June 11, 2025 • 24 mins
Mimi Tallo grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a northeastern, blue-collar town. She was surrounded by dysfunction, abuse, and addiction. She was also surrounded by relatives she didn’t find out were relatives until she dove into her genealogy. Mimi talks about her upbringing and her father’s life-long belief that he was Sicilian and how it shaped him and their family. He was, at it turns out, Irish. Mimi is a speaker, author, and podcast maven. Access to her books and story are at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Mimi-Tallo/author/B09FJ4K65Y?ref=ap_rdr&ccs_id=1efbf676-940e-40e8-bfea-5065d5941dc7, and her podcast can be found at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/be-heard-empower-yourself/id1680364703. Her previous podcast about her memoir, "Raised by Wolves Trapped by Demons," can be heard at https://ataapodcast.com/raised-by-wolves-trapped-by-demons/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
Welcome everybody.
This is Avoiding The Addiction Affliction,sponsored by Westwords Consulting.
I'm Mike McGowan.
A few months ago, I had a conversationwith Mimi Tallo, author of a fabulous
book, Raised by Wolves Trapped by Demons.
And Mimi we've had a ton ofpositive feedback about that.
(00:33):
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Your book and that broadcast.
We ended up that conversation with abit of a cliffhanger for a podcast.
That I promised we'd pick back upon eventually, and we will today.
Mimi grew up in a small town wellScranton, Pennsylvania, not small,
but a northeastern blue collar town.
She was surrounded by dysfunction,abuse, addiction, and we talked
(00:55):
the last time, and I'll put alink to that in the podcast.
Of her struggle to make somethingof her life, and she did while
battling the demons that seemedto pop up around every corner.
Mimi's a speaker, author, and as shedescribes herself, a podcast maven.
Welcome back Mimi.
Okay.
Now, Mimi, we ended the conversationlast time after talking about the
(01:19):
whole, your life and your family.
By observing that bothof us had Irish roots.
Yes, we did.
And you dug deep, deep intoyour genealogy and wrote a book
about it called Irish Roots.
Yes I did.
Now, your dad, and this is where I wannastart, your dad didn't think he was Irish.
He was adopted.
(01:39):
He knew his mother was Irishbecause he had the adoption papers
that said who his mother was.
So he hated the Irish because his motherput him in an orphanage, of course,
but he thought he was only part Irish.
His father that adopted him liedand told him he was his real father.
(02:01):
Not adopted, real bloodand that he was Sicilian.
(laughs) Okay.
You know, the reason I like this is bothof them, if you think Irish and Sicilian.
Immediately things cometo mind with both, right?
Both genealogies.
Now, your dad, your dad, asyou talked about last time,
(02:23):
had a substance abuse problem.
How much of his identity besidesthat, how much of his identity
was formed thinking his ancestorswere Sicilian rather than Irish?
Complete.
He was, he completely convincedhimself that he was Sicilian.
He learned how to speak thelanguage at a very young age.
(02:45):
My.
And yeah, he was very smart man.
He went to Sicily.
He went to the town wherehis father was born, Rivera.
And he found relatives that had the samelast name who he thought were his cousins.
And he had a fabulous time there.
(03:06):
And they ended up sending,one of their kids to visit us.
Okay?
So he was convinced.
Convinced he was Sicilian.
In fact, he went twice.
He went over there twice to visit.
And his cousin, his one cousin, he thoughtcame here and this was really something.
(03:27):
Our newspaper The Scranton Timeshad a big story with pictures and
everything about how my fatherfound his relatives in Sicily.
(laughs) This is great.
And I had the chart made up becausethis cousin was not a genealogist.
(03:49):
He was more than that.
He went back farther.
He did, I can't think of the term for it.
He had a big chart that hebrought from Sicily, and he
went back hundreds of years.
He went back to Julius Caesar.
Oh my Lord!
And so that's why we havethe newspaper article.
And he said that my father's family.
(04:11):
The Sicilian family that really wasn'tthe family was actually back in Julius
Caesar's time had a Roman, they calledthem secretaries for Julius Caesar,
one of Julius Caesar's secretaries.
They're the guys to take the the noteand run to the next camp with it.
(04:32):
Wow!
I know that's how far back he went.
Wow.
Now he's correct.
His family.
Correct?
Yeah.
But my father's little tale atthe end doesn't belong there.
Well, and that was passed alongto you, so your whole growing up
you thought, Hey, he's Sicilian.
Absolutely.
(04:52):
I met people.
I went over there myself lateron, and I met these same people.
I stayed with them thinking I was blood.
Well, and you talked about it inyour neighborhoods, you dated,
your neighborhood was full.
And that was Irish kids that I wasfriends with and found out when I
(05:12):
did unearthing my Irish roots, whichis the book about finding them.
I found out kids I played with areprobably second and third cousins.
So you grew up thinking they'refriends and now they're related to you?
