I didn't want anybody to who I really was. I wanted to pretend like I was normal and my cup as everybody else. And so when I met these ladies, I mean they all came from well, two of them came from extremely good families. One of them had a really great mom and a divorce situation. But she she was actually my very best friend. And then there's another couple in the prayer group who I was friends with, but I wasn't real close with them, but um, and that couple actually was the nicest to me. But the the other three couples in there, I'll never forget. My husband's put in prison, and like they don't speak to me from that point out. And the friend who was my best friends, she says to me, I asked her to go out to dinner with me and said, listen, like we had to talk, like did I did I do something wrong? I mean, like tell me. I mean, you're like my best friend in the world. My husband's just going to prison for six kids. Like what did that do? And she said to me, she said, you know, I am very Catholic and I'm very black and white, and what you did was wrong conceiving your children with a dinner and you didn't just do it one time. You had six children by the dinner and you lied to us and you didn't tell us this. And I'm black and white and I just can't. I can't be friends with you. The children were also paying for trips behavior ostracized and judged. Other kids weren't allowed to come to their home. They weren't invited to birthday parties in a family that had been injured enough, the injuries piled on my son Neil. He was only one when his father went away, and he came home last week and said, Mom, like, he doesn't even really know trips in prison or for what anything about it, because he's never really been a father figure. But he said, Mom, like this girl in my class, like if I come into class irritated, or if I say something to or she'll look at to me and she'll say, are you in a bad mood? Charles? Because your dad's in jail. I'm just like, what's wrong with these kids? Like what is wrong with these kids? And you know, like one of my kids came home devastated, like, Mom, they want to die God mother you There're all these people sing terrible things and they'll laugh and say where's your adt yet today? And I'm like like, who are these Christian people? Like what the hell? And you know, I'm a little fighter, so I'm just like putting my box in gloves on, just you know, if I weren't grounded in myself and and my faith. I would have left my faith because I'm sitting here thinking how to I forgive my husband for having a sex addiction and committed to trying to find a way. And they're never speaking to me because my husband is going to prison for cald molestation and they're thinking I knew something, you know, I'm like, what is wrong with you? People? But I'll forgive them. And one of the people I never mentioned names, and I would never do that, but she sent me this really ugly text message, and you know, I just said, I can't believe what you're trying to do for fame and for money and and I've told you to leave my family out of your drama. And I was like, Number one, I'm a self made millionaire. Nothing am I am doing except with the intent of helping other women or in extremely dark places, not go through what I've gone through, to see their value, to see the word In Number two, it's really hard to look at yourself and this story. I know it is, but as Christians, we all mess up. We're all sinners, so you know you need to just own it and know that I don't pass judgment. I forgive you, but this is my story and it's a big part of it, because you know, that's why people go into depression and anxiety, because you know, something shameful like this happens and everyone turns it back on you. And I've had women tell me until they heard my story, they were on the verge of suicide, and after hearing my story that I've given them hope and they can get through what they're going through, and that that their commitment is to be in the best moment they can be. And to me, like this is embarrassing the stuff I share. I'm getting a lot of support, but I'm also getting a tremendous amount of criticism within the community for for putting my stuff out there. But you can get goodness out of bad and light out of darkness if you do you let it, if you're not ashamed of what's happened. Because we all mess up. And I say, my pain, it is terrible, My story is heartwrenching, but my pain really is no different than the next person's pain. It's just different and it's all relative, which brings me to talking to you. There's another embedded secret at the core of this family dynamic. Are you ready for this one? The children don't know that Trip is not their biological father. Yes, you heard that right. And since his arrest, Trip has been telling people the secret that he and Venus planned to take to their graves together. So I got um. I got a phone call from someone who said, oh my god, Venus, I just heard this terrible rumor, and I wanted to call you because you know, I don't think it's true, but I think you should know about it, just because I think you should know about I'm like, what is it. Well? Trip has gone around and he's telling some people that these aren't even his biological kids, and I'm like what, And I didn't know what what to say. You know, at that point it's like, okay, no one in the world do except for me and Trip. You know, at that point, what do you what do you say? And so I thought about it, and I said, you know, I've got to go to all my kids because if I don't, if this person has heard it, my kids are going to hear it. And I don't want them hearing this from someone else. This is not a conversation