October 8, 2020 • 32 mins
Singer Kanene Pipkin always loved her mother, but they weren’t exactly close. Until one day her mother called with some news Kanene couldn’t wrap her head around—news that would change their relationship, and Kanene’s understanding of what it means to be a family, forever.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio, Mama,
to get Away, Spits of a little Shame, just so
not to give by, just enough to give bye. Oh
(00:20):
a little Girl onto Vogue, Just not to give by,
just not to give bye. That's Canein Pitkin of the
Lone Bellow, a Brooklyn based band, singing a song she
wrote straight from the Heart, a song about her mother,
(00:42):
a song about a secret and it's aftermath. This is
a story about the complex legacy of what we hide
and the remarkable beauty that can emerge when what has
been hidden is brought to light. I'm Danny Shapiro and
(01:05):
this is Family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us,
the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape of your childhood.
Where did you grow up? What was it like. I
(01:25):
grew up in Hardersburg, Virginia, which is a smallish town
I would say midway between Washington, d c. And Richmond, Virginia.
We learned a lot of Civil War history. I used
to do my cross country practices and trails that ran
through the battlefield um because there was a lot of ghosts.
(01:48):
I guess were you aware of that? Do you have
that sense at the time? Oh? Absolutely, Virginia is just
it'sincially a place. It's kind of a haunted place, and
I think I was always really interested in history, not
just American history, but world history in general, so it
was a rich place to grow up. When I was
(02:08):
about ten years old, my parents co founded UH, an
intentionally cross cultural church that focused on and still focuses
on racial reconciliation because at that point Frederick was still
i would say fairly segregated culturally, especially, and I think
some people just really wanted to do the work of listening.
(02:29):
So I've been thinking a lot about that with recent
events and just how when we started the church, we
were singing, you know, gospel music in the attic of
this bluegrass music shop. That is the landscape of my
childhood right there, and I think a lot of how
I became the kind of musician that I am today.
Brothers and sisters, Oh yeah, I'm the fourth of five siblings,
(02:53):
um five down a heat siblings, and there's kind of
a big gap between me and my older brother, and
so me and a younger brother were kind of like
the little kids. And then the three older were like
the older kids, And tell me about your mom. My mom.
Her name is Sharon, She is be she little, she'd
be fierce or whatever that Shakespeare line is. Um. She
(03:17):
to teach, and she dresses in jewel tones. Um. But
she grew up near St. Louis and then in Omaha,
so she she was fishing in Omaha. Um. And she
was the oldest of ten kids. Kind of a genius,
so I would say, could beat anybody at trivial pursuit,
(03:37):
could answer almost every jeopardy question immediately, that kind of thing.
But definitely Shye Kennan's mom and dad met in the
early nineteen seventies. Her parents were pretty different from each other,
a case of opposites attract Her dad was outgoing, extroverted,
(03:57):
and had a gift for enthusiasm. He loved to travel,
meet people, get to know people, and just kind of
figure out what makes them tick. Canine's mom was much
more introverted. As a child, Knine found her kind of opaque.
She definitely got the sense that there was a lot
about her mom that she didn't know. She didn't really
(04:18):
talk to me about things the way that some of
my other friend's moms would and some of my other
friends would say that their moms were like their best
friend or you know, their confidant, And I think I
was got the impression that my mom was just like Dizzy.
I knew she loved us and she was an amazing mom,
but she was busy, you know. But as I got older,
(04:40):
I kind of perceived that there might be a little
more to what I perceived as isolation. After she graduates
from college, Canine makes plans to move to China and
her parents take her to the airport to see her off,
and her mother well, her mother just falls apart. I
(05:02):
remember my mom at the airport, like at the Parcher's
gate at Dullis, and she she just broke down. She
was weeping, and honestly, I was pretty confused because I
was like, I don't really think you needed me that much.
And you know, we always had like a close relationship.
(05:23):
I love my mom and she's really caring, but like,
I never saw myself as that important, not in a
bad way, but just I guess I just didn't think
she would be that effective if I left. Had you
gone away to college, yeah, I went to college, Jubilie
and Mary, but It's only about at most a two
hour drive, right, So the difference between being a two
(05:45):
hour drive away and being on the other side of
the world. Yeah, and I think it was. And I
had taken trips like I had gone. I've been to India,
and I had done a summer in China the year before,
and I'd always like to travel, and I had spent
the entire summer before I moved to China, I did
like a classic backpacking trip with my younger brother and
(06:06):
two of my friends. So I was gone a lot.
And I hadn't really spent significant time at home since
I had graduated from high school. And so yeah, I
guess I was just confused. Like we didn't have long
conversations on the phone ever. Um, I just felt like
there wasn't a lot of openness or vulnerability in our relationship.
(06:29):
So what did you make of it? At the time,
it made me feel guilty for leaving, and it made
me feel like maybe my mom needed me, and I
wasn't sure why. Really it was confusing, but I just,
you know, I had a lot on my mind. I
was moving to Asia, and you know, I had a
lot to get started. So I think I just kind
of I buried it, and I tried to be as
(06:52):
good as a long distance daughter as I could be.
I tried to write long emails phone and this was
way before zoom. This was the Skype days, so the
Skype a lot, and you know, just trying to let
them into my world. But it was just kind of surprising.
So you go off to China and how long do
(07:14):
you stay there before you return to the States. Well,
they're off and on for about four years, I think.