Yes, and my father had a halfbrother that lived six blocks away
(05:33):
his whole life and he never knew.
He never knew?
No.
'cause his Irish father hada son with another woman.
So he had the son with this womanthat my father knew was his mother,
and then he had a son with anotherwoman, so that made him a half brother.
(05:53):
After you did your research and wroteyour book, did you happen to go back to
any of those second cousins and say, Heywe ain't just friends, we're related?
Yes.
Yes, I did.
She can't find where ourrelationship connects.
And I gave her the names,but you gotta do the work.
Yeah, yeah.
Especially second or third.
So yeah, that was Brennan's.
(06:15):
And then I found and talked to acousin Scanlon that was actually
the half brother's daughter.
Wow.
That lives six blocks away.
So I had a cousin that lives six blocksaway, so she would, I don't know what
that would be if he was half, let's see,what would, what would that make her
(06:35):
A half cousin?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Related, related to you in some way, doyou think it would've changed your dad's?
How, how might it have changed?
I know you're guessing your dad'sperception of himself and his life.
If he would've known the truth?
Hundred percent.
In what way?
Because he would've known these people.
(06:57):
He was related to thefamily he thought he was in.
The Italian family.
His adopted mother.
Her family snubbed him.
They didn't accept him.
His adopted motherdidn't really accept him.
She called him names and told himto go back to the horror that had
(07:21):
him, told him that in Italian.
And so he was kind of lonely because,the father's side, the so-called father
who was not really his biologicalfather, he had no relatives over there.
All the relatives were on the wife'sside, and she hated this child.
(07:43):
Right?
So he didn't have likea, a big happy family.
You know, and if, if he had known abouthis Irish family that he had a half
brother six blocks away, we would'vehad a lot more people in our life.
Yeah.
For sure.
So I think a hundred percent difference.
(08:05):
Did you know the half brother?
No, I did not.
He would've been my father'sage, maybe a few years younger.
Yeah.
All of that.
Right.
I'm correcting myself when I looked it up.
They were born the same year.
He had my father with the woman thatwas not his wife, and then he had a
son with a woman that was his wife,and they were born the same year, 1927.
(08:30):
So he was an alcoholic and wehad a lot of neighborhood bars.
And I say they might have dranktogether in every [inaudible].
Right.
But yeah.
Now when you're doing this, the, Iwanted to talk about this because
families I think are interesting to me.
I've done family therapy for,I did it for a long time.
(08:54):
And the secrets, the secrets we keep.
Are so not healthy.
And so, so you're doing theresearch and you just must have
picked it up and started doing it.
What did you think?
What was it like when you said, oh my.
(09:14):
Yes.
When you found out thetruth, what did you do?
Who'd you tell?
Well, the first thing.
Well, of course I toldthe immediate family.
Did they believe you?
Well, they believed me.
Of course, they believed me,but it, it didn't, like they
didn't know those grandparents.
I didn't, that would've beentheir great grandparents.
The people that [inaudible] to myfather, I did not know them because, my
(09:39):
grandfather that adopted, my father diedbefore I was born, and the wife died when
I was about maybe five or six years old.
So I really didn't know them, andI barely knew the other side of
the family, the Italian side of thefamily that was very distant to us.
(10:01):
Okay.
I was close to my mother's sideof the family who were Italian.
So I had a bunch of cousins.
I was the oldest, I was thefirst one born in the Italian,
real Italian mother's side.
So I was the oldest of all the cousins.
(10:22):
And my family only had four children, butthe rest of them all had 6, 7, 8 children.
So.
(laughs) I have lots of cousins.
Wow.
Yeah.
And they all married... My aunts,well, let's see, my one aunt, she
married an Italian, you know, soher children were full Italian.
(10:44):
Okay.
And she had six kids.
Right.
And then the other ones married,you know, polish or whatever.
But they knew, they knew what the mix was.
Sure.
Right.
Did it change your perceptionof, of yourself too.
Do you now celebrate St. Patrick's Day?
The funny thing of it is like Scranton,Pennsylvania is a big Irish town.
(11:08):
Yeah.
They celebrate St. Patrick's Daypretty much the whole month of March.
Wow.
Well, they have the lead up to it.
They, we have a St. Patrick's Day parade,and then they have the actual day itself.
And don't forget, I wasin the bar business.
(11:28):
Yeah.
So St. Patrick's Day for myadult life was a big deal.
And I would bring up the fact thatI was one fourth Irish because I
knew about the mother, but I didn'tknow I was really half Irish.
Yeah.
Could have sold more green beer.
(11:49):
I probably would be more motivated.
(laughs) I would get into it more.
I, trust me, Mike, I got into it enough.
(laughs)
Yeah, yeah, right.
We, we talked about that thelast time and it's amazing.
One of my favorite parts thelast times conversation was the.
You got while in rehab.
You got cards from the beer distributors.
Beer distributors.
