Don't Duck

to her husband, Seymour. They have four children and seven grandchildren. Sylvia is one of our country's most beloved teachers of mindfulness meditation. Many of you may have heard of her, and if you haven't, trust me, you should download one of her audiobooks. Do that right now, just cause this podcast and download one of her books. You will say inked me later. She's also a very dear friend of mine, which makes me a very lucky person. In truth, Sylvia

is the entire reason this podcast exists. As I was grappling with my own humongous family secret, I was on the phone with Sylvia one afternoon. As tends to happen when we share a family secret, it prompts the listener to think of family secrets of her own, and so Sylvia began to tell me the story of a secret that had haunted her for much of her life. As I sat in my little office with the phone glued to my ear, listening to my friend's story, I thought,

I wish I was recording this. Hence this podcast. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets. Secrets that are kept from us, secrets we keep from others, and secrets we keep from ourselves. Sylvia was raised in Coney Island, in an enclave of immigrant Jews. In her neighborhood, she was surrounded by relatives my parents met because they lived around the corner from each other. My grandparents were friends

of each other, and my mother and father married. They moved in with my father's parents because my father didn't yet have a job, and I was born there a year later. A year after that, my grandfather died and my grandmother, who was my principal caretaker as I was growing up, lived with us for the rest of her life. So I lived in a situation where I was the only child and the only grandchild of the three people who lived in my house with me and much loved

by all three of them. Um. We lived within the wider community of a large family of cousins and aunts and uncle's and my mother, who was a wonderful storyteller, told me all the background about all these people, so and I loved them. They were my favorite kind of stories, how uncle Julius came to the United States, and how this one did that and that one did this. So I felt growing up that I knew most of the things about my family. But within all this closeness and happiness,

Sylvia's mother was very sick. My mother's health was frail. My mother had rheumatic heart disease, the consequence of having had rheumatic fever as a child, And I was always alarmed because I really didn't understand that the consequences of what that meant for her, and I worried always because she was out of breath, she couldn't walk as fast as other people's mother's, she couldn't swim or play tennis. Um, And I think I know that I was always frightened

that she would die. We didn't talk of that sickness in my house because I think in the end, maybe it was a good decision. My mother had this defective mitral valve that limited what she could do, but she was a cheerful person, so she wasn't totally undone by the illness, and she didn't mention it. We just knew about it. But then Sylvia learned that there was a story she didn't know, a painful story that wasn't part of the great and often joyous oral tradition of her family.

Somewhere in my adolescence, but I think before I went to college, my mother mentioned in a conversation, maybe it was an overheard conversation, that she had a sister who was younger than she was, but not as younger as my aunt Marian, and that that sister had died. So let's talk about what you remember about that conversation, or

whether it was something that you overheard. I think one of the really interesting things about those moments where one is discovering something or hearing something that is of incredible importance that maybe coming out in a kind of casual way or overheard or just slipped into conversation, and yet it lodges somewhere in the psyche, and it was some offend manner. I don't remember if she said it to

me or to somebody else. There was no photograph as pictures of my mother as a child and our cousins as a as children. I think, now that you're asking me and I'm thinking about it, the best I remember is I thought. I remember thinking maybe I heard wrong. And I've asked myself, since I've known your story, and since I've learned stories of secrets from side of my friends, why is it that I wouldn't say the obvious, Hey,

you had another sister. Sylvia had one aunt, her mother's younger sister, Miriam, and her father was an only child. So these adults comprise her entire immediate family. But now it seemed her grandparents had had three daughters, not too but Sylvia talks this information away to the point that she barely remembers it. It's a vestige, a mirage, not something tangible. She doesn't exactly forget all about it. It's more like she puts it off to the side, way

off to the side. Sylvia grows up, attends Barnard College at the age of sixteen, miss her future husband, Seymour, a doctor. She's married by the time she's twenty, and

