May 18, 2023 • 42 mins
Forever punctuated by shame, secrecy, and danger, Isaac's search to know himself has always been a precarious journey. But as he walks the rocky road toward self-acceptance, he must reconcile his need to be both strong and vulnerable.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This episode contains discussion of suicide. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
So many stories half told and half heard, so many
grim intimations, so many obfuscating euphemisms. We were a classic
New England family, incapable of discussing such things openly, everything
enveloped in a haze of mystery and shame. There was
nothing I could do with the questions that I had,
(00:34):
the unmanageable anger and fear and nameless other feelings. I
was having no place to put it all, so I
kept it inside. When you can't talk about something, you're
prevented from naming and describing it, from making it real.
And what you can't name and describe and make real
becomes infinite and limitless and impossible to decipher or resolve,
(00:59):
because it can band to fill your whole life and
self to its tiniest corners, or it can shrink to nothing,
nothing being the size of things that are not real.
You are alone with it, with yourself, with this unsolvable problem.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
That's Isaac Fitzgerald, frequent contributor to The Today Show and
author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Dirt bag, Massachusetts.
Isaac's is a story about the intricate dance between shame
and secrecy, and the complex process of putting our burdens down,
then picking them up again, and onward we go, doing
(01:43):
our best, trying, failing, failing better. I'm Danny Shapiro and
this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
(02:04):
the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
So my parents were married when they had me, just
to different people. And that is a line that I've
used throughout my life, and it is a line that
I learned very early in my life. As I grew older,
I did get to know my parents better and I
did get to hear more of their history. They met
(02:36):
at Theology School, of all places, to have an affair.
My mother was married to a Unitarian minister. My father
was I think, a very smart man, but a bit
at sea, a bit lost, and had gone to school
maybe to try and find an anchor of some sort,
and instead they found each other. My mom's family could
(03:00):
be a bit harsh, would be one way to put it.
Is a very common New England family. Could be another
way to put it, which is to say a little
withholding a little judgmental. My father came from an Irish family,
a little more open, a little more joyful, but his
parents had both been mill workers, my mother's parents farmers,
(03:22):
and so they both came from little meets. When they met,
fell in love, had an affair. Eventually, my mother told
my father that it couldn't go on. She cut it off.
They both had young children, my half brother and my
half sister, and not long after that my mom realized
(03:43):
that she was pregnant with me. So the way that
I viewed the landscape of my childhood for many years
was that I was a bomb that blew up my parents' lives,
and not just their lives, but the lives of their partner,
the lives of their children, my half siblings. I felt
(04:04):
like I'd really come in and wrecked a lot of things.
And it took me a lifetime to recognize that that
kind of shameful version of the story that I held
with me for so long was, of course, not the
full story, and not the way that even my parents
would describe it, That my siblings would describe it, even
their partners would describe it. So that was their story,
(04:28):
and then for me my childhood. The earliest years on
paper would be the ones you might think were the worst,
which is both of my parents kind of rejected from
their families, eventually telling their partners the truth, didn't have
a home and said they turned to the Catholic Worker.
If you're unfamiliar with the Catholic Worker started by Dorothy Day,
(04:50):
it is a socialist, really believing in the Bible, give
the shirt off your back to help your neighbor. Organization
much less Vatican, much less you know, opulence, and much more.
How can we help one another? And that is the situation.
I was raised and raised in an unhaf shelter, eventually
(05:11):
making our way to a place called John Larry House,
which is kind of like a halfway home run by
the Catholic Worker. You look at that on paper and
you'd think, oh, those must have been the hard years.
But in this interesting way, those were the happiest years
of my life.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
So those years, you know, up until age eight, you're
living in these facilities that are under the auspices of
the Catholic Worker. Correct, does it feel like a community? Literally?
The landscape? What was it like?
Speaker 1 (05:43):
You know? I remember this big sign that I'm pretty sure,
said like no drugs, no drinking, no violence. There were
people from of course, all different types of backgrounds, but
you had altercations. Absolutely difficult place to have a kid.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Were there other kids around.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Not many, every once in a while, but for the
most part is a very adult place. But the other
aspect of it is it was this incredible community and
people for the most part. Of course, you had your
moments of sharpness or violence, but for the most part,
what you had were people watching out for one another,
were people taking care of one another. I was a
(06:22):
very talkative kid. I was a very inquisitive kid. I'm
sure at times, especially somebody with a hangover or just
having a really rough day, I'm sure I annoyed the
heck out of them. But for every one of those moments,
there were so many people who tried to be charming
to me, who would tell me stories, who would try
to entertain me with magic tricks or long tales. There
(06:43):
was one guy named Albert. He always called me the Captain.
I don't know why he called me the Captain, but
I know that I loved it so so much, And
so it was also this really joyous, wonderful place. I
mean the food. It wasn't going to win any awards,
but there was a lot of it, and everybody was
sharing and everybody lended a hand. And that's what I
really remember. And I remember my parents very early on
(07:07):
went from this situation where they were there because they
didn't have a place to go. But the more they
became involved with the community, the stronger they got. And
that was something that I even as a child, I
could just kind of feel that, and so that place
was very very special to me.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
And how was your parents' marriage during those years, How
did that period of time kind of impact them?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, so that's I mean, this is the thing. They
were trying to get their feet under them. They were
both in their early to mid thirties, and through the
Catholic worker they eventually got jobs, and then they eventually
got better jobs. And so it gets to the point
where my mother's working at the Cathedral the Holy Cross
there in Boston and my father gets a job at
(07:57):
a Catholic school teacher. Incredible. It's an incredible moment and
something I think they both felt very proud of. But
at the same time, you know, I'm not blowing anybody
away by saying being poor is very very hard. Getting
on your feet is very very hard. Especially you can
have the support of the Catholic worker. But when you're
(08:18):
lacking support from family and maybe you're feeling shameful about
everything that's happened, you know, life can be confusing and
can be complex. So their marriage was already I would
argue difficult. I think they were really thrown together in
all these different ways, and one of those ways was
me like, they made this commitment to stay together and
(08:41):
figure it out. And so there are arguments. There were
difficult times, but for the most part, even with the difficulties,
those were the good years. And then it's when me
and my mother moved to north central Massachusetts that things
really took a turn.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Right. You're right about this very It's sweet and touching
and sort of funny and ironic all at once. But
the place that you were living was not far from
Fenway Park in Boston, and your father would get the
you know, the cheapest, cheapest, cheapest seats, you know, way
high up, and then you'd find your way down to
(09:17):
the really good seats that people had that were empty.
And then if an usher came along and checked your tickets,
your father would say, oh please, it's you know, if
nobody's using these seats, it's my son's first game. And
you write, I mean I must have had one hundred
first games at Fenway Park. And there was something so
I mean, on the one hand, your father's you know,
was a man of faith. He's doing something that's like
(09:39):
not so not so kosher, shall we say, And on
the other hand, it's this very loving thing to do
that he just constantly wants to have. You have that experience.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It's a moment filled of love, and that's why I
remember it so warmly. But yeah, it was this absolute
act of love on his part, and that is something
that I credit both of my parents. They had tough
decisions to make. They failed in a lot of ways,
I don't want to shy away from that, but they
also had these moments of brilliance. And I think that's
(10:09):
what makes families so complex, especially when you want to
portray it with all its dirty parts, but also all
its good parts too. You know, these are human beings
that are doing their best for all their faults and
all the struggles that they had. When I was young,
another thing they gave me was just a love of books,
a love of literature. No matter where we lived. You know,
(10:30):
a lot of the furniture we'd find on the street
or whatever, but they always made sure that our books
came with us. They were taking me to the library
whenever they weren't working, whenever they had the chance to.
They weren't giving me this cookie cutter, happy suburban childhood,
but they wanted to make sure that I at least
felt won the power of education, but to the power
(10:51):
of imagination. And so you bring up my dad being
a man of faith, which is absolutely the truth of
my mother too, a woman of faith. But in that moment,
I think for he loved a little bit of a story.