(12:10):
Yeah.
I just think that's great.
I have flowers.
I got huge bouquets.
Oh, that's great.
Of flowers.
And the other people in the rehabthought I was some kind of actress
or something, because with these hugebouquets, I got at least three of them.
Well, what people believe.
They believe.
Well, husband didn't know anythingabout anonymity, you know?
(12:32):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, the reason I mentioned St.Patrick's Day is my dad, Irish through
and through, was his birthday's in March.
So when you said the wholemonth, you're not kidding.
And, and he had a problem.
People who listened to this know, andmy dad was had an alcohol problem.
And so Mimi, we didn't see him.
March was bender month.
And so from his birthday throughSt. Patrick's Day, even when
(12:55):
he was around he was gone.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
And so, you know, you have theItalian side, but then your dad's
substance abuse problems justkind of went with the territory.
Huh?
You know, it's interesting to methat my mother's side of the family,
which definitely was Italian when Imet some of them that lived in Italy.
(13:20):
Nobody seemed to have a drinking problem.
They drank wine with dinner.
It was just the thing to do.
But no one seemed to be an alcoholicor I didn't hear any stories of that.
Right.
And that to me was interesting.
And on my mother's side too, like,none of her sisters were alcoholics.
(13:44):
Her brother wasn't an alcoholic.
There were some mental issueswith some of the sisters, but
the alcoholism wasn't there.
I bring that up because I really thinkthere was a genetic part to that.
The alcoholism, I believe that.
There was genetic and then the fact thathe grew up in such a terrible environment,
(14:06):
a cold, unloving household, you know,that kind of thing, feeling alone and I
think he drank to be with other people.
You know, you like to go to bars.
Yeah.
A lot of people say that, you knowwhatever gaps they had growing
up when they discovered drinkingor drugs, it, it fills a hole.
(14:29):
And if you haven't learned tofill the hole in another way,
it becomes much more attractive.
Exactly.
How far back did you go?
You went you know, when reading your book,you went, how did, and how'd you do it?
How long did it take?
You went way back.
It took me a few months.
I used DNA ancestry.
Oh.
See that's the great thing.
The people that have done it, thatmatched me, you know, I would look them
(14:53):
up and, and see how close our matcheswas, and that's how I did the tree.
So, you know, I would find out,okay, this person related to us,
if they could find their mother.
You know, so then I would findtheir mother, but wouldn't
have who the husband was.
So then I'd have to do some moredigging to find out who the husband
was, and then I'd find the children.
It was kind of fun.
(15:15):
Yeah.
It was time consuming.
And sometimes I'd go down therabbit hole and I'd say, oh,
I'm, I'm doing this for hours.
I gotta stop and feedmy husband, you know?
(laughs)
(laughs) Yeah.
It's a hobby, right.
Yeah, it was more than that'cause it was like finding out
a lot of stuff I did not know.
So yeah, I went back to,I wanna say 18th century.
(15:40):
County Mayo.
Yeah.
Pretty much around the potatofamine and all that stuff.
I went there and found out a lotof my relatives moved to Scranton
Pennsylvania from County Mayo.
And my real grandmother and my realgrandfather both were from County Mayo,
different towns, Sligo and Rose Common.
(16:03):
And I don't know, I don't thinkthey knew each other in Ireland.
Okay.
And I say this in the book, when I lookedup the records, his birth record, hers,
et cetera, I think she must have beenraped because he was like, he was like 10
years older than her, and she was like 14.
Wow!
(16:24):
And catholic Irish people, youdid not have babies unmarried.
It just was not acceptable.
So I am positive they put her in theSt. Joseph's, they had an orphanage
and a place for unwed mothers.
Wow.
That must have rang a bell.
(16:46):
Well, yeah.
Yes it did, because that'swhere my father was born.
And I think they probably had herthere when she started to show.
I think they sent her thereaway from people's sight.
They kept it a total secret.
Sure.
So until he was born andthen she could go home.
(17:07):
Right.
And he was there tillhe was four years old.
That's why it's like, I used to thinkto myself, if this is his real father,
and he knew he was there, why didhe wait till he was four years old?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
You know, have you, youtalked about going to Sicily.
Did you go to County Mayo?
(17:28):
I haven't done that yet because youknow, this is all fairly recent, the last
couple years that I found this stuff out.
I had always, I've been to Italy twice,you know, and I met relatives from both
sides and when I told the relativesthat weren't really my relatives that
I found out, they really weren't myblood relatives, they didn't care.
(17:50):
(laughs) That's great.
Yeah.
No, we're, we're still cousins.
We love you.
You come stay with us, whatever.
Because we had gotten to know them.
You know?
Yeah.
That, that's something, isn't it?
Well, it is.
And you know, if you, if you go,first of all, I've been there.
It's gorgeous.
It's beautiful.
Yeah.
(18:10):
One of my memories is flying when youfly in, if the sun is out, which is iffy
.You see every shade, you know, they talk about green.