Came home for a few months to get married while
having some visa trouble, and actually my mom was like,
I was already engaged and we had been planning on
being engaged for like a year and a half. Sounded
(07:34):
like a good idea at the time, and then my
mom was like, why don't you just stay here for
a few months, stayn for a few months, and on
the wedding and get married. So that's what we did.
After they were married, Canine and her husband returned to China,
but they started growing restless. They had good jobs that
were paying the bills, but they found themselves wondering what
(07:55):
their next step might be. They thought about graduate school
coming to the States, but then Canine meets a family
that had adopted five Chinese kids, all of whom had
special needs. They ran an orphanage and supported the orphanage
with a bread baking business. They also trained the kids
who were able to bake so that they'd have skills.
(08:17):
This family and their enterprise really lights Kenin up, so
she decides to go to culinary school and become a
pastry chef. I knew a lot of people who were
doing kind of microfinance job training, skill training type stuff
for different populations, and so I had always loved baking,
and I started to think about maybe going to chef
(08:39):
school so I could come back and you know, teacher,
I don't know see what happened with that, but I
didn't want to rush into it. So my husband I
both decided we would do this really long fast and
I think it was either a thirty or forty days,
just like a a juice fast thirty or forty day
(08:59):
juice past. Yeah, you know, why not? I want to
make sure I heard that right right. It just seems
like such a huge decision, and I just wanted to
make sure I was like emotionally and mentally and spiritually
just clear to make it. So about halfway through that fast,
(09:21):
her mom calls me. So, I'm already kind of on
this like weird journey, this plane of existence that already
feels kind of like Caigros time, just like this amplified
time of importance. And my mom calls me kind of
out of the blue, and she's like, hey, I need
to tell you something, and like, they found my baby.
(09:47):
Let's just stop there for a sec think about this.
Imagine being in the middle of a month long juice
fast and hearing these words they found my baby. I
think you might feel like you're hallucinating. And obviously that
(10:08):
tendance didn't make any sense to me at the time,
and I asked her to explain, like what do you mean?
And she went on to tell me that my aunt
had been googling their maiden name, which is kind of
a unique name, and had found someone posting on a
(10:30):
site of people trying to find their birth parents, um
that this was their birth name, and she just knew
it was my my mom's child. I remember my mom
called me. She was calling all of her kids to
kind of ask our permission to get in contact with
her her child, and I just remember being like, you
(10:56):
obviously don't need my permission, but I mean, I'm glad
you are telling us this. And I remember my mom
not being able to say the word rape when she
was telling me about the child. She she told me
she had been assaulted, and all this was kind of
coming out as I'm kind of the way I'm telling
it to you now, just lots of random details. She
(11:19):
had not dealt with the trauma of it. And then
so I was able to find a piece together that
she had been raped and had gotten pregnant from the
encounter and then had kind of been sent away to
have my half sister. And I'm still not totally sure
as to why. So Canine is halfway around the world
(11:41):
in Beijing. She's twenty five years old, she hasn't eaten
solid food in a while, and now she discovers the
source of that opacity she had always sensed in her mother,
the source of her mother's slight remove. So you're years old,
what you making of this as she's you're getting these
(12:03):
disjointed details. I mean, it's completely overwhelming. I immediately I'm
starting to think about different things from my past, the
ways that I was raised, the ways that my parents
would react to certain things that would happen, or things
in the news, or just as I was growing older,
(12:24):
the way they would deal with me, and just the
way that my mom was. It felt like a lot
of things started to make sense. But also, you know,
my mom was barely able to even tell me what
had happened at this point, and so I felt very overwhelmed.
But I felt really grateful that I had randomly read
(12:46):
Alice Siebold's memoir called Lucky, which is about when she
was raped as a young college student, and she kind
of goes into the gritty detail right off the bat
of like everything that happens, and then the whole book
is her dealing with it. And so I had just
read this book really by chance, and I felt like
(13:07):
I had been prepared for this phone call um in
a strange way, and I was able to kind of
care for my mom a little bit better, I think,
and ask better questions. Did your mind go back to
that moment in the airport when you were this very
young woman leaving and going, you know, halfway across the world.
(13:29):
It definitely did. And I was able to talk to
my mom about that later when talking to her about
her own past, and she She just said that I
had always been just a calming presence to her and
she could just really feel that I cared about her
(13:51):
and then I loved her and that I was for her.
And she said sometimes that was just like difficult for
her to feel about most people. And I don't know
if it's just my style of communicating or something else,
but I felt like a gift. You know, when someone
tells you that they really feel loved by you, that's
(14:13):
a special thing because that's something that you can't really control.
I'm gathering that she made that same phone quality each
one of your siblings. And it also it's interesting because
it sounds like she didn't have to. I've heard a
lot of stories where in a way, someone's hand is
forced because you know someone has come forward and made
(14:38):
themselves known and the story is going to come out.
This wasn't a story that was going to come out.
You know, your aunt doing that research and finding that
name and seeing that it must be your mother's child.
It sounds like it opened something up in your mother
of I can't just put this back in the bott
(15:00):
x mm hmm. Yeah. I mean she was definitely offered
the can of worms and given the choice open order don't,
And I'm really proud of her that she did. I
think she thought, for what it was an opportunity to
heal and to deal with some things that had not
been dealt with, and to connect with someone that she
(15:22):
thought she had lost. It was supposed to be a
closed adoption, but they mistakenly put my mother's maiden name
on the file, and so that was how my half
sister found her. So I think my mom really had
never thought it would be a possibility, and then I
(15:42):
think it just felt like a second chance against all
the odds. When your mom told you, it was with
a sense that she was interested in knowing more, reaching out.
