May 30, 2020 • 28 mins
Dani and Liz respond to questions from the audience about shame, the power of the unthought known, and the growing community of people who find out later in life they were donor-conceived.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio High
Family Secret Listeners. It's Danny again. Here's part two of
my live conversation with Liz Phair. The audience at the
Fine Arts Theater in Los Angeles had some questions for us. Hi. Um,
(00:30):
this is a question for Danny. First of all, so
lovely to see you both up there and to hear
we have to say thank you. Um, Danny, here's a
question I had, and I think you're sort of have
sort of answered it with this term the how can
we keep all confusing it? The the unthought unthought known.
And I think that if that was in the book,
(00:51):
I maybe didn't absorb it enough because as I was
reading your book, I was swinging from side to side,
or I was feeling like you were swinging from side
side saying, on the one hand, everyone's told you your
whole life you're not Jewish. On the other hand, you say,
how can that be? And Um, On the one hand,
(01:11):
I felt sure that in your life you had talked
to folks or had friends who were adoptees, or had
used sperm donors, or had experienced some of those things,
and yet when it was about you, you seemed um,
it almost seemed like you hadn't thought about it before,
like it was so mind blowing to you, the complexities
(01:33):
of it, and so I couldn't really I guess my
question is, can you help me understand kind of where
the path was between those dramatic swings of I was
so certain about this, and yet at the same time
I always had doubts and and maybe the answer is
this the unthought known. I never consciously entertained a doubt.
(01:57):
And also I didn't I in the world that I
grew up in, I didn't know anything about sperm donation
or um. Really, adoption was hardly talked about it all.
I mean, even even I think in in our you know,
it was it was kind of a quiet thing. I mean,
(02:18):
I think, um, you know, Lizz's parents told her from
the time that it was like woven into your identity
from the time you're very small. They were psychologically astute
enough to do that. There were a lot of parents
who didn't, and even if they did, everything was often
just very very silent, you know, And so there was
no sense of I mean, we again, we are who
(02:43):
were told we are as small children. I also adored
my father and the and I and I didn't adore
my mother, and so the it would have been something
that would have been just devastating and dangerous for me
to entertain. So there never was. I mean, when I
write about it in the book, there it is from
(03:04):
the place of now piecing it together, you know, the
collapsing of time. There's a moment in my book where
so I was when I was three years old, the
Kodak Christmas poster child. It falls under the category of
you can't make this ship up, right, you know. I
was like what And there was a story that my
mother always told about how that happened, and it was
(03:27):
just an accepted story by absolutely everybody. She took me
into the city for a portrait at the holidays, and
and then the Kodak people were in the photography studio
and they saw that, they saw the portrait and they said,
wouldn't it be wonderful to use this for the Christmas card.
So it's all these years later, and this was everybody
who saw the Christmas card knew in my family knew
(03:51):
that story. It's completely accepted. It confirmation bias. It's all
these years later, my husband and I are home one
day the the poster has a place of honor in
my son's bathroom. I mean, it's like really, it's just
kind of like And my husband is looking at the
at the poster one day and he says, this was
(04:11):
shot as a Christmas card. I was like, what are
you talking about. You're wearing a black and red dress.
You're playing with a wooden train that is containing red
and green elves with you know, little elf elf hats um.
What orthodox Jewish mother would have dressed her child in
(04:36):
such a manner for the holiday portrait? And and he
and he said that, and it was like the veil lifted.
And I was like, ah, that's true. She was not
telling the truth about that, And she made up a
story about how that came to be. So that's just
(04:56):
an example of the unthought known. It large. Like everyone
in my family, it was a big joke. It was
a source of hilarity that an Orthodox Jewish girl was
wishing the whole world Americ merry Christmas. Isn't that funny?
But not so funny when you actually understand the backstory, right?
(05:16):
Thank you, Hello, Hi danny Um. When reading your book
and you sharing your journey, I felt that you were
very nurturing with your words and what you were sharing.
And I'm curious to know it felt that you were
making it very more nurturing for the reader as we
(05:39):
all learned of your story. And it felt even though
it had a rapid pace and it was a very
quick read, um, it was a page turner. UM, it
felt like you did it in a very very careful,
caring way for the reader to find out all the information.
And it felt that it was kind of a tool
of self care for yourself, perhaps speaking to yourself through
(06:05):
this book. And curious to know if that, um, you
see it as a self care tool as you as well,
is um in your book? Um? And what are your
self care? What is your self care therapist that you
do for yourself? What an interesting question. So the first part,
and I actually wonder for you, Liz about this, because
(06:29):
to write a good book, to write a book that's
gonna resonate connect with readers, um, at some point, the
writer does need to think about how that connection happens. UM.
Or I mean I was aware in writing Inheritance that
I was writing a story that was, in its details
(06:53):
not going to be relatable to a lot of people. UM.
And on All of my other books had relatable um
storylines in some way. And this is where I think.
It's like, you know, it's not relatable to people. Um.
