Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Tina and Ann met as journalists covering a capital murder trial, 15 years ago. Tina has been a tv and radio personality and has three children. Ann has a master's in counseling and has worked in the jail system, was a director of a battered woman's shelter/rape crisis center, worked as an assistant director at a school for children with autism, worked with abused kids and is currently raising her three children who have autism. She also is autistic and was told would not graduate high school, but as you can see, she has accomplished so much more. The duo share their stories of overcoming and interview people who are making it, despite what has happened. This is more than just two moms sharing their lives. This is two women who have overcome some of life's hardest obstacles. Join us every Wednesday as we go through life's journey together. There is purpose in the pain and hope in the journey.
Real Talk with Tina and Ann
The Weight of Silence: Family Secrets and Identity
Ann and returning guest Denise Bard explore how family secrets shape our identity, relationships, and sense of self, inspired by the Mariska Hargitay documentary "My Mom, Jane." They share personal experiences with secrets kept from them that affected their core identities and discuss the trauma of carrying others' shame.
• According to research, 97% of families keep some type of secret, with those related to identity, trauma, or betrayal causing the most psychological damage
• Secrets create emotional isolation, especially for children who feel they're carrying family shame
• When someone tells you something didn't happen when you saw it with your own eyes, it creates a form of "crazy-making" that causes you to doubt your perception
• Finding out family secrets later in life can cause profound identity shifts, forcing you to re-evaluate who you thought you were
• Breaking the cycle of secrecy is possible by choosing transparency with your own children in age-appropriate ways
• Secrets can be inherited—not just events, but the silence, shame, and survival behaviors
• The healing process is valid however it unfolds, and sometimes telling the truth will break something that needed to break
Remember that there is purpose in our pain and hope in our journey, even when that journey includes uncovering difficult truths about our families and ourselves.
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Anne and I'm Denise. Well, for all of you that might not remember Denise, this is Denise Bard. She used to be a regular and I am so glad to have her back on. I'm very excited because this is an episode and a half. I recently watched the Mariska Hargitay documentary and it touched me on so many levels. If you have not watched it my Mom, jane, a 2024 HBO documentary directed by Mariska Hargitay. The movie depicts her relationship with her family, especially her mom, who was Jane Mansfield, a very famous Hollywood iconic actress from the 50s and 60s, and she tragically died in a car accident with all three of her kids in the backseat, and Mariska was one of them and she was only three at the time. I'm not giving anything away from the movie. This is where actually the story begins. Mariska in this movie really seeks to understand her mom and who she really was, outside of the Hollywood version of her, and the family secrets that shaped Mariska's identity.
Speaker 2:I would recommend this to everybody. Have you seen it, denise, that? But I did get to watch some of the clips and it is it's like I've been waiting for it to come out on more platforms so I could see the whole thing, because it really does draw you in.
Speaker 1:It does and I plan on watching it again. I mean it really it spoke to me on so many levels and I don't like to watch really hard stories where it makes me feel too much. You know. I mean, I normally just walk away, turn the TV off if I start feeling something. I don't know why I'm like that, but sometimes they just hit too deep and I can't watch. But this one I had to watch from beginning to end and will probably, like I said, watch it again because it's my girl, you know, it's Mariska, and there are a few celebrities where I feel like I know them and they're my friend and she's one of those people. And I've been watching SVU for years and I watch it because I relate and I feel like she is that person who validates me and she helps us feel heard and she helps us feel believed and I think somebody who helps give you that voice is one of the most important things that you can do for somebody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's right. She is relatable, especially like if you've been in positions of the keeping secrets. It's as if you're talking to a dear friend or listening to a friend. You might not have the same story, but there's something about it that you know, and I've always said this we might not share the same story, but there's such a relatable thing and when you do, it almost opens you up and makes those fears of containment, I don't want to say disappear, but allows you to be more vulnerable because you have somebody else across from you or like she is, that you know. Wow, you know she's vulnerable. I feel that you know yeah it gives you permission.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:She was sexually assaulted and they do talk about that in the movie and it also makes me, helps me, feel closer to her. Knowing that about her. It helps me understand her mission on SBU and the movement Joyful Heart Foundation for survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse. Everything resonated with me during this movie, but the part that hit me in the gut, I think, was how the family secrets were woven throughout the entire movie. And I think one of the biggest killers of relationships is secrets and in this case, family secrets, and the things we don't talk about, you know, the things that sit in the corners of our family history, collecting dust and shaping us years after they happened, the thing that we still don't talk about with some of our family because they still act like that didn't happen. And I asked Denise because she has had such a special place on the podcast and understands what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I grew up where and the secrets, especially now, is you know they were secrets to me, but found out that they weren't such secret after all because other people knew of them. So it it changes the game when they're they're known by other people. So are they really a secret?