I mean, what happened next, so like it happened pretty quickly.
I think they had a phone call and then I
(16:05):
remember I got to the stage maybe a month or
two later, and my little brother and I and my
mom and dad went to Omaha to meet Dory, my
half sister and her family, and my dad and mom
went and had dinner with her one night, and then
my little brother and I joined the next day and
(16:26):
we went to the to the zoo with Doria and
her family. She has three kids. Imagine walking past, a
group of people at the zoo, an older couple, several
younger women and men, some kids, just a family having
an outing, just like everybody else, right, except all families
(16:50):
have stories, and sometimes these stories are secrets and require love, patients, care,
compassion when these stories begin to be told. It was
a lot for them both, and I think it was
(17:10):
just the beginning of what ended up being a really
long process for both of them. And I know a
lot more about my mom's side of the process and stories,
but the beginning of kind of being able to go
back and work through the trauma. It was amazing because
it was it was this opportunity to meet her and
(17:32):
see her as was fully formed, like beautiful woman. She
looks more like my mom than any of the siblings do,
any like me or any of my siblings do. And
she has this beautiful family. She had just had these
two twin boys, and I don't know. She was a real,
like concrete person with the life, and I think that
(17:54):
was incredibly helpful for my mother to see. And then
once she could see that, she could go back and
deal with the pain that was the genesis of this
this beautiful life, you know, the idea that you know,
we are not the pain that has formed us. Yeah, exactly.
Had your mother told your father about her history? Yeah,
(18:17):
he had known, but he doesn't really like to talk
about stuff. He had a pretty rough upbringing, so he's
a very he's very sensitive, he's very sweet, but he
can be a little inaccessible as well emotionally sometimes. But
it wasn't a surprise to him. No, he knew about it,
because that would have been an even more different story. Right. Absolutely,
(18:45):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. Now.
Kenine is back in the States. She's training to be
a chef. She's singing on the side. She's always been
(19:06):
a singer, and one day she feels in for a
friend who needs help with a gig, and something happens,
some kind of kismet, some kind of magic, when their
voices blend together. You can't force this stuff, you can't
make it happen, but when it does, it's unmistakable. The juice. Yeah,
(19:26):
the juice. So at that point you started loan Bellow
and you we were like, this is a thing, and
we're doing this. It took a little while for to
kind of solidify into the format it is today. And
my bandmates are named Zack and Brian, and they had
both been pursuing their own music careers for a long time,
(19:49):
and my husband and I had done my husband's names Jason.
Jason and I had done a lot of gigs when
we were in China Um and we had an agent
who would get us these like bonkers gigs that like
I don't know, the opening of a future apartment complex,
and like super bizar Jason wants to march in the
parade wearing a Swedish flag. It was very strange, and
(20:12):
we we had a lot of our own music and stuff,
but we had never really thought about doing professionally. It's
always a lot of fun in the hobby, something we
love doing. So when I got to New York and
I was going to pastry Chef School in Manhattan, I
ended up singing with Zack filling in for somebody, and
he just like knew immediately he was like coming to
(20:33):
be in abandon me. And then randomly, one day when
I was filling in at a show of his, Brian
or other bandmate got on stage and it was when
three of us sang together, we all just felt it.
I love singing with them. And it's it's so much fun,
but it really hijacked my plan of going back to
China and becoming a pastry chef. And there was a
(20:56):
kind of a moment where Jason and I had to
decide if we were going to try to day in
the States and do the band, or if we're going
to move back. And you know what I always say
is no one ever gets that opportunity and says I'll
be in a band when I'm older. Um, we decided
to go for it. We recorded our first record Summer
(21:18):
of two thousand eleven, and it came out January two.
So it was about, you know, a couple of years
in the making, I find myself connecting that, Like that's
sort of that magic that happened on on stage and
the sort of accidental random nature of like the three
of you ending up on the same stage at the
same time, singing with your reading the alice eye bold,
(21:42):
you know, random, um, and yet totally shapes what happens next. Absolutely.
I mean one of the things that I was really
struck by is your song just enough to get by.
There's this lyric, it's the chorus if Silence is Golden,
I know a lot of wealthy women buying what's sold
(22:02):
to them, buying anything but freedom. And I understand it
to be a song that you wrote about your mother's experience,
maybe for your mother. How has this discovery in your life,
How has it played into your artistic process, the expression
(22:23):
that you do as a songwriter, as a musician. You
know that song, it was really a long time coming.
I've heard Brian singing this little melody just as a
good book kind of lounge e and I think he
was like thinking about drinking or smoking or something, and
it was weird because it was kind of a jolly
(22:45):
sounding melody. But as soon as I heard it, I
thought about my mom. And I think at this point
it had been a couple of years and she had
been doing this work, and I've been keeping up with
her progress, like going to a counselor and kind of
trying to work through everything. And I was really proud
of her for being willing to go back to that place.