Not Not everybody's a rock star, right, um, and not
(07:14):
everybody knows what it's like to wake up one day
and find out that your you know, your father isn't
your biological father, and that apparently your biological father is
a sperm donor you every It's such a bonkers kind
of thing, um that I had to think about, and
I always said to my students, UM, I sort of
(07:36):
had to go against my own advice. I would say,
don't think about what's universal about your story. Be it
drilled down into what's so utterly specific, and that is
what will become universal. But in the case of writing Inheritance,
I did have to think about it. And the way
I had to think about it is what am I learning?
Because I didn't ask for this story. I wanted to
(07:58):
send it back to the story store, you know, just
it was so shocking and so painful, and and I
was like, you know, just in the thick of it.
But in the thick of it, there's Um. I remember
I had a meeting and it's it's some of it
is actually in the book. I met with. It was
Rabbi David Wolpe. Um. I asked him if he would
(08:18):
meet with me, because um, I have a lot of
respect for him. And I was just on this search
for um you know what what what kind of meaning
I was going to make and and and Rabbi Wolpe
said to me, everyone feels other And I said this
part I didn't put in the book. I said, really everyone.
(08:38):
And he said smart people. And he said, you have
gone to the front of otherness and you're coming back
with something to teach us. And I really took that
to heart. I thought, well, what am I? This is?
This is my lot in life, this is this is
my I'm someone who's written about family and identity all
(09:00):
my life, who now has you know, just experienced, you know,
the the biggest sort of pardon the expression, but the
biggest mind fuck you know when it comes to um,
you know, identity and just the sort of profound sort
of identity crisis, existential crisis. How do I translate that?
(09:25):
And by translating it for the reader, I was also
translating it for myself. It didn't feel like self care.
While I was writing this book, it felt like pure torture.
I sat in a chair. My body went to complete,
you know, like I stopped moving, I stopped exercising, I
stopped doing anything other than sitting in this chair and
(09:49):
writing this book, um and researching and reporting and calling.
But ultimately it was I mean, I bye, bye, peace
seeing together the philosophical and moral, you know, sort of bye.
And Liz, you were talking about this. By being forced
by the endeavor to think of my parents as people
(10:13):
like what you're talking about with your birth mother and
holding that and holding that birth certificate, she was She
was a person to you in that moment. She wasn't
only your mother who wasn't able to She wasn't just
part of my story. She wasn't just part of your story.
Which is such a gift when that happens, because we
(10:35):
never really do that, we never really forced to do
that as as children, as as children or the grown
children of our parents. We don't ever have to think
of them really as anything other than our parents in
one way or another. And I had to do that,
and you know, it's self care. It's interesting. I mean,
I've been on the road for this book since last January,
(10:58):
and we need some self care. I meditate every morning
for twenty minutes. I bring my I haven't. I can't
do a carry on because my self care ways about
like fifteen pounds, like just the crystals and Mark Nepo's
Book of Awakening that I actually have to carry with
me and I can't read it on a kindle, and um,
(11:19):
and my all my essential oils that are you know,
just I mean I I wherever we go, there we are,
and I need to bring a lot to kind of
like settle myself wherever I am. Um, what do you
do for self care? I don't know that. I mean
I make art for self care. And I often find
that the friction between me and other people increases if
(11:42):
I'm not making art, and if I am making art,
I'm a lovely person. And it's really it's vital to
me and vital to those around me that I continue
to do. So it's how I process. So even though
as you said, it's excruciating to write, and I totally
understand why no one ever finishes their book because it's brutal,
(12:04):
you wouldn't think that it seems like the most cushy
job you could have, and it's brutal, but but the
feeling of joy, completeness and wholeness that I feel, even
for a difficult story is it's physical. It's a very
physical realignment for me, and so I do lots of
(12:26):
other stupid stuff, but like I do think that art
is the most self caring thing and and it's selfish.
I'm not gonna lie like you're taking time away and
saying please don't call me during these hours or you
can't you know, leave me alone for a week or
whatever that is. But it's it's the most other than
you know, the usual stuff like exercise and eating well
(12:48):
and sleeping right. Like it's the most aligning, restorative thing
I know how to do. We'll be back in a
moment with more family secrets. Hi, uh Danny, And let's
thank you so much. Um you're speaking is melody. Really
(13:10):
it's inspiring. And thank you for sharing what your manager said.
I'm hoping that I'll think that on a daily basis.
I wanted to ask because it is so rich and painful,
and as you're talking about how you're writing with each
of your books and going there, it sounds really nice
when you say, oh, the sharves of glass and in
(13:31):
between you see the light. It sounds beautiful, but when
you're having to put it down on paper and expressing
it that way, how do you get there and make
it authentic instead of like trying to sound a certain
way or be a certain thing. Kind Um, One of
(13:52):
the things that really bothers me the most is I
have to do it sober. I can't. I don't have
any fun tools, Like no fun tool will give me
that stuff. So it really chaps my ask that I
have to do all this stuff sover because it would
be much more fun. You know. I read about writers
like you know, they're whiskey or whatever. I can't do that.
