July 12, 2023 • 55 mins
How much do you really know about your family history? And how would you handle it if you learned something big after it was too late to ask more questions?
Guest: Shirley B Novack
Book: The Story Of...
....................
Promo: Fellowship of the Geeks
Disclaimer: Chris, Play Comics
Music: Jake Pierle -- https://jakepierle.bandcamp.com/
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Ignorance Was Bliss online: https://linktr.ee/iwbpodcast
Sponsor: Bath By Bex (code CBDkate for 25% off)
Sponsor: Komuso Design (code bliss15 for 15% off)
Sponsor: Horrific Hope Film Festival 2024 (code bliss24 for 15% off submission)
Guest: Shirley B Novack
Book: The Story Of...
....................
Promo: Fellowship of the Geeks
Disclaimer: Chris, Play Comics
Music: Jake Pierle -- https://jakepierle.bandcamp.com/
....................
Ignorance Was Bliss online: https://linktr.ee/iwbpodcast
Sponsor: Bath By Bex (code CBDkate for 25% off)
Sponsor: Komuso Design (code bliss15 for 15% off)
Sponsor: Horrific Hope Film Festival 2024 (code bliss24 for 15% off submission)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Looking for a geek podcast or theFellowship of the Geeks. We talked about
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(00:20):
the Geeks podcast. You can findus wherever you normally get your podcasts.
This podcast involves topics such as violence, sex, and mental illness. If
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Privacy and confidentiality have been protected,with personal information being removed or changed
(00:42):
whenever possible. If you ever feelunsafe or suicidal, please call your local
crisis center, emergency services, ornational hotline. In the US, the
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is eight hundredtwo seven three eight two five five And
remember matter, Hey, this isKate. Do you feel like you know
(01:11):
pretty much everything about your family,your family's history, or the major events
that they've lived through, Because Igotta tell you you probably don't, especially
if your family goes back a generationor two. There's this tendency to gloss
(01:33):
things over and show you the clean, pretty, non traumatic sides of things,
which I get a lot of usdo that because we don't want to
dwell in the negative. We wantto hype up the good things and enjoy
each other's company when we get together, and we don't want to sit in
(01:57):
that dark space and think about theunpleasant things. But the flip side is
that after someone dies or if theyare still alive but refused to speak about
it, and you find out aboutsomething big, you can't follow that thread.
(02:23):
You can't ask questions or put itinto some sort of context that makes
sense, and sometimes it ends upbeing this jarring, unfamiliar experience of what
else do I know? Or didI ever really know that person? Or
(02:46):
what do I do with this information? And so I don't know. I
err on the side of disclosure.I just try to keep it at an
age appropriate level, because there arethings kids don't need to know, but
(03:07):
I don't know. I feel likethey can handle more than we give them
credit for at times. So myguests today. Her name is Shirley Novak.
She's an author and a parent anda daughter, and her story starts
(03:28):
with learning things about her father's lifethat she didn't know in time to ask
him about them. And how doesthat shape you? And what do you
do with it? From there?Well, in her case, she wrote
a book, and the book it'scalled the Story of Dot Dot Dot because
(03:53):
she knows she's not the only onewho has been handed this story without a
ton of context or nuance, andwithout the ability to get the firsthand account
of it. And now what?And I think it shapes us. I
(04:14):
think it shapes how we function ashumans and neighbors and citizens in the world.
And I think it definitely shapes howwe are as parents. Are you
sure you really want to know?This is ignorance? Was bliss? I'm
(05:05):
Sureley Novak and I was born andbrought up in the Boston area. I
am the product of a Polish fatherand a Russian mother, immigrants, and
I have been an interior well,I've been many things throughout my life.
I started out as a research assistantin surgery, went on to teaching,
(05:30):
went on to having children, andended up getting a degree in design,
And for thirty eight years I havehad an interior design practice. However,
in the past, about two yearsago, I started writing a novel.
It's actually a historic fiction that isloosely based on my father's life, and
(05:51):
it got published and it's for saleand it's doing great, and I'm very,
very pleased because I'm a product ofthe fifties and sixties. I'm not
young anymore, although mentally i am. And at my age, I have
a whole new profession and I can'twait for the next one. It's really
(06:15):
been it's been a great ride forthe past couple of years. And I
get to meet people like Kate onpodcasts and that's really widened my horizon.
The book is loosely, I sayloosely based on my father's life, and
I say that because when he wasborn. He was born in Corretz,
(06:36):
Poland, in nineteen o four,and his father was a horrible tyrant of
a man. And when his sweet, wonderful mother died when he was twelve
years old, his father sent heand his nine year old brother to live
in the care of a brothel.While in the brothel, my father got
(06:58):
raped by a Polish soldier. Sofar all this is true. That's where
the fiction begins, and so therest of the book is fiction, and
I have the Polish soldier coming backinto my father's life many many years later
in America. And the book isits love, its hate, it's revenge,
(07:23):
it's murder, it's mayhem, kidnapping, and a lot of love.
And that's called the Story of DotDot. And what the three dots signify
is that there are so many peoplewho came over to this country at the
beginning of the twentieth century, andthey all have stories. Everyone has a
(07:45):
story. So the three dots areallowing anybody else who wants to write a
story about their beginning in America,then it's open to you. So that
was that. And as I said, I was a child of the fifties.
And when you say ignorance was blissIgnorance was really the topic of the
(08:07):
day because everything was hush hush,don't tell the children, don't let the
children know. Nothing bad is supposedto happen. Everyone's supposed to be happy
all the time, and you're notsupposed to know anything that is reality.
I had two parents that really shelteredtheir children, but we were smart enough
(08:31):
to know that we wanted to knowwhat really went on in life, and
ignorance ended up not being so blissful. So I love the title of your
podcast because it really hit a chordwith me. You know, as far
as growing up at that time oflife. It was post World War two
and we went through the Korean CubanMissile crisis, the Korean War. I
(08:58):
never knew anything about that. AllI knew is that when the when the
earraid went off, I was supposedto hide under a desk because that'll help,
That will help, right, youknow, so when you heard the
ear raid, you knew that abomb was supposed to happen, and just
go into a closet or hide undera desk. I mean, talk about
(09:20):
ignorance being bliss. I would justsay that that's, you know, the
error that I grew up in andm fortunately as I when I became a
mother, I did not carry thatover to my own children. I've always
been very honest and aboveboard with them, but I always try to leave with
(09:41):
a high note like as bad asit is, it will get better,
but be honest. And I thinkthat I think they respected me more for
it. I hope they still loveme, you know, with with my
kids, I feel like love youto like it's an obligation you have to
(10:01):
love your children. You don't necessarilyhave to like them and vice versa.
You know, absolutely, I'm withyou there, So tell me, how
did you find out your father's storyif they were protecting you from it?
Oh, after he died. Whenhe died, I was already married.
(10:22):
He died in nineteen eighty four,and then relatives came forth with stories.
His brother was still around, andyeah, they said that he carried that
secret most of his life. Andwhen I found out about it, I
was really devastated because he was fifteenyears old, he had no one,
(10:48):
He had a nine year old,well, he had a younger brother who
was now at twelve at that time. Who sends their kids to be brought
up in a brothel? You know, I don't. I don't care what
part of life is. You havea father who really he never loved anyone.
This means in fact, in mybook, there were only two names
(11:09):
that were not changed, and onewas my paternal grandfather and his wife because
they were the epitome of evil andthey did not they did not deserve to
be anything other than that, youknow, as I represented in my book.
Unfortunately I got to know them,and I understand I have family that
(11:33):
it was my own that I'm thinking, like, yeah, I could say
that, I could say that aboutthem. Yeah, you know, you
automatically think that as a parent,you're going to love your children. I
mean, the love that I havefor my kids is crazy, like every
other mother probably well most mothers have, I should say, And I would
(11:54):
throw myself in front of a trainfor all three of them. However,
I don't always like them or thethings that they do, but I always
loved them fiercely, and yeah,nothing else matters. And right now they're
very, very proud of me becausethey can't believe I wrote a book and
actually got it published. It's noteasy the process of publishing, you know.
(12:18):
I knew I couldn't go into Simonand Schuster or a random house,
and I knew that I couldn't justPLoP into a publishing house. So I
did my due diligence and I foundthat there was this company called the Fulton
Press and they were a hybrid publishingcompany. And for people who don't know
(12:39):
what a hybrid publishing company is,they well, this one in particular does
everything from soup to nuts, andyou have to put a little money up
front, but this company doesn't takea dime until you've made that back.
And I sent them my manuscript.They did not charge me to read the
(13:00):
manuscript, and that's not all thatcommon either, and they said, well,
we'll call you in a few weeks. We'll let you know what we
think. And they called me inthree days and they said, we'd like
to sign you. And from thatpoint on it was the easiest, most
fun thing I've ever done in mylife, honest to god. So when
people tell me how difficult it is, I haven't had that experience yet.
(13:24):
There's always hope, but yeah,yeah, I mean, you know,
it may be coming around the bandwith my next book. But I'm hoping
that you know, now that Ihave published a book and now that it
has gotten great reviews, that Ican get an agent, you know,
a literary agent to do all thisfor me. But I don't know.