Well, it's not just green, it's everyshade of green you ever thought of.
Yeah.
And so it's fascinating.
And the people are equallygregarious and welcoming.
That's you know, I wasn'tallowed to stay in a hotel.
I had to stay with relatives.
(18:32):
Yes.
The house that my grandparentsbuilt and grew up in, the
lady invited me in for lunch.
I don't even know her.
I just show up and.
Yeah.
Next thing you know, she's cooking for me.
That's what happened in Italy.
They wouldn't let me stay in a hotel.
And my cousin that lives inAlberobello, which is beautiful, it's
actually an Italian tourist town.
(18:54):
So Italians go there on vacationbecause it's rustic and it has
this specific type of buildingsthat they lived in called truly.
And they're built in an odd way outof bricks and a certain I'll have to
have a picture at the end of the notes.
But anyway, they, they had me staywith them, didn't pay for a thing.
(19:18):
They wouldn't even letme pay for some beers.
Wow.
And the only thing talkingabout culture and alcohol.
Wine and Italian is very acceptable.
Very acceptable.
And my birthday happenedto be the same time.
They threw me a beautifulbirthday party at a hotel.
(19:39):
And of course, this one woman that Idid not know, I wasn't related to her.
She didn't know I wasan alcoholic, you know?
So she kept pushing me to have this wine.
She said, you have to taste this wine.
This is the best wineyou're ever gonna have.
You have to have a taste.
And I didn't wanna tell her, you know,well, I, I don't have to tell her.
(20:02):
I just kept saying no.
She was like, pushing that wine at me.
She said, just take a sip.
Wow.
So, so finally I saidto her, I'm allergic.
I'm allergic to wine.
Did she buy that?
Well, yeah, that she backedoff, but I mean, really?
(laughs)
(20:23):
Yeah.
Well think about that and I don'texpect you to have the answer to this,
but Mimi, Italian wine, French wine,Russian vodka, Irish beer, Irish whiskey.
There's a lot of culturalassociations with alcohol.
You know?
Mm-hmm.
Which type of alcohol they drink too.
Russian is vodka.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
(20:43):
Why does alcohol sometimesdefine a culture?
Well, I think because of the type ofalcohol has to do with the culture because
in Russia, you know, potatoes are abig crop and they make vodka in Russia.
That's their mostprominent alcohol is vodka.
(21:04):
So I think of vodka, I think of Russians.
And French again they grow grapes.
That's a big commodity for them.
They make wine so naturally,I, I think it follows.
And the thing in with, with Ireland,which was I thought was funny, is the
Irish Catholic were oppressed by theProtestant Catholics from England.
(21:27):
And they weren't allowedto do a lot of things.
Like they weren't allowed to make alcoholand a lot of the farmers had stills.
You know what a still is, right?
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
And they made it and they they, Ithink they did use potatoes and other
things, you know, but if they gotcaught, they got fined or put in jail.
Yeah.
(21:48):
You know, but if you think aboutit, I don't think the connotation
is the same for like French wineand Irish whiskey Irish beer.
No.
My whole life it's been like, oh, Irishand it, and it goes, oh, over drinking.
Right?
So, yes.
(22:08):
Yes.
Yeah.
And now that you knowthat, and it's hidden too.
It's hidden within families.
And I really believe it's because they hadsuch a hard life, like especially certain
parts of Ireland, like County Mayo.
Right.
And I mean, you know, talk aboutHitler trying to wipe out the Jews.
(22:30):
I really believe that the ProtestantCatholics, well, Catholics, like I
said, the Protestants from England,the Lords, the upper class, the Royal
people wanted to get rid of the poorIrish Catholics, if that makes sense.
(22:52):
If you weren't gonna be aProtestant, they weren't gonna
have anything to do with you.
They took their land.
They would walk rightin and take their land.
The only way my ancestors gotto keep their land is they had
it for over a hundred years.
They had it for over ahundred years in the family.
They couldn't take it.
(23:14):
Have you communicated with any of them?
I know you haven't been there, buthave you communicated with any of 'em?
Not anybody over there, just in,in the United States, I found a
first cousin, so that's wonderful.
I'm on communication.
That's great.
Yeah.
I'm, I took a break from that researchbecause I ended up writing two more books
(23:36):
and having a podcast and a YouTube show.
Yeah.
And I take care of, my husband hasParkinson's and, you know, a lot going
on, but I will be getting back into it.
In doing some deeperresearch, let's say, you know,
Well, it's great and it fits ourpodcast because it's you know,
there are associations with it.
(23:57):
And Mimi, I'll let you go.
For this part with this, as theysay, it's not just alcohol, right?
You certainly got the Irish gift for Gab.
Oh, I did.
And that's a good thing.
It is!
That's great.
Well, the book and you canfind the book on Amazon.
We'll put a link to that for you all.