eventually she and Seymour settle in northern California. Sylvia has all her children by the time she's twenty five, a span of years during which her mother dies, finally succumbing to her weak her During this time, it's almost like Sylvia is trying to cram it all in, get as much as she possibly can out of this life, since she's grown up with a powerful internalized message that life may be short, perhaps very short, there's always the possibility

of loss. What happened is that after she died, years went by, during which time I became closer to her than I had been to her younger sister, Miriam. I think Miriam missed my mother very much, and I did too. And at that time I was married, I had my own family, was living in California, and I developed the habit of calling my aunt every Saturday afternoon and we will talk on the phone about everything. So we were really close. And at one point, oh, I know what happened.

My grandfather came to spend time with me and lived with me in California. He was years old and in very good health and um sound memory, and we became very close, sharing old stories and one day just having a walk together. I said, by the way, I once heard that you actually had three daughters and that there was somebody born after Gladys and before Miriam. And I remember him looking at me and squinting over at me, say I could I could almost imitate his tone of voice.

He would say, what wasn't matter with you? One word, wasn't matter with you? Why did you hear that story? That's not true, that never happened, that wasn't true. No, no, no, why did you get that? So it was the end

of that. I let it go. Sometime later, after I developed this relationship with my with my aunt, I'm one of our Saturday phone calls, I said, by the way, Miriam, uh, I heard, and I told the whole story, And I said, I asked Grandpa, who had then by then died, said I asked Grandpa about it, and he said no. She said no, no, no, there was for any other child. No, never any other child. I said, Okay, time went by. How did you feel during the time that was going by?

Did you accept that was it? Was it a sense of maybe I was wrong, maybe I misheard. Did you doubt yourself? Well? It was really it was like maybe I had a dream. Maybe I had a dream. Oh yeah, and you know that any one of the things about me, because I don't like to be wrong. So if I, if I, if I had developed something which was so to speak, quote unquote stupid, I wouldn't have admitted it to people. I've had this idea, and I'm sure of it from my grandfather had said, it's not true. I've

never seen any artifact of that. Time went by. My grandfather had died. I was in New York, and of course my mother had died long before I was in New York, probably somewhere in my late fift these early sixties, and my husband's Seymore was with me. I think I was teaching and I had a day free, and I said, you know, I'd like to go out to the cemetery. I'd like to go to the cemetery where my mother was buried. And so he said okay, and we went out.

Then anybody who knows cemeteries in Queens knows that there's endless, endless acreage of cemeteries and Queens. But I had the name of the cemetery, and what was the cemetery called? Do you remember Mount Hebron? Mount Hebron so it was a Jewish cemetery. Was absolutely a Jewish cemetery, which brings me back to buried secrets. I know these cemeteries on the outskirts of New York City. My dad's family plot,

the Shapiro family plot, is in one of them. They aren't pastoral final resting places, you know, with pretty benches and shady trees. They tend to be massive, crumbling places to stones crammed up against one another, like crooked teeth in the mouth of the world. And I knew that my mother was buried in a burial area that was bought by the first men's Atonia Society of my grandfather's

Austrian town. What people did is they came as immigrants and among other things, they pulled their money and they bought acreage or acreage, they bought a plot in Jewish cemetery, and you paid your cemetery dues to pay for the plot, and then whenever you died twenty or thirty or forty

years later, you have placed in that plot. So that so it's like the village from the old country was transported to this cemetery plot where you would all be together again, no kidding, and there's a there's anyway story never want comes to visit a friend of his who is in the hospital, and very we ill apparently in the conversation in Yiddish is about how you're doing and whether or not you might die, and he the visitor tells the patient in the hospital, you know who died

last week, so and so and tells him. And this person's response is not I'm sorry that so and so died, but oh dear, if I die now, I'm gonna have to lie next to so and so forever. Uh so all the jokes that they made about that, but that's what you did. My mother is not, so to speak, lying next to my grandparents. She is in the order that she died as part of the village, as part of the village. It's not even my mother is village. It's my father's parents village. An irresistible side note here.