(13:46):
You know, you told me beforeI record, you're in the process of
writing, and so you kind ofgot to stay with your head in that
game right now before you get intothe next phase, right right. And
I find writing There were days thatI can't, but when it flows,
it flows. I mean when whenI can't, I can sit down for
(14:07):
hours and it just comes. Andwhen it doesn't, it doesn't. How
are you with that? Like,because I know writers who, you know,
emphatically beat themselves up on the daysthat it can't. And then I
know other writers who are like,look, you just can't every day.
(14:28):
No, it's it's either there orit isn't. I walk three miles every
morning, and that's when I domy writing in my head. You know,
that's when everything gets formulated. Becauseyou get stuck. You absolutely get
stuck, and somehow or other,that's the best time for me to unstick,
(14:50):
you know, while I'm walking andI'm just able to shut everything out
and just concentrate on my book.Now. I have my brother who is
a historian. He's published fourteen books. I believe his latest just came out
the same day. Mind it actuallyon Obama, and he was insistent that
(15:16):
I don't do fiction, you know, make it factual, get your dates,
get it. So I started doingresearch, and I said, this
isn't fun, this isn't what Iwanted to So I went my own way.
I couldn't do it. It wastoo much work. This was a
(15:37):
labor of love. I mean,that's in you know a lot of ways
It's sort of how I approached mypodcast is that I do put work into
it. It is effort, butI need it to be more fun than
stress. Oh my middle name isfun. I believe in fun. You
can know, you know, turninglemon into lemonade? Yuh, I do.
(16:02):
I wake up every morning with myglass half full. And I am
a firm believer that if one doorcloses, a bigger one opens, and
I just I enjoy. I toldI told my family I expect to live
to one hundred and twenty three andthen if I should die, just brought
me up on the sofa and leaveme there so I can see what's going
(16:25):
on. You don't even left out. And now I already left out.
I don't want to want to goanywhere or I want to stay here.
So um yeah, I try tomake the most. I've had so many
different professions, and I've gone intothem wholehearted. I mean, when I
graduated college, initially I had adegree in laboratory science, and I found
(16:52):
out that there was a group inBoston that was operating on the unborn.
It was research because then you didn'tdo that. And I read everything I
could about them, and I wentfor an interview and they said, we
really want someone with a master's degree, but your enthusiasm is so overwhelming,
(17:12):
we have to hire you. Actually, And I was cheaper than anyone with
a master's degree anyway, so theyhired me. And when you think that
you're on the groundbreaking research, becausenow you know, fetal surgery is so
common, it just it. Ithappens all the time. And we were
(17:33):
we were the groundbreakers at Boston UniversityMedical Center. And then when funding got
cut back, I became a teacherand I taught, well, I taught
the medical assisting program at a schooland that was great. So it's like
I did that until I had children. So I enjoyed the I was very
(17:55):
fortunate that I was able to getjobs that I loved, so I always
loved working. And then I hadmy interior design for him, and that
I'm just mostly retired from right now. I mean, that's so I've been
on disability since twenty fourteen because theybroke my back. And when I first
(18:18):
started the podcast, the sort ofvision to the effect, it wasn't really
a vision. It was a matterof I had four kids and my father
had just moved in with us,and it was chaos all the time,
and they never stopped talking to me, and so I wanted a hobby in
which they couldn't talk to me.And so on New Year's Day of twenty
(18:44):
eighteen, and I went up tomy husband and either tapped him on the
shoulder or grabbed him by the shirtcollar, depending on who's telling the story,
and explained to him I'm starting apodcast. And he's a smart man,
so he said, okay, doyou need help, And I'm like,
I need you to go away iswhat I need? Just I just
(19:06):
because I was losing myself, youknow, I felt like I was playing
the supportive role to everybody else andI didn't have a starring role in my
own life anymore. And I neededto do something that made me feel relevant
and smart and functional again. Andso my very first couple episodes, I
(19:27):
felt, well, I'm going todo Yeah, I'm a forensic psychologist by
trade, and so I'm going tofocus on what forensic psychology isn't isn't it's
going to be sort of true crimeadjacent. And my first couple episodes were
a ton of work. It wasa lot of research, it was a
lot of doing the things that Ihad done previously, except not getting paid
(19:52):
for it. And I was like, this just feels like work. I
don't want to do this. Andpretty early on I I had the opportunity
to talk to somebody rather than justtalking at the microphone, I had the
opportunity to have a conversation, andit was so much more fun and so
much more engaging, and I waslike that, that's what I want to
do. That's that's the thing thatkeeps me going. And so I just
(20:18):
dropped episode of four hundred and sixtysomething like that's it, just because I
still find it fun. Well,what an accomplishment, you know, I
mean that many episodes. I meanthat is really quite I used to be
patting yourself all over for that.That's fantastic. I had my first husband.
(20:41):
I remarried twenty one years ago.My first husband was a dentist and
he wanted me to stay home.So when my children were very small,
I was a stay at home momand I loved that job. But when
I became a design I don't doanything half acidly. I know, I
(21:03):
have to just throw everything I haveinto it. And so I became a
well known designer in the Boston area, and I was doing show houses,
and he was getting very upset aboutthat. He couldn't stand that I was
getting this attention. And I wasso happy about me because I was being
(21:26):
successful. And one night I wentinto Boston to pick up a coffee table
off an airplane and it wasn't onthe plane, and they said to me,
it'll be on the next plane atseven thirty. So I said,
okay, well, I'll go intothe terminal and have dinner and I'll come
back at seven thirty. In themeantime, I got caught up in a
(21:49):
motorcade. I got caught up ina motorcade, and the cargo area of
Logan Airport is like often no mediouslyand you don't know where it isn't know
where I was, I don't knowhow to get out of there, so
I followed them. I fell instep with the motorcade and suddenly I'm at
the end of a private runway.Air Force two is on the tar mat,
(22:14):
and I'm surrounded by Secret Service men. Okay, long story short.
Colin Powell had just spoken at Harvard'scommencement and we were in the middle of
desert storm. I was in avan with tinted windows. So obviously I
was a terrorist coming to blow upColin Powell's plane. Anyhow, as it
(22:38):
turned out, you know, theychecked me out from top to bottom.
They wouldn't talk to me, butthey stopped me from leaving every time I
would try to back up the carwoodstall because they had a device to do
that. They can't stop you ifyou were in motion, but they could
prevent me from leaving. So theyall disband, they go into a building,
(23:02):
and I figured I'd better stop atthe gas station, the service station
at the airport and find out what'swrong with my car. And I had
a cell phone hardwired into my carat the time. This was nineteen ninety
three. And the man says tome, there's nothing wrong with your car,
but I bet your phone is dead. It was, it was,
(23:26):
And then he told me about themhaving this device that could prevent me from
leaving. So when I came homethat night, I said to my house
I'll do anything for a story.I thought this was a great story.
You know, me a terrorist,please. So I came home and I
said to my husband, Wow,you're not gonna believe what happened to me
(23:47):
just now. And he was lookingfor any excuse to get me to stop
working. And he said that's it. Either you give up your job and
you stay home, or leaving you. And I went yes, sea well
because I had been in a veryunhappy, miserable marriage, but he was
(24:11):
he was made a depressive, bipolarand as long as I had children still
at home, I didn't have theheart. I couldn't do it. But
once those words came out of hismouth, I would not let myself go
back. I had to keep movingforward. So Colin Powell, thank you.
(24:33):
I'm sure you listen to the podcast. I mean that that's a big
thing, you know. I didgive some thought to like do I want
my husband to be part of mypodcast? And I realized, no,
no, no, I want I'man independent human being and I always worked
independently, and I want this tobe my thing. I want a thing.
(24:55):
And maybe this isn't my thing,fine, but I want to stand
or fall on my own. Yeah. I mean, there are things that
are cohesive that bring people together,but crossing the boundaries of what you do
and someone else does, I thinkit makes for a happier marriage. I
think that if you can respect eachother's interests and still come together at interests
(25:21):
that you have together. I thinkthat makes for a happy marriage. This
was clearly two people that never shouldhave been together because it was brutal.
And the funny thing is is you'rea forensic psychologist. My husband said to
me, okay, you're having amidlife crisis. I want you to go
(25:41):
see a shrink. I said,okay, I've never done that before.
I'll go to a shrink. Andmy shrink ended up who I love.
I got the right person for me. We had a great relationship, and
he ended up by telling me youare the most mentally healthy person I've ever
had in my office. You know, and I have two brothers that are
(26:03):
the same way. They are mentallyhealthy, and I attribute that to seeing
our parents as two people we didn'twant to become. So it was positive
in the negative. You know,both of my parents are unwell, you
know way my father is no longeralive and my mother is deeply toxic.
And there are a lot of timeswhere I find myself stopping and going what
(26:26):
would pay him do right now,and then doing the opposite, whatever the
opposite may be. And my kidsseem to like me and they're doing well,
and my marriage is solid. We'vebeen married almost twenty three years,
and you know, we've had we'vegone through some stuff, you know,
(26:48):
and I am not the person Iwas at twenty three when we got married,
and so we've had to work throughthat. But you know, he's
I consider him to be my biggestsupporter in this and part of that is
him saying, you do your thing. You You'll tell me if you need
help, but otherwise go for it. I think I married the same person
(27:14):
the second time. He's busy.Yeah, it could be because I did.