He loved a little bit of an imagination of a
little bit of a con in a way, especially you know,
when there was nobody that was actually going to get
hurt by it. And that was that fun way part story.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Isaac's parents are indeed bound by their faith, their faith
in Catholicism as well as their faith in literature. These
become obsessions for them, and in turn, they become obsessions
for Isaac too. This can happen when parents are hard
to hold onto. It's almost as if their obsessions and
values become proxies for themselves, so Isaac holds on tight.
(11:41):
Things change for Isaac and his family when, at age eight,
he is mugged at gunpoint.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I was taking a shortcut home that of course, I
was told one hundred times not to take. The person
who was mugging me apologizes, and at the time, I
remember feeling like I was being really brave. And then
I looked down and without even knowing it, I'd wet
myself and that's that's why the person apologized. I have
other memories of that time period. There was a Halloween
(12:09):
where a woman got in the head with a bottle.
There you know, somebody had been shot on the front steps.
There was blood on the sidewalk. My parents had been
working to get their feet under them, and I think
they were starting to feel My father was becoming more
secure in his role as an educator. My mother was
feeling more secure in the role that she'd had at
the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. She'd learned these skills,
(12:31):
she knew how she could apply them to other jobs.
I think they started to realize we want to be
in a better place. But like everything I'm saying here, right,
there's the romantic version. They're arguing a lot more. And
I think my mom maybe needed a break, and so
we moved to north central mass which is right next
to her parents.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Right, and so it being right next to her parents' place,
you know, in one world, could be a great thing,
but that in fact comes with a lot of challenges.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
My mother's mother was a very harsh and critical person,
and my mother had done everything right in my grandmother's
eyes up until when she didn't. And that was the
affair that was deciding to leave her first partner trying
to start this family. She had a notion, which is
(13:27):
you were cheating. He was cheating. This isn't going to work.
You should have stuck with your first marriage. And she
let those criticisms be known. At the same time, I
think my mother was questioning a lot of where she
was in life. I think when you're in your again
it was early thirties to mid thirties to approaching forty,
you start to wonder, have I made the right decisions?
(13:49):
What's going on? We have a society that treats women poorly,
treats mothers poorly, and is very judgmental of them. And
you want to let's not forget we're talking now about
the eighties, the early nineties. I think there's a lot
of pressure that she was feeling, and so we moved
to this farmhouse that had no heat. There was a
(14:12):
cast iron wood stove in the middle. And my mother
doesn't really know anyone in the area, so all she
hasked is to go over and talk to her parents,
who basically are telling her all the mistakes that she's
made over and over and over again and again. I
was young, I was eight years old. But you can
feel when the only other person in the house starts
(14:34):
to go dark.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
We'll be right back. I think absorbs a great deal
of his grandmother's disapproval. After all, if she's unhappy about
his mother's choices, which began with his parents, it's a
fair and culminated in his berth. It would be hard
(15:03):
not to feel that his grandmother disapproves of his very
existence alone in that desolate farmhouse. The feeling that all
this is somehow his fault begins to set in.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
I have this very clear memory. My mom once a
week would go over to her parents' house. I was
supposed to stay at the house, but I never would,
and I would kind of sneak over, and I remember
like looking through a window and she was crying. And
very soon after that she would start crying in the
house all the time as well, she would stop getting
out of bed. There are very very hard years, but
(15:40):
I just remember realizing that I'm the reason that she said.
That's how it sat inside me. So my grandmother would
look at me as scants. My grandmother would be so
cold to me, and I realized it was because of
her her dislike for my father, but really it was
this feeling that I had ruined her daughter, but just
(16:01):
by existing, and that wasn't something I couldn't fix. I
did not like sitting with this feeling of worthlessness, so
I started turning to books because there that would take
my mind off of everything that was happening their mound well.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
And also I think with books it's not only the
distraction or this sort of escape into other worlds, but
also at times a feeling that there are other people
out there who have also felt some of these things.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
That is exactly right. One of my favorite quotes comes
from the play The History Boys, and I'm probably not
going to say correctly here, so part of it for
not getting word to word. But it's basically like you
can be reading a book and you can come across
a line or a thought that is a thought or
a feeling that you thought only you had had you
(16:52):
truly you'd never shared it with anyone, and then you
see it there on the page, and it's like a
hand comes out of the book and grabs your own.
All of a sudden, you feel less alone in the world.
And I think that's absolutely right. That is when I
had a very difficult conversation with my mother. At that point,
her mental health is starting to deteriorate. She's leaning on
(17:13):
me more and more. She started talking to me like
I was a friend, not like a child. She started
treating me like somebody she could lean on instead of
take care of.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
But Isaac needs to be taken care of. He's gone
from city poor to country poor. He misses his father,
he has a very disapproving set of grandparents, and he
feels in some way like he doesn't have any right
to be here at all. He writes, but he can
feel the trouble, though he can't at the time put
words to it. Then if there are before and after
(17:47):
moments in life when you hear something you can't unhear.
You learn something you can't unlearn. This is one of
those moments for Isaac. His mother tells him something that
perhaps no parent should ever tell a child.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
All then forget, we're driving and it must have been
a warm day, because I remember there was that shimmer
on the road, you know, where it almost looks like
the road is turning into water. And she basically tells
me the story of when my parents met. And they're
at school and she decides, I'm gonna cut this affair off,
and they actually went for one last day, would tell
(18:24):
their partners they were going on retreats for school with
other people at the school, but of course it was
just the two of them, and they would go up
to the White Mountains in New Hampshire and that is
where they would conduct their affair. And she shared so
much that I even know the mountain that I was
conceived on. I know that they were using birth control
and clearly it didn't take. And she shared with me
(18:45):
that because she'd broken up afterwards, she decided kind of
not to talk to my dad for a little bit,
and she had to decide. She walked me through every
decision she thought she was like maybe I could tell
her partner at the time, maybe we could just this
is your kid. Maybe okay, maybe I tell the truth,
but maybe there's forgiveness there and then she can seers
(19:06):
her maybe I can have an abortion. And she goes
so far as telling me that she scheduled the abortion,
and she got to the clinic and she got to
the front room and that is when she decided not
to and she walked out. But then she ended it
the way she started, and she told me all this,
this wall of words, its wave of words, and she
(19:26):
just said, but maybe it would have been for the best.
And that's what rings in my head. And this is
the difficult thing you want to talk about. Family secrets
or secrets we don't tell ourselves, the secrets we don't
share with other people, but we know are in our
heart at all times. There's a way where I can
look at my entire life and we can get to
(19:47):
the complex relationship with my parents now. But maybe it's
for the best. That's not wrong. There is a world
where if she had made that choice, her life might
have been a lot move there. And I know if
she was here in this room and I said that,
she would be so angry at me because I know
she loves me. I know she loves me, but maybe
(20:10):
for the best. Maybe that's not the right way to
put it. But if you want to say, maybe it
would have been easier, she's probably right. And I didn't
understand that at eight, of course, but I definitely did
by the time when I was fourteen, and I was
able to see that for her.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah, which only contributes to that sense of being the bomb.
Exactly During this time, Isaac's mother's mental health deteriorates. She
attempts to take her life a number of times.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
It was just me and her with her very critical
parents next door, and she was grappling with shame, and
she didn't have anyone to talk to about it. And
I didn't know what to do. I mean, I knew
how to cook spaghettio's. I knew how to try and
get her out of bed so she could get to
her job. I knew. I started doing a lot of
(21:01):
the caretaking. We had a washer, we didn't have a dryer,
hanging clothes on the clothesline. I just watched, as you know,
I didn't have the words for at the time, but
as her mental health deteriorated, and eventually that turned into
basically kind of crying all the time, or being quiet
all the time, or not being able to get out
(21:22):
of bed. Manifested in one time. The memory I have,
which is so this is you know, not every memory
we have right as crystal clear. But she was wearing
a green Champion sweatshirt and she had a knife in
her hand, and she went to stab herself in the stomach,
and I remember grabbing her and saying no, no, no,
(21:43):
no no, and crying. Now, I want to be very clear,
she didn't cut into her skin. She cut that sweatshirt.