I have to go to a state of vulnerability. But
(14:14):
this may just be me. I don't know how you
would feel about this, but I have an ability, maybe
because I've been writing songs for so long to do
like an inception like dive. I don't have a lot
of memories, but the memories I have are there because
they're either really great or really terrible, and I can
walk into it. So the trick that I'm always the
(14:36):
way I'm gaming myself is you make sure no one's
going to interrupt you. Usually I work very late at night,
and I'm terribly dismayed to see my son has picked
up this habit. But I need the world to shut up.
I needed to be quiet, almost like a what are
those uh chambers? Those when you don't have any stimulation,
(14:59):
sensory depth, ovation chambers? So I can I always try
to write in the age that I was when I'm
in the memory. So if you can go into the
age that you were, and it does require vulnerability, but
there's surrender in the sense of just put it down,
what you see, what you smell, Just follow the train
(15:21):
of sensation, and you'll find yourself giving yourself insight. It's
almost like you do the sensation first. Where am I?
What does it feel like? What does it look like?
Go back there? Who am I? Like? You know, there's
a couple of stories, like from in my book The
New York City Blackout, which I book ended with being
(15:41):
in New York City during a blizzard too, but like
in the blizzard, I'm more like hard and grizzled and
older and responsible, and in the Blackout, I'm younger and
like loving the snow day of it and having romance
with someone I shouldn't have. It's just like like be
that person and don't leave. Okay, God, I want to
(16:04):
say something that I cannot say. I have the perfect
I'll tell you later, but there are other things that
you do where you have to take your mind out
of it and follow that. There you go, hi, uh Danny.
I just wanted to say, as a woman who's also
(16:26):
donor conceived, I'm sure you've all of us come out
and have something to say. So, um, I found out
at twenty five, and I found my father's other daughter
two years ago and she didn't know that her mother
had lied to her and told the stories. And we
found our biological father's identity a year and a half ago,
(16:49):
so this is all really new for us. So anyway,
I just wanted to preface that, um to say that
we as part of the donor conceived community. I mean,
when I was twenty five, there was nobody else donor conceived.
It's just not talked about, and our mothers said our
mothers were told not to tell anybody. So anyway, what
(17:10):
I just wanted to say is just really appreciate to
you giving life to our story because it's really not
well known and the people in our family and our
friends who hear that we are donor conceived. They don't
really understand what this means to us, to be basically
lied to our entire lives. And then suddenly one day, poof,
(17:31):
you know, the man you thought youre was your father wasn't,
and I was really happy about it. You weren't, and
my my sister Jane was very confused. And now we
have our father's biological children through his wife and they're
very upset and confused the whole thing. So the fact
that you gave this story life and have been able
(17:52):
to educate so many people in terms of what we're
all going through, we just really app I speak for
all of us, We really do appreciate it. And UM,
my question is what's next for you in terms of
supporting the community. Are you is this the end of it?
Are you speaking to the community, are you involved? Just
(18:14):
really curious what you're doing next? Thanks, thanks for that,
and thanks thanks for sharing. UM. What I'm doing is
this UM. That's why I've been on the road for
the last year. That's why I've just been to five
cities in five days. UM. That's why I have an
ongoing UM tour, UH, both nationally and internationally. UM. I'm
(18:42):
a writer who made this discovery and you know, poured
my heart heart out into a book about it, and
I'm now out there actually really trying to UM connect
and okay, I you know, it's it's interesting because to me,
(19:03):
when I speak to audiences crowds, I feel like I
have a responsibility to say, million people have the trill
of hands right now? How many people in this room
have UM ordered a DNA test? See yeah, I love
doing that right. So it's um the most popular holiday
(19:29):
gift in America. Um Uh. Families are giving it to
each other for Hanakah and Christmas. UM. And for a
portion of these people, there is UM a shocking discovery.
It's not always doing our conception. UM. Birth parents are
finding their birth children, birth children are finding their birth parents.
(19:54):
Sometimes that's a all of the all of these cases.
Sometimes that's a beautiful story. Sometimes it's a painful story. UM.
Sometimes it's almost always it's a complicated story. And there
are members of families who feel differently about what they're learning.