I married a prince the second time. And our anniverse our twenty first
anniversary in a couple of weeks,and it's you know, he gets up
every day and says, what canI do to make you happy? And
I'm like, what can I doto make you happy? And yet I
(27:36):
have my thing. He has histhing, and it's it's fabulous. It's
fabulous. It's so different, youknow, it's the antithesis of what I
had at the beginning of my othermarriage. I was twenty one. I
did not want to get married totwenty one. But you know, when
you're you're Eastern European Jewish, you'rean old maid. I mean, I
(27:59):
had family pressuring me. My parentshad me at seventeen, and so the
fact that I didn't have my firstchild until I was twenty two, I
had family going, when are yougoing to have a baby? When are
you going to do this? AndI was just like, I wanna you
know, I don't know, graduatethat's the thing that I would like to
(28:21):
do. It was just such asuch a shift in mindset, and I've
really had a lot of time todouble think what family means, Like I
lean less into genetics and more intowould I drop everything for this person and
would they drop everything from me?Do I want this person to shine?
(28:41):
And do they want me to shine? That's family, yeah, you know,
not genetics, not a marriage license. That And so it happens.
I'm very lucky that. I don'tthink it's luck. I think we worked
hard. But but my husband ismy best friend and we're doing well.
But I wouldn't have stayed with himout of obligation because life's short. Absolutely,
(29:07):
I only made that mistake once.And you know, the outside world
could not believe that I was gettingseparated, because what you're always so happy
you're always so upbeaten. I said, yes, I'm a happy person in
a miserable marriage. You know,it's like the days with the price I
(29:33):
paid, but the nights I had, the knights with the price I paid
for the days I had because hetook responsibility for absolutely nothing, and it
was very freeing because I was strongenough to carry the load. And I
found that very freeing. So whenI first got married to my current husband,
(29:55):
he was a widower, so wecame from very different places, and
he and his his wife moved symbioticallytogether through the life and he I wasn't
used to that. I was usedto, you know, let me do
my thing, you do your things. So it yeah, we had to
learn which boundaries we could cross themwhich ones we couldn't. And I would
(30:18):
say, we have a phenomenal marriagealso, and I couldn't be happier in
my life. I feel like Iknow the answer, but I'm gonna ask,
anyway, do you think that youwould have ended up writing if you
had stayed in your first marriage.I honestly I have thought of that myself.
I always want when I was inthe fourth I have one acknowledgement in
(30:44):
my book and also I'm going toput it out there because one of the
reasons I'm doing podcasts so much isI'm trying to find somebody. My fourth
grade teacher gave us an assignment thatsaid, you know, he said,
write a poem about spring. SoI was nine years old, and he
was so impressed with my poem thathe made me read it to the entire
(31:07):
school, and at the end hetook me aside and he said, I
just want you to know that oneday you were going to be a great
writer. Don't ever stop writing.I never forgot that. Now his name
was John Willett, and we werehis first class out of when after he
graduated college. So it is conceivablethat he could still be alive or his
(31:33):
family somebody would know who I wantthem to know that he is my acknowledgment
in the book, and what aneffect he had on me. And I
have gone to the Boston School Department. It doesn't go back that far.
And I went on Facebook trying tofind him, and I got more people
(31:56):
writing me saying I was in yourfourth grade. I remember, mister Willip,
but I don't know what happened tohim, you know, So I
have all these new friends now fromthe fourth grade, and it's very interesting,
it's funny. So if anybody outthere knows John Willard from Boston,
Massachusetts, WI l et wil E. I think t or Tt wyl Ett.
(32:24):
I don't know. I know thathe went. He ended up teaching
English at Boston English High School,and that's as far as I could find
out about him. What happened afterthat, I don't know, but I
really would love to find out whateverhappened to him and let his family at
(32:44):
least know that he had such aneffect on a nine year old kid that
I ended up writing a novel.I ended up writing a book, and
so I might have still written mybook. I don't know if it would
have been the same, because Idon't know if my mindset would have been
as free to just let it flow. I don't know. It's a great
(33:06):
question, and I've often thought aboutit. I would like to think I
would have any kind of, youknow, adjacent question to that is,
I understand your father died before thisis published. Oh wait, he in
nineteen eighty four. Would he haveread it? And what do you think
he would have thought? Oh?My god, he would have been so
(33:28):
proud of me, he would haveI was the baby and I was the
only girl. So he and Ihad a much different relationship than my older
brothers had. And the main characterof the book is his name is Jacob.
My father's name was not Jacob,but Jacob. The personality and the
(33:49):
character of Jacob in my book ismy father. He was so well he
was never wealthy. He was afurniture maker, and he was so well
respected and dignified that his funeral wason the fourth of July and we thought
no one would come because it's thefourth of July, you know. So
(34:13):
we took a very small chapel andthree hundred people came and they started giving
eulogies. And the eulogies were actuallyhysterical because my father was like, you
know, jeans overalls and T shirtsand he wasn't a snappy dresser by any
means, but they allotted to thatin some of his eulogies, and like,
(34:37):
what kind of a dresser he was. But it was wild that all
these people came. So I think, you know, when my brothers would
both read the book, they theycannot understand that this is really my father,
because it wasn't the father that theygrew up with. My father would
(34:58):
go out at ten o'clock at nightand bring home. But Sundays, you
know, he for me and mymother, and he was just the very
sweet eye. He let me takehis car whenever I needed it. He
never let the other guys take it. M Yeah, you know, but
he was very strict and very firmabout you know, having respect. Respect
(35:22):
was the main thing in his world. You have to be respectful, you
you know, you have to behumble, and you have to be educated.
And so yeah, in that respect, I may I may have written
it, but certainly not by nineteeneighty four. Also, I didn't know
at that point that he had beenraped, right, and and you said
(35:45):
that you find, but just didthat change? What did that change for
you? It made me sad.It made me so sad, and I
just, um, I really it'slike I just wanted to be able to
embrace him and hug him and youknow. Uh. But by then though,
(36:06):
it was he was He died young. I mean, he died.
He just dropped dead one day.He didn't suffer at all. My mother,
on the other hand, passed awaythree years ago at the age of
one hundred and five, So livingtwo one hundred and twenty three is not
And I'm gonna lived to one hundredand twenty three, right, Yeah,
it's not that far out of yourpotential there. Then you've got the jeans
(36:30):
for it. I don't know.But but in one hundred and twenty three
though, But I don't want tobe any different than I am right now.
So what are the chances of thatyou make them? I mean,
it's not up to me. Youmake your chances, I think, and
and I mean you've already proven youhave the ability to reinvent. Yeah,
I mean you broke your back.I broke my neck. We have more
(36:53):
similarities than you can imagine. Andbreaking my neck turned out to be a
very little because I didn't become aquadriplegic, you know, opened certain doors
for me that I never could haveimagined. Believe it or not, it's
(37:13):
yet so every everything can be anopportunity. Of course, I wouldn't recommend
anybody break their neck or their backin order to have that opportunity. But
in my case it turned out tobe very It turned out to be a
good thing. Eventually. Well,that's a thing you have to give it
long enough. You have to giveit long enough to find you know.
(37:36):
I spent after I broke my back, I spent probably about four years moping,
because if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it well.
And so I threw myself into mopingwith full gusto, you know,
and just and feeling like I hadworked so hard to build myself up to
(37:57):
build this career. I was thefirst of my family to go to college.
I was so definitely the first toget my masters to my doctorate,
and so I was really focused on, like, I don't think education,
honestly, is that important, exceptif you have a specific job you want
that requires the education, and thenyou got to roll through the education to
get to the job. And that'swhat I did, is I could not
(38:20):
have been a forensic psychologist without certaindegrees. And so that's what I did,
and I worked hard, and Idid it while having children and through
a marriage and through everything, andI was It wasn't so much I don't
think proud of myself is the rightword so much as a yeah, damn
it, I did it. Idid the thing, and I worked for
(38:47):
a little over a decade and II have a autoimmune disorder. So all
I did was step wrong on aplayground. I didn't fall down. I
didn't. I wasn't in an accident. I just stepped wrong and my back
snapped, and everything changed. Everythingchanged, And so I spent four solid
(39:07):
years pretty much moping, you know, and feeling like my life is over.