She cut that sweatshirt, but she was She's having these
outbursts in these moments. Around this time, my father actually
does move out, makes the decision to move out. In
my mind, and things are going to get better, but
actually they get worse because while he was in the city,
(22:04):
he had another affair. My mother finds out about it.
This does not help with the mental health that she's having.
And even as he comes out, I would argue to
try and make amends, it's almost like gasoline is added
to the fire. Now they are fighting constantly. He sees
what I'm doing with her he sees how I'm trying
to help her in these ways, but I at one
(22:25):
point I have to call an ambulance because of the
suicide attempt. She gets put I get told that she's
going away for a little while, but she actually gets
put in a state run facility for a week. It's
not like we had money or health insurance. This was
literally the state was just like, all right, we need
to put this person somewhere else. She gets medication, which
(22:45):
we think is going to be a good thing. Instead
at one point, neither of my parents' drink, but I
find her with an empty bottle of pills and an
empty bottle of vodka. Now with therapy, I have a
lot of different ways to look at it, but there's
one way looking at where I have a lot of
empathy for her and not do try to hold that.
But it's also really hard looking back and recognizing that
(23:06):
the person that was supposed to take care of you
was not able to take care of themselves. And it's
hard to know where to put that anger. If you
put it on the situation, if you put it on
her parents being so unforgiving or unempathetic, And I just
remember being very confused.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Right, because it has to go somewhere, right.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, it starts almost low level, but exactly what you're saying,
where you know, this question of where do I put
this anger? And I don't even know how to put
words to it, and so it's very easy to just
put it on oneself. And it starts very low level risk.
Taking my school again, it's a very rural part of
north central Massachusetts. So what you have is a regional school.
(23:51):
It's not just a regional high school. It's a regional
high school in middle school. Because there's just aren't enough
kids in the area. So these four towns poured into
this place. So at the age of twelve, I'm all
of a sudden in the same building with kid two eighteen,
and of course you're not supposed to go down that hallway,
but who cares. I immediately make friends with a lot
of older kids. By the age of twelve, I'm drinking.
(24:11):
I'm doing drugs, and you know, it's weed was constant.
But it wasn't just weed. It was mushrooms, it was acid,
it was anything we could get our hands on. And
I loved it, almost like books. It was this escape
and I didn't have the words for it back then.
But it's very clear that I wanted to hurt myself
(24:31):
in certain ways. I wanted to be self destructive. All
of a sudden, I was funnier, all of a sudden,
I was quicker, all of a sudden, I was more
open to talking instead of really curling into myself. So
it was something I enjoyed as well. But there were
also Yeah, very early on, there was that is I
would argue. Around the age of twelve is when I
start to grapple with the fact that I it's such
(24:55):
a hard thing for me even say still, but I
might want to die. The idea of not being around
sometimes sounds not just pretty but very good. I mean,
what's interesting is I feel almost embarrassed to say it
because it's so childlike. But again, I was a child.
I had a lot of knives. At one point, I
(25:16):
put them all in a board and I would take
it under my bed, out from under my bed. I
kept it under my bed. I'd take it out from
under my bed. I'd be like, well, if I roll
out of bed, I'll fall my knives and I'll die.
So dramatic, but so much like I just didn't know
what to do. I would drink until blackout, and I
hope that I didn't wake up the drinking and driving
(25:38):
that was happening in that area even before I had
a license, and it wasn't happening just in this bubble.
Because this happened the area that I lived in, Teenagers
died from drinking and driving accidents all the time. I
would know people, I guess. In one way, that's me
saying it was almost something I was hopeful for. Another
way to me saying this is something I wasn't the
(26:01):
only kid in the area that I was having these issues.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, No, it's kind of it's a perfect storm in
an area like that because kids are driving at really
young ages and before they have licenses. Also, the driving
age is younger, and there's tremendous boredom, and there's also weapons.
I mean, it's, you know what a mess. But there's
this other aspect of it too, which is and it
makes so much sense emotionally. But you have all of
(26:26):
this body shame, you know, you have this body image shame,
and you right, we're all in our own personal hells,
you know when it comes to body shame. But I
think that that feeling is so sort of fundamental in
terms of self loathing, Like what else could possibly be
as absolutely clear as loathing what you see in the mirror,
(26:50):
you know, when it comes to self loathing.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, and also just about taking up space. My mother
had been bigger when she was younger, and it was
yet another thing that her mother was hyper critical of,
and I started to inherit that too. We got out
to this house, I had so much time alone, and
now I can name it. Now I know what it is.
(27:14):
I was anxious. I was crawling out of my skin
with anxiety. And so I turned, of course, like we're
talking about to drugs, to alcohol, but also to eat.
I would pour sugar on top of bowls of cheerios
and just scarf them down. I became an anxious eater.
And we're also, like we were just talking about you
set a perfect store in the area. We're talking about
(27:37):
the lowest income county and all of Massachusetts, and we're
talking about a rural area where a lot of the
food is not healthy. It's just a lot of starches
and a lot of let's just buy the cheapest thing
that we can afford, and I hope that gets us through.
And so I started to grow. But again, there was
already so much resentment for myself, and now that they're
(28:00):
there was more of me. I wanted to be small,
I wanted to disappear. I was thinking that I didn't
maybe want to exist, so to actually be this bigger body.
I started to resent myself for it so so much,
not even knowing that I was doing the exact same
thing that my mother had done years and years before.
And of course that was part of her anxiety too,
(28:21):
is she had spent her whole life getting away from
this area, and I think she felt like such a
such a tremendous sadness about finding herself back there and
watching me be a child in that same.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Area, which of course never gets spoken about.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
No, that's I mean, that's so much of this comes
down to people not communicating with one another.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Will be back in a moment with more family secrets.
When New Year's Eve of nineteen ninety nine comes along,
many of us are scared the world as we know
it might end at midnight when we enter as the
new Millennium. But not Isaac and his friends. They're not scared.
(29:11):
They're psyched.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
We were excited. Yeah, Clean Slate, and we couldn't wait
for it, because why not restart look at all the
things that were going wrong. And one of the movies
that were very drawn to, which was that same kind
of time period, was Fight Club, and it was this
idea and let's we don't even talk about it, like
the surprise surprise, A bunch of boys got together and
(29:33):
beat each other up and have us quite a bit.
But what we really loved about that film we probably
couldn't have articulated at the time, was it ends with
this wiping of the debt, this idea that maybe society
could restart. And we thought that would be tremendous, because
when you're on the bottom, that's what you're always hoping for,
(29:54):
a reshuffling. You want to see if you can get
delta better hand This hand sucks. What happens even let's
say all these other these things that we've gotten used to,
but we were used to it that they weren't helping us.
What if they got wiped away.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
In the midst of this teenage nihilism, something extraordinary happens.
Isaac gets into trouble at school for hitting another kid
in the face with a math book, and he's suspended,
but he can't stay home alone, so he rides out
his suspension in the school library. He starts helping out
the librarians and they notice that he's suffering. They step
(30:33):
in and try to help. They tell him about a
nearby boarding school that sometimes has scholarships and financial aid
available for local kids. Isaac applies and sure enough, he
gets a free ride.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
There was many people at the school who kind of
rallied around me and could tell maybe things were not
great at home, because at that point my parents were
constantly fighting. The violence had spread. My mother and I
had been in altercations. My father and I had been
in altercations. What had been this simmering resentment and attacks
(31:07):
and there have been a lot of yelling and violence
in the household. But then we started getting physical with
each other. It wasn't just suicide attempts, it was violence.
I was lucky enough to have some people at this
school take notice to know that that school was not
going to be able to help me enough, and they
encouraged me to apply to a boarding school that was
(31:29):
very nearby. And I think a lot of the people
took notice and to recognize that because they maybe had
stories like that themselves. And I just think that's what
happened in that moment. I had certain teachers, librarians, secretaries,
people took notice that I was hurting, and they helped
me make this transition into a boarding school. I was
no longer at my house and things changed.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
So would you describe that as another sort of full
crumb moment, like another before and after a moment? Was
that a big shift?