(23:07):
And she told me that her one counselor had her
imagined when she had to walk through it, that someone
was with her, and she said she always imagined it
was me that I was like standing with her, walking
with her through the experience. I felt very honored to
be that kind of presence in my mom's life and
in her recovery. And I think it just made me
(23:31):
I want to put myself in her shoes and allow
myself to kind of feel I feel my own feelings
about all of it, and she was doing the work
of going through all that emotional trauma, and I think
it made me want to write about things in a
way that would help other people who felt alone and
(23:53):
who felt isolated by their own secrets and by the
shame we put on herself when things be honor control
have happened to us. And yeah, that song. I wrote
it kind of all in an afternoon in the van,
and I was just really in my feelings and it
was a very cathartic, very like swift lyrical process. It's
(24:18):
kind of just all came out, and my bandmates really
liked it, but I just kind of I didn't feel
ready to sing it. So Kenin puts the song away,
just tucks it away, but of course it doesn't actually
go away. She's a little afraid of it. I'm not
sure what to do with it. But a year later,
during the start of the Me Too, movement. Suddenly she
(24:41):
knows it's time. I was like, oh damn, I think
I'm ready to sing this. I think I'm ready to
do it, but I had to make sure that my
mom was okay with it because I didn't want to.
She was still pretty private about what had happened, and
I was very sensitive, And I think that song, to me,
is a very honest reflection that just because you're dealing
(25:05):
with something doesn't mean it works out in a very
neat and orderly way. It's not a Hallmark movie ending.
It's a it's messy, you know, it's it's difficult, it's
it's heartbreaking, and it's not just like I got raped
and I had a child and now we're best friends
(25:25):
and everything is great and I love talking about it.
That's definitely not That's not how it works out. It's
not how it shakes out. So there was a lot
of frustration in me seeing that people were trying to
get her to talk about it before she was ready
and get her to kind of spin it into this
thing that it wasn't. So I was very sensitive. We
(25:49):
like neat and tidy narratives that we can tie up
in a bow. Yeah, yeah, So I knew it wasn't that,
so I wanted the song to kind of have this
uneasy too. It kind of how could started healing, but
also just an honest feeling of like I don't really
know how to sense. What was your mother's response when
(26:11):
you worked up the courage to, you know, take her
the song and show her what you've written. She liked it.
She was very encouraging about it, and I was, I know,
I was nervous as hell. I was like I was
shaken in my boots taking it to her because I
just didn't, you know, I didn't want to feel like
I was like voyeuristic or I don't know, just being
(26:31):
like I used your pain to make an apodoy. But
you know, I think she recognized that I put a
lot of myself into that song too, and she said
it was a very accurate portrayal of of what she
went through, and that took a lot of weight off
my shoulders and it made me prepared to kind of
(26:52):
go to bat for the song and make it as
good as it could be. What's it been like to
perform the song? It's been awesome. Is there anything different
about it than performing your other songs that are maybe
a little bit less loaded ha ha. I can definitely
see some people getting a little uncomfortable. And I've had
people right near people come up to me after the
(27:14):
show and tell me their stories which are in some
way similar to my mom. Um that's been, That's been everything,
you know. That's all I've really desired is that it's
just a helpful thing for people. We're going to take
a quick break here for a word from our sponsor.
(27:42):
If there's one thing I've learned from hosting this podcast,
it's that when there are secrets, there is almost always shame,
a drumbeat beneath. That's why the secrets being kept. And
then the shame has its own legacy. It works on
people we know something isn't right, but we can't put
our finger on it. Then sometimes we have an opportunity
(28:04):
to take that legacy of shame and make something that
reaches and helps other people and explodes the shame by
naming it. I'm just so indebted to my sister Dory.
(28:24):
I have sister Dory and my mom. We're just really
being willing to to do the work of bringing into
the light talking about it, and I think their bravery
and just willingness to go somewhere uncomfortable and willingness to
to be honest and transparent has I feel like it
really has unlocked something in me. And I think specifically
(28:50):
growing up with that secret not knowing about it, my
parents were pretty overprotective, I would say, and I think
I saw a lot of shame, just like being a woman,
and I kind of felt like I was suspect of
a lot of things. And I think once I had
known about my mom, it just made sense. It made
sense where they were protected. But it also kind of
(29:11):
freed me from thinking that I had something to do
with it, you know what I mean. I was a
good kid, you know, like boring that way, and so
I always felt pretty frustrated that I felt like my
parents didn't trust me. And I think now the lesson
that has taught me is just with my own son,
I think about ways that I can be honest and
(29:33):
open with him, and that I can give him the
gift of my transparency and my my story. Yeah. I
was going to ask you about exactly that, because I
think becoming a mother, becoming a parent, tends to make
us reflect back on how we were children and how
we were parented and and the things that we carried
(29:53):
or the legacy of that, and you know, the pendulum
swings and swings again, and your son is held. He'll
be three next week. So I have I guess one
last question for you, as you think about this, as
you think about everything that has transpired since that first
(30:14):
phone call when you were in your mid twenties, are
you glad that all this came out? Absolutely? Because I've
you know, I've gained a sister, and I can see
the freedom has brought my mom at a great cost,
for sure. But there's something unspeakably good about a life
(30:42):
and a beautiful person who you love coming out of
such a a tragedy, And it just feels like a
gift that there should be any any good that comes
out of it at all. But I think it has
helped me understand my mother and understand what a lot
(31:04):
of women have been through so much more. And that's
all I really want in life, to understand people better.
You know. That's beautiful, Kenney, Thank you so much. Hello. Attle.
(31:35):
Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagan
is the supervising producer and Bethan Macaluso is the executive producer.
We'd also like to give a special thanks to Tyler
Klang and Tristan McNeil. If you have a family secret
you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your
story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
(31:56):
one eight eight eight secret zero. That's secret and then
the number zero. You can also find us on Instagram
at Danny Ryder and Facebook at facebook dot com slash
Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter at fami Secrets pot go by.