Like I said, my you know, I no longer feel like I'm
playing the lead role in my ownlife, like all I'm here to do
is support other people, which Ican do, but you feel less and
less yourself. And starting the podcast, like I said it was, it
(39:28):
was meant to be a hobby inan escape and just something to try,
something to prove, like does mybrain still work? Because I also have
a traumatic brain injury from another thing. I collect diagnoses like I'm going for
full coverage on the medical bingo board. So that's that's a thing. But
it's not funny. It's not funny. It is it you laugh or scream,
(39:52):
those are your choices. That's howlong were you bedridden for on your
back? And well, I'm I'man idiot. And so I went immediately
back to work, and I workedfor two weeks and realized I cannot do
this because it was very, verylow on my back, so there was
no oh, you know, it'sa and then I just realized, like,
(40:14):
I can't function, I'm not givingmy best to my clients. I'm
not thinking well because I'm in somuch pain all the time. I can't
do this. I was bedridden fora long time because in twenty ten,
four years prior, I died inchildbirth, and so I was in a
comma for ten days and then inthe hospital for six weeks. Like these
are the things I do. Idon't like my life is. People told
(40:36):
me, like, you should writethis down, and I've said, no,
one would believe me. It's justridiculous, the things that happened to
me. And then I was home, you know, I was. I
was in the hospital for six weeks, and then I was home on home
healthcare for a year. So youknow, it's just it's it's dumb,
it's whatever. But the thing iswith each of them, if you give
(41:00):
it long enough, you find ohit's not. That's why I don't believe
everything happens for a reason, becausethat would imply that there was some sort
of reason that I got so sick. There was some sort of reason that
I broke and I don't believe that, but I do believe that you can
find meaning in everything that happens toyou. And so, as a for
(41:22):
instance, after the whole dying andchildbirth thing, there's a long story to
it, but I ended up adoptinga fourth child, which was entirely unplanned,
and it turns out she completed ourfamily. It turns out we needed
her in our lives, and thatnever would have happened if I hadn't gotten
(41:43):
sick. And when I broke myback, like, I spent some time
hardcore moping. But then I decided, I'm going to start a podcast and
maybe four people will listen to it. I don't care. I just I
want my voice out there. Imy a few years prior, maybe as
(42:04):
much as a decade prior, mygreat grandmother died and she was the relative
I was closest to growing up,and I realized I don't have any recordings
of her voice. I can kindof remember, but it fades over time
and I don't have any recordings ofit. And so I decided, whether
they want it or not, mykids are going to get a recording of
my voice. They're gonna know whatmoms sounded like, how how old are
(42:28):
your children? Twenty three, eighteen, thirteen and ten. Wow. Yeah,
it takes me like five years toforget how much work kids are and
to think I should do that again. So that's how I would have had
till I would I would have keptbeing pregnant. Was that they happened.
It was the best. I lovedit, and then you know, and
after kid number three, that's Ihad to have a radical hys direct me.
(42:51):
And so that's how number four endedup being a total surprise, you
know. But so I thought,I'm going to start this podcast. It's
going to be very narrative and researchedand dry in a way, because a
lot of true crime podcasts in twentyeighteen were like that, where you know,
(43:12):
either it was a couple of girlsdrinking and giggling a lot, or
it was a very straightforward narrative.And I decided I didn't want to drink
and giggle a lot, so Iwas going to go for the narrative side.
And then I was like this justthis feels like work, like I
can do. What are my strengths? And my strengths are connecting with people.
(43:36):
Plus that's what I missed by beingyou know, people say I'd love
to be on disability. No,look, it's isolating and it's you lose
yourself. And by starting this podcast, I found myself again. And that's
such a gift. It's such ait's it's it wasn't what I looked for,
(43:57):
you know. So both things,you know, the dying and child
birth. I ended up with thekid that we needed to finish our family
and then see breaking my back therewas a longer time frame, but then
I ended up starting this podcast thathas created people I love around the world.
It has created a family for me. Yeah, And that that's what
(44:19):
writing that book did to me too. Because I'm doing I'm doing um book
clubs right and left, I'm doingI've done a couple of signings. Weird
people I hadn't seen in sixty yearsshowed up. That was amazing, and
um yeah, um so I thinkI think, um, you know,
(44:45):
when something really bad happens, thistoo shall come to pass. That's my
thing, This too shall come topass. Fifteen years ago, my son
was on life support and I saidhe was a bad diagnosis, bad doctor,
bad diagnosis, and I said,if you die, I want to
(45:07):
die with you. I could notwake up the next day if you die.
Unfortunately he didn't, And he ishe is just a great human being.
He's very successful, and I justI adore him. I absolutely adore
him. Man. Yeah, he'ssomeone that's never on my shit list,
(45:30):
you know. Oh, all fourof mine are on my shit list oft
times. But then I also havea favorite at different times, so it
balances. You know. I thinkthat you have to have multiple children and
still have a favorite. Yes,it comes with having multiple children. The
one who gives you the least amountof grief that day that day. Just
(45:51):
because you're my favorite today does notmean you'll be my favorite tomorrow. And
that's why I said, you knowthat the love is automatic. I love
you no matter what the matter.What like is earned. And if you're
an unlikable little jerk today, guesswhat I'm alike one of your siblings.
More so, what is your eighteenyear old doing? So my eldest,
(46:13):
my twenty three year old, isworking in in a like a sort of
childcare after school program. They graduatedfrom Leslie and doing art, but they
wanted a break from doing art oncommission on demand and they wanted to just
sort of step away. So theyjust graduated in December and now they're doing
(46:36):
work with kids, and I thinkthey're gonna shift at the end of the
school year. We'll see. Myeighteen year old just started college. We
are one of the community colleges uphere, and they have also started streaming
and youtubing, and they're doing betterthan I am, which I'm totally not
bitter about at all, like youknow, but honestly good for that.
(46:58):
Like they on a space and theythey're still going to school because they understand
that the streaming is fun and it'sbringing them a little bit of spending money.
But you know, there's gonna comea day where they're gonna need things
like health insurance. My thirteen yearold is just the sweetest kid. He's
(47:22):
got the biggest heart, and healso makes me crazy, but that's fine,
Like I accept that. And thenthe ten year old, she's sort
of, you know, my bonuskid. She's been diagnosed with autism and
PTSD because of her She came tous when she was three, and that
was a she had a traumatic childhood, you know, infancy. And but
(47:45):
the thing is what that has forcedme to do is slow down and parent
differently, you know, because there'sthere's a certain assumption we start to make.
I started to make anyway, whenyou have a second kid and a
third kid, it's like, oh, I know what I'm doing, you
know, and then kid number fourcomes along and you're like, oh,
I have no idea, you know, like I don't know what to do
(48:08):
with this one. And but that'sthat's its own gift because it prevents it
makes life interesting, it makes lifeinteresting, but it also prevents me from
being you know, sort of thatwhich I can't think of the word.
I'm looking forward, like that pridefulsnottiness of like oh I got this,
you know what. No, she'syour own person, and I need to
(48:28):
slow down and adjust who this personis, not who I am. My
three kids came from three different planets, They came from different units. They
are so different from each other.It's not it's like I can't believe they're
all mine. But you have totreat them. According to my feeling is
(48:49):
that you have to treat your childaccording to what they need and how they
want to communicate. You know,there's no set rule, there's no set
anything. I'm glad I was becamea mother. When I did become a
mother, and not today, Imean kids that are having babies right now.
You're facing all kinds of challenges inthis world. But you got to
(49:15):
take a day by day. Andmy grandson was finding out at seven o'clock
tonight which IVY League school he mightget into, I might not get into.
They were all he's gotten into everyschool he's applied to so far.
But the three IVY leagues that heapplied to, we're going to email him
(49:35):
at seven o'clock tonight. So soyou'll find out soon, you know.
And yeah, I find out,And that's I don't know if I'll end
up being a grandparent just based onmy kids tendencies. Maybe the younger kids
the older who don't seem interested inhaving children, And that's something that I
think is a blessing of this generation. Yeah, my three children are not
(49:59):
married. They decided they wanted careers, and they all flourished in their careers.
My stepdaughter has three children, andI'm the only grandmother they know because
I was there when they were born. And so he's my grandson and and
(50:20):
he's the baby, and he's goingoff to college next year, and I
mean, the one weird does hewant to go. He wants to go
to Saint Andrews because that's where hegot in. He got into Saint Andrews
in Scotland and it sounds exciting,but I don't I really hope so far.
My god, Yeah, well that'sI mean, that's the thing.
(50:44):
Is I somehow like, even thoughyou know, I'm a psychologists, like
I understand the concept. I understandthat I am not like my sisters.
I get that, But somehow Iimagined that my children would be like each
other. And my first two arelike flip sides of a coin. They
are just so one pulls left,one pulls right all of the time.
(51:07):
And so my eldest knew which collegethey wanted and went to that college and
that was it and there was nolike, only applied to that one college.
And so if they hadn't gotten toLeslie, I'm not really sure what
they would have. I don't knowwe would have figured it out. And
kid number two is like, well, I'm not really sure what I want
(51:28):
to do. So let's say acouple of dollars and do community college for
two years and then I'll figure itout. And I'm like, you're so
much smarter than I was at thatage. I just wanted to get away
and here you are making like informeddecisions. Knock it off. So last
question that I had though, isthat have your kids wrote the book?
(51:49):
Oh? My god? Yes?And how do they? How do they
react? They they are amazed,amazed. In fact, for they last
year they had the book mounted andblown up and they framed it with the
(52:10):
um about the author on it andthe acknowledgement on it and what the book
is about. It's all in abig frame and they were so excited.
And they come to all my likebook signings or whatever I do. They're
there. I mean, my youngestis in La so he's not around,
(52:30):
but um, the other two arehere. And yet my kids are very
my kids. My kids, Mykids love me. I love them.
I mean, you know, Ieven the braddy one is he loves me
so and he'll hear this, andyou know what he'll say, I'm brady.
(52:51):
He'll know what it was, yeah, because uh yeah, I love
them fiercely. As you understand,I made a point when I was younger
of trying to ask my grandparents andgreat grandparents about what their childhood was like
(53:19):
and what their coming up years werelike. And that's sort of a thing,
and I'm grateful that most of themtold me, most of them talk
to me about it, although Iknow I didn't get the whole story,
and I know now that the wholestory is not going to be accessible to
(53:40):
me, and so I feel likeyou know that vulnerability is hard and it's
awkward, but it's better than thequestion marks that remain once you're gone,
I think, so really, thankyou so much for coming on my show
(54:04):
and sharing your story and just beingthe phenomenal person that you are. I
hope you'll come back in play sometime. Thank you, guys for listening.