Speaker 1 (31:58):
One hundred percent for moment? I said, with this one especially,
it's one of those things where you're like, and now
everything will be fixed. And part of life, as I
know you know, is you just recognize weight. It's never fixed,
it's never perfect. Now things are different, things have shifted,
and you can walk towards the light, but it doesn't
(32:19):
mean all of a sudden everything is wrapped up in
a bow.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Well, and it also means you know, wherever you go,
there you are. You're still you in those new circumstances.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
You know, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Maybe a bit bolstered, maybe with some more opportunities and
more light in the distance, but you're still you.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
After boarding school, Isaac doesn't plan on going to college,
but he gets a scholarship and to college he goes,
but the scholarship money is just for tuition. Of course,
he needs spending money too. He gets a job as
soon as he gets on campus, painting houses in New Hampshire.
When he turns twenty three, he moves across the country
with some friends to San Francisco. He doesn't go back
(33:06):
home for the first Thanksgiving or Christmas. Then he doesn't
go back at all. He's estranged from his parents for
a decade. He moves through life, taking one step forward,
two steps back. He's drawn to the bar scene. He
buys a motorcycle. Bars and motorcycles can be a dangerous combination,
(33:27):
so Isaac sets up rules for himself. He's not going
to drink and ride this bike. Then he's not going
to ride it very far. Then only one drink if
he's going to ride it. But one morning, Isaac wakes
up in his apartment wearing all his clothes. He's not hurt,
as far as he can tell, but he has no
(33:47):
recollection of how or when he got home from the
night before. It turned out that he had ridden to
Santa Cruz seventy miles away, drank himself into a blackout,
drove all the way home parked perfectly, headed upstairs and
fell asleep without any memory of this. He clocks it
as the moment he should stop drinking, but it's not
(34:10):
and he doesn't. Years later, when Isaac seeks therapy, is
therapist helps him understand and unpack this rhythm he's repeatedly
found himself in one step forward, two steps back after
a sessional, your therapist going to a barn in her
neighborhood and having a drink. And when you say to
(34:31):
your therapist, this is what I do, she asks you
why it's such a great question.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Well, I think you absolutely said it as no matter
where I go, there I am and we can keep
trying to grow. And that is what one step forward,
two steps back is all about. Is that is how
it gets done, just like you said, because it's better
than just seven steps back. You have to walk a
little forward, slide a little back, walk a little forward,
slide a little back. And for me, it was my
(35:01):
therapist that pointed it out to me. That came to
therapy very late in life, and I'm still trying to
figure it out because I'm only three years into therapy.
But she was the one that said, do you notice
that your home, a place you should have felt safe,
was not safe. Do you notice that the church, a
place you're supposed to feel safe, a biker bar, the
work you did at the armory, these other places where
(35:23):
most people would say, oh well, you know, even the
Catholic work or homeless shelter, that's not a safe place
for a child. And that's where you felt the most loved.
That's where you felt the most safe. And it was
my therapist that pointed that out to me. It was
my therapist that said, look, you were seeking out danger.
You went to work with this group in Southeast Asia
who smuggled medical supplies because you were looking for something
(35:47):
to punish yourself with. But what you found in those
places was real community and real love and real tenderness.
And the places where you're supposed to feel the most
safe is where you, not to use a strong word,
but where you were portrayed.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Therapy not only enables Isaac to confront his past, but
it also empowers him to write about it. And writing
his stories allows Isaac to have the conversations he's never
had with his parents. His therapist said to him, all
this could have been a conversation. Everything you write about
could have been a conversation, but you clearly didn't know
(36:25):
how to talk to one another. When his book comes out,
his mom reads it in one night. She writes him
a note the next day. In the note, she writes,
I am so sorry. I had no idea you were
carrying this.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
And that, to me, is the biggest secret in all
of this. You can say that maybe she had rose
colored glasses on to not see some of the mistakes
I was making. You can obviously argue that if a
kid puts an entire country between you and the family
and does to come back for ten years, there's obviously
some issues. I think she wasn't a fool. She was
(37:02):
aware that something was going on, but she didn't really
understand how much of what happened in those years I
was still carrying with me and I had a respect
for her. She wrote a lot of other stuff that
I can't go over every single thing of it, But
what became clear to me was that when I would
see her, I always tried to put on a smiling face.
As we started this new relationship. Since I've moved back,
(37:25):
since we're no longer strange, I was the one that
wanted to be like it's fine, I forgive you. It's
we're good. We're good, We're good. I was the one
that was never interested in getting into it or talking
about it. So what this book has done is it
started some of the best conversations I've ever had with
my mother. My father's hilarious, he had his own he
(37:47):
wrote his home letters about it, et cetera. But also, again,
just want to say, I can't share any of that. Really,
it'sot to know that, he said, and we'll see a thanksgiving,
which is his way of saying, Hey, this is hard,
this is tough, but you're still here, You're still part
of the family. But that was the biggest secret I
never shared with them. I was never able to I
(38:08):
was never able to communicate to them how hurt I was.
My therapist literally was like you. Instead of talking to them,
decided to figure out how to write a book and
then wrote about it in hopes that they might see
you for the hurt kid that you are.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
So where does forgiveness reside in all this?
Speaker 1 (38:29):
For you? That is the lie that I told myself
for a long time. The thing that I said was
as I got a little older, not as old as
I am now, but as I got a little older,
I recognized that they too had been dealt a hard hand.
And who knows, if I'd written this book when I
was twenty five, it would have just been my parents
are the worst people that ever lived. I had the
(38:51):
hardest childhood. It would have been so angry. At thirty five,
I'm able to be empathetic to them, I'm able to
see how they also were struggling. I was so quick
to try and forgive because I was raised Catholic, so
I had all this anger, but I didn't want to
accept it. I didn't want to acknowledge it. I didn't
want to sit with it. I just wanted to say, Okay,
(39:13):
that was all bad, But I forgive my parents. Look,
I went to a boarding school. I got a scholarship
to go there. I got a scholarship to go to college.
I'm living a kind of normal life. Now, It'll be okay.
I don't need to worry about that too much. I
don't need to be too hard on them for that.
And that's the lie I told myself for a very
long time, is that forgiveness is something you can just choose.
(39:36):
Forgiveness for me now, when I see it as what
I recognize it as. What true forgiveness is is you
need to look at your life. You need to decide
who you want to keep in it and who you don't.
And it's okay, it's okay to cut people out. I
want to be very clear. This book is a story
about how my family blew apart, but it's also how
my family came back together. But that doesn't have to
(39:57):
be everybody's story. If you have somebody that hurts you
and you want to cut them out of your life,
that's okay. But for me, I had been saying I'd
forgiven them for so long. I realized I had to
look at my life. Who do I want to keep
in it? I realized because of my nieces and nephews,
because of my siblings, because of myself, I can admit
(40:19):
that I want this family unit to be a unit again.
And that was going to take real forgiveness. And what
real forgiveness is is you actually look at the things
and you actually acknowledge what happened, and you talk about them,
and the person maybe doesn't just say everything you want
to hear. They're going to have their own views on it,
(40:39):
but you can grapple with it, and that's how you
can make steps forward together. That is where real forgiveness
comes from. When I was a kid, I just had
this concept of it from the church. You pray, you
go to confession, you can confess your forgiven acknowledging it
is just the first step. You really got to work
(41:00):
with people and talk with people and hope, you know,
because again I'm not some angel. I've also heard other
people hope that they can find it within themselves to
forgive you. And so that's the aspect of all this
that I'm still in with my parents. But what's so
incredible to me is that they're willing to have those conversations,
(41:21):
and in a way, I can feel the relief. We
talk more than we've ever talked. I visit them more
than I've ever visited even after we were strange and
I came back. I'm visiting them more now than I
ever had before. And they could have told me to
take a hike, but instead they've embraced me more than
ever before, and that's been a really incredible experience.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacour is
the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
(42:18):
find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This episode contains discussion of suicide. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
So many stories half told and half heard, so many
grim intimations, so many obfuscating euphemisms. We were a classic
New England family, incapable of discussing such things openly, everything
enveloped in a haze of mystery and shame. There was
nothing I could do with the questions that I had,
(00:34):
the unmanageable anger and fear and nameless other feelings. I
was having no place to put it all, so I
kept it inside. When you can't talk about something, you're
prevented from naming and describing it, from making it real.