Speaker 1:A secret to you. Mm hmm, I mean that's not OK. That means that there were more than one people that were. They were keeping this secret to you. Mm-hmm, I mean that's not okay. That means that there were more than one people that were. They were keeping this secret from you and it was intentional that they were all collectively in on something against you. Secret's the kind where you grow up by adults long ago, like you said, behind closed doors and the truth was kept from you, regardless of their reason. I mean, why do you think secrets are kept from kids or other people in the family?
Speaker 2:I think that there's a number of things. I think they're kept because it exposes those people to who they really are. In my case there was a lot of abuse. You don't want anybody else on the outside. I always call it a facade Is outside. Well, I had to keep the secrets on the inside.
Speaker 2:My grandmother would always say nobody needs to know what goes on behind these doors, it's family related, it has nothing. So you keep these facades on and a lot of people look at you and have no idea. They think this is great or whatever. But the truth is something different on the inside and those people who are making you keep those secrets don't want anybody to know that because they are viewed in a different light. You know, in public they are not what they are in private. So I feel like a lot of times there's the whole adoption thing, and I'm not personally adopted so I don't know that I'd ever be able to speak on it. I know a lot of times parents choose to not tell their child either at all, which I don't know. I'm not sure that I would agree upon doing that, but I don't live in someone's life where they choose to keep it until a certain age where they feel like the child would understand.
Speaker 1:Adoption is a really big one, you know. I mean I was adopted and a lot of secrets were kept and all five of my kids are adopted and I'll talk more about that later. All five of my kids are adopted and I'll talk more about that later. But I really do want to emphasize that I wanted the truth to be out. I wanted them to know age appropriate and my kids have always known that they were adopted. I've never kept that from them and I've also let them know their stories and you know, if somebody doesn't tell them, then somebody else is going to tell them and they're going to rewrite the story for them and I honestly think that they should hear the truth as it is, as it really is. And if they find out later something so horrific or identity changing I guess that then that changes their relationship with you, because you weren't honest. Yeah, and I never wanted to keep things from my kids. I always let them know from the get-go who they were with the information that I had. You know Right.
Speaker 1:According to the Journal of Family Psychology, family secrets are common, with up to 97% of families keeping some type of secret. Research shows that secrets related to identity, trauma or betrayal can have the most damaging psychological effects, often leading to anxiety, depression and strained relationships, which absolutely A study by psychologists and I know I'm not going to say this right, but Vangelisti and Coghlan found that secrecy within families often leads to feelings of shame, confusion and distrust, especially in children. Why are these secrets kept, like you were trying to talk about? Sometimes they're meant to protect, like you said, of themselves, that person. Other times they're about avoiding shame or deflecting guilt. So often the silence is about protecting the image of the very person who doesn't want you to know what they did to you or to someone else in the family. But no matter the reason, the impact is real and sometimes, especially if it is a child, the secret is kept so the child is not hurt, like in Mariska's case. Do you think, as a child grows, that they should know when a secret has to do with them?
Speaker 2:I can only talk on personal experience For me, as I'm 50 years old now, I am continuing to learn some of the secrets that even I didn't know exist, and so I think that some of the secrets that I had or that were kept from me were traumatic. However, I remember bits and pieces, and so I never get to put the story together and put closure to it, because there are still secrets being kept, no matter what they are. I don't know the appropriate age, you know. I think it depends on the secret. I guess this is such a tricky, tricky situation, right? If you're for me, you know it was traumatic. What happened to me, I don't think anybody was going to tell me at that age, even though there were a lot of people who knew, right, they didn't understand that I understood so much. So now, in my 50s, you know, I'm still understanding what it was. But as I'm older now, I'm frustrated because that part of the secret has still been kept and I'm still back there. It's almost like you're stuck in that time.