I hope maybe this spurs you togo ask a couple of questions of your
family while they're still around to ask, because all of us have a finite
(54:29):
number of minutes where we can tellour stories and then the clock runs out,
which is a super happy thought,I know, but it's true.
Tell your story. Will you haveyour chance to tell your story? That's
what I'm talking about, is ifyou want any control over your own narrative
(54:53):
and how people think of you andunderstand you, after you on you kind
of need to tell that story now, and your story is important, it
really is. You matter,
Looking for a geek podcast or theFellowship of the Geeks. We talked about
comics, movies, TV books,games, pretty much whatever gets our attention,
and our attention is kind of allover the place, and full disclosure,
we get a little randy at times, well a lot of times,
pretty much all the time. Butanyway, come check out the Fellowship of
(00:20):
the Geeks podcast. You can findus wherever you normally get your podcasts.
This podcast involves topics such as violence, sex, and mental illness. If
this might disturb you where those aroundyou, you might want to reconsider listening.
Privacy and confidentiality have been protected,with personal information being removed or changed
(00:42):
whenever possible. If you ever feelunsafe or suicidal, please call your local
crisis center, emergency services, ornational hotline. In the US, the
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is eight hundredtwo seven three eight two five five And
remember matter, Hey, this isKate. Do you feel like you know
(01:11):
pretty much everything about your family,your family's history, or the major events
that they've lived through, Because Igotta tell you you probably don't, especially
if your family goes back a generationor two. There's this tendency to gloss
(01:33):
things over and show you the clean, pretty, non traumatic sides of things,
which I get a lot of usdo that because we don't want to
dwell in the negative. We wantto hype up the good things and enjoy
each other's company when we get together, and we don't want to sit in
(01:57):
that dark space and think about theunpleasant things. But the flip side is
that after someone dies or if theyare still alive but refused to speak about
it, and you find out aboutsomething big, you can't follow that thread.
(02:23):
You can't ask questions or put itinto some sort of context that makes
sense, and sometimes it ends upbeing this jarring, unfamiliar experience of what
else do I know? Or didI ever really know that person? Or
(02:46):
what do I do with this information? And so I don't know. I
err on the side of disclosure.I just try to keep it at an
age appropriate level, because there arethings kids don't need to know, but
(03:07):
I don't know. I feel likethey can handle more than we give them
credit for at times. So myguests today. Her name is Shirley Novak.
She's an author and a parent anda daughter, and her story starts
(03:28):
with learning things about her father's lifethat she didn't know in time to ask
him about them. And how doesthat shape you? And what do you
do with it? From there?Well, in her case, she wrote
a book, and the book it'scalled the Story of Dot Dot Dot because
(03:53):
she knows she's not the only onewho has been handed this story without a
ton of context or nuance, andwithout the ability to get the firsthand account
of it. And now what?And I think it shapes us. I
(04:14):
think it shapes how we function ashumans and neighbors and citizens in the world.
And I think it definitely shapes howwe are as parents. Are you
sure you really want to know?This is ignorance? Was bliss? I'm
(05:05):
Sureley Novak and I was born andbrought up in the Boston area. I
am the product of a Polish fatherand a Russian mother, immigrants, and
I have been an interior well,I've been many things throughout my life.
I started out as a research assistantin surgery, went on to teaching,
(05:30):
went on to having children, andended up getting a degree in design,
And for thirty eight years I havehad an interior design practice. However,
in the past, about two yearsago, I started writing a novel.
It's actually a historic fiction that isloosely based on my father's life, and
(05:51):
it got published and it's for saleand it's doing great, and I'm very,
very pleased because I'm a product ofthe fifties and sixties. I'm not
young anymore, although mentally i am. And at my age, I have
a whole new profession and I can'twait for the next one. It's really
(06:15):
been it's been a great ride forthe past couple of years. And I
get to meet people like Kate onpodcasts and that's really widened my horizon.
The book is loosely, I sayloosely based on my father's life, and
I say that because when he wasborn. He was born in Corretz,
(06:36):
Poland, in nineteen o four,and his father was a horrible tyrant of
a man. And when his sweet, wonderful mother died when he was twelve
years old, his father sent heand his nine year old brother to live
in the care of a brothel.While in the brothel, my father got
(06:58):
raped by a Polish soldier. Sofar all this is true. That's where
the fiction begins, and so therest of the book is fiction, and
I have the Polish soldier coming backinto my father's life many many years later
in America. And the book isits love, its hate, it's revenge,
(07:23):
it's murder, it's mayhem, kidnapping, and a lot of love.
And that's called the Story of DotDot. And what the three dots signify
is that there are so many peoplewho came over to this country at the
beginning of the twentieth century, andthey all have stories. Everyone has a
(07:45):
story. So the three dots areallowing anybody else who wants to write a
story about their beginning in America,then it's open to you. So that
was that. And as I said, I was a child of the fifties.
And when you say ignorance was blissIgnorance was really the topic of the
(08:07):
day because everything was hush hush,don't tell the children, don't let the
children know. Nothing bad is supposedto happen. Everyone's supposed to be happy
all the time, and you're notsupposed to know anything that is reality.
I had two parents that really shelteredtheir children, but we were smart enough
(08:31):
to know that we wanted to knowwhat really went on in life, and
ignorance ended up not being so blissful. So I love the title of your
podcast because it really hit a chordwith me. You know, as far
as growing up at that time oflife. It was post World War two
and we went through the Korean CubanMissile crisis, the Korean War. I
(08:58):
never knew anything about that. AllI knew is that when the when the
earraid went off, I was supposedto hide under a desk because that'll help,
That will help, right, youknow, so when you heard the
ear raid, you knew that abomb was supposed to happen, and just
go into a closet or hide undera desk. I mean, talk about
(09:20):
ignorance being bliss. I would justsay that that's, you know, the
error that I grew up in andm fortunately as I when I became a
mother, I did not carry thatover to my own children. I've always
been very honest and aboveboard with them, but I always try to leave with
(09:41):
a high note like as bad asit is, it will get better,
but be honest. And I thinkthat I think they respected me more for
it. I hope they still loveme, you know, with with my
kids, I feel like love youto like it's an obligation you have to
(10:01):
love your children. You don't necessarilyhave to like them and vice versa.
You know, absolutely, I'm withyou there, So tell me, how
did you find out your father's storyif they were protecting you from it?
Oh, after he died. Whenhe died, I was already married.
(10:22):
He died in nineteen eighty four,and then relatives came forth with stories.
His brother was still around, andyeah, they said that he carried that
secret most of his life. Andwhen I found out about it, I
was really devastated because he was fifteenyears old, he had no one,
(10:48):
He had a nine year old,well, he had a younger brother who
was now at twelve at that time. Who sends their kids to be brought
up in a brothel? You know, I don't. I don't care what
part of life is. You havea father who really he never loved anyone.
This means in fact, in mybook, there were only two names
(11:09):
that were not changed, and onewas my paternal grandfather and his wife because
they were the epitome of evil andthey did not they did not deserve to
be anything other than that, youknow, as I represented in my book.
Unfortunately I got to know them,and I understand I have family that
(11:33):
it was my own that I'm thinking, like, yeah, I could say
that, I could say that aboutthem. Yeah, you know, you
automatically think that as a parent,you're going to love your children. I
mean, the love that I havefor my kids is crazy, like every
other mother probably well most mothers have, I should say, And I would
(11:54):
throw myself in front of a trainfor all three of them. However,
I don't always like them or thethings that they do, but I always
loved them fiercely, and yeah,nothing else matters. And right now they're
very, very proud of me becausethey can't believe I wrote a book and
actually got it published. It's noteasy the process of publishing, you know.
(12:18):
I knew I couldn't go into Simonand Schuster or a random house,
and I knew that I couldn't justPLoP into a publishing house. So I
did my due diligence and I foundthat there was this company called the Fulton
Press and they were a hybrid publishingcompany. And for people who don't know
(12:39):
what a hybrid publishing company is,they well, this one in particular does
everything from soup to nuts, andyou have to put a little money up
front, but this company doesn't takea dime until you've made that back.
And I sent them my manuscript.They did not charge me to read the
(13:00):
manuscript, and that's not all thatcommon either, and they said, well,
we'll call you in a few weeks. We'll let you know what we
think. And they called me inthree days and they said, we'd like
to sign you. And from thatpoint on it was the easiest, most
fun thing I've ever done in mylife, honest to god. So when
people tell me how difficult it is, I haven't had that experience yet.
(13:24):
There's always hope, but yeah,yeah, I mean, you know,
it may be coming around the bandwith my next book. But I'm hoping
that you know, now that Ihave published a book and now that it
has gotten great reviews, that Ican get an agent, you know,
a literary agent to do all thisfor me. But I don't know.
(13:46):
You know, you told me beforeI record, you're in the process of
writing, and so you kind ofgot to stay with your head in that
game right now before you get intothe next phase, right right. And
I find writing There were days thatI can't, but when it flows,
it flows. I mean when whenI can't, I can sit down for
(14:07):
hours and it just comes. Andwhen it doesn't, it doesn't. How
are you with that? Like,because I know writers who, you know,
emphatically beat themselves up on the daysthat it can't. And then I
know other writers who are like,look, you just can't every day.