It's just there are fathers discovering children they never knew
they had. There are people discovering half siblings that they
(20:15):
never knew they had it, just it's it's really kind
of epidemic UM. And what people don't really realize is
the sheer numbers. So if twelve million people uh did
this d N DNA testing last year, which was what
the number was, and if two percent of those people
(20:37):
are discovering what's known in that world as an MPE,
which stands stands for not parent expected, two twelve million
people is I think two forty people. That's the number
of people who are making these discoveries right now. And
it has to do with all of this secrecy, all
of and I me also to say the secrecy which
(21:03):
is ending now. I mean, it's beginning to come to
an end. It's got a ways to go. We all
have ways to go, because there are still I mean,
I don't want to get on a soapbox about this tonight,
but in this country, we are one of the only
countries in the developed world that does not have any
kind of UM database, any kind of registry for a
(21:27):
number of donor a number of offspring that a donor
can produce, right no checks and balances. You add to
that secrecy, lack of disclosure, and you have really a
crisis UM so all of this is I mean to
answer your question. That's that's what I'm doing. What I'm
(21:50):
doing is using the megaphone that I currently have to
spread the word as much as I can and to
humanize and make people understand what this story is. I
was at a dinner the other day in Philadelphia with
a bunch of of UM publishing people and somebody just
(22:10):
turned to me and said, well, no matter what, your
father still your father, and that that is true. I
came to that my father is very much still my father.
In fact, he's more my father than he ever was.
But for someone to say that to me like that,
it's like, how about walking for a minute in my shoes,
you know? And then she said, I don't think people
should be contacting their donors. I mean I know families
that have just been completely torn apart by this, and like, okay,
(22:32):
I've been doing nothing but thinking about this for the
last four years, but thank you for your opinion. UM,
it's it's it's it's really complicated, and what I'm trying
to do is UM shed light on that complexity. We'll
be back in a moment. Well, since it is the
(22:55):
last question, let me thank you both very much for
something that was very entertaining, educational, and formative. And so
I'll just end with a question about one word shame. Um.
You ask the questions why do families lie? Why do
families keep things secret? And in the Jewish tradition in particular,
(23:18):
there's enormous evidence that shame is a critical motive for lying.
I mean, I'm sure you have been through the first
chapters of Genesis, I don't know how many times. But
the patriarch Abraham, his wife Sarah, was childless, and she's shamed.
She has to give him a concubine. He tries to
(23:40):
pointer off the Pharaoh, lying that she's his sister, and
then later on in the Bible they make up a
story that she bears Isaac after she's passed the menopause um,
only so that they can say Abraham begat Isaac, which
is Abraham couldn't possibly be Isaac's biological father. Uh. Isn't
(24:05):
there a very significant Jewish tradition, or perhaps general the
shame as a critical factor in this question of secrecy.
I love that we're ending this evening with that question.
I mean, I love that because I've become a bit
of a student of secrecy in in You know, I
(24:27):
discovered that I was the secret after writing about secrecy
all my life. But then when I started the podcast,
when I started Family Secrets I, which happened in a
very organic way. It just came out of people started
telling me there their secrets. They would read Inheritance and
start telling me their stories. I've seen in conversation after conversation,
(24:55):
you know when I've had enough. Now I've had thirty conversations,
like really deep ones with p Will who have really
intense kind of unpacking of family secrets, and I've begun
to see, all right, what what do all of these
stories have in common? UM? And thrumming? Underneath the keeping
of the secret is I think almost inevitably shame. And
(25:18):
the shame UM comes in many forms, but it's some
version of no one would understand this. I'm completely alone,
uh in this experience. If I were to voice it,
I would be ridiculed or not understood, or I would
be shunned. UM. And you know, I I teach a
(25:41):
large retreat once a year on the East coast and
UM and a few years ago, at the end of
the retreat, I gave this exercise to everyone sitting there,
there are a couple hundred people, and I made it
up on the spot. I said, okay, I want all
of you just take a piece of paper. You'll have
three minutes. I want you two and and once you
(26:01):
finish what you've written, you can rip it up, you
can burn it, you can throw it away, do whatever
you want. No one's ever going to see it. I
want you to write the thing that if anyone knew
about you, you would die of mortification. And then I
was like, okay, start And from where I was sitting,
I watched like a couple of hundred people, no one hesitated,
(26:25):
everyone started writing. It wasn't like shame, What is this shame?
What are you talking about? Shame? And but then later
as I was driving home, I was thinking, because to me,
the lesson was whatever is in here is rich material
for you, like think about that now that you've But
I was driving home and I was thinking the real lesson, um,
(26:48):
which I never would do, is it if I said,
actually just kidding, you'll have to read you have to.
You'll have to read it aloud now, which I would
never ever do. Um. There are teachers who would, but
I'm not one of them. Would have happened, everyone in
that room would have started nodding and resonating and feeling
(27:09):
like yeah, me too, or I understand, or the compassion,
the empathy, the sense of this is, you know, this
is the human catastrophe. We're all in this together, but
we don't do that. And that is why, you know,
conversations like this feels so incredibly valuable and important to me. Um.
(27:30):
And also why this moment in time, I think we're
we're at the start of something. I mean, there's so
much that's so messed up in the world right now,
but counteracting it in some way is this desire for
authenticity and connection and gathering and truth telling and vulnerability
(27:51):
and you know, just this sense of we're all more
alike than we are different and can we just kind
of Um. I think the guests that no one I've
asked to come on Families Secrets, I said, no, not
one person. And they're not doing it because they want
to confess in a kind of brilliant way. They're doing
it because there's this sense of you know what, I'm
telling this and it's liberating me. Yes, thank you for
(28:39):
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 High
Family Secret Listeners. It's Danny again. Here's part two of
my live conversation with Liz Phair. The audience at the
Fine Arts Theater in Los Angeles had some questions for us. Hi. Um,
(00:30):
this is a question for Danny. First of all, so
lovely to see you both up there and to hear
we have to say thank you. Um, Danny, here's a
question I had, and I think you're sort of have
sort of answered it with this term the how can
we keep all confusing it? The the unthought unthought known.
