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. As I tore the nation from my book Inheritance, 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. I just want to say thank you for having this podcast. It's really really interesting and I'm not the only one that holds a secret. I am holding a secret from my daughter, myself, my family. I guess. UM. I don't know if my ex is
my twenty year old daughters father. UM. We always said keep it as what it was. I had my daughter. UM, my husband took over the role. He doesn't even know. I just never told anyone. I looked at her. She looks like my husband. But the guy that I was with also looks like my husband. UM, just you know, different pigments UM in the skin talk the lighter and I've never talked about it, UM, but with one person, and it was him, the the one that I think
is my daughter's father. At the time, he was going to do eight years and and and the penitential and UM be broken off. And back then it was something called Humphrey eleven pills and it wasn't the morning after UM and I took those and I ended up finding out I was partner and I kept my daughter. She's the love of my life. UM. But she would be devastated is she found out that her dad wasn't really her dad, which is Micaelspin. My husband would be deadist
devastated as well. I would be devastated. I wouldn't even know what to do with myself. Mom. We've had a fabulous life. I just figured I would just botle degree about it, UM, write a letter and if they find it one day, they find it. If they don't, then it will be the way it will be for the rest of the life. UM. I thought about doing UM ancestry, but that just makes me want to vomit. I can't even bathom what I would do if I would find that out. But again, thank you so much. Have a
great day, and thanks for listening to my story. Hi. I have two secrets. One is when I learned a while ago and another one that I learned more recently. And the first one is that UM, I have an aunt who was married to a man who um was actually probably a large percentage African American. But that was a big deal secret in the family, and um he told his wife, and his wife told her sister, who
was my mom. And I only found out when I was maybe in my twenties, and it was a huge big deal for my mom to tell me this, and he forre me to secrecy. And I never told my cousins, and we're not close. There's been a lot of trouble in our family, and I don't I don't talk to them, but I know where they are and I know how to reach them, and I'm very tempted to call or to text member leave them an email or something and tell them. But if they were genetic testing, they'll find
out on their own. But then the man was the father of my uncle was passing as why that he was. If you look at the pictures their wedding, you can really kind of thing that it wasn't he might have been myding Stern or whatever. But I know it's it's pretty interesting to me. It's not a big deal, but it was like terribly shameful to my mom and apparently
to her sister as well. The second secret is that I am a large percentage asking I'm Jewish, and my father and his first wife we're both um we're both a really large percentage Jewish. And I don't know if they ever even talked about to to each other, because it was kind of a thing that their families wanted to set um. Both sides came from Germany, and I think it had been it had been like a very difficult Jewish in Germany, and I think a lot of
people just wanted to forget that they were. So I was surprised to find out that the percentage is so high, but that was it. So thank you. I'm really enjoying the podcast so much. Take care of why him. My family secret is that, Um, I grew up not looking like my dad. My dad is a very small, petite man. His dad was a jockey. I don't look anything like him. He had dark hair, dark guys, I'm flong with blue eyes.
And Um, when I came home from college, I was watching one of those Maury Povich, you know, he's not my dad DNA testing shows, and I was joking with my mom and I said, oh, you know, like maybe I'm adopted, just joking around and or you know, I said, boy, I look like you, but not like dad. And she admitted to me that she had been married, UM in
her early twenties. UM, she's been married to someone who was in the Coastguard and that the relationship wasn't working out, and while he was at see she wrote him a letter and packed up her things and moved back to the town that I live in now. UM immediately got together with my dad, who was her high school sweetheart and he raised me. On the age of five, he started really getting bad into drugs and he was a
heroine at it. UM around the time that my mom told me that, you know, there's that she was married to another man, and there's a possibility that this man was my father. UM, my dad had recently gotten off drugs and we had started rebuilding our relationships so I didn't really look too much further into it. I did an ancestry DNA test um like so many other people, I did find out that I was not related genetically my father and instead was related to another man. I
was linked to a first cousin. I reached out to that person um getting here back. I reached out to another person on Instagram of all things, who was an aunt, and she did get back to me UM and kind of confirmed things and let me know that my biological father is not interested in having a relationship with me. In fact, he UM is a very conservative Republican and I'm married to a woman, so I think that that
would probably be a big issue. But you know, it was kind of hard for me, and it's still as hard to come to terms with the fact that this person that is my biological father is not even interested in meeting me. So that's my family's secret. 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 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.