Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. I've heard from so many about your own family secrets and realize that what we are creating for each other on this podcast is a community, a community for those who are looking
for a safe and supportive space to unburden themselves. To that end, we've created a number for listeners to call in to record stories to share here in this space. This week, I'd like to share a few of those stories from our community. Thanks for listening. Hi there, Um I'd like to share my secret. I found out last year, when I was fifty two, that my biological father was
not who I thought it was. My mom had always told me that her first husband was my sister's dad, and then my father also, and when she was pregnant with me, he passed away at the age of six. Then she married her second husband and they had my brother, and they then went on to get divorced. When I was in high school, her second husband started saying that
he was my biological father. Um. It made a lot of sense to me because I physically resembled him more, I did not look like who she said my father was UM, and when I questioned her, she said that that's this was not accurate. So I kind of dropped it and just went on with life and death. Forward to gosh, when I was in mid thirties, me and her second husband, my stepdad, talked about it more. He really felt like he was my biological father. So we did a DNA test and it was negative, which was
really surprising and kind of appointing. I think I really wanted him to be my father biologically. So then you know, time went on. I had children, and two years ago my oldest child decided to get his DNA tested and it came back that he was thirty percent Irish. UM just kind of made all of us shrugger eyebrows, like, okay, where did that come from? None on my side, supposedly, and none on my husband's side. So I did mine UM last year and sure enough, it came back that
I was half Irish. At that time, I had about six second cousins pop up on the twenty three and me About a month later, I got a message from a lady who said that she was my aunt. UM. I reached out to her. Long story short, she and my mom, who was since deceased, had been best friends in high school and college, and we're actually in each other's weddings. UM. She had two brothers, and we we
concluded that older brother Tom was my biological father. They are Irish, and unfortunately I won't be able to ever meet him, but I do have my aunt, a cousin, and two more half siblings that I'm excited to meet. Hi. I just want to thank you for the podcast. UM. Listening to your podcast is giving me the courage to
pick up and tell my secret. UM. Yesterday I told my teenage children about my childhood, how I was sexually abused for eleven years, and how when I was eleven I told my secret and by the time I was twelve, I would be able to testify in court against my abuser. UM. I had not had the courage to tell my children. I didn't know how I would tell them. Yesterday, I did it, and they were so understanding and said they
actually kind of knew something had happened to me. And it just felt so good and I feel so free telling my children my past and it is no longer a family secret, so thank you. Hi there. Uh So, a few weeks ago, my husband gelt phone calls that we needed to head back to New York because my husband's grandmother was ill and that she didn't have much fight.
So we went back to New York. She stayed with some family and uh, while we were visiting, we ended up having to take his grandmother to the hospital, UM the emergency room to care for while she was there. Amazingly, during all of this COVID stuff, she was allowed to have visitors in her room. I was the first on her list. Uh. During this four hours that I got to done with her, she told me of her first
child that she had when she was fourteen. She had been living in Brooklyn and her family made her um moved out of the house, so she was living with her sister and shortly after having a baby, she it's gone out for a walk and the baby had actually been restaurant over in a carriage. Thankfully, the baby survived, but she realized that at that point, given her life situation, that she she gived the baby up for adoptions, and
that's what she did. When she got older, she told her husband about it, and she told her children, and everyone treated it as she had done something wrong, so she more or less like even though she told them, she kept a lot of promotions about it to herself. And it's really something that unless she had told me, it's really not talked about with the family. So I
kind of feel I now have this like mission. So she told me her story while she was on her death sad like, I now have this mission I feel to find out who this person says to this person that I have been, and just try and connect that family to the family that they don't realize that they have. If you'd like to share your story, call one eight eight eight Secret zero and record your story. We won't be able to run all the stories, but we do want to shine a light on as many as we can.
The number again is one eight eight Secret and then the numeral zero. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.