And I think that if that was in the book,
(00:51):
I maybe didn't absorb it enough because as I was
reading your book, I was swinging from side to side,
or I was feeling like you were swinging from side
side saying, on the one hand, everyone's told you your
whole life you're not Jewish. On the other hand, you say,
how can that be? And Um, On the one hand,
(01:11):
I felt sure that in your life you had talked
to folks or had friends who were adoptees, or had
used sperm donors, or had experienced some of those things,
and yet when it was about you, you seemed um,
it almost seemed like you hadn't thought about it before,
like it was so mind blowing to you, the complexities
(01:33):
of it, and so I couldn't really I guess my
question is, can you help me understand kind of where
the path was between those dramatic swings of I was
so certain about this, and yet at the same time
I always had doubts and and maybe the answer is
this the unthought known. I never consciously entertained a doubt.
(01:57):
And also I didn't I in the world that I
grew up in, I didn't know anything about sperm donation
or um. Really, adoption was hardly talked about it all.
I mean, even even I think in in our you know,
it was it was kind of a quiet thing. I mean,
(02:18):
I think, um, you know, Lizz's parents told her from
the time that it was like woven into your identity
from the time you're very small. They were psychologically astute
enough to do that. There were a lot of parents
who didn't, and even if they did, everything was often
just very very silent, you know, And so there was
no sense of I mean, we again, we are who
(02:43):
were told we are as small children. I also adored
my father and the and I and I didn't adore
my mother, and so the it would have been something
that would have been just devastating and dangerous for me
to entertain. So there never was. I mean, when I
write about it in the book, there it is from
(03:04):
the place of now piecing it together, you know, the
collapsing of time. There's a moment in my book where
so I was when I was three years old, the
Kodak Christmas poster child. It falls under the category of
you can't make this ship up, right, you know. I
was like what And there was a story that my
mother always told about how that happened, and it was
(03:27):
just an accepted story by absolutely everybody. She took me
into the city for a portrait at the holidays, and
and then the Kodak people were in the photography studio
and they saw that, they saw the portrait and they said,
wouldn't it be wonderful to use this for the Christmas card.
So it's all these years later, and this was everybody
who saw the Christmas card knew in my family knew
(03:51):
that story. It's completely accepted. It confirmation bias. It's all
these years later, my husband and I are home one
day the the poster has a place of honor in
my son's bathroom. I mean, it's like really, it's just
kind of like And my husband is looking at the
at the poster one day and he says, this was
(04:11):
shot as a Christmas card. I was like, what are
you talking about. You're wearing a black and red dress.
You're playing with a wooden train that is containing red
and green elves with you know, little elf elf hats um.
What orthodox Jewish mother would have dressed her child in
(04:36):
such a manner for the holiday portrait? And and he
and he said that, and it was like the veil lifted.
And I was like, ah, that's true. She was not
telling the truth about that, And she made up a
story about how that came to be. So that's just
(04:56):
an example of the unthought known. It large. Like everyone
in my family, it was a big joke. It was
a source of hilarity that an Orthodox Jewish girl was
wishing the whole world Americ merry Christmas. Isn't that funny?
But not so funny when you actually understand the backstory, right?
(05:16):
Thank you, Hello, Hi danny Um. When reading your book
and you sharing your journey, I felt that you were
very nurturing with your words and what you were sharing.
And I'm curious to know it felt that you were
making it very more nurturing for the reader as we
(05:39):
all learned of your story. And it felt even though
it had a rapid pace and it was a very
quick read, um, it was a page turner. UM, it
felt like you did it in a very very careful,
caring way for the reader to find out all the information.
And it felt that it was kind of a tool
of self care for yourself, perhaps speaking to yourself through
(06:05):
this book. And curious to know if that, um, you
see it as a self care tool as you as well,
is um in your book? Um? And what are your
self care? What is your self care therapist that you
do for yourself? What an interesting question. So the first part,
and I actually wonder for you, Liz about this, because
(06:29):
to write a good book, to write a book that's
gonna resonate connect with readers, um, at some point, the
writer does need to think about how that connection happens. UM.
Or I mean I was aware in writing Inheritance that
I was writing a story that was, in its details
(06:53):
not going to be relatable to a lot of people. UM.
And on All of my other books had relatable um
storylines in some way. And this is where I think.
It's like, you know, it's not relatable to people. Um.