(24:19):
The book is called Irish Roots.
Right?
Unearthing my Irish Roots.
Unearthing your Irish Roots.
Yeah.
Because I had to dig them up.
(laughs)
Yeah.
(laughs) Well, that's great.
That's great.
For those of you listening,we so enjoy you listening.
I hope you enjoy these.
We hope that you find yourself,feel good about yourself.
(24:39):
Thanks for listening.
Be safe and keep the faith.
Welcome everybody.
This is Avoiding The Addiction Affliction,sponsored by Westwords Consulting.
I'm Mike McGowan.
A few months ago, I had a conversationwith Mimi Tallo, author of a fabulous
book, Raised by Wolves Trapped by Demons.
And Mimi we've had a ton ofpositive feedback about that.
(00:33):
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Your book and that broadcast.
We ended up that conversation with abit of a cliffhanger for a podcast.
That I promised we'd pick back upon eventually, and we will today.
Mimi grew up in a small town wellScranton, Pennsylvania, not small,
but a northeastern blue collar town.
She was surrounded by dysfunction,abuse, addiction, and we talked
(00:55):
the last time, and I'll put alink to that in the podcast.
Of her struggle to make somethingof her life, and she did while
battling the demons that seemedto pop up around every corner.
Mimi's a speaker, author, and as shedescribes herself, a podcast maven.
Welcome back Mimi.
Okay.
Now, Mimi, we ended the conversationlast time after talking about the
(01:19):
whole, your life and your family.
By observing that bothof us had Irish roots.
Yes, we did.
And you dug deep, deep intoyour genealogy and wrote a book
about it called Irish Roots.
Yes I did.
Now, your dad, and this is where I wannastart, your dad didn't think he was Irish.
He was adopted.
(01:39):
He knew his mother was Irishbecause he had the adoption papers
that said who his mother was.
So he hated the Irish because his motherput him in an orphanage, of course,
but he thought he was only part Irish.
His father that adopted him liedand told him he was his real father.
(02:01):
Not adopted, real bloodand that he was Sicilian.
(laughs) Okay.
You know, the reason I like this is bothof them, if you think Irish and Sicilian.
Immediately things cometo mind with both, right?
Both genealogies.
Now, your dad, your dad, asyou talked about last time,
(02:23):
had a substance abuse problem.
How much of his identity besidesthat, how much of his identity
was formed thinking his ancestorswere Sicilian rather than Irish?
Complete.
He was, he completely convincedhimself that he was Sicilian.
He learned how to speak thelanguage at a very young age.
(02:45):
My.
And yeah, he was very smart man.
He went to Sicily.
He went to the town wherehis father was born, Rivera.
And he found relatives that had the samelast name who he thought were his cousins.
And he had a fabulous time there.
(03:06):
And they ended up sending,one of their kids to visit us.
Okay?
So he was convinced.
Convinced he was Sicilian.
In fact, he went twice.
He went over there twice to visit.
And his cousin, his one cousin, he thoughtcame here and this was really something.
(03:27):
Our newspaper The Scranton Timeshad a big story with pictures and
everything about how my fatherfound his relatives in Sicily.
(laughs) This is great.
And I had the chart made up becausethis cousin was not a genealogist.
(03:49):
He was more than that.
He went back farther.
He did, I can't think of the term for it.
He had a big chart that hebrought from Sicily, and he
went back hundreds of years.
He went back to Julius Caesar.
Oh my Lord!
And so that's why we havethe newspaper article.
And he said that my father's family.
(04:11):
The Sicilian family that really wasn'tthe family was actually back in Julius
Caesar's time had a Roman, they calledthem secretaries for Julius Caesar,
one of Julius Caesar's secretaries.
They're the guys to take the the noteand run to the next camp with it.
(04:32):
Wow!
I know that's how far back he went.
Wow.
Now he's correct.
His family.
Correct?
Yeah.
But my father's little tale atthe end doesn't belong there.
Well, and that was passed alongto you, so your whole growing up
you thought, Hey, he's Sicilian.
Absolutely.
(04:52):
I met people.
I went over there myself lateron, and I met these same people.
I stayed with them thinking I was blood.
Well, and you talked about it inyour neighborhoods, you dated,
your neighborhood was full.
And that was Irish kids that I wasfriends with and found out when I
(05:12):
did unearthing my Irish roots, whichis the book about finding them.
I found out kids I played with areprobably second and third cousins.
So you grew up thinking they'refriends and now they're related to you?
Yes, and my father had a halfbrother that lived six blocks away
(05:33):
his whole life and he never knew.
He never knew?
No.
'cause his Irish father hada son with another woman.
So he had the son with this womanthat my father knew was his mother,
and then he had a son with anotherwoman, so that made him a half brother.
(05:53):
After you did your research and wroteyour book, did you happen to go back to
any of those second cousins and say, Heywe ain't just friends, we're related?
Yes.