(14:28):
No, it's it's either there orit isn't. I walk three miles every
morning, and that's when I domy writing in my head. You know,
that's when everything gets formulated. Becauseyou get stuck. You absolutely get
stuck, and somehow or other,that's the best time for me to unstick,
(14:50):
you know, while I'm walking andI'm just able to shut everything out
and just concentrate on my book.Now. I have my brother who is
a historian. He's published fourteen books. I believe his latest just came out
the same day. Mind it actuallyon Obama, and he was insistent that
(15:16):
I don't do fiction, you know, make it factual, get your dates,
get it. So I started doingresearch, and I said, this
isn't fun, this isn't what Iwanted to So I went my own way.
I couldn't do it. It wastoo much work. This was a
(15:37):
labor of love. I mean,that's in you know a lot of ways
It's sort of how I approached mypodcast is that I do put work into
it. It is effort, butI need it to be more fun than
stress. Oh my middle name isfun. I believe in fun. You
can know, you know, turninglemon into lemonade? Yuh, I do.
(16:02):
I wake up every morning with myglass half full. And I am
a firm believer that if one doorcloses, a bigger one opens, and
I just I enjoy. I toldI told my family I expect to live
to one hundred and twenty three andthen if I should die, just brought
me up on the sofa and leaveme there so I can see what's going
(16:25):
on. You don't even left out. And now I already left out.
I don't want to want to goanywhere or I want to stay here.
So um yeah, I try tomake the most. I've had so many
different professions, and I've gone intothem wholehearted. I mean, when I
graduated college, initially I had adegree in laboratory science, and I found
(16:52):
out that there was a group inBoston that was operating on the unborn.
It was research because then you didn'tdo that. And I read everything I
could about them, and I wentfor an interview and they said, we
really want someone with a master's degree, but your enthusiasm is so overwhelming,
(17:12):
we have to hire you. Actually, And I was cheaper than anyone with
a master's degree anyway, so theyhired me. And when you think that
you're on the groundbreaking research, becausenow you know, fetal surgery is so
common, it just it. Ithappens all the time. And we were
(17:33):
we were the groundbreakers at Boston UniversityMedical Center. And then when funding got
cut back, I became a teacherand I taught, well, I taught
the medical assisting program at a schooland that was great. So it's like
I did that until I had children. So I enjoyed the I was very
(17:55):
fortunate that I was able to getjobs that I loved, so I always
loved working. And then I hadmy interior design for him, and that
I'm just mostly retired from right now. I mean, that's so I've been
on disability since twenty fourteen because theybroke my back. And when I first
(18:18):
started the podcast, the sort ofvision to the effect, it wasn't really
a vision. It was a matterof I had four kids and my father
had just moved in with us,and it was chaos all the time,
and they never stopped talking to me, and so I wanted a hobby in
which they couldn't talk to me.And so on New Year's Day of twenty
(18:44):
eighteen, and I went up tomy husband and either tapped him on the
shoulder or grabbed him by the shirtcollar, depending on who's telling the story,
and explained to him I'm starting apodcast. And he's a smart man,
so he said, okay, doyou need help, And I'm like,
I need you to go away iswhat I need? Just I just
(19:06):
because I was losing myself, youknow, I felt like I was playing
the supportive role to everybody else andI didn't have a starring role in my
own life anymore. And I neededto do something that made me feel relevant
and smart and functional again. Andso my very first couple episodes, I
(19:27):
felt, well, I'm going todo Yeah, I'm a forensic psychologist by
trade, and so I'm going tofocus on what forensic psychology isn't isn't it's
going to be sort of true crimeadjacent. And my first couple episodes were
a ton of work. It wasa lot of research, it was a
lot of doing the things that Ihad done previously, except not getting paid
(19:52):
for it. And I was like, this just feels like work. I
don't want to do this. Andpretty early on I I had the opportunity
to talk to somebody rather than justtalking at the microphone, I had the
opportunity to have a conversation, andit was so much more fun and so
much more engaging, and I waslike that, that's what I want to
do. That's that's the thing thatkeeps me going. And so I just
(20:18):
dropped episode of four hundred and sixtysomething like that's it, just because I
still find it fun. Well,what an accomplishment, you know, I
mean that many episodes. I meanthat is really quite I used to be
patting yourself all over for that.That's fantastic. I had my first husband.
(20:41):
I remarried twenty one years ago.My first husband was a dentist and
he wanted me to stay home.So when my children were very small,
I was a stay at home momand I loved that job. But when
I became a design I don't doanything half acidly. I know, I
(21:03):
have to just throw everything I haveinto it. And so I became a
well known designer in the Boston area, and I was doing show houses,
and he was getting very upset aboutthat. He couldn't stand that I was
getting this attention. And I wasso happy about me because I was being
(21:26):
successful. And one night I wentinto Boston to pick up a coffee table
off an airplane and it wasn't onthe plane, and they said to me,
it'll be on the next plane atseven thirty. So I said,
okay, well, I'll go intothe terminal and have dinner and I'll come
back at seven thirty. In themeantime, I got caught up in a
(21:49):
motorcade. I got caught up ina motorcade, and the cargo area of
Logan Airport is like often no mediouslyand you don't know where it isn't know
where I was, I don't knowhow to get out of there, so
I followed them. I fell instep with the motorcade and suddenly I'm at
the end of a private runway.Air Force two is on the tar mat,
(22:14):
and I'm surrounded by Secret Service men. Okay, long story short.
Colin Powell had just spoken at Harvard'scommencement and we were in the middle of
desert storm. I was in avan with tinted windows. So obviously I
was a terrorist coming to blow upColin Powell's plane. Anyhow, as it
(22:38):
turned out, you know, theychecked me out from top to bottom.
They wouldn't talk to me, butthey stopped me from leaving every time I
would try to back up the carwoodstall because they had a device to do
that. They can't stop you ifyou were in motion, but they could
prevent me from leaving. So theyall disband, they go into a building,
(23:02):
and I figured I'd better stop atthe gas station, the service station
at the airport and find out what'swrong with my car. And I had
a cell phone hardwired into my carat the time. This was nineteen ninety
three. And the man says tome, there's nothing wrong with your car,
but I bet your phone is dead. It was, it was,
(23:26):
And then he told me about themhaving this device that could prevent me from
leaving. So when I came homethat night, I said to my house
I'll do anything for a story.I thought this was a great story.
You know, me a terrorist,please. So I came home and I
said to my husband, Wow,you're not gonna believe what happened to me
(23:47):
just now. And he was lookingfor any excuse to get me to stop
working. And he said that's it. Either you give up your job and
you stay home, or leaving you. And I went yes, sea well
because I had been in a veryunhappy, miserable marriage, but he was
(24:11):
he was made a depressive, bipolarand as long as I had children still
at home, I didn't have theheart. I couldn't do it. But
once those words came out of hismouth, I would not let myself go
back. I had to keep movingforward. So Colin Powell, thank you.
(24:33):
I'm sure you listen to the podcast. I mean that that's a big
thing, you know. I didgive some thought to like do I want
my husband to be part of mypodcast? And I realized, no,
no, no, I want I'man independent human being and I always worked
independently, and I want this tobe my thing. I want a thing.
(24:55):
And maybe this isn't my thing,fine, but I want to stand
or fall on my own. Yeah. I mean, there are things that
are cohesive that bring people together,but crossing the boundaries of what you do
and someone else does, I thinkit makes for a happier marriage. I
think that if you can respect eachother's interests and still come together at interests
(25:21):
that you have together. I thinkthat makes for a happy marriage. This
was clearly two people that never shouldhave been together because it was brutal.
And the funny thing is is you'rea forensic psychologist. My husband said to
me, okay, you're having amidlife crisis. I want you to go
(25:41):
see a shrink. I said,okay, I've never done that before.
I'll go to a shrink. Andmy shrink ended up who I love.
I got the right person for me. We had a great relationship, and
he ended up by telling me youare the most mentally healthy person I've ever
had in my office. You know, and I have two brothers that are
(26:03):
the same way. They are mentallyhealthy, and I attribute that to seeing
our parents as two people we didn'twant to become. So it was positive
in the negative. You know,both of my parents are unwell, you
know way my father is no longeralive and my mother is deeply toxic.
And there are a lot of timeswhere I find myself stopping and going what
(26:26):
would pay him do right now,and then doing the opposite, whatever the
opposite may be. And my kidsseem to like me and they're doing well,
and my marriage is solid. We'vebeen married almost twenty three years,
and you know, we've had we'vegone through some stuff, you know,
(26:48):
and I am not the person Iwas at twenty three when we got married,
and so we've had to work throughthat. But you know, he's
I consider him to be my biggestsupporter in this and part of that is
him saying, you do your thing. You You'll tell me if you need
help, but otherwise go for it. I think I married the same person
(27:14):
the second time. He's busy.Yeah, it could be because I did.
I married a prince the second time. And our anniverse our twenty first
anniversary in a couple of weeks,and it's you know, he gets up
every day and says, what canI do to make you happy? And
I'm like, what can I doto make you happy? And yet I
(27:36):
have my thing. He has histhing, and it's it's fabulous. It's
fabulous. It's so different, youknow, it's the antithesis of what I
had at the beginning of my othermarriage. I was twenty one. I
did not want to get married totwenty one. But you know, when
you're you're Eastern European Jewish, you'rean old maid. I mean, I
(27:59):
had family pressuring me. My parentshad me at seventeen, and so the
fact that I didn't have my firstchild until I was twenty two, I
had family going, when are yougoing to have a baby? When are
you going to do this? AndI was just like, I wanna you
know, I don't know, graduatethat's the thing that I would like to
(28:21):
do. It was just such asuch a shift in mindset, and I've
really had a lot of time todouble think what family means, Like I
lean less into genetics and more intowould I drop everything for this person and
would they drop everything from me?Do I want this person to shine?