(32:33):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio, Mama,
to get Away, Spits of a little Shame, just so
not to give by, just enough to give bye. Oh
(00:20):
a little Girl onto Vogue, Just not to give by,
just not to give bye. That's Canein Pitkin of the
Lone Bellow, a Brooklyn based band, singing a song she
wrote straight from the Heart, a song about her mother,
(00:42):
a song about a secret and it's aftermath. This is
a story about the complex legacy of what we hide
and the remarkable beauty that can emerge when what has
been hidden is brought to light. I'm Danny Shapiro and
(01:05):
this is Family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us,
the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape of your childhood.
Where did you grow up? What was it like. I
(01:25):
grew up in Hardersburg, Virginia, which is a smallish town
I would say midway between Washington, d c. And Richmond, Virginia.
We learned a lot of Civil War history. I used
to do my cross country practices and trails that ran
through the battlefield um because there was a lot of ghosts.
(01:48):
I guess were you aware of that? Do you have
that sense at the time? Oh? Absolutely, Virginia is just
it'sincially a place. It's kind of a haunted place, and
I think I was always really interested in history, not
just American history, but world history in general, so it
was a rich place to grow up. When I was
(02:08):
about ten years old, my parents co founded UH, an
intentionally cross cultural church that focused on and still focuses
on racial reconciliation because at that point Frederick was still
i would say fairly segregated culturally, especially, and I think
some people just really wanted to do the work of listening.
(02:29):
So I've been thinking a lot about that with recent
events and just how when we started the church, we
were singing, you know, gospel music in the attic of
this bluegrass music shop. That is the landscape of my
childhood right there, and I think a lot of how
I became the kind of musician that I am today.
Brothers and sisters, Oh yeah, I'm the fourth of five siblings,
(02:53):
um five down a heat siblings, and there's kind of
a big gap between me and my older brother, and
so me and a younger brother were kind of like
the little kids. And then the three older were like
the older kids, And tell me about your mom. My mom.
Her name is Sharon, She is be she little, she'd
be fierce or whatever that Shakespeare line is. Um. She
(03:17):
to teach, and she dresses in jewel tones. Um. But
she grew up near St. Louis and then in Omaha,
so she she was fishing in Omaha. Um. And she
was the oldest of ten kids. Kind of a genius,
so I would say, could beat anybody at trivial pursuit,
(03:37):
could answer almost every jeopardy question immediately, that kind of thing.
But definitely Shye Kennan's mom and dad met in the
early nineteen seventies. Her parents were pretty different from each other,
a case of opposites attract Her dad was outgoing, extroverted,
(03:57):
and had a gift for enthusiasm. He loved to travel,
meet people, get to know people, and just kind of
figure out what makes them tick. Canine's mom was much
more introverted. As a child, Knine found her kind of opaque.
She definitely got the sense that there was a lot
about her mom that she didn't know. She didn't really
(04:18):
talk to me about things the way that some of
my other friend's moms would and some of my other
friends would say that their moms were like their best
friend or you know, their confidant, And I think I
was got the impression that my mom was just like Dizzy.
I knew she loved us and she was an amazing mom,
but she was busy, you know. But as I got older,
(04:40):
I kind of perceived that there might be a little
more to what I perceived as isolation. After she graduates
from college, Canine makes plans to move to China and
her parents take her to the airport to see her off,
and her mother well, her mother just falls apart. I
(05:02):
remember my mom at the airport, like at the Parcher's
gate at Dullis, and she she just broke down. She
was weeping, and honestly, I was pretty confused because I
was like, I don't really think you needed me that much.
And you know, we always had like a close relationship.
(05:23):
I love my mom and she's really caring, but like,
I never saw myself as that important, not in a
bad way, but just I guess I just didn't think
she would be that effective if I left. Had you
gone away to college, yeah, I went to college, Jubilie
and Mary, but It's only about at most a two
hour drive, right, So the difference between being a two
(05:45):
hour drive away and being on the other side of
the world. Yeah, and I think it was. And I
had taken trips like I had gone. I've been to India,
and I had done a summer in China the year before,
and I'd always like to travel, and I had spent
the entire summer before I moved to China, I did
like a classic backpacking trip with my younger brother and
(06:06):
two of my friends. So I was gone a lot.
And I hadn't really spent significant time at home since
I had graduated from high school. And so yeah, I
guess I was just confused. Like we didn't have long
conversations on the phone ever. Um, I just felt like
there wasn't a lot of openness or vulnerability in our relationship.
(06:29):
So what did you make of it? At the time,
it made me feel guilty for leaving, and it made
me feel like maybe my mom needed me, and I
wasn't sure why. Really it was confusing, but I just,
you know, I had a lot on my mind. I
was moving to Asia, and you know, I had a
lot to get started. So I think I just kind
of I buried it, and I tried to be as
(06:52):
good as a long distance daughter as I could be.
I tried to write long emails phone and this was
way before zoom. This was the Skype days, so the
Skype a lot, and you know, just trying to let
them into my world. But it was just kind of surprising.
So you go off to China and how long do
(07:14):
you stay there before you return to the States. Well,
they're off and on for about four years, I think.
Came home for a few months to get married while
having some visa trouble, and actually my mom was like,
I was already engaged and we had been planning on
being engaged for like a year and a half. Sounded
(07:34):
like a good idea at the time, and then my
mom was like, why don't you just stay here for
a few months, stayn for a few months, and on
the wedding and get married. So that's what we did.