Yes, I did.
She can't find where ourrelationship connects.
And I gave her the names,but you gotta do the work.
Yeah, yeah.
Especially second or third.
So yeah, that was Brennan's.
(06:15):
And then I found and talked to acousin Scanlon that was actually
the half brother's daughter.
Wow.
That lives six blocks away.
So I had a cousin that lives six blocksaway, so she would, I don't know what
that would be if he was half, let's see,what would, what would that make her
(06:35):
A half cousin?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Related, related to you in some way, doyou think it would've changed your dad's?
How, how might it have changed?
I know you're guessing your dad'sperception of himself and his life.
If he would've known the truth?
Hundred percent.
In what way?
Because he would've known these people.
(06:57):
He was related to thefamily he thought he was in.
The Italian family.
His adopted mother.
Her family snubbed him.
They didn't accept him.
His adopted motherdidn't really accept him.
She called him names and told himto go back to the horror that had
(07:21):
him, told him that in Italian.
And so he was kind of lonely because,the father's side, the so-called father
who was not really his biologicalfather, he had no relatives over there.
All the relatives were on the wife'sside, and she hated this child.
(07:43):
Right?
So he didn't have likea, a big happy family.
You know, and if, if he had known abouthis Irish family that he had a half
brother six blocks away, we would'vehad a lot more people in our life.
Yeah.
For sure.
So I think a hundred percent difference.
(08:05):
Did you know the half brother?
No, I did not.
He would've been my father'sage, maybe a few years younger.
Yeah.
All of that.
Right.
I'm correcting myself when I looked it up.
They were born the same year.
He had my father with the woman thatwas not his wife, and then he had a
son with a woman that was his wife,and they were born the same year, 1927.
(08:30):
So he was an alcoholic and wehad a lot of neighborhood bars.
And I say they might have dranktogether in every [inaudible].
Right.
But yeah.
Now when you're doing this, the, Iwanted to talk about this because
families I think are interesting to me.
I've done family therapy for,I did it for a long time.
(08:54):
And the secrets, the secrets we keep.
Are so not healthy.
And so, so you're doing theresearch and you just must have
picked it up and started doing it.
What did you think?
What was it like when you said, oh my.
(09:14):
Yes.
When you found out thetruth, what did you do?
Who'd you tell?
Well, the first thing.
Well, of course I toldthe immediate family.
Did they believe you?
Well, they believed me.
Of course, they believed me,but it, it didn't, like they
didn't know those grandparents.
I didn't, that would've beentheir great grandparents.
The people that [inaudible] to myfather, I did not know them because, my
(09:39):
grandfather that adopted, my father diedbefore I was born, and the wife died when
I was about maybe five or six years old.
So I really didn't know them, andI barely knew the other side of
the family, the Italian side of thefamily that was very distant to us.
(10:01):
Okay.
I was close to my mother's sideof the family who were Italian.
So I had a bunch of cousins.
I was the oldest, I was thefirst one born in the Italian,
real Italian mother's side.
So I was the oldest of all the cousins.
(10:22):
And my family only had four children, butthe rest of them all had 6, 7, 8 children.
So.
(laughs) I have lots of cousins.
Wow.
Yeah.
And they all married... My aunts,well, let's see, my one aunt, she
married an Italian, you know, soher children were full Italian.
(10:44):
Okay.
And she had six kids.
Right.
And then the other ones married,you know, polish or whatever.
But they knew, they knew what the mix was.
Sure.
Right.
Did it change your perceptionof, of yourself too.
Do you now celebrate St. Patrick's Day?
The funny thing of it is like Scranton,Pennsylvania is a big Irish town.
(11:08):
Yeah.
They celebrate St. Patrick's Daypretty much the whole month of March.
Wow.
Well, they have the lead up to it.
They, we have a St. Patrick's Day parade,and then they have the actual day itself.
And don't forget, I wasin the bar business.
(11:28):
Yeah.
So St. Patrick's Day for myadult life was a big deal.
And I would bring up the fact thatI was one fourth Irish because I
knew about the mother, but I didn'tknow I was really half Irish.
Yeah.
Could have sold more green beer.
(11:49):
I probably would be more motivated.
(laughs) I would get into it more.
I, trust me, Mike, I got into it enough.
(laughs)
Yeah, yeah, right.
We, we talked about that thelast time and it's amazing.
One of my favorite parts thelast times conversation was the.
You got while in rehab.
You got cards from the beer distributors.
Beer distributors.
(12:10):
Yeah.
I just think that's great.
I have flowers.
I got huge bouquets.
Oh, that's great.
Of flowers.
And the other people in the rehabthought I was some kind of actress
or something, because with these hugebouquets, I got at least three of them.
Well, what people believe.
They believe.
Well, husband didn't know anythingabout anonymity, you know?
(12:32):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, the reason I mentioned St.Patrick's Day is my dad, Irish through
and through, was his birthday's in March.