(28:41):
And do they want me to shine? That's family, yeah, you know,
not genetics, not a marriage license. That And so it happens.
I'm very lucky that. I don'tthink it's luck. I think we worked
hard. But but my husband ismy best friend and we're doing well.
But I wouldn't have stayed with himout of obligation because life's short. Absolutely,
(29:07):
I only made that mistake once.And you know, the outside world
could not believe that I was gettingseparated, because what you're always so happy
you're always so upbeaten. I said, yes, I'm a happy person in
a miserable marriage. You know,it's like the days with the price I
(29:33):
paid, but the nights I had, the knights with the price I paid
for the days I had because hetook responsibility for absolutely nothing, and it
was very freeing because I was strongenough to carry the load. And I
found that very freeing. So whenI first got married to my current husband,
(29:55):
he was a widower, so wecame from very different places, and
he and his his wife moved symbioticallytogether through the life and he I wasn't
used to that. I was usedto, you know, let me do
my thing, you do your things. So it yeah, we had to
learn which boundaries we could cross themwhich ones we couldn't. And I would
(30:18):
say, we have a phenomenal marriagealso, and I couldn't be happier in
my life. I feel like Iknow the answer, but I'm gonna ask,
anyway, do you think that youwould have ended up writing if you
had stayed in your first marriage.I honestly I have thought of that myself.
I always want when I was inthe fourth I have one acknowledgement in
(30:44):
my book and also I'm going toput it out there because one of the
reasons I'm doing podcasts so much isI'm trying to find somebody. My fourth
grade teacher gave us an assignment thatsaid, you know, he said,
write a poem about spring. SoI was nine years old, and he
was so impressed with my poem thathe made me read it to the entire
(31:07):
school, and at the end hetook me aside and he said, I
just want you to know that oneday you were going to be a great
writer. Don't ever stop writing.I never forgot that. Now his name
was John Willett, and we werehis first class out of when after he
graduated college. So it is conceivablethat he could still be alive or his
(31:33):
family somebody would know who I wantthem to know that he is my acknowledgment
in the book, and what aneffect he had on me. And I
have gone to the Boston School Department. It doesn't go back that far.
And I went on Facebook trying tofind him, and I got more people
(31:56):
writing me saying I was in yourfourth grade. I remember, mister Willip,
but I don't know what happened tohim, you know, So I
have all these new friends now fromthe fourth grade, and it's very interesting,
it's funny. So if anybody outthere knows John Willard from Boston,
Massachusetts, WI l et wil E. I think t or Tt wyl Ett.
(32:24):
I don't know. I know thathe went. He ended up teaching
English at Boston English High School,and that's as far as I could find
out about him. What happened afterthat, I don't know, but I
really would love to find out whateverhappened to him and let his family at
(32:44):
least know that he had such aneffect on a nine year old kid that
I ended up writing a novel.I ended up writing a book, and
so I might have still written mybook. I don't know if it would
have been the same, because Idon't know if my mindset would have been
as free to just let it flow. I don't know. It's a great
(33:06):
question, and I've often thought aboutit. I would like to think I
would have any kind of, youknow, adjacent question to that is,
I understand your father died before thisis published. Oh wait, he in
nineteen eighty four. Would he haveread it? And what do you think
he would have thought? Oh?My god, he would have been so
(33:28):
proud of me, he would haveI was the baby and I was the
only girl. So he and Ihad a much different relationship than my older
brothers had. And the main characterof the book is his name is Jacob.
My father's name was not Jacob,but Jacob. The personality and the
(33:49):
character of Jacob in my book ismy father. He was so well he
was never wealthy. He was afurniture maker, and he was so well
respected and dignified that his funeral wason the fourth of July and we thought
no one would come because it's thefourth of July, you know. So
(34:13):
we took a very small chapel andthree hundred people came and they started giving
eulogies. And the eulogies were actuallyhysterical because my father was like, you
know, jeans overalls and T shirtsand he wasn't a snappy dresser by any
means, but they allotted to thatin some of his eulogies, and like,
(34:37):
what kind of a dresser he was. But it was wild that all
these people came. So I think, you know, when my brothers would
both read the book, they theycannot understand that this is really my father,
because it wasn't the father that theygrew up with. My father would
(34:58):
go out at ten o'clock at nightand bring home. But Sundays, you
know, he for me and mymother, and he was just the very
sweet eye. He let me takehis car whenever I needed it. He
never let the other guys take it. M Yeah, you know, but
he was very strict and very firmabout you know, having respect. Respect
(35:22):
was the main thing in his world. You have to be respectful, you
you know, you have to behumble, and you have to be educated.
And so yeah, in that respect, I may I may have written
it, but certainly not by nineteeneighty four. Also, I didn't know
at that point that he had beenraped, right, and and you said
(35:45):
that you find, but just didthat change? What did that change for
you? It made me sad.It made me so sad, and I
just, um, I really it'slike I just wanted to be able to
embrace him and hug him and youknow. Uh. But by then though,
(36:06):
it was he was He died young. I mean, he died.
He just dropped dead one day.He didn't suffer at all. My mother,
on the other hand, passed awaythree years ago at the age of
one hundred and five, So livingtwo one hundred and twenty three is not
And I'm gonna lived to one hundredand twenty three, right, Yeah,
it's not that far out of yourpotential there. Then you've got the jeans
(36:30):
for it. I don't know.But but in one hundred and twenty three
though, But I don't want tobe any different than I am right now.
So what are the chances of thatyou make them? I mean,
it's not up to me. Youmake your chances, I think, and
and I mean you've already proven youhave the ability to reinvent. Yeah,
I mean you broke your back.I broke my neck. We have more
(36:53):
similarities than you can imagine. Andbreaking my neck turned out to be a
very little because I didn't become aquadriplegic, you know, opened certain doors
for me that I never could haveimagined. Believe it or not, it's
(37:13):
yet so every everything can be anopportunity. Of course, I wouldn't recommend
anybody break their neck or their backin order to have that opportunity. But
in my case it turned out tobe very It turned out to be a
good thing. Eventually. Well,that's a thing you have to give it
long enough. You have to giveit long enough to find you know.
(37:36):
I spent after I broke my back, I spent probably about four years moping,
because if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it well.
And so I threw myself into mopingwith full gusto, you know,
and just and feeling like I hadworked so hard to build myself up to
(37:57):
build this career. I was thefirst of my family to go to college.
I was so definitely the first toget my masters to my doctorate,
and so I was really focused on, like, I don't think education,
honestly, is that important, exceptif you have a specific job you want
that requires the education, and thenyou got to roll through the education to
get to the job. And that'swhat I did, is I could not
(38:20):
have been a forensic psychologist without certaindegrees. And so that's what I did,
and I worked hard, and Idid it while having children and through
a marriage and through everything, andI was It wasn't so much I don't
think proud of myself is the rightword so much as a yeah, damn
it, I did it. Idid the thing, and I worked for
(38:47):
a little over a decade and II have a autoimmune disorder. So all
I did was step wrong on aplayground. I didn't fall down. I
didn't. I wasn't in an accident. I just stepped wrong and my back
snapped, and everything changed. Everythingchanged, And so I spent four solid
(39:07):
years pretty much moping, you know, and feeling like my life is over.
Like I said, my you know, I no longer feel like I'm
playing the lead role in my ownlife, like all I'm here to do
is support other people, which Ican do, but you feel less and
less yourself. And starting the podcast, like I said it was, it
(39:28):
was meant to be a hobby inan escape and just something to try,
something to prove, like does mybrain still work? Because I also have
a traumatic brain injury from another thing. I collect diagnoses like I'm going for
full coverage on the medical bingo board. So that's that's a thing. But
it's not funny. It's not funny. It is it you laugh or scream,
(39:52):
those are your choices. That's howlong were you bedridden for on your
back? And well, I'm I'man idiot. And so I went immediately
back to work, and I workedfor two weeks and realized I cannot do
this because it was very, verylow on my back, so there was
no oh, you know, it'sa and then I just realized, like,
(40:14):
I can't function, I'm not givingmy best to my clients. I'm
not thinking well because I'm in somuch pain all the time. I can't
do this. I was bedridden fora long time because in twenty ten,
four years prior, I died inchildbirth, and so I was in a
comma for ten days and then inthe hospital for six weeks. Like these
are the things I do. Idon't like my life is. People told
(40:36):
me, like, you should writethis down, and I've said, no,
one would believe me. It's justridiculous, the things that happened to
me. And then I was home, you know, I was. I
was in the hospital for six weeks, and then I was home on home
healthcare for a year. So youknow, it's just it's it's dumb,
it's whatever. But the thing iswith each of them, if you give
(41:00):
it long enough, you find ohit's not. That's why I don't believe
everything happens for a reason, becausethat would imply that there was some sort
of reason that I got so sick. There was some sort of reason that
I broke and I don't believe that, but I do believe that you can
find meaning in everything that happens toyou. And so, as a for
(41:22):
instance, after the whole dying andchildbirth thing, there's a long story to
it, but I ended up adoptinga fourth child, which was entirely unplanned,
and it turns out she completed ourfamily. It turns out we needed
her in our lives, and thatnever would have happened if I hadn't gotten
(41:43):
sick. And when I broke myback, like, I spent some time
hardcore moping. But then I decided, I'm going to start a podcast and
maybe four people will listen to it. I don't care. I just I
want my voice out there. Imy a few years prior, maybe as
(42:04):
much as a decade prior, mygreat grandmother died and she was the relative
I was closest to growing up,and I realized I don't have any recordings
of her voice. I can kindof remember, but it fades over time
and I don't have any recordings ofit. And so I decided, whether
they want it or not, mykids are going to get a recording of
my voice. They're gonna know whatmoms sounded like, how how old are
(42:28):
your children? Twenty three, eighteen, thirteen and ten. Wow. Yeah,
it takes me like five years toforget how much work kids are and
to think I should do that again. So that's how I would have had
till I would I would have keptbeing pregnant. Was that they happened.