My dad died in a car crash when I was twenty three, and my mom died almost two decades later. When my mother was dying, she informed me that she was not going to be buried in my father's family plot in one. Instead, she planned to be buried in southern Jersey. I mean way down the Jersey Turnpike, which, if you don't know it is one of the least fun roads in the country, with her family and away from all of those people who she had fought with

her whole married life. I feel sorry for you, she said, though I knew she didn't. You'll have to visit your parents in two different cemeteries. Any who, Charle malecham Irene Shapiro. Generations come and go and not much changes. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back in a moment. It's a miserable day, cold and wet when Sylvia and Seymour make the swept from Manhattan to the cemetery in Queens.

So we win. And we found those two tombstones, and I looked at them, and you know, I put a requisite rock on the top of each one, which signifies all kinds of things, but the people going by it means someone was there and someone visited. And then we walked back to the entrance and there's a little hot or a house or very small office at the bottom of them where you can go in and ask where it is so and so buried, and they give you

the plot map. And when we went in there, I said, you know, I said to see more on the way back. You know, this was my father's father's plot. My mother's family also had a plot in this cemetery. Um, and my grandmother's Trasia and must be buried there. Let's find out where. So we go into the cemetery. I'm all of a sudden, really, I seem that as I'm telling you the story, I'm a little choking up about it. So we take your breath and out, getting a little

bit teary about it. We go into this office and I said, my grandfather's last name, and and then just suddenly I'm kind of a whim. I said, you know, I'm also interested in a child that might be buried in that same community's burial place. And I know that she was a child about five years old, and that she died in about Remember this is the mid nineteen nineties. The small cemetery office is not equipped with WiFi or internet. In fact, they're in the midst of transferring all their

files from a rolodex a rolodex to a computer. So finding a child with Sylvia's grandfather's name Fuchs is slow going, if not impossible. He looked and looking through names, says, we have a lot of folks this here. What was her first name? Uh, what was the first name? And of course Sylvia doesn't know the child's first name because the child was a secret. And I said, I don't know, but I think maybe it was Sylvia. He looks, he said, yeah, this is Sylvia. Folks that died in nineteen twenty one.

And I said, well, I go back, show me on the map where to look and know what to say. Really, he said, well, you would be able to find it because um children were buried not in a regular plot. They were buried in a corner of plot that their community owned, and they were just buried next to each other. When they have young children, they're buried next to each other. And they didn't have granite headstones. They had limestone headstones.

The children. Yeah, they just the oral grouped in the corner. There's a children's area for young children and newborns. And they're just limestone. Marco's mounds name. And it's been so many years in the rains, the limestone washes off. You'll never find it. So we walk out of that place

and I say more, says, let's go back. Meantime it's the end of the long day, and it's a long walk up there, and I'm kind of blown away by the whole thing, and it's becoming overcast and it looks like it's going to rain, and I said, well, he says, well, we won't find it. He said, let's go. We're going to take a quick break. Sylvia is overcome with a desire to flee the cemetery. She's suddenly exhausted. It has been a very long day. But Seymour and this totally

gets to me. Seymour pushes her. He knows it's probably the only time she'll ever be able to get to the bottom of this question she's always had, so, he insists. So we walk back up, we find that plot. Then we see in the corners there are these like clumps of limestone. Marker's all very washed off, so you really can't read the names. And by this time I'm really feeling undone in the weather, and I just I said,

let's go. That can't do this anymore. And sans, I know, keeping looking, with keeping looking, this is making me cry as well. And all of a sudden, he said, here it is. And it isn't limestone. It's a dark gray, beautiful granites down and it says Sylvia folks daughter official folks. It's my grandfather's child. So when we came over from the trip, I called my aunt Miriam. You know, as I'm telling you the story, it's not easy. I have all goose pimples all over me. I called my aunt Miriam,