Speaker 1:When those secrets touch the very foundation of who you are, they are never small, never, no matter how small you think that they are. Honestly, I think once something becomes a secret, it's no longer small. It instantly becomes big, it instantly becomes something. And maybe it wouldn't have if it would have been in the open.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's an emotional toll of silence. Not all secrets are meant to be malicious, but when they affect your identity, your safety, your story, they become harmful. But when they affect your identity, your safety, your story, they become harmful. Secrets can lead to emotional fragmentation, where your sense of self is splintered by half-truth, causing you to know or not know what is true and what is not true or what is not true. They can create emotional isolation too, especially for children who feel they're carrying the weight of family shame and boy do I know that. And most importantly, secrets can be inherited, not just events, but the silence, the shame, the survival behavior. Yeah, there's all of that and then some.
Speaker 1:For me personally, yeah, I want to touch on a couple of these. I can relate with the emotional isolation. I was that kid who carried the weight of a family secret and I was told to hold it in and I was not allowed to tell it affected me to my core and affected my relationship with the person until they died and I was never able to let it go. I've often asked the question if I forgave that person, because I know forgiveness is so important and I'm a Christian and I know that that's important. That's not a question that I even think that I can answer for some reason, and I'm not sure why. But what happens when you are that kid that is told to keep a secret, or an adult who was afraid to tell something because of fear is the manipulator and survival is the motivation.
Speaker 2:I always call fear a prison. You are imprisoned with everything that is kept secret because it is the fear I would be told all the time. For me it was again we don't tell people what happens behind closed doors. Or the fear to keep the secret was if you tell someone, you're going to get hurt. We need to keep this secret. You don't want them to laugh at you. You don't want them to tell you you're crazy. You don't want it was always something that I was told would happen to me if I told the secret.
Speaker 2:It's as if you know when you have childhood abuse, especially sexual abuse, you know they're told to keep quiet because somebody else is going to get hurt if you say something. So the manipulation is there to scare you that if you say something, somebody else is going to get hurt. And again, like survival, like I had to keep secrets. How am I going to be able to survive if I didn't? Those fears, the threats of keeping secrets, is what really silences you in that prison. But it's something that you take with you as you get older, like as I'm older. Now I'm like I don't know if I'm going to ever find the answers to some of those secrets and this emotional toll from you know, inherited and family. It's a cycle. I didn't know that other families weren't like that.
Speaker 1:Well, the events normally are bad enough, yeah, but then secrets add an extra layer to everything.
Speaker 1:It just makes it so much worse. And the other part of this is what you talked about with secrets being inherited. I can say that for you know. A long time I held on to the secrets that were done before me and I felt the power behind them until family members passed away. And then I felt, and after they passed away I felt free to say them or at least allow them to be a little bit more out in the open, and I even got a dub tattooed on my arm after my mom died. I'll just say it. I mean, it was my mom who kept a lot of the secrets, and my adopted mom. After my dad died, some pretty horrific things happened in my family when I was 11, 12 years old and it honestly could have be a documentary, and I was made to believe that I had to take those secrets to my grave like she did. But then I realized those secrets were not mine.
Speaker 2:I didn't do anything wrong, so I was not going to own their shame. Yeah, there's so many generational secrets in my family and there was a point in my life where it was. I was searching for the answers for everybody else and I stopped doing that and I thought no, that's you know, that's your closet to have to figure out. I can't do that for you, right? And yeah, it's freeing when you, when you realize that and I'll say this to my grandmother passed away and it was almost and I hate to say this because there were good things, not a lot, but the abuses that came from my grandmother and my mother were quite different, but it was freeing as well.
Speaker 2:I was able to then not be afraid to be me. I don't know if that you know. There you go because you were, you know, holding on to everything and finally, yeah, finally, I can share things and not worry and have that fear. You know my mother's still living, but we have something in place where she's not in contact. There's no contact. So in our family and everything that we have she doesn't exist and therefore that also, you know, a judge made sure that that would never happen again. So I can't take on their burden of whatever their secrets were.
Speaker 1:And the shame behind secrets can be devastating and can affect someone's entire identity, and I think the secrets in my family shaped me more than the things that were out in the open, and that's a huge thing to say and it's a hard thing to admit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, when you don't have answers, when people pass away and they take that to their grave, so that piece of me is never going to be complete and I wasn't adopted. So I can only say this is what I would imagine it to be. When you are a person who is not with the biological family, so you're always questioning who am I? Right, it's the who am I? And for me I still have that question.