that a stranger or you know, a friend or someone making fun of them needs to have, especially with all the scandal we're already going through, and so I just set them down individually and I just said, you know, you were conceived out of love, you were wanted, you were wanted more than you could possibly know, and I'm your mother and this is your father. But biologically, I said, it's kind of like you're half adopted because your father could not have children. And that's it. After trying for a few years, we wanted a family, and we decided getting a donor was the way we wanted to have our family. And so here you guys are, and you're all biologically related because we bought all of the sperm. It was at a corporation called zy Text. One of my children says, they were actually relieved, and they were happy in a sense because they said, we don't have his genes, meaning that they don't have whatever gene it is that that's made him a child. Lester doesn't mean that they don't want their grandfather and grandmother's geens, because they adore my husband's family and my husband's family is very good to them and they're still family. But they were relieved that they didn't have to wonder. You know, if you have a parent that has schizophrenia, you have a greater chance of having that, or if you're BiPOL and you have a parent, you have a greater chance of having that, you know. So they weren't upset like I thought they were going to be upset. They had a sense of relief because of what he was convicted of, that they didn't have to think, Okay, could this be a possibility? You know, I know with my own mother who struggles with whatever mental illness she has. You know, when I was in my twenties, I used to wonder, Oh my god, am I gonna end up like my mother? I struggled with that. It was trumpantizing what their father did, not only what he was convicted of, but the abuse. I mean, he would towards the end there like act like he was gonna kill himself in front of our children. And so they were happy to know that they had a better shot of not struggling with the same things that he struggled with. In the midst of all these struggles, Venus triumphantly pulls ahead in her career. She's really really good, I mean, like stupendously good at selling houses. In ten years, she does nearly five million dollars in real estate sales, staggering accomplishment of tenacity and hard work. Well, I'll tell you this. I'll tell you um, I never intended nor wanted to be as financially as successful as I've turned out to be. I have achieved a lot of financial success, and I believe I'm no one special. That I was put into a situation and I have six children depending on me, and I knew if I failed that they would fail, and that if I put my cross down, then they would carry the cross the rest of their lives. I was determined. I was determined not to let that happen, and I didn't know what that meant. But as far as my real estate success goes, I believe you can be successful at anything, anything, and you can achieve whatever you set your mind to. You just have to have the work ethic and determination. You've gotta have forgiveness. But I never set out, you know, to make seven figures every year. That was never my intent. My intent was. You know, money is nice. I like doing well, but money is a means to an end. And I tell my kids all the time, as long as you can financially support yourself and meet your basic needs and have a little extra for security, like your happiness. I don't believe goes up with what your bank account reflects. So again I tell people I'm nobody's special and they can do what I've done and probably more because they don't have seven children. I have seven children now because it's a lot. You know, I get up at five o'clock every morning, I go. You know, I put the oxygen mask on myself. I learned early on in my journey that you know, I couldn't take care of my six kids if I didn't make myself a priority. Well, there's no time when you're working seventy hours a week unless you get a little uncomfortable. That fund five miles every day because those in orphands going. So I could be present and deal with the stress that I was under, because you need some kind of outlet. So I researched to hold the outlets for anxiety and depression and stress and and exercise was it. So, you know, making myself a priority and letting my kids know that what I didn't want to do is become this real estate mongol successful person. And then my kids I think that the money was more important to them, and that I lost sight of them in order to achieve financial recognition and games. And so you know, I committed every every day when my husband went to prison that first year, I got up at five o'clock, I ran, I came home, I got all six children up. I took them to church every morning, but first school five days a week, and then we went on Sundays. And then I committed, no matter how long my work week was, to sitting down having family dinner with my children every night, because letting them know that, Okay, mom's got this crazy work schedule, but she's here with us, and we're gonna go around and we're gonna say a good thing and are not so good thing, and she hears us, she loves us. We matter. That's the life changing things. That's what you build your family on. That's why I have this unbreakable bond with my kids because they saw, no matter how tough things were, that I was committed first to being a mom to them, second taking care of them emotionally and financially. And they also saw my commitment to taking care of myself because I tell my kids, you've got to take care of yourself, because you teach other people how to treat