So when you said the wholemonth, you're not kidding.
And, and he had a problem.
People who listened to this know, andmy dad was had an alcohol problem.
And so Mimi, we didn't see him.
March was bender month.
And so from his birthday throughSt. Patrick's Day, even when
(12:55):
he was around he was gone.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
And so, you know, you have theItalian side, but then your dad's
substance abuse problems justkind of went with the territory.
Huh?
You know, it's interesting to methat my mother's side of the family,
which definitely was Italian when Imet some of them that lived in Italy.
(13:20):
Nobody seemed to have a drinking problem.
They drank wine with dinner.
It was just the thing to do.
But no one seemed to be an alcoholicor I didn't hear any stories of that.
Right.
And that to me was interesting.
And on my mother's side too, like,none of her sisters were alcoholics.
(13:44):
Her brother wasn't an alcoholic.
There were some mental issueswith some of the sisters, but
the alcoholism wasn't there.
I bring that up because I really thinkthere was a genetic part to that.
The alcoholism, I believe that.
There was genetic and then the fact thathe grew up in such a terrible environment,
(14:06):
a cold, unloving household, you know,that kind of thing, feeling alone and I
think he drank to be with other people.
You know, you like to go to bars.
Yeah.
A lot of people say that, you knowwhatever gaps they had growing
up when they discovered drinkingor drugs, it, it fills a hole.
(14:29):
And if you haven't learned tofill the hole in another way,
it becomes much more attractive.
Exactly.
How far back did you go?
You went you know, when reading your book,you went, how did, and how'd you do it?
How long did it take?
You went way back.
It took me a few months.
I used DNA ancestry.
Oh.
See that's the great thing.
The people that have done it, thatmatched me, you know, I would look them
(14:53):
up and, and see how close our matcheswas, and that's how I did the tree.
So, you know, I would find out,okay, this person related to us,
if they could find their mother.
You know, so then I would findtheir mother, but wouldn't
have who the husband was.
So then I'd have to do some moredigging to find out who the husband
was, and then I'd find the children.
It was kind of fun.
(15:15):
Yeah.
It was time consuming.
And sometimes I'd go down therabbit hole and I'd say, oh,
I'm, I'm doing this for hours.
I gotta stop and feedmy husband, you know?
(laughs)
(laughs) Yeah.
It's a hobby, right.
Yeah, it was more than that'cause it was like finding out
a lot of stuff I did not know.
So yeah, I went back to,I wanna say 18th century.
(15:40):
County Mayo.
Yeah.
Pretty much around the potatofamine and all that stuff.
I went there and found out a lotof my relatives moved to Scranton
Pennsylvania from County Mayo.
And my real grandmother and my realgrandfather both were from County Mayo,
different towns, Sligo and Rose Common.
(16:03):
And I don't know, I don't thinkthey knew each other in Ireland.
Okay.
And I say this in the book, when I lookedup the records, his birth record, hers,
et cetera, I think she must have beenraped because he was like, he was like 10
years older than her, and she was like 14.
Wow!
(16:24):
And catholic Irish people, youdid not have babies unmarried.
It just was not acceptable.
So I am positive they put her in theSt. Joseph's, they had an orphanage
and a place for unwed mothers.
Wow.
That must have rang a bell.
(16:46):
Well, yeah.
Yes it did, because that'swhere my father was born.
And I think they probably had herthere when she started to show.
I think they sent her thereaway from people's sight.
They kept it a total secret.
Sure.
So until he was born andthen she could go home.
(17:07):
Right.
And he was there tillhe was four years old.
That's why it's like, I used to thinkto myself, if this is his real father,
and he knew he was there, why didhe wait till he was four years old?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
You know, have you, youtalked about going to Sicily.
Did you go to County Mayo?
(17:28):
I haven't done that yet because youknow, this is all fairly recent, the last
couple years that I found this stuff out.
I had always, I've been to Italy twice,you know, and I met relatives from both
sides and when I told the relativesthat weren't really my relatives that
I found out, they really weren't myblood relatives, they didn't care.
(17:50):
(laughs) That's great.
Yeah.
No, we're, we're still cousins.
We love you.
You come stay with us, whatever.
Because we had gotten to know them.
You know?
Yeah.
That, that's something, isn't it?
Well, it is.
And you know, if you, if you go,first of all, I've been there.
It's gorgeous.
It's beautiful.
Yeah.
(18:10):
One of my memories is flying when youfly in, if the sun is out, which is iffy
.You see every shade, you know, they talk about green.
Well, it's not just green, it's everyshade of green you ever thought of.
Yeah.
And so it's fascinating.
And the people are equallygregarious and welcoming.
That's you know, I wasn'tallowed to stay in a hotel.
I had to stay with relatives.
(18:32):
Yes.
The house that my grandparentsbuilt and grew up in, the
lady invited me in for lunch.
I don't even know her.