Speaker 2:You know, I didn't know my paternal, really my paternal side of my family. I just reconnected with my father and I got answers to secrets that were kept. This was like a whole other level for me, and so it made me question even more oh my God, who am I Like? I know that sounds weird. Like you said, how is it that you don't know your identity? Right, but it is because the more secrets that come out to you, you're I don't understand. It's almost like it also validates all of those feelings of isolation and validates all those those emotions of feeling alone. It's a lot of validating, too, when secrets come out, as horrible as they may be and as hard as they may be. There's a validation in it as well.
Speaker 1:I mean it's really hard when you believe for a really long time that you're one thing and then all of a sudden it's like somebody puts another piece in the puzzle but now the puzzle is completely different and it will never look the same again. So it's like what do you do with that piece? That's been missing for a really long time and you've been okay with it, You've been living without it and all of a sudden now it changes the whole perspective. And you touched on something else, which it really is our perspective of our childhood. It's how we saw it, it's what we remember, what we believe, and there could be three different kids in the same family and they remember it completely different. And it's because sometimes, you know, a parent is different to every single child. But sometimes it really does come down to how each child sees what happened, and especially when there's dysfunction. So it's really interesting to see everybody's different perspective and the identity shift that happens. Some people need to know every single detail to find peace and some people don't, and it's okay. I mean, neither way is wrong. But when your identity changes in a moment, which has happened to me quite a few times, it deserves to be honored. And when your truth finally surfaces, it deserves space.
Speaker 1:And when your story was shaped without your consent, you have every right to rewrite it on your own terms. That is what this movie with Mariska, I think, was about and that's what I would want to ask her anyway, if I ever got the chance. But someone else told her story and she wanted the right to tell her own story and I think there could be a line of people who want to tell your narrative to hide the truth. But in Mariska's case, she did an entire investigation to get the truth behind her family's secrets, to know her own identity, and it ripped her apart for a little while. It broke her, but she wanted to know who she was. And you know, Denise, you wrote a book about your own narrative. Did that help you find out who you were?
Speaker 2:It definitely helped me start the path. It definitely helped me to see that story that I've rewritten for myself, because I was finally able to share what I kept secret as far as what was happening at home, at home. So my book, the 32nd Moments and the Women who Raised Me, was about the teachers who, unbeknownst to them, raised me because at home I was facing these abuse, this abuse, and I was kept. I was to keep secrets, and so that did help me to notice that I wasn't the story that was written for me. I've become the story I've written for myself. So, yeah, it started on the right path and, as I said, I'm still learning secrets. Maybe that'll be another book, I don't know. And, as you said, with her telling her own story, there are so many stories about me out there. It depends on who's telling it Interesting, and this for me is I'm going to tell my story. I'm still learning about who I am. I just want to put this out there too, as I've written the book and more people have read it that knew me growing up. That's where I've learned the most, because all of a sudden, the answers or the secrets that they were keeping have been exposed to me, and I think you also have to think about who the story's coming from. Are they reliable sources? Do you feel like they are?
Speaker 2:But I had was the daughter of a couple, an older couple, who used to babysit me. You know, do you know how you got there? And I'm like, yeah, you babysat me or they babysat me. She said, no, the authorities brought you.
Speaker 2:The secret continued because I found out and I know I'm sharing right here, so I hope you don't mind my mother was 16 when she had me. My father was 18. He wasn't in the picture. Within. My family found out as an adult that my grandmother had had a child at a wedlock and she was forced to give this child up. Just found this out about seven years ago, learning that and then coming and hearing this new story as well. As she was very promiscuous and the people that she was promiscuous with she can get away with anything, especially with the system, so I was definitely a pawn in it and so those secrets are now coming out and I'm learning this and there's the identity crisis. You're like what is going on? So when, when one secret is told, there is a flutter of all the things? I just learned some stuff, probably in the last two months, that I was like are you kidding me? So then it makes you question everything about yourself. I mean, I know my truth, but it's added stuff to this mystery of who I am.
Speaker 1:It's a mystery you know I just found out things about me in the last week I'll even say 48 hours that I did not know. And you know I knew pieces, parts of it, but I didn't know the underlying truth.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And fortunately I know a lot more now than I did a couple days ago. But it's not easy when that happens, and I loved your word when you're a pawn, I mean it's like we're a human being. Yeah, upon. I mean it's like we're a human being. We were a child and we needed to be recognized for who we are, for who we were, and we're just not somebody that could be pushed under the rug or the story not be important for you, for us to really know what really happened to us. I just think that that's horrific.