And what you can't name and describe and make real
becomes infinite and limitless and impossible to decipher or resolve,
(00:59):
because it can band to fill your whole life and
self to its tiniest corners, or it can shrink to nothing,
nothing being the size of things that are not real.
You are alone with it, with yourself, with this unsolvable problem.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
That's Isaac Fitzgerald, frequent contributor to The Today Show and
author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Dirt bag, Massachusetts.
Isaac's is a story about the intricate dance between shame
and secrecy, and the complex process of putting our burdens down,
then picking them up again, and onward we go, doing
(01:43):
our best, trying, failing, failing better. I'm Danny Shapiro and
this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
(02:04):
the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
So my parents were married when they had me, just
to different people. And that is a line that I've
used throughout my life, and it is a line that
I learned very early in my life. As I grew older,
I did get to know my parents better and I
did get to hear more of their history. They met
(02:36):
at Theology School, of all places, to have an affair.
My mother was married to a Unitarian minister. My father
was I think, a very smart man, but a bit
at sea, a bit lost, and had gone to school
maybe to try and find an anchor of some sort,
and instead they found each other. My mom's family could
(03:00):
be a bit harsh, would be one way to put it.
Is a very common New England family. Could be another
way to put it, which is to say a little
withholding a little judgmental. My father came from an Irish family,
a little more open, a little more joyful, but his
parents had both been mill workers, my mother's parents farmers,
(03:22):
and so they both came from little meets. When they met,
fell in love, had an affair. Eventually, my mother told
my father that it couldn't go on. She cut it off.
They both had young children, my half brother and my
half sister, and not long after that my mom realized
(03:43):
that she was pregnant with me. So the way that
I viewed the landscape of my childhood for many years
was that I was a bomb that blew up my parents' lives,
and not just their lives, but the lives of their partner,
the lives of their children, my half siblings. I felt
(04:04):
like I'd really come in and wrecked a lot of things.
And it took me a lifetime to recognize that that
kind of shameful version of the story that I held
with me for so long was, of course, not the
full story, and not the way that even my parents
would describe it, That my siblings would describe it, even
their partners would describe it. So that was their story,
(04:28):
and then for me my childhood. The earliest years on
paper would be the ones you might think were the worst,
which is both of my parents kind of rejected from
their families, eventually telling their partners the truth, didn't have
a home and said they turned to the Catholic Worker.
If you're unfamiliar with the Catholic Worker started by Dorothy Day,
(04:50):
it is a socialist, really believing in the Bible, give
the shirt off your back to help your neighbor. Organization
much less Vatican, much less you know, opulence, and much more.
How can we help one another? And that is the situation.
I was raised and raised in an unhaf shelter, eventually
(05:11):
making our way to a place called John Larry House,
which is kind of like a halfway home run by
the Catholic Worker. You look at that on paper and
you'd think, oh, those must have been the hard years.
But in this interesting way, those were the happiest years
of my life.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
So those years, you know, up until age eight, you're
living in these facilities that are under the auspices of
the Catholic Worker. Correct, does it feel like a community? Literally?
The landscape? What was it like?
Speaker 1 (05:43):
You know? I remember this big sign that I'm pretty sure,
said like no drugs, no drinking, no violence. There were
people from of course, all different types of backgrounds, but
you had altercations. Absolutely difficult place to have a kid.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Were there other kids around.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Not many, every once in a while, but for the
most part is a very adult place. But the other
aspect of it is it was this incredible community and
people for the most part. Of course, you had your
moments of sharpness or violence, but for the most part,
what you had were people watching out for one another,
were people taking care of one another. I was a
(06:22):
very talkative kid. I was a very inquisitive kid. I'm
sure at times, especially somebody with a hangover or just
having a really rough day, I'm sure I annoyed the
heck out of them. But for every one of those moments,
there were so many people who tried to be charming
to me, who would tell me stories, who would try
to entertain me with magic tricks or long tales. There
(06:43):
was one guy named Albert. He always called me the Captain.
I don't know why he called me the Captain, but
I know that I loved it so so much, And
so it was also this really joyous, wonderful place. I
mean the food. It wasn't going to win any awards,
but there was a lot of it, and everybody was
sharing and everybody lended a hand. And that's what I
really remember. And I remember my parents very early on
(07:07):
went from this situation where they were there because they
didn't have a place to go. But the more they
became involved with the community, the stronger they got. And
that was something that I even as a child, I
could just kind of feel that, and so that place
was very very special to me.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
And how was your parents' marriage during those years, How
did that period of time kind of impact them?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, so that's I mean, this is the thing. They
were trying to get their feet under them. They were
both in their early to mid thirties, and through the
Catholic worker they eventually got jobs, and then they eventually
got better jobs. And so it gets to the point
where my mother's working at the Cathedral the Holy Cross
there in Boston and my father gets a job at
(07:57):
a Catholic school teacher. Incredible. It's an incredible moment and
something I think they both felt very proud of. But
at the same time, you know, I'm not blowing anybody
away by saying being poor is very very hard. Getting
on your feet is very very hard. Especially you can
have the support of the Catholic worker. But when you're
(08:18):
lacking support from family and maybe you're feeling shameful about
everything that's happened, you know, life can be confusing and
can be complex. So their marriage was already I would
argue difficult. I think they were really thrown together in
all these different ways, and one of those ways was
me like, they made this commitment to stay together and
(08:41):
figure it out. And so there are arguments. There were
difficult times, but for the most part, even with the difficulties,
those were the good years. And then it's when me
and my mother moved to north central Massachusetts that things
really took a turn.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Right. You're right about this very It's sweet and touching
and sort of funny and ironic all at once. But
the place that you were living was not far from
Fenway Park in Boston, and your father would get the
you know, the cheapest, cheapest, cheapest seats, you know, way
high up, and then you'd find your way down to
(09:17):
the really good seats that people had that were empty.
And then if an usher came along and checked your tickets,
your father would say, oh please, it's you know, if
nobody's using these seats, it's my son's first game. And
you write, I mean I must have had one hundred
first games at Fenway Park. And there was something so
I mean, on the one hand, your father's you know,
was a man of faith. He's doing something that's like
(09:39):
not so not so kosher, shall we say, And on
the other hand, it's this very loving thing to do
that he just constantly wants to have. You have that experience.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It's a moment filled of love, and that's why I
remember it so warmly. But yeah, it was this absolute
act of love on his part, and that is something
that I credit both of my parents. They had tough
decisions to make. They failed in a lot of ways,
I don't want to shy away from that, but they
also had these moments of brilliance. And I think that's
(10:09):
what makes families so complex, especially when you want to
portray it with all its dirty parts, but also all
its good parts too. You know, these are human beings
that are doing their best for all their faults and
all the struggles that they had. When I was young,
another thing they gave me was just a love of books,
a love of literature. No matter where we lived. You know,
(10:30):
a lot of the furniture we'd find on the street
or whatever, but they always made sure that our books
came with us. They were taking me to the library
whenever they weren't working, whenever they had the chance to.
They weren't giving me this cookie cutter, happy suburban childhood,
but they wanted to make sure that I at least
felt won the power of education, but to the power
(10:51):
of imagination. And so you bring up my dad being
a man of faith, which is absolutely the truth of
my mother too, a woman of faith. But in that moment,
I think for he loved a little bit of a story.