and we talked about one thing or another. And I said, Miriam, I was in New York. Yeah I know, I said, Merriwell, I was in New York. I went to the cemetery and I went to look at graves, my mother's grave, and then I went over to where your mother is buried with Rajah is buried, and I found the gravestone for Sylvia folks. And she didn't say anything, so I said, I was I was really upset, Miriam. I said, it's really upset because I thought I had such a close

relationship with with myanpa official. You know, we were so close, and he lied to me. And she said, you know he didn't lie to Merriam. What do you mean you didn't lie? I found with toolstone. She said, you forgot. I said, Marriam, you don't forget it if you have a six year old child that dies. She said, if it's too horrible for you, you forget it. And you know, I thought it'd be easier to tell this story, but it's not. It's a very loving thing that Seymour did.

It was it was I think about it now, I think about it in that moment, and I was that really it was he who said no, no, we're here, let's go. No, no, no, not finished looking the look. And after we discovered it, I remember, you know, I was physically upset and crying, I think, but I remember he was saying to me, tell me what's so upsetting, and I said, um, they lied to me, all those people. The end of the phone call with Aunt Miriam is he forgot as this said, Miriam, tell me, did you

forget you? Did you remember her at all? Uh? Because Miriam was between two and three when her sister Sylvia died, she said, you know, I only have one memory. I remember I was sitting on the floor in the sun porch of the apartment where I lived with my parents. I was sitting on the floor and watching the light patterns of sunshine on the wooden floor of that sun porch, and my mother was sitting in a rocking chair behind me, and all of a sudden I heard my mother crying,

and I became upset because she was crying. And my mother picked me up right away, and she said, mine, dish, fine, dish, mine kin, don't cry my child, And room said, I never saw her cry again, and we don't. Don't tell you that story. I'm thinking how painful it is to not be able to talk about it ever, not be able to cry to your children, or cry to anybody. I'm sure it never goes away if you have a child who's six years old and dies. One thing I

find myself wondering. Sylvia is a person who has spent much of her adult life coming to know the inner workings of her own mind. She's gone on silent meditation rich treats for months, months at a time. She's taught mindfulness all over the world. I remember when I was first getting to know her work. I read a few sentences from one of her books. Allowed to my husband. Why is this so good? I asked him. He answered,

because it's the product of an unconfused mind. How was it that the original conversation or overheard moment way back when with her mother never drifted into Sylvia's unconfused mind in all those periods of silence and contemplation. I mean, one of the things that's interesting to me is there was that overheard conversation or she or she straight out told you and I don't know, and you put it somewhere. I think this is what we do. Um. I'm understanding that more and more as I'm in my own process

of discovering what I knew, what I didn't know. You know about my own family secrets. Um, but where do we put you? Know? You you have lived a very examined life more than most. You're you're a Buddhist, you're a teacher, you're a writer, you're a storyteller, you're a psychologist.

For God to say, and so there was this this piece of knowledge that just kind of wedged itself somewhere while you were busy becoming a psychologist and getting a doctorate and going to school and having four children and raising a family and living a life and going on you know, month long meditation retreats, and it never emerged again.

I've thought several times, and often I think in my life that there's been something very dependable about my psyche, depending on what situation I would be in, I would say about my psyche or about my heart, but where my psyche or my heart did not let me know things at a time that I couldn't have handled them well. And later on I thought to myself, that was so really thoughtful of my mind and my heart to tell me, well, you don't have to take care of this now, we'll

be back when you can handle it. I don't know that you ever finished Anny when I told you that story before. I was surprised to find that still gives me goose pet flush and I still feel like crying about it. So here's a question for you. In that moment in the in the cemetery office, when you were asked the question what was her first name? And out of your mouth came maybe it was Sylvia. Where did that come from? You know, I don't know you were