Not Not everybody's a rock star, right, um, and not
(07:14):
everybody knows what it's like to wake up one day
and find out that your you know, your father isn't
your biological father, and that apparently your biological father is
a sperm donor you every It's such a bonkers kind
of thing, um that I had to think about, and
I always said to my students, UM, I sort of
(07:36):
had to go against my own advice. I would say,
don't think about what's universal about your story. Be it
drilled down into what's so utterly specific, and that is
what will become universal. But in the case of writing Inheritance,
I did have to think about it. And the way
I had to think about it is what am I learning?
Because I didn't ask for this story. I wanted to
(07:58):
send it back to the story store, you know, just
it was so shocking and so painful, and and I
was like, you know, just in the thick of it.
But in the thick of it, there's Um. I remember
I had a meeting and it's it's some of it
is actually in the book. I met with. It was
Rabbi David Wolpe. Um. I asked him if he would
(08:18):
meet with me, because um, I have a lot of
respect for him. And I was just on this search
for um you know what what what kind of meaning
I was going to make and and and Rabbi Wolpe
said to me, everyone feels other And I said this
part I didn't put in the book. I said, really everyone.
(08:38):
And he said smart people. And he said, you have
gone to the front of otherness and you're coming back
with something to teach us. And I really took that
to heart. I thought, well, what am I? This is?
This is my lot in life, this is this is
my I'm someone who's written about family and identity all
(09:00):
my life, who now has you know, just experienced, you know,
the the biggest sort of pardon the expression, but the
biggest mind fuck you know when it comes to um,
you know, identity and just the sort of profound sort
of identity crisis, existential crisis. How do I translate that?
(09:25):
And by translating it for the reader, I was also
translating it for myself. It didn't feel like self care.
While I was writing this book, it felt like pure torture.
I sat in a chair. My body went to complete,
you know, like I stopped moving, I stopped exercising, I
stopped doing anything other than sitting in this chair and
(09:49):
writing this book, um and researching and reporting and calling.
But ultimately it was I mean, I bye, bye, peace
seeing together the philosophical and moral, you know, sort of bye.
And Liz, you were talking about this. By being forced
by the endeavor to think of my parents as people
(10:13):
like what you're talking about with your birth mother and
holding that and holding that birth certificate, she was She
was a person to you in that moment. She wasn't
only your mother who wasn't able to She wasn't just
part of my story. She wasn't just part of your story.
Which is such a gift when that happens, because we
(10:35):
never really do that, we never really forced to do
that as as children, as as children or the grown
children of our parents. We don't ever have to think
of them really as anything other than our parents in
one way or another. And I had to do that,
and you know, it's self care. It's interesting. I mean,
I've been on the road for this book since last January,
(10:58):
and we need some self care. I meditate every morning
for twenty minutes. I bring my I haven't. I can't
do a carry on because my self care ways about
like fifteen pounds, like just the crystals and Mark Nepo's
Book of Awakening that I actually have to carry with
me and I can't read it on a kindle, and um,
(11:19):
and my all my essential oils that are you know,
just I mean I I wherever we go, there we are,
and I need to bring a lot to kind of
like settle myself wherever I am. Um, what do you
do for self care? I don't know that. I mean
I make art for self care. And I often find
that the friction between me and other people increases if
(11:42):
I'm not making art, and if I am making art,
I'm a lovely person. And it's really it's vital to
me and vital to those around me that I continue
to do. So it's how I process. So even though
as you said, it's excruciating to write, and I totally
understand why no one ever finishes their book because it's brutal,
(12:04):
you wouldn't think that it seems like the most cushy
job you could have, and it's brutal, but but the
feeling of joy, completeness and wholeness that I feel, even
for a difficult story is it's physical. It's a very
physical realignment for me, and so I do lots of
(12:26):
other stupid stuff, but like I do think that art
is the most self caring thing and and it's selfish.
I'm not gonna lie like you're taking time away and
saying please don't call me during these hours or you
can't you know, leave me alone for a week or
whatever that is. But it's it's the most other than
you know, the usual stuff like exercise and eating well
(12:48):
and sleeping right. Like it's the most aligning, restorative thing
I know how to do. We'll be back in a
moment with more family secrets. Hi, uh Danny, And let's
thank you so much. Um you're speaking is melody. Really
(13:10):
it's inspiring. And thank you for sharing what your manager said.
I'm hoping that I'll think that on a daily basis.
I wanted to ask because it is so rich and painful,
and as you're talking about how you're writing with each
of your books and going there, it sounds really nice
when you say, oh, the sharves of glass and in
(13:31):
between you see the light. It sounds beautiful, but when
you're having to put it down on paper and expressing
it that way, how do you get there and make
it authentic instead of like trying to sound a certain
way or be a certain thing. Kind Um, One of
(13:52):
the things that really bothers me the most is I
have to do it sober. I can't. I don't have
any fun tools, Like no fun tool will give me
that stuff. So it really chaps my ask that I
have to do all this stuff sover because it would
be much more fun. You know. I read about writers
like you know, they're whiskey or whatever. I can't do that.