He loved a little bit of an imagination of a
little bit of a con in a way, especially you know,
when there was nobody that was actually going to get
hurt by it. And that was that fun way part story.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Isaac's parents are indeed bound by their faith, their faith
in Catholicism as well as their faith in literature. These
become obsessions for them, and in turn, they become obsessions
for Isaac too. This can happen when parents are hard
to hold onto. It's almost as if their obsessions and
values become proxies for themselves, so Isaac holds on tight.
(11:41):
Things change for Isaac and his family when, at age eight,
he is mugged at gunpoint.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I was taking a shortcut home that of course, I
was told one hundred times not to take. The person
who was mugging me apologizes, and at the time, I
remember feeling like I was being really brave. And then
I looked down and without even knowing it, I'd wet
myself and that's that's why the person apologized. I have
other memories of that time period. There was a Halloween
(12:09):
where a woman got in the head with a bottle.
There you know, somebody had been shot on the front steps.
There was blood on the sidewalk. My parents had been
working to get their feet under them, and I think
they were starting to feel My father was becoming more
secure in his role as an educator. My mother was
feeling more secure in the role that she'd had at
the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. She'd learned these skills,
(12:31):
she knew how she could apply them to other jobs.
I think they started to realize we want to be
in a better place. But like everything I'm saying here, right,
there's the romantic version. They're arguing a lot more. And
I think my mom maybe needed a break, and so
we moved to north central mass which is right next
to her parents.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Right, and so it being right next to her parents' place,
you know, in one world, could be a great thing,
but that in fact comes with a lot of challenges.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
My mother's mother was a very harsh and critical person,
and my mother had done everything right in my grandmother's
eyes up until when she didn't. And that was the
affair that was deciding to leave her first partner trying
to start this family. She had a notion, which is
(13:27):
you were cheating. He was cheating. This isn't going to work.
You should have stuck with your first marriage. And she
let those criticisms be known. At the same time, I
think my mother was questioning a lot of where she
was in life. I think when you're in your again
it was early thirties to mid thirties to approaching forty,
you start to wonder, have I made the right decisions?
(13:49):
What's going on? We have a society that treats women poorly,
treats mothers poorly, and is very judgmental of them. And
you want to let's not forget we're talking now about
the eighties, the early nineties. I think there's a lot
of pressure that she was feeling, and so we moved
to this farmhouse that had no heat. There was a
(14:12):
cast iron wood stove in the middle. And my mother
doesn't really know anyone in the area, so all she
hasked is to go over and talk to her parents,
who basically are telling her all the mistakes that she's
made over and over and over again and again. I
was young, I was eight years old. But you can
feel when the only other person in the house starts
(14:34):
to go dark.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
We'll be right back. I think absorbs a great deal
of his grandmother's disapproval. After all, if she's unhappy about
his mother's choices, which began with his parents, it's a
fair and culminated in his berth. It would be hard
(15:03):
not to feel that his grandmother disapproves of his very
existence alone in that desolate farmhouse. The feeling that all
this is somehow his fault begins to set in.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
I have this very clear memory. My mom once a
week would go over to her parents' house. I was
supposed to stay at the house, but I never would,
and I would kind of sneak over, and I remember
like looking through a window and she was crying. And
very soon after that she would start crying in the
house all the time as well, she would stop getting
out of bed. There are very very hard years, but
(15:40):
I just remember realizing that I'm the reason that she said.
That's how it sat inside me. So my grandmother would
look at me as scants. My grandmother would be so
cold to me, and I realized it was because of
her her dislike for my father, but really it was
this feeling that I had ruined her daughter, but just
(16:01):
by existing, and that wasn't something I couldn't fix. I
did not like sitting with this feeling of worthlessness, so
I started turning to books because there that would take
my mind off of everything that was happening their mound well.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
And also I think with books it's not only the
distraction or this sort of escape into other worlds, but
also at times a feeling that there are other people
out there who have also felt some of these things.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
That is exactly right. One of my favorite quotes comes
from the play The History Boys, and I'm probably not
going to say correctly here, so part of it for
not getting word to word. But it's basically like you
can be reading a book and you can come across
a line or a thought that is a thought or
a feeling that you thought only you had had you
(16:52):
truly you'd never shared it with anyone, and then you
see it there on the page, and it's like a
hand comes out of the book and grabs your own.
All of a sudden, you feel less alone in the world.
And I think that's absolutely right. That is when I
had a very difficult conversation with my mother. At that point,
her mental health is starting to deteriorate. She's leaning on
(17:13):
me more and more. She started talking to me like
I was a friend, not like a child. She started
treating me like somebody she could lean on instead of
take care of.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
But Isaac needs to be taken care of. He's gone
from city poor to country poor. He misses his father,
he has a very disapproving set of grandparents, and he
feels in some way like he doesn't have any right
to be here at all. He writes, but he can
feel the trouble, though he can't at the time put
words to it. Then if there are before and after
(17:47):
moments in life when you hear something you can't unhear.
You learn something you can't unlearn. This is one of
those moments for Isaac. His mother tells him something that
perhaps no parent should ever tell a child.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
All then forget, we're driving and it must have been
a warm day, because I remember there was that shimmer
on the road, you know, where it almost looks like
the road is turning into water. And she basically tells
me the story of when my parents met. And they're
at school and she decides, I'm gonna cut this affair off,
and they actually went for one last day, would tell
(18:24):
their partners they were going on retreats for school with
other people at the school, but of course it was
just the two of them, and they would go up
to the White Mountains in New Hampshire and that is
where they would conduct their affair. And she shared so
much that I even know the mountain that I was
conceived on. I know that they were using birth control
and clearly it didn't take. And she shared with me
(18:45):
that because she'd broken up afterwards, she decided kind of
not to talk to my dad for a little bit,
and she had to decide. She walked me through every
decision she thought she was like maybe I could tell
her partner at the time, maybe we could just this
is your kid. Maybe okay, maybe I tell the truth,
but maybe there's forgiveness there and then she can seers
(19:06):
her maybe I can have an abortion. And she goes
so far as telling me that she scheduled the abortion,
and she got to the clinic and she got to
the front room and that is when she decided not
to and she walked out. But then she ended it
the way she started, and she told me all this,
this wall of words, its wave of words, and she
(19:26):
just said, but maybe it would have been for the best.
And that's what rings in my head. And this is
the difficult thing you want to talk about. Family secrets
or secrets we don't tell ourselves, the secrets we don't
share with other people, but we know are in our
heart at all times. There's a way where I can
look at my entire life and we can get to
(19:47):
the complex relationship with my parents now. But maybe it's
for the best. That's not wrong. There is a world
where if she had made that choice, her life might
have been a lot move there. And I know if
she was here in this room and I said that,
she would be so angry at me because I know
she loves me. I know she loves me, but maybe
(20:10):
for the best. Maybe that's not the right way to
put it. But if you want to say, maybe it
would have been easier, she's probably right. And I didn't
understand that at eight, of course, but I definitely did
by the time when I was fourteen, and I was
able to see that for her.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah, which only contributes to that sense of being the bomb.
Exactly During this time, Isaac's mother's mental health deteriorates. She
attempts to take her life a number of times.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
It was just me and her with her very critical
parents next door, and she was grappling with shame, and
she didn't have anyone to talk to about it. And
I didn't know what to do. I mean, I knew
how to cook spaghettio's. I knew how to try and
get her out of bed so she could get to
her job. I knew. I started doing a lot of
(21:01):
the caretaking. We had a washer, we didn't have a dryer,
hanging clothes on the clothesline. I just watched, as you know,
I didn't have the words for at the time, but
as her mental health deteriorated, and eventually that turned into
basically kind of crying all the time, or being quiet
all the time, or not being able to get out
(21:22):
of bed. Manifested in one time. The memory I have,
which is so this is you know, not every memory
we have right as crystal clear. But she was wearing
a green Champion sweatshirt and she had a knife in
her hand, and she went to stab herself in the stomach,
and I remember grabbing her and saying no, no, no,
(21:43):
no no, and crying. Now, I want to be very clear,
she didn't cut into her skin. She cut that sweatshirt.