I just show up and.
Yeah.
Next thing you know, she's cooking for me.
That's what happened in Italy.
They wouldn't let me stay in a hotel.
And my cousin that lives inAlberobello, which is beautiful, it's
actually an Italian tourist town.
(18:54):
So Italians go there on vacationbecause it's rustic and it has
this specific type of buildingsthat they lived in called truly.
And they're built in an odd way outof bricks and a certain I'll have to
have a picture at the end of the notes.
But anyway, they, they had me staywith them, didn't pay for a thing.
(19:18):
They wouldn't even letme pay for some beers.
Wow.
And the only thing talkingabout culture and alcohol.
Wine and Italian is very acceptable.
Very acceptable.
And my birthday happenedto be the same time.
They threw me a beautifulbirthday party at a hotel.
(19:39):
And of course, this one woman that Idid not know, I wasn't related to her.
She didn't know I wasan alcoholic, you know?
So she kept pushing me to have this wine.
She said, you have to taste this wine.
This is the best wineyou're ever gonna have.
You have to have a taste.
And I didn't wanna tell her, you know,well, I, I don't have to tell her.
(20:02):
I just kept saying no.
She was like, pushing that wine at me.
She said, just take a sip.
Wow.
So, so finally I saidto her, I'm allergic.
I'm allergic to wine.
Did she buy that?
Well, yeah, that she backedoff, but I mean, really?
(laughs)
(20:23):
Yeah.
Well think about that and I don'texpect you to have the answer to this,
but Mimi, Italian wine, French wine,Russian vodka, Irish beer, Irish whiskey.
There's a lot of culturalassociations with alcohol.
You know?
Mm-hmm.
Which type of alcohol they drink too.
Russian is vodka.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
(20:43):
Why does alcohol sometimesdefine a culture?
Well, I think because of the type ofalcohol has to do with the culture because
in Russia, you know, potatoes are abig crop and they make vodka in Russia.
That's their mostprominent alcohol is vodka.
(21:04):
So I think of vodka, I think of Russians.
And French again they grow grapes.
That's a big commodity for them.
They make wine so naturally,I, I think it follows.
And the thing in with, with Ireland,which was I thought was funny, is the
Irish Catholic were oppressed by theProtestant Catholics from England.
(21:27):
And they weren't allowedto do a lot of things.
Like they weren't allowed to make alcoholand a lot of the farmers had stills.
You know what a still is, right?
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
And they made it and they they, Ithink they did use potatoes and other
things, you know, but if they gotcaught, they got fined or put in jail.
Yeah.
(21:48):
You know, but if you think aboutit, I don't think the connotation
is the same for like French wineand Irish whiskey Irish beer.
No.
My whole life it's been like, oh, Irishand it, and it goes, oh, over drinking.
Right?
So, yes.
(22:08):
Yes.
Yeah.
And now that you knowthat, and it's hidden too.
It's hidden within families.
And I really believe it's because they hadsuch a hard life, like especially certain
parts of Ireland, like County Mayo.
Right.
And I mean, you know, talk aboutHitler trying to wipe out the Jews.
(22:30):
I really believe that the ProtestantCatholics, well, Catholics, like I
said, the Protestants from England,the Lords, the upper class, the Royal
people wanted to get rid of the poorIrish Catholics, if that makes sense.
(22:52):
If you weren't gonna be aProtestant, they weren't gonna
have anything to do with you.
They took their land.
They would walk rightin and take their land.
The only way my ancestors gotto keep their land is they had
it for over a hundred years.
They had it for over ahundred years in the family.
They couldn't take it.
(23:14):
Have you communicated with any of them?
I know you haven't been there, buthave you communicated with any of 'em?
Not anybody over there, just in,in the United States, I found a
first cousin, so that's wonderful.
I'm on communication.
That's great.
Yeah.
I'm, I took a break from that researchbecause I ended up writing two more books
(23:36):
and having a podcast and a YouTube show.
Yeah.
And I take care of, my husband hasParkinson's and, you know, a lot going
on, but I will be getting back into it.
In doing some deeperresearch, let's say, you know,
Well, it's great and it fits ourpodcast because it's you know,
there are associations with it.
(23:57):
And Mimi, I'll let you go.
For this part with this, as theysay, it's not just alcohol, right?
You certainly got the Irish gift for Gab.
Oh, I did.
And that's a good thing.
It is!
That's great.
Well, the book and you canfind the book on Amazon.
We'll put a link to that for you all.
(24:19):
The book is called Irish Roots.
Right?
Unearthing my Irish Roots.
Unearthing your Irish Roots.
Yeah.
Because I had to dig them up.
(laughs)
Yeah.
(laughs) Well, that's great.
That's great.
For those of you listening,we so enjoy you listening.
I hope you enjoy these.
We hope that you find yourself,feel good about yourself.
(24:39):
Thanks for listening.
Be safe and keep the faith.
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