I have to go to a state of vulnerability. But
(14:14):
this may just be me. I don't know how you
would feel about this, but I have an ability, maybe
because I've been writing songs for so long to do
like an inception like dive. I don't have a lot
of memories, but the memories I have are there because
they're either really great or really terrible, and I can
walk into it. So the trick that I'm always the
(14:36):
way I'm gaming myself is you make sure no one's
going to interrupt you. Usually I work very late at night,
and I'm terribly dismayed to see my son has picked
up this habit. But I need the world to shut up.
I needed to be quiet, almost like a what are
those uh chambers? Those when you don't have any stimulation,
(14:59):
sensory depth, ovation chambers? So I can I always try
to write in the age that I was when I'm
in the memory. So if you can go into the
age that you were, and it does require vulnerability, but
there's surrender in the sense of just put it down,
what you see, what you smell, Just follow the train
(15:21):
of sensation, and you'll find yourself giving yourself insight. It's
almost like you do the sensation first. Where am I?
What does it feel like? What does it look like?
Go back there? Who am I? Like? You know, there's
a couple of stories, like from in my book The
New York City Blackout, which I book ended with being
(15:41):
in New York City during a blizzard too, but like
in the blizzard, I'm more like hard and grizzled and
older and responsible, and in the Blackout, I'm younger and
like loving the snow day of it and having romance
with someone I shouldn't have. It's just like like be
that person and don't leave. Okay, God, I want to
(16:04):
say something that I cannot say. I have the perfect
I'll tell you later, but there are other things that
you do where you have to take your mind out
of it and follow that. There you go, hi, uh Danny.
I just wanted to say, as a woman who's also
(16:26):
donor conceived, I'm sure you've all of us come out
and have something to say. So, um, I found out
at twenty five, and I found my father's other daughter
two years ago and she didn't know that her mother
had lied to her and told the stories. And we
found our biological father's identity a year and a half ago,
(16:49):
so this is all really new for us. So anyway,
I just wanted to preface that, um to say that
we as part of the donor conceived community. I mean,
when I was twenty five, there was nobody else donor conceived.
It's just not talked about, and our mothers said our
mothers were told not to tell anybody. So anyway, what
(17:10):
I just wanted to say is just really appreciate to
you giving life to our story because it's really not
well known and the people in our family and our
friends who hear that we are donor conceived. They don't
really understand what this means to us, to be basically
lied to our entire lives. And then suddenly one day, poof,
(17:31):
you know, the man you thought youre was your father wasn't,
and I was really happy about it. You weren't, and
my my sister Jane was very confused. And now we
have our father's biological children through his wife and they're
very upset and confused the whole thing. So the fact
that you gave this story life and have been able
(17:52):
to educate so many people in terms of what we're
all going through, we just really app I speak for
all of us, We really do appreciate it. And UM,
my question is what's next for you in terms of
supporting the community. Are you is this the end of it?
Are you speaking to the community, are you involved? Just
(18:14):
really curious what you're doing next? Thanks, thanks for that,
and thanks thanks for sharing. UM. What I'm doing is
this UM. That's why I've been on the road for
the last year. That's why I've just been to five
cities in five days. UM. That's why I have an
ongoing UM tour, UH, both nationally and internationally. UM. I'm
(18:42):
a writer who made this discovery and you know, poured
my heart heart out into a book about it, and
I'm now out there actually really trying to UM connect
and okay, I you know, it's it's interesting because to me,
(19:03):
when I speak to audiences crowds, I feel like I
have a responsibility to say, million people have the trill
of hands right now? How many people in this room
have UM ordered a DNA test? See yeah, I love
doing that right. So it's um the most popular holiday
(19:29):
gift in America. Um Uh. Families are giving it to
each other for Hanakah and Christmas. UM. And for a
portion of these people, there is UM a shocking discovery.
It's not always doing our conception. UM. Birth parents are
finding their birth children, birth children are finding their birth parents.
(19:54):
Sometimes that's a all of the all of these cases.
Sometimes that's a beautiful story. Sometimes it's a painful story. UM.
Sometimes it's almost always it's a complicated story. And there
are members of families who feel differently about what they're learning.
It's just there are fathers discovering children they never knew
they had. There are people discovering half siblings that they
(20:15):
never knew they had it, just it's it's really kind
of epidemic UM. And what people don't really realize is
the sheer numbers. So if twelve million people uh did
this d N DNA testing last year, which was what
the number was, and if two percent of those people
(20:37):
are discovering what's known in that world as an MPE,
which stands stands for not parent expected, two twelve million
people is I think two forty people. That's the number
of people who are making these discoveries right now. And
it has to do with all of this secrecy, all
of and I me also to say the secrecy which
(21:03):
is ending now. I mean, it's beginning to come to
an end. It's got a ways to go. We all
have ways to go, because there are still I mean,
I don't want to get on a soapbox about this tonight,
but in this country, we are one of the only
countries in the developed world that does not have any
kind of UM database, any kind of registry for a
(21:27):
number of donor a number of offspring that a donor
can produce, right no checks and balances. You add to
that secrecy, lack of disclosure, and you have really a
crisis UM so all of this is I mean to
answer your question. That's that's what I'm doing. What I'm
(21:50):
doing is using the megaphone that I currently have to
spread the word as much as I can and to
humanize and make people understand what this story is. I
was at a dinner the other day in Philadelphia with
a bunch of of UM publishing people and somebody just
(22:10):
turned to me and said, well, no matter what, your
father still your father, and that that is true. I
came to that my father is very much still my father.