After they were married, Canine and her husband returned to China,
but they started growing restless. They had good jobs that
were paying the bills, but they found themselves wondering what
(07:55):
their next step might be. They thought about graduate school
coming to the States, but then Canine meets a family
that had adopted five Chinese kids, all of whom had
special needs. They ran an orphanage and supported the orphanage
with a bread baking business. They also trained the kids
who were able to bake so that they'd have skills.
(08:17):
This family and their enterprise really lights Kenin up, so
she decides to go to culinary school and become a
pastry chef. I knew a lot of people who were
doing kind of microfinance job training, skill training type stuff
for different populations, and so I had always loved baking,
and I started to think about maybe going to chef
(08:39):
school so I could come back and you know, teacher,
I don't know see what happened with that, but I
didn't want to rush into it. So my husband I
both decided we would do this really long fast and
I think it was either a thirty or forty days,
just like a a juice fast thirty or forty day
(08:59):
juice past. Yeah, you know, why not? I want to
make sure I heard that right right. It just seems
like such a huge decision, and I just wanted to
make sure I was like emotionally and mentally and spiritually
just clear to make it. So about halfway through that fast,
(09:21):
her mom calls me. So, I'm already kind of on
this like weird journey, this plane of existence that already
feels kind of like Caigros time, just like this amplified
time of importance. And my mom calls me kind of
out of the blue, and she's like, hey, I need
to tell you something, and like, they found my baby.
(09:47):
Let's just stop there for a sec think about this.
Imagine being in the middle of a month long juice
fast and hearing these words they found my baby. I
think you might feel like you're hallucinating. And obviously that
(10:08):
tendance didn't make any sense to me at the time,
and I asked her to explain, like what do you mean?
And she went on to tell me that my aunt
had been googling their maiden name, which is kind of
a unique name, and had found someone posting on a
(10:30):
site of people trying to find their birth parents, um
that this was their birth name, and she just knew
it was my my mom's child. I remember my mom
called me. She was calling all of her kids to
kind of ask our permission to get in contact with
her her child, and I just remember being like, you
(10:56):
obviously don't need my permission, but I mean, I'm glad
you are telling us this. And I remember my mom
not being able to say the word rape when she
was telling me about the child. She she told me
she had been assaulted, and all this was kind of
coming out as I'm kind of the way I'm telling
it to you now, just lots of random details. She
(11:19):
had not dealt with the trauma of it. And then
so I was able to find a piece together that
she had been raped and had gotten pregnant from the
encounter and then had kind of been sent away to
have my half sister. And I'm still not totally sure
as to why. So Canine is halfway around the world
(11:41):
in Beijing. She's twenty five years old, she hasn't eaten
solid food in a while, and now she discovers the
source of that opacity she had always sensed in her mother,
the source of her mother's slight remove. So you're years old,
what you making of this as she's you're getting these
(12:03):
disjointed details. I mean, it's completely overwhelming. I immediately I'm
starting to think about different things from my past, the
ways that I was raised, the ways that my parents
would react to certain things that would happen, or things
in the news, or just as I was growing older,
(12:24):
the way they would deal with me, and just the
way that my mom was. It felt like a lot
of things started to make sense. But also, you know,
my mom was barely able to even tell me what
had happened at this point, and so I felt very overwhelmed.
But I felt really grateful that I had randomly read
(12:46):
Alice Siebold's memoir called Lucky, which is about when she
was raped as a young college student, and she kind
of goes into the gritty detail right off the bat
of like everything that happens, and then the whole book
is her dealing with it. And so I had just
read this book really by chance, and I felt like
(13:07):
I had been prepared for this phone call um in
a strange way, and I was able to kind of
care for my mom a little bit better, I think,
and ask better questions. Did your mind go back to
that moment in the airport when you were this very
young woman leaving and going, you know, halfway across the world.
(13:29):
It definitely did. And I was able to talk to
my mom about that later when talking to her about
her own past, and she She just said that I
had always been just a calming presence to her and
she could just really feel that I cared about her
(13:51):
and then I loved her and that I was for her.
And she said sometimes that was just like difficult for
her to feel about most people. And I don't know
if it's just my style of communicating or something else,
but I felt like a gift. You know, when someone
tells you that they really feel loved by you, that's
(14:13):
a special thing because that's something that you can't really control.
I'm gathering that she made that same phone quality each
one of your siblings. And it also it's interesting because
it sounds like she didn't have to. I've heard a
lot of stories where in a way, someone's hand is
forced because you know someone has come forward and made
(14:38):
themselves known and the story is going to come out.
This wasn't a story that was going to come out.
You know, your aunt doing that research and finding that
name and seeing that it must be your mother's child.
It sounds like it opened something up in your mother
of I can't just put this back in the bott
(15:00):
x mm hmm. Yeah. I mean she was definitely offered
the can of worms and given the choice open order don't,
And I'm really proud of her that she did. I
think she thought, for what it was an opportunity to
heal and to deal with some things that had not
been dealt with, and to connect with someone that she
(15:22):
thought she had lost. It was supposed to be a
closed adoption, but they mistakenly put my mother's maiden name
on the file, and so that was how my half
sister found her. So I think my mom really had
never thought it would be a possibility, and then I
(15:42):
think it just felt like a second chance against all
the odds. When your mom told you, it was with
a sense that she was interested in knowing more, reaching out.