named for her. I don't know that's what I figured, but you know, um, that's why I offered the name. Had you ever had that thought before before that moment that it came out of your mouth? I think I must have known, really on some level, and I think I'm on the spot there. I don't remember thinking beforehand that she would be Sylvia. But phasebook, what do you think her name was? Coming from Jews who named for people who died. I figured I must be Sylvia and

she must be Sylvia. I mean, this is on the one hand, it's a doozy of a secret. It's also very far back in the reaches of history in terms of a life you know, um, and yet there's some way in which it seems like it has hovered over the course of of your life without knowing it. Um. I remember when you first told me the story. What I was so struck by was that moment where you said, where you just decided today, I'm going to go to the cemetery. We're gonna go, We're gonna take buses and trains,

We're going to get there in the rain. We're gonna have this kind of day. How did you reconcile? I think a lot of people who discover a secret well are are at the same time realizing that they were lied to. Um. There's a betrayal there in some way to exactly the word. I just was thinking that in the moment of finding out uh Semol was really asking me about what particularly was so upsetting to me, and I said, everybody lied, and I asked and they lied,

So it was it was stricken from the record. I think my sense from Miriam, from friends of mine who have had similar stories is that they were so unable to even they were so frightened of even feeling the intensity of their distress. You know what else, I've seen Danny as a meditation guide and confidant for so many people people have come on retreat and uh, when I've

seen them in an individual meetings during a retreat. Retreats are always silent, so they don't get to talk to each other, and since they're asked not to read or to write or two talk during the retreats, they have nothing but their own minds to pay attention to. And it's universally true that when people uh stop stimuli from coming in and spend a lot of the time sitting walking back and forth, trying to just be present in this moment, that they're herd of mind, of psyche or

whatever tells them what they haven't heard before. For me, certainly, it presents a moral inventory. You know, you left this really undone, and you heard so and those feelings and you never such a really I'm happy for that, because h I feel like after the initial oh dear, my mind feels slightly unburdened because I had been keeping the secret from myself and I fixed it. My friend Donna Massini, a poet, wrote a beautiful poem years ago called I

Have the Skull that I've Never forgotten. In it, the poem is a narrator. A woman has just visited the dentist. She said, cavities filled with novacaine. Obviously I As she walks down the street afterwards, she wonders, where does the pain go? She had been numbed, but did that mean she hadn't on some level felt the pain. So that the numbing or the the impossibility or the seeming impossibility of being able to handle something that that painful, doesn't

mean that it disappears. You think of something that startles, hurts the mind that goes ah, I don't think that. And that's really what I'm teaching people these days. That's the all gis of what I'm teaching. It's not to be able to so calm your mind that you rise above your stuff, whether you actually see that it's ephemeral and it's empty and therefore really isn't significant. It's none of those things to be able to recognize this is what's happening. This is a feeling that's arising in me.

This is either it's it's frightening, or it's startling, or it's this thing or it's stadding. And I see that that's happening, and I can stay here. I can stay here and I can know it, and it will pen that I can feel it. I love that you don't have to get out of the way, you can be here. Yeah, I thought that, as I remember years ago, I was saying to a psychotherapy pageant of mine, the same as I would say to a meditation student, don't duck, don't duck.

Oh yeah, you can do this, don't duck. I'd like to thank my guest, Sylvia Borstein, for sharing her words of wisdom with us today. You can find out more about Sylvia and her teachings at Sylvia borstein dot com. Family Secrets as an i Heeart Media production. Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer, Andrew Howard and Tristan McNeil are the audio engineers, and Julie doug This is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share. You can get in touch with us at listener mail

at Family Secrets Podcast dot com. You can also find us on Instagram at Danny Ryder, Facebook at Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter at fam Secrets Pod That's FAMI Secrets Pod. For more about my book, Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot com. My last question is do you wish that you hadn't known? Do you wish that you would never have found out? Oh? No, I knew you were going to say that, but I didn't want to answer it for you. Um oh no, no, no, no. I like knowing. I like knowing