In fact, he's more my father than he ever was.
But for someone to say that to me like that,
it's like, how about walking for a minute in my shoes,
you know? And then she said, I don't think people
should be contacting their donors. I mean I know families
that have just been completely torn apart by this, and like, okay,
(22:32):
I've been doing nothing but thinking about this for the
last four years, but thank you for your opinion. UM,
it's it's it's it's really complicated, and what I'm trying
to do is UM shed light on that complexity. We'll
be back in a moment. Well, since it is the
(22:55):
last question, let me thank you both very much for
something that was very entertaining, educational, and formative. And so
I'll just end with a question about one word shame. Um.
You ask the questions why do families lie? Why do
families keep things secret? And in the Jewish tradition in particular,
(23:18):
there's enormous evidence that shame is a critical motive for lying.
I mean, I'm sure you have been through the first
chapters of Genesis, I don't know how many times. But
the patriarch Abraham, his wife Sarah, was childless, and she's shamed.
She has to give him a concubine. He tries to
(23:40):
pointer off the Pharaoh, lying that she's his sister, and
then later on in the Bible they make up a
story that she bears Isaac after she's passed the menopause um,
only so that they can say Abraham begat Isaac, which
is Abraham couldn't possibly be Isaac's biological father. Uh. Isn't
(24:05):
there a very significant Jewish tradition, or perhaps general the
shame as a critical factor in this question of secrecy.
I love that we're ending this evening with that question.
I mean, I love that because I've become a bit
of a student of secrecy in in You know, I
(24:27):
discovered that I was the secret after writing about secrecy
all my life. But then when I started the podcast,
when I started Family Secrets I, which happened in a
very organic way. It just came out of people started
telling me there their secrets. They would read Inheritance and
start telling me their stories. I've seen in conversation after conversation,
(24:55):
you know when I've had enough. Now I've had thirty conversations,
like really deep ones with p Will who have really
intense kind of unpacking of family secrets, and I've begun
to see, all right, what what do all of these
stories have in common? UM? And thrumming? Underneath the keeping
of the secret is I think almost inevitably shame. And
(25:18):
the shame UM comes in many forms, but it's some
version of no one would understand this. I'm completely alone,
uh in this experience. If I were to voice it,
I would be ridiculed or not understood, or I would
be shunned. UM. And you know, I I teach a
(25:41):
large retreat once a year on the East coast and
UM and a few years ago, at the end of
the retreat, I gave this exercise to everyone sitting there,
there are a couple hundred people, and I made it
up on the spot. I said, okay, I want all
of you just take a piece of paper. You'll have
three minutes. I want you two and and once you
(26:01):
finish what you've written, you can rip it up, you
can burn it, you can throw it away, do whatever
you want. No one's ever going to see it. I
want you to write the thing that if anyone knew
about you, you would die of mortification. And then I
was like, okay, start And from where I was sitting,
I watched like a couple of hundred people, no one hesitated,
(26:25):
everyone started writing. It wasn't like shame, What is this shame?
What are you talking about? Shame? And but then later
as I was driving home, I was thinking, because to me,
the lesson was whatever is in here is rich material
for you, like think about that now that you've But
I was driving home and I was thinking the real lesson, um,
(26:48):
which I never would do, is it if I said,
actually just kidding, you'll have to read you have to.
You'll have to read it aloud now, which I would
never ever do. Um. There are teachers who would, but
I'm not one of them. Would have happened, everyone in
that room would have started nodding and resonating and feeling
(27:09):
like yeah, me too, or I understand, or the compassion,
the empathy, the sense of this is, you know, this
is the human catastrophe. We're all in this together, but
we don't do that. And that is why, you know,
conversations like this feels so incredibly valuable and important to me. Um.
(27:30):
And also why this moment in time, I think we're
we're at the start of something. I mean, there's so
much that's so messed up in the world right now,
but counteracting it in some way is this desire for
authenticity and connection and gathering and truth telling and vulnerability
(27:51):
and you know, just this sense of we're all more
alike than we are different and can we just kind
of Um. I think the guests that no one I've
asked to come on Families Secrets, I said, no, not
one person. And they're not doing it because they want
to confess in a kind of brilliant way. They're doing
it because there's this sense of you know what, I'm
telling this and it's liberating me. Yes, thank you for
(28:39):
more podcasts for my Heart Radio. Visit the I heart radio, app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.