Speaker 1:And I also took something from what you said about how you know it really comes down to everybody's perspective in writing your story, what we said, when people want to write our story and it's from how they knew us. Like, I know that the teachers in your life would have told your story one way, and you know people when you were in in your life would have told your story one way, and you know people when you were in the group home would have told it another way, and you know your mom would tell it another way and vice versa. I mean everybody has these different versions of what worst things. My dad died when I was 11, and the worst thing happened to me, actually after my dad died, to compound what happened by the adults around me, and those secrets were kept all the way to the graves of the people that were responsible for it. With that said, I was going into seventh grade and I did not even know who I was or what was going on and my dad was gone. There was so much stuff, abuse going on in my home. I was very quiet, I was very like just searching. I didn't even know how to be anymore. And I was in seventh grade, going into the worst time of your life, you know, because nobody likes middle school, everybody's already awkward.
Speaker 1:Yes, and there I was, you know, and I fast forward many decades later ran into my science teacher and he had me that year, the year that I was the most lost in my life. And I'm like, oh hi, you know, you were my favorite teacher and all this stuff. I mean because he really was. I had him written all over my science book I have a crush on so-and-so. I won't say his name, but he was really cute, so anyway. But he says to me back oh yeah, you were the one that was really troubled. I remember that about you. You had a lot of problems.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Hmm, yeah, you know, is that how? That's what you want to do? I mean, here we are, decades later. I'm an adult, a very successful adult. Okay, I mean, I guess this is my time to be able to say you know what?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I made it anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was. It's like you want to tell them, yeah, I was troubled, but the secret is why you know they don't know why. Yeah, I was troubled. Because you don't even understand or know why I was troubled differently or whatever.
Speaker 1:I think maybe I might have shared with him and I don't even know, because I don't really share that much for just anything. I mean, we do the podcast. I always believe in helping others and I will tell my story if I know for sure that it will help somebody else. But I'm not going to tell it, just to tell it, yeah, just to make you think of me differently than you just did.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's so funny that you say that because I think I spent many years trying to do that to the people who I thought looked at me as that troubled child and I don't even know for sure that they did, but they were the ones in middle school. I, you know, was the most difficult and I was difficult then, but there were reasons. I wasn't the troubled child that you think I was. I mean I was, but not for the reasons you think I was a pawn in someone else's story, Doesn't matter how much I tell them, they're going to believe what they want to believe and I can't change that. So I learn and I'm working on accepting that and saying you know what you're missing out on who I am today.
Speaker 1:I spent years because, because of the secrets and because of the problems that I had when I was a kid, I didn't go the great, a great direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, and I got lost. I made a lot of really bad choices. I ended up with wrong people. I ended up having more abuse in my younger years and you know, that's what taught me how to be different and how to look for different. I can't even believe I was that person back then, but you know, it's just really sad that even then people tried to write my narrative and if I could have told them what had happened up to this point and I was just. You know, sometimes people are just seeking and they're just looking to find their own selves.
Speaker 1:I was as broken as could be and, yes, I handled it badly the first 20, almost 30 years of my life. I handled it horribly, but I also didn't have a lot of direction and the people that raised me didn't give me the direction that I needed. I did not have those parents around me to help me, tell me the right way to go. They just I didn't and they made the bad choices. They were the ones that.
Speaker 1:How can you look to people who made so many bad choices and ask them for help? You can't do that. I mean, that adds a whole nother layer of problem, which comes down to trust. You know, there are so many parts to finding out the depths of a lie or a secret, and what we're talking about here is grief, the loss of what we thought was the truth, and there are so many rippling effects. When a secret is uncovered and the identity within yourself is changed. It can tear us apart, it can tear families apart, and the other thing that happens, which we just kind of touched on, is that trust is lost.
Speaker 1:Trust and when you're taught not to trust your own memories, I think that was the biggest loss for me as a child. I lost my dad. I lost my mom because of the secrets and the lies that she kept. I lost trust and I lost my adult relationships and I was a small child. I learned young not to trust anyone and I think the biggest thing I lost was the loss of trust, and it wasn't my