She cut that sweatshirt, but she was She's having these
outbursts in these moments. Around this time, my father actually
does move out, makes the decision to move out. In
my mind, and things are going to get better, but
actually they get worse because while he was in the city,
(22:04):
he had another affair. My mother finds out about it.
This does not help with the mental health that she's having.
And even as he comes out, I would argue to
try and make amends, it's almost like gasoline is added
to the fire. Now they are fighting constantly. He sees
what I'm doing with her he sees how I'm trying
to help her in these ways, but I at one
(22:25):
point I have to call an ambulance because of the
suicide attempt. She gets put I get told that she's
going away for a little while, but she actually gets
put in a state run facility for a week. It's
not like we had money or health insurance. This was
literally the state was just like, all right, we need
to put this person somewhere else. She gets medication, which
(22:45):
we think is going to be a good thing. Instead
at one point, neither of my parents' drink, but I
find her with an empty bottle of pills and an
empty bottle of vodka. Now with therapy, I have a
lot of different ways to look at it, but there's
one way looking at where I have a lot of
empathy for her and not do try to hold that.
But it's also really hard looking back and recognizing that
(23:06):
the person that was supposed to take care of you
was not able to take care of themselves. And it's
hard to know where to put that anger. If you
put it on the situation, if you put it on
her parents being so unforgiving or unempathetic, And I just
remember being very confused.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Right, because it has to go somewhere, right.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, it starts almost low level, but exactly what you're saying,
where you know, this question of where do I put
this anger? And I don't even know how to put
words to it, and so it's very easy to just
put it on oneself. And it starts very low level risk.
Taking my school again, it's a very rural part of
north central Massachusetts. So what you have is a regional school.
(23:51):
It's not just a regional high school. It's a regional
high school in middle school. Because there's just aren't enough
kids in the area. So these four towns poured into
this place. So at the age of twelve, I'm all
of a sudden in the same building with kid two eighteen,
and of course you're not supposed to go down that hallway,
but who cares. I immediately make friends with a lot
of older kids. By the age of twelve, I'm drinking.
(24:11):
I'm doing drugs, and you know, it's weed was constant.
But it wasn't just weed. It was mushrooms, it was acid,
it was anything we could get our hands on. And
I loved it, almost like books. It was this escape
and I didn't have the words for it back then.
But it's very clear that I wanted to hurt myself
(24:31):
in certain ways. I wanted to be self destructive. All
of a sudden, I was funnier, all of a sudden,
I was quicker, all of a sudden, I was more
open to talking instead of really curling into myself. So
it was something I enjoyed as well. But there were
also Yeah, very early on, there was that is I
would argue. Around the age of twelve is when I
start to grapple with the fact that I it's such
(24:55):
a hard thing for me even say still, but I
might want to die. The idea of not being around
sometimes sounds not just pretty but very good. I mean,
what's interesting is I feel almost embarrassed to say it
because it's so childlike. But again, I was a child.
I had a lot of knives. At one point, I
(25:16):
put them all in a board and I would take
it under my bed, out from under my bed. I
kept it under my bed. I'd take it out from
under my bed. I'd be like, well, if I roll
out of bed, I'll fall my knives and I'll die.
So dramatic, but so much like I just didn't know
what to do. I would drink until blackout, and I
hope that I didn't wake up the drinking and driving
(25:38):
that was happening in that area even before I had
a license, and it wasn't happening just in this bubble.
Because this happened the area that I lived in, Teenagers
died from drinking and driving accidents all the time. I
would know people, I guess. In one way, that's me
saying it was almost something I was hopeful for. Another
way to me saying this is something I wasn't the
(26:01):
only kid in the area that I was having these issues.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, No, it's kind of it's a perfect storm in
an area like that because kids are driving at really
young ages and before they have licenses. Also, the driving
age is younger, and there's tremendous boredom, and there's also weapons.
I mean, it's, you know what a mess. But there's
this other aspect of it too, which is and it
makes so much sense emotionally. But you have all of
(26:26):
this body shame, you know, you have this body image shame,
and you right, we're all in our own personal hells,
you know when it comes to body shame. But I
think that that feeling is so sort of fundamental in
terms of self loathing, Like what else could possibly be
as absolutely clear as loathing what you see in the mirror,
(26:50):
you know, when it comes to self loathing.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, and also just about taking up space. My mother
had been bigger when she was younger, and it was
yet another thing that her mother was hyper critical of,
and I started to inherit that too. We got out
to this house, I had so much time alone, and
now I can name it. Now I know what it is.
(27:14):
I was anxious. I was crawling out of my skin
with anxiety. And so I turned, of course, like we're
talking about to drugs, to alcohol, but also to eat.
I would pour sugar on top of bowls of cheerios
and just scarf them down. I became an anxious eater.
And we're also, like we were just talking about you
set a perfect store in the area. We're talking about
(27:37):
the lowest income county and all of Massachusetts, and we're
talking about a rural area where a lot of the
food is not healthy. It's just a lot of starches
and a lot of let's just buy the cheapest thing
that we can afford, and I hope that gets us through.
And so I started to grow. But again, there was
already so much resentment for myself, and now that they're
(28:00):
there was more of me. I wanted to be small,
I wanted to disappear. I was thinking that I didn't
maybe want to exist, so to actually be this bigger body.
I started to resent myself for it so so much,
not even knowing that I was doing the exact same
thing that my mother had done years and years before.
And of course that was part of her anxiety too,
(28:21):
is she had spent her whole life getting away from
this area, and I think she felt like such a
such a tremendous sadness about finding herself back there and
watching me be a child in that same.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Area, which of course never gets spoken about.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
No, that's I mean, that's so much of this comes
down to people not communicating with one another.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Will be back in a moment with more family secrets.
When New Year's Eve of nineteen ninety nine comes along,
many of us are scared the world as we know
it might end at midnight when we enter as the
new Millennium. But not Isaac and his friends. They're not scared.
(29:11):
They're psyched.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
We were excited. Yeah, Clean Slate, and we couldn't wait
for it, because why not restart look at all the
things that were going wrong. And one of the movies
that were very drawn to, which was that same kind
of time period, was Fight Club, and it was this
idea and let's we don't even talk about it, like
the surprise surprise, A bunch of boys got together and
(29:33):
beat each other up and have us quite a bit.
But what we really loved about that film we probably
couldn't have articulated at the time, was it ends with
this wiping of the debt, this idea that maybe society
could restart. And we thought that would be tremendous, because
when you're on the bottom, that's what you're always hoping for,
(29:54):
a reshuffling. You want to see if you can get
delta better hand This hand sucks. What happens even let's
say all these other these things that we've gotten used to,
but we were used to it that they weren't helping us.
What if they got wiped away.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
In the midst of this teenage nihilism, something extraordinary happens.
Isaac gets into trouble at school for hitting another kid
in the face with a math book, and he's suspended,
but he can't stay home alone, so he rides out
his suspension in the school library. He starts helping out
the librarians and they notice that he's suffering. They step
(30:33):
in and try to help. They tell him about a
nearby boarding school that sometimes has scholarships and financial aid
available for local kids. Isaac applies and sure enough, he
gets a free ride.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
There was many people at the school who kind of
rallied around me and could tell maybe things were not
great at home, because at that point my parents were
constantly fighting. The violence had spread. My mother and I
had been in altercations. My father and I had been
in altercations. What had been this simmering resentment and attacks
(31:07):
and there have been a lot of yelling and violence
in the household. But then we started getting physical with
each other. It wasn't just suicide attempts, it was violence.
I was lucky enough to have some people at this
school take notice to know that that school was not
going to be able to help me enough, and they
encouraged me to apply to a boarding school that was
(31:29):
very nearby. And I think a lot of the people
took notice and to recognize that because they maybe had
stories like that themselves. And I just think that's what
happened in that moment. I had certain teachers, librarians, secretaries,
people took notice that I was hurting, and they helped
me make this transition into a boarding school. I was
no longer at my house and things changed.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
So would you describe that as another sort of full
crumb moment, like another before and after a moment? Was
that a big shift?