I mean, what happened next, so like it happened pretty quickly.
I think they had a phone call and then I
(16:05):
remember I got to the stage maybe a month or
two later, and my little brother and I and my
mom and dad went to Omaha to meet Dory, my
half sister and her family, and my dad and mom
went and had dinner with her one night, and then
my little brother and I joined the next day and
(16:26):
we went to the to the zoo with Doria and
her family. She has three kids. Imagine walking past, a
group of people at the zoo, an older couple, several
younger women and men, some kids, just a family having
an outing, just like everybody else, right, except all families
(16:50):
have stories, and sometimes these stories are secrets and require love, patients, care,
compassion when these stories begin to be told. It was
a lot for them both, and I think it was
(17:10):
just the beginning of what ended up being a really
long process for both of them. And I know a
lot more about my mom's side of the process and stories,
but the beginning of kind of being able to go
back and work through the trauma. It was amazing because
it was it was this opportunity to meet her and
(17:32):
see her as was fully formed, like beautiful woman. She
looks more like my mom than any of the siblings do,
any like me or any of my siblings do. And
she has this beautiful family. She had just had these
two twin boys, and I don't know. She was a real,
like concrete person with the life, and I think that
(17:54):
was incredibly helpful for my mother to see. And then
once she could see that, she could go back and
deal with the pain that was the genesis of this
this beautiful life, you know, the idea that you know,
we are not the pain that has formed us. Yeah, exactly.
Had your mother told your father about her history? Yeah,
(18:17):
he had known, but he doesn't really like to talk
about stuff. He had a pretty rough upbringing, so he's
a very he's very sensitive, he's very sweet, but he
can be a little inaccessible as well emotionally sometimes. But
it wasn't a surprise to him. No, he knew about it,
because that would have been an even more different story. Right. Absolutely,
(18:45):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. Now.
Kenine is back in the States. She's training to be
a chef. She's singing on the side. She's always been
(19:06):
a singer, and one day she feels in for a
friend who needs help with a gig, and something happens,
some kind of kismet, some kind of magic, when their
voices blend together. You can't force this stuff, you can't
make it happen, but when it does, it's unmistakable. The juice. Yeah,
(19:26):
the juice. So at that point you started loan Bellow
and you we were like, this is a thing, and
we're doing this. It took a little while for to
kind of solidify into the format it is today. And
my bandmates are named Zack and Brian, and they had
both been pursuing their own music careers for a long time,
(19:49):
and my husband and I had done my husband's names Jason.
Jason and I had done a lot of gigs when
we were in China Um and we had an agent
who would get us these like bonkers gigs that like
I don't know, the opening of a future apartment complex,
and like super bizar Jason wants to march in the
parade wearing a Swedish flag. It was very strange, and
(20:12):
we we had a lot of our own music and stuff,
but we had never really thought about doing professionally. It's
always a lot of fun in the hobby, something we
love doing. So when I got to New York and
I was going to pastry Chef School in Manhattan, I
ended up singing with Zack filling in for somebody, and
he just like knew immediately he was like coming to
(20:33):
be in abandon me. And then randomly, one day when
I was filling in at a show of his, Brian
or other bandmate got on stage and it was when
three of us sang together, we all just felt it.
I love singing with them. And it's it's so much fun,
but it really hijacked my plan of going back to
China and becoming a pastry chef. And there was a
(20:56):
kind of a moment where Jason and I had to
decide if we were going to try to day in
the States and do the band, or if we're going
to move back. And you know what I always say
is no one ever gets that opportunity and says I'll
be in a band when I'm older. Um, we decided
to go for it. We recorded our first record Summer
(21:18):
of two thousand eleven, and it came out January two.
So it was about, you know, a couple of years
in the making, I find myself connecting that, Like that's
sort of that magic that happened on on stage and
the sort of accidental random nature of like the three
of you ending up on the same stage at the
same time, singing with your reading the alice eye bold,
(21:42):
you know, random, um, and yet totally shapes what happens next. Absolutely.
I mean one of the things that I was really
struck by is your song just enough to get by.
There's this lyric, it's the chorus if Silence is Golden,
I know a lot of wealthy women buying what's sold
(22:02):
to them, buying anything but freedom. And I understand it
to be a song that you wrote about your mother's experience,
maybe for your mother. How has this discovery in your life,
How has it played into your artistic process, the expression
(22:23):
that you do as a songwriter, as a musician. You
know that song, it was really a long time coming.
I've heard Brian singing this little melody just as a
good book kind of lounge e and I think he
was like thinking about drinking or smoking or something, and
it was weird because it was kind of a jolly
(22:45):
sounding melody. But as soon as I heard it, I
thought about my mom. And I think at this point
it had been a couple of years and she had
been doing this work, and I've been keeping up with
her progress, like going to a counselor and kind of
trying to work through everything. And I was really proud
of her for being willing to go back to that place.