you. So you've got to start with yourself. And it's taking me a lifetime to learn these things. But my goal is by sharing my story that I can help other women learn in a lot less time than I did their value and what they bring to the table and to get out of a bad relationship if it's not working. The rest is kind of history. I've remarried. I'm actually I've had a seventh child at forty four. It's my first unplayed pregnant saying we were married a few years and um, we were married eight years. We're actually going through divorced. And even with that, I'm like, you know what has been married me and he had never been married. He was private, fifty years old, no children, and I'm like that tells you he's a saint just to try to marry me with all this craziness. But um, I'll look at the marriage with him and I'm like, you know, even though it didn't work, it still was a huge success because we've got this beautiful child together and we're going to raise together. You just have to look at what you have and focus on what you have versus what you don't have. And then I think that you can get through the ups and downs of life and overcome. Veniss kids have gone through these ups and downs in life, and they've overcome so much, particularly her eldest son, John, who was sixteen when his father went to prison. All of my kids are amazing, but John, and you know, he had to step up and be the dad in the family when his father went away, and he is very, very protective over his siblings. And you know, to this day, he's like, Mom, just if you helped Charles study for his reading test? Have you helped Charles is the youngest of the six children, and he's just this amazing soul. And he's just good. I asked him one time, I said, John, I said, like, why are you so good? I mean, because I'm like, there's no way I'm responsible for him being so good. I mean, I just I mean, I try to be a good mom, but like, he's just he's just good. Well, for example, like when he was a senior in high school, um he took his team, he was one of the captains, and took them to the state championship. They won for the first time and the last time in the history of their school. And later that year his team they have awards at the end of the year. They created a special award for John that they give away now every year and it's like just it's called the Heart and Soul because they say he embodies the heart and soul of what you want to see in a young athlete. And so fast forward, he goes to dental school. He had to get up and give a speech to everyone, and all the parents were there, um, all the students, the the whole faculty at the dental school. It's kind of a big deal. And he goes through and he thanks everyone, the faculty, and he recognizes a lot of the students and just you know, highlights what's so good about them and what they're achieving together. And and then he ends and he says, but I can't end this speech without I recognize in my mom. And so of course I had no idea that he was to do this. It's like, Mom, could you stand up? And I'm like what, And so I'm there. It just makes me crack, sir. Everyone in the whole place is like looking because a lot of people knew what our family had gone through. And he just basically said, he said, Mom, when the whole world through the towel in on us. You stepped up and you taught me to never quit. You taught me to never settle, and you taught me to persevere no matter what. And he said, for that, I will be Dr John Morris because of the example that you set for me and my siblings. You're the number one mom in the world, and everybody else is competing for a second place, and like the whole place was just That's when you know, like everything I've been through, everything is worth it, because when you have your children looked at you and they have this love and respect for you, even though again I am not the perfect mother. I want to say that a hundred times, and I failed and constantly, but when they look at you and they generally love and respect you, I mean there is nothing, no amount of success, no amount of money, nothing in the world that can ever give you happiness and peace in a sense of fulfillment as when you have your children one by one look at you and recognize that you know you've basically sacrificed yourself to try to be a good parent to them. And again, my advice to other people and what helped me when you go through tough times, don't look at what you can do big for your family. It's really the little things to having dinner with them, you know, taking them to mass or whatever your faith is, to go into their gains. Just you know, I'll be at their games working. They won't see me. I'll secretly have my phone hidden while they're on the field, but they see me there, you know, they see me there. And I'm producing sixty seventy million dollars a year in real estate. That's hard. But they see what you do and they love you for it, and you just, I don't know, that's happiness is you know, heard Oprah one time refer to m Martin Luther Keane got everybody can be famous, but everybody can be happiness because something like happiness is found in service. In service, it can be in many ways your family too, you know, to charity to other people that need you. You can serve. And that's God has put me on the serve to serve my children, to be a mom. And I just happened to be successful at the same time because I have to be successful to take care of them. Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly z A Core is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find me on Instagram at Danny writer. And if you'd like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.