Speaker 1 (31:58):
One hundred percent for moment? I said, with this one especially,
it's one of those things where you're like, and now
everything will be fixed. And part of life, as I
know you know, is you just recognize weight. It's never fixed,
it's never perfect. Now things are different, things have shifted,
and you can walk towards the light, but it doesn't
(32:19):
mean all of a sudden everything is wrapped up in
a bow.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Well, and it also means you know, wherever you go,
there you are. You're still you in those new circumstances.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
You know, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Maybe a bit bolstered, maybe with some more opportunities and
more light in the distance, but you're still you.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
After boarding school, Isaac doesn't plan on going to college,
but he gets a scholarship and to college he goes,
but the scholarship money is just for tuition. Of course,
he needs spending money too. He gets a job as
soon as he gets on campus, painting houses in New Hampshire.
When he turns twenty three, he moves across the country
with some friends to San Francisco. He doesn't go back
(33:06):
home for the first Thanksgiving or Christmas. Then he doesn't
go back at all. He's estranged from his parents for
a decade. He moves through life, taking one step forward,
two steps back. He's drawn to the bar scene. He
buys a motorcycle. Bars and motorcycles can be a dangerous combination,
(33:27):
so Isaac sets up rules for himself. He's not going
to drink and ride this bike. Then he's not going
to ride it very far. Then only one drink if
he's going to ride it. But one morning, Isaac wakes
up in his apartment wearing all his clothes. He's not hurt,
as far as he can tell, but he has no
(33:47):
recollection of how or when he got home from the
night before. It turned out that he had ridden to
Santa Cruz seventy miles away, drank himself into a blackout,
drove all the way home parked perfectly, headed upstairs and
fell asleep without any memory of this. He clocks it
as the moment he should stop drinking, but it's not
(34:10):
and he doesn't. Years later, when Isaac seeks therapy, is
therapist helps him understand and unpack this rhythm he's repeatedly
found himself in one step forward, two steps back after
a sessional, your therapist going to a barn in her
neighborhood and having a drink. And when you say to
(34:31):
your therapist, this is what I do, she asks you
why it's such a great question.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Well, I think you absolutely said it as no matter
where I go, there I am and we can keep
trying to grow. And that is what one step forward,
two steps back is all about. Is that is how
it gets done, just like you said, because it's better
than just seven steps back. You have to walk a
little forward, slide a little back, walk a little forward,
slide a little back. And for me, it was my
(35:01):
therapist that pointed it out to me. That came to
therapy very late in life, and I'm still trying to
figure it out because I'm only three years into therapy.
But she was the one that said, do you notice
that your home, a place you should have felt safe,
was not safe. Do you notice that the church, a
place you're supposed to feel safe, a biker bar, the
work you did at the armory, these other places where
(35:23):
most people would say, oh well, you know, even the
Catholic work or homeless shelter, that's not a safe place
for a child. And that's where you felt the most loved.
That's where you felt the most safe. And it was
my therapist that pointed that out to me. It was
my therapist that said, look, you were seeking out danger.
You went to work with this group in Southeast Asia
who smuggled medical supplies because you were looking for something
(35:47):
to punish yourself with. But what you found in those
places was real community and real love and real tenderness.
And the places where you're supposed to feel the most
safe is where you, not to use a strong word,
but where you were portrayed.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Therapy not only enables Isaac to confront his past, but
it also empowers him to write about it. And writing
his stories allows Isaac to have the conversations he's never
had with his parents. His therapist said to him, all
this could have been a conversation. Everything you write about
could have been a conversation, but you clearly didn't know
(36:25):
how to talk to one another. When his book comes out,
his mom reads it in one night. She writes him
a note the next day. In the note, she writes,
I am so sorry. I had no idea you were
carrying this.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
And that, to me, is the biggest secret in all
of this. You can say that maybe she had rose
colored glasses on to not see some of the mistakes
I was making. You can obviously argue that if a
kid puts an entire country between you and the family
and does to come back for ten years, there's obviously
some issues. I think she wasn't a fool. She was
(37:02):
aware that something was going on, but she didn't really
understand how much of what happened in those years I
was still carrying with me and I had a respect
for her. She wrote a lot of other stuff that
I can't go over every single thing of it, But
what became clear to me was that when I would
see her, I always tried to put on a smiling face.
As we started this new relationship. Since I've moved back,
(37:25):
since we're no longer strange, I was the one that
wanted to be like it's fine, I forgive you. It's
we're good. We're good, We're good. I was the one
that was never interested in getting into it or talking
about it. So what this book has done is it
started some of the best conversations I've ever had with
my mother. My father's hilarious, he had his own he
(37:47):
wrote his home letters about it, et cetera. But also, again,
just want to say, I can't share any of that. Really,
it'sot to know that, he said, and we'll see a thanksgiving,
which is his way of saying, Hey, this is hard,
this is tough, but you're still here, You're still part
of the family. But that was the biggest secret I
never shared with them. I was never able to I
(38:08):
was never able to communicate to them how hurt I was.
My therapist literally was like you. Instead of talking to them,
decided to figure out how to write a book and
then wrote about it in hopes that they might see
you for the hurt kid that you are.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
So where does forgiveness reside in all this?
Speaker 1 (38:29):
For you? That is the lie that I told myself
for a long time. The thing that I said was
as I got a little older, not as old as
I am now, but as I got a little older,
I recognized that they too had been dealt a hard hand.
And who knows, if I'd written this book when I
was twenty five, it would have just been my parents
are the worst people that ever lived. I had the
(38:51):
hardest childhood. It would have been so angry. At thirty five,
I'm able to be empathetic to them, I'm able to
see how they also were struggling. I was so quick
to try and forgive because I was raised Catholic, so
I had all this anger, but I didn't want to
accept it. I didn't want to acknowledge it. I didn't
want to sit with it. I just wanted to say, Okay,
(39:13):
that was all bad, But I forgive my parents. Look,
I went to a boarding school. I got a scholarship
to go there. I got a scholarship to go to college.
I'm living a kind of normal life. Now, It'll be okay.
I don't need to worry about that too much. I
don't need to be too hard on them for that.
And that's the lie I told myself for a very
long time, is that forgiveness is something you can just choose.
(39:36):
Forgiveness for me now, when I see it as what
I recognize it as. What true forgiveness is is you
need to look at your life. You need to decide
who you want to keep in it and who you don't.
And it's okay, it's okay to cut people out. I
want to be very clear. This book is a story
about how my family blew apart, but it's also how
my family came back together. But that doesn't have to
(39:57):
be everybody's story. If you have somebody that hurts you
and you want to cut them out of your life,
that's okay. But for me, I had been saying I'd
forgiven them for so long. I realized I had to
look at my life. Who do I want to keep
in it? I realized because of my nieces and nephews,
because of my siblings, because of myself, I can admit
(40:19):
that I want this family unit to be a unit again.
And that was going to take real forgiveness. And what
real forgiveness is is you actually look at the things
and you actually acknowledge what happened, and you talk about them,
and the person maybe doesn't just say everything you want
to hear. They're going to have their own views on it,
(40:39):
but you can grapple with it, and that's how you
can make steps forward together. That is where real forgiveness
comes from. When I was a kid, I just had
this concept of it from the church. You pray, you
go to confession, you can confess your forgiven acknowledging it
is just the first step. You really got to work
(41:00):
with people and talk with people and hope, you know,
because again I'm not some angel. I've also heard other
people hope that they can find it within themselves to
forgive you. And so that's the aspect of all this
that I'm still in with my parents. But what's so
incredible to me is that they're willing to have those conversations,
(41:21):
and in a way, I can feel the relief. We
talk more than we've ever talked. I visit them more
than I've ever visited even after we were strange and
I came back. I'm visiting them more now than I
ever had before. And they could have told me to
take a hike, but instead they've embraced me more than
ever before, and that's been a really incredible experience.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacour is
the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
(42:18):
find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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