(23:07):
And she told me that her one counselor had her
imagined when she had to walk through it, that someone
was with her, and she said she always imagined it
was me that I was like standing with her, walking
with her through the experience. I felt very honored to
be that kind of presence in my mom's life and
in her recovery. And I think it just made me
(23:31):
I want to put myself in her shoes and allow
myself to kind of feel I feel my own feelings
about all of it, and she was doing the work
of going through all that emotional trauma, and I think
it made me want to write about things in a
way that would help other people who felt alone and
(23:53):
who felt isolated by their own secrets and by the
shame we put on herself when things be honor control
have happened to us. And yeah, that song. I wrote
it kind of all in an afternoon in the van,
and I was just really in my feelings and it
was a very cathartic, very like swift lyrical process. It's
(24:18):
kind of just all came out, and my bandmates really
liked it, but I just kind of I didn't feel
ready to sing it. So Kenin puts the song away,
just tucks it away, but of course it doesn't actually
go away. She's a little afraid of it. I'm not
sure what to do with it. But a year later,
during the start of the Me Too, movement. Suddenly she
(24:41):
knows it's time. I was like, oh damn, I think
I'm ready to sing this. I think I'm ready to
do it, but I had to make sure that my
mom was okay with it because I didn't want to.
She was still pretty private about what had happened, and
I was very sensitive, And I think that song, to me,
is a very honest reflection that just because you're dealing
(25:05):
with something doesn't mean it works out in a very
neat and orderly way. It's not a Hallmark movie ending.
It's a it's messy, you know, it's it's difficult, it's
it's heartbreaking, and it's not just like I got raped
and I had a child and now we're best friends
(25:25):
and everything is great and I love talking about it.
That's definitely not That's not how it works out. It's
not how it shakes out. So there was a lot
of frustration in me seeing that people were trying to
get her to talk about it before she was ready
and get her to kind of spin it into this
thing that it wasn't. So I was very sensitive. We
(25:49):
like neat and tidy narratives that we can tie up
in a bow. Yeah, yeah, So I knew it wasn't that,
so I wanted the song to kind of have this
uneasy too. It kind of how could started healing, but
also just an honest feeling of like I don't really
know how to sense. What was your mother's response when
(26:11):
you worked up the courage to, you know, take her
the song and show her what you've written. She liked it.
She was very encouraging about it, and I was, I know,
I was nervous as hell. I was like I was
shaken in my boots taking it to her because I
just didn't, you know, I didn't want to feel like
I was like voyeuristic or I don't know, just being
(26:31):
like I used your pain to make an apodoy. But
you know, I think she recognized that I put a
lot of myself into that song too, and she said
it was a very accurate portrayal of of what she
went through, and that took a lot of weight off
my shoulders and it made me prepared to kind of
(26:52):
go to bat for the song and make it as
good as it could be. What's it been like to
perform the song? It's been awesome. Is there anything different
about it than performing your other songs that are maybe
a little bit less loaded ha ha. I can definitely
see some people getting a little uncomfortable. And I've had
people right near people come up to me after the
(27:14):
show and tell me their stories which are in some
way similar to my mom. Um that's been, That's been everything,
you know. That's all I've really desired is that it's
just a helpful thing for people. We're going to take
a quick break here for a word from our sponsor.
(27:42):
If there's one thing I've learned from hosting this podcast,
it's that when there are secrets, there is almost always shame,
a drumbeat beneath. That's why the secrets being kept. And
then the shame has its own legacy. It works on
people we know something isn't right, but we can't put
our finger on it. Then sometimes we have an opportunity
(28:04):
to take that legacy of shame and make something that
reaches and helps other people and explodes the shame by
naming it. I'm just so indebted to my sister Dory.
(28:24):
I have sister Dory and my mom. We're just really
being willing to to do the work of bringing into
the light talking about it, and I think their bravery
and just willingness to go somewhere uncomfortable and willingness to
to be honest and transparent has I feel like it
really has unlocked something in me. And I think specifically
(28:50):
growing up with that secret not knowing about it, my
parents were pretty overprotective, I would say, and I think
I saw a lot of shame, just like being a woman,
and I kind of felt like I was suspect of
a lot of things. And I think once I had
known about my mom, it just made sense. It made
sense where they were protected. But it also kind of
(29:11):
freed me from thinking that I had something to do
with it, you know what I mean. I was a
good kid, you know, like boring that way, and so
I always felt pretty frustrated that I felt like my
parents didn't trust me. And I think now the lesson
that has taught me is just with my own son,
I think about ways that I can be honest and
(29:33):
open with him, and that I can give him the
gift of my transparency and my my story. Yeah. I
was going to ask you about exactly that, because I
think becoming a mother, becoming a parent, tends to make
us reflect back on how we were children and how
we were parented and and the things that we carried
(29:53):
or the legacy of that, and you know, the pendulum
swings and swings again, and your son is held. He'll
be three next week. So I have I guess one
last question for you, as you think about this, as
you think about everything that has transpired since that first
(30:14):
phone call when you were in your mid twenties, are
you glad that all this came out? Absolutely? Because I've
you know, I've gained a sister, and I can see
the freedom has brought my mom at a great cost,
for sure. But there's something unspeakably good about a life
(30:42):
and a beautiful person who you love coming out of
such a a tragedy, And it just feels like a
gift that there should be any any good that comes
out of it at all. But I think it has
helped me understand my mother and understand what a lot
(31:04):
of women have been through so much more. And that's
all I really want in life, to understand people better.
You know. That's beautiful, Kenney, Thank you so much. Hello. Attle.
(31:35):
Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagan
is the supervising producer and Bethan Macaluso is the executive producer.
We'd also like to give a special thanks to Tyler
Klang and Tristan McNeil. If you have a family secret
you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your
story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
(31:56):
one eight eight eight secret zero. That's secret and then
the number zero. You can also find us on Instagram
at Danny Ryder and Facebook at facebook dot com slash
Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter at fami Secrets pot go by.
(32:33):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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