It was the best. I lovedit, and then you know, and
after kid number three, that's Ihad to have a radical hys direct me.
(42:51):
And so that's how number four endedup being a total surprise, you
know. But so I thought,I'm going to start this podcast. It's
going to be very narrative and researchedand dry in a way, because a
lot of true crime podcasts in twentyeighteen were like that, where you know,
(43:12):
either it was a couple of girlsdrinking and giggling a lot, or
it was a very straightforward narrative.And I decided I didn't want to drink
and giggle a lot, so Iwas going to go for the narrative side.
And then I was like this justthis feels like work, like I
can do. What are my strengths? And my strengths are connecting with people.
(43:36):
Plus that's what I missed by beingyou know, people say I'd love
to be on disability. No,look, it's isolating and it's you lose
yourself. And by starting this podcast, I found myself again. And that's
such a gift. It's such ait's it's it wasn't what I looked for,
(43:57):
you know. So both things,you know, the dying and child
birth. I ended up with thekid that we needed to finish our family
and then see breaking my back therewas a longer time frame, but then
I ended up starting this podcast thathas created people I love around the world.
It has created a family for me. Yeah, And that that's what
(44:19):
writing that book did to me too. Because I'm doing I'm doing um book
clubs right and left, I'm doingI've done a couple of signings. Weird
people I hadn't seen in sixty yearsshowed up. That was amazing, and
um yeah, um so I thinkI think, um, you know,
(44:45):
when something really bad happens, thistoo shall come to pass. That's my
thing, This too shall come topass. Fifteen years ago, my son
was on life support and I saidhe was a bad diagnosis, bad doctor,
bad diagnosis, and I said,if you die, I want to
(45:07):
die with you. I could notwake up the next day if you die.
Unfortunately he didn't, And he ishe is just a great human being.
He's very successful, and I justI adore him. I absolutely adore
him. Man. Yeah, he'ssomeone that's never on my shit list,
(45:30):
you know. Oh, all fourof mine are on my shit list oft
times. But then I also havea favorite at different times, so it
balances. You know. I thinkthat you have to have multiple children and
still have a favorite. Yes,it comes with having multiple children. The
one who gives you the least amountof grief that day that day. Just
(45:51):
because you're my favorite today does notmean you'll be my favorite tomorrow. And
that's why I said, you knowthat the love is automatic. I love
you no matter what the matter.What like is earned. And if you're
an unlikable little jerk today, guesswhat I'm alike one of your siblings.
More so, what is your eighteenyear old doing? So my eldest,
(46:13):
my twenty three year old, isworking in in a like a sort of
childcare after school program. They graduatedfrom Leslie and doing art, but they
wanted a break from doing art oncommission on demand and they wanted to just
sort of step away. So theyjust graduated in December and now they're doing
(46:36):
work with kids, and I thinkthey're gonna shift at the end of the
school year. We'll see. Myeighteen year old just started college. We
are one of the community colleges uphere, and they have also started streaming
and youtubing, and they're doing betterthan I am, which I'm totally not
bitter about at all, like youknow, but honestly good for that.
(46:58):
Like they on a space and theythey're still going to school because they understand
that the streaming is fun and it'sbringing them a little bit of spending money.
But you know, there's gonna comea day where they're gonna need things
like health insurance. My thirteen yearold is just the sweetest kid. He's
(47:22):
got the biggest heart, and healso makes me crazy, but that's fine,
Like I accept that. And thenthe ten year old, she's sort
of, you know, my bonuskid. She's been diagnosed with autism and
PTSD because of her She came tous when she was three, and that
was a she had a traumatic childhood, you know, infancy. And but
(47:45):
the thing is what that has forcedme to do is slow down and parent
differently, you know, because there'sthere's a certain assumption we start to make.
I started to make anyway, whenyou have a second kid and a
third kid, it's like, oh, I know what I'm doing, you
know, and then kid number fourcomes along and you're like, oh,
I have no idea, you know, like I don't know what to do
(48:08):
with this one. And but that'sthat's its own gift because it prevents it
makes life interesting, it makes lifeinteresting, but it also prevents me from
being you know, sort of thatwhich I can't think of the word.
I'm looking forward, like that pridefulsnottiness of like oh I got this,
you know what. No, she'syour own person, and I need to
(48:28):
slow down and adjust who this personis, not who I am. My
three kids came from three different planets, They came from different units. They
are so different from each other.It's not it's like I can't believe they're
all mine. But you have totreat them. According to my feeling is
(48:49):
that you have to treat your childaccording to what they need and how they
want to communicate. You know,there's no set rule, there's no set
anything. I'm glad I was becamea mother. When I did become a
mother, and not today, Imean kids that are having babies right now.
You're facing all kinds of challenges inthis world. But you got to
(49:15):
take a day by day. Andmy grandson was finding out at seven o'clock
tonight which IVY League school he mightget into, I might not get into.
They were all he's gotten into everyschool he's applied to so far.
But the three IVY leagues that heapplied to, we're going to email him
(49:35):
at seven o'clock tonight. So soyou'll find out soon, you know.
And yeah, I find out,And that's I don't know if I'll end
up being a grandparent just based onmy kids tendencies. Maybe the younger kids
the older who don't seem interested inhaving children, And that's something that I
think is a blessing of this generation. Yeah, my three children are not
(49:59):
married. They decided they wanted careers, and they all flourished in their careers.
My stepdaughter has three children, andI'm the only grandmother they know because
I was there when they were born. And so he's my grandson and and
(50:20):
he's the baby, and he's goingoff to college next year, and I
mean, the one weird does hewant to go. He wants to go
to Saint Andrews because that's where hegot in. He got into Saint Andrews
in Scotland and it sounds exciting,but I don't I really hope so far.
My god, Yeah, well that'sI mean, that's the thing.
(50:44):
Is I somehow like, even thoughyou know, I'm a psychologists, like
I understand the concept. I understandthat I am not like my sisters.
I get that, But somehow Iimagined that my children would be like each
other. And my first two arelike flip sides of a coin. They
are just so one pulls left,one pulls right all of the time.
(51:07):
And so my eldest knew which collegethey wanted and went to that college and
that was it and there was nolike, only applied to that one college.
And so if they hadn't gotten toLeslie, I'm not really sure what
they would have. I don't knowwe would have figured it out. And
kid number two is like, well, I'm not really sure what I want
(51:28):
to do. So let's say acouple of dollars and do community college for
two years and then I'll figure itout. And I'm like, you're so
much smarter than I was at thatage. I just wanted to get away
and here you are making like informeddecisions. Knock it off. So last
question that I had though, isthat have your kids wrote the book?
(51:49):
Oh? My god? Yes?And how do they? How do they
react? They they are amazed,amazed. In fact, for they last
year they had the book mounted andblown up and they framed it with the
(52:10):
um about the author on it andthe acknowledgement on it and what the book
is about. It's all in abig frame and they were so excited.
And they come to all my likebook signings or whatever I do. They're
there. I mean, my youngestis in La so he's not around,
(52:30):
but um, the other two arehere. And yet my kids are very
my kids. My kids, Mykids love me. I love them.
I mean, you know, Ieven the braddy one is he loves me
so and he'll hear this, andyou know what he'll say, I'm brady.
(52:51):
He'll know what it was, yeah, because uh yeah, I love
them fiercely. As you understand,I made a point when I was younger
of trying to ask my grandparents andgreat grandparents about what their childhood was like
(53:19):
and what their coming up years werelike. And that's sort of a thing,
and I'm grateful that most of themtold me, most of them talk
to me about it, although Iknow I didn't get the whole story,
and I know now that the wholestory is not going to be accessible to
(53:40):
me, and so I feel likeyou know that vulnerability is hard and it's
awkward, but it's better than thequestion marks that remain once you're gone,
I think, so really, thankyou so much for coming on my show
(54:04):
and sharing your story and just beingthe phenomenal person that you are. I
hope you'll come back in play sometime. Thank you, guys for listening.
I hope maybe this spurs you togo ask a couple of questions of your
family while they're still around to ask, because all of us have a finite
(54:29):
number of minutes where we can tellour stories and then the clock runs out,
which is a super happy thought,I know, but it's true.
Tell your story. Will you haveyour chance to tell your story? That's
what I'm talking about, is ifyou want any control over your own narrative
(54:53):
and how people think of you andunderstand you, after you on you kind
of need to tell that story now, and your story is important, it
really is. You matter,
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