Bonus: Listener Stories, Episode 10

In this bonus episode we hear from listeners in the Family Secrets community. To share your secret, call 1-888-SECRET-0.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that
are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
and the secrets we keep from ourselves. I've heard from

(00:23):
so many about your own family secrets and realize that
what we are creating for each other on this podcast
is a community, a community for those who are looking
for a safe and supportive space to unburden themselves. To
that end, we've created a number for listeners to call
in to record stories to share here in this space.

(00:44):
This week, I'd like to share a few of those
stories from our community. Thanks for listening. So my family
secret is my grandma really never knew of her father
died when she was six years old. Chilling ever had
one photo, not knew that rates of him. So fast
forward forty years and her mother died. She found her

(01:06):
father's first specificate and it turns out he was twenty
five years older than she originally thought. So she always
kind of wondered, well, what he did in the twenty
five years, and she never thought she would give the
answer to the kind of secret. So one day, um,
I was just messing around on dot com and I
found a photo of her father when that my grandmother

(01:30):
had never seen, so I just kept clicking and it
turns out her father had a whole mother family. He
had a son and a daughter thurty years ago in
my grandma, my great uncle, and it's done my grandma. Um,
she had nieces and nephews that were actually older than her.

(01:50):
And yeah, but the craziest thing is is that her
half brother actually ended up an able Quoque when three
streets away from her when they both grew up in
New Jersey, so she could have seen on the street
or at the grocery store. But it's just kind of

(02:11):
crazy how cool incidences happened like that. And I'm just
happy I was able to bring that closure to my grandmother.
And I really loved the podcast and what you were
doing with it, and keep up the great work. Hi.
I am a new listener of the Family Secrets podcast
and I love it. And then his um sort of

(02:33):
compelled me to call and share my secret. That's a
family secret, but um, it's sort of something I feel
is my own now as I've gotten older. Um, when
I was young, I like a lot of people who
have called in found out through pretty obvious reasons that
my father UM was not my biological father. And I

(02:56):
actually found out on my own when I was about twelve, yeah, UM,
reading my baby book and realizing the last names were
very obviously people who I didn't know and weren't my
grandparents that I had grown up going UM. I told
my parents that I found out, and to be quite honest,

(03:19):
through my youth and growing up, we never really talked
about it again. UM, But I did have access to
my father's name, and as I got older and UM
better at sleeping and finding people on the Internet, I
discovered UM a law of information about my family and

(03:41):
where my dad was. And so my secret now is
that I know exactly where he is. UM. My father
went to prison when I was in my twenties and
is still there, and often I check in on status
of his prison sentence and his whereabouts in prison, as

(04:04):
he has quite a long sentence and has moved around
quite a few times from difference UM detention centers and such.
And I have found many of my family members as
well cousins and aunts UM on Facebook, and have even
sent a message in a sort of veiled Facebook page

(04:26):
to an aunt and have a lot of intention of
maybe meeting these people, but very real fears of offending
my family if I do so. I have also recently,
UM just had of pure curiosity of maybe having more
have siblings, the question of twenty three and the DNA kit,

(04:47):
and look forward to seeing if there's saying new family
secrets that arise from that. But UM, I love the
podcast and I'll continue to listen. Thanks. I I just
felt really compelled to call and express my thanks for
uh the creation of this community and space that's really

(05:12):
allowed me to wrap my mind around and understand my
own family's secret. UM. And I am my family's secret. UM.
When my mother had me, she had me when she
was young, and UM, I never actually told the father
or my father that she was pregnant, or at least

(05:32):
that's what I've been told at this point. I didn't
know this for a long time. It wasn't until I
was nine years old when she sat me down after
her and um my stepdad had had a fight and
he had left, and she basically said to me, you know,
you don't need to worry about him anyway. He's not
even your dad. So that was the end of the conversation, UM,

(05:57):
and from there, you know, UM thirty five now, and
I've spent the last twenty some odd years trying to
make sense of of of what that means. UM. When
I was young, I did ask for more information and
was basically told it wasn't any of my business, which
in retrospect, I think was a defensive reaction. She was

(06:18):
scared and she didn't herself know what to do, especially
because she never told this man that she was pregnant.
But you know, it's just been in the last couple
of years that I've really started to own, UM, you know,
this this secret I guess, and UM, you know, own
the fact that I want to know more and that

(06:38):
I want to find this person and that it's important
to me. I still struggle on the daily with you know,
how to ask my mother for more information, to get
more information. However, through this podcast, I've gotten the idea
that an ancestry kit would be would be helpful to
start my journey as I work up the courage to
take for more information. Right off, anyway, I just wanted

(07:01):
to say thank you, thank you for the community, thank
you for the thought. If you'd like to share your story,
call one eight eight eight secret zero and record your story.

(07:24):
We won't be able to run all the stories, but
we do want to shine a light on as many
as we can. The number again is one eight eight
secret and then the numeral zero. For more podcasts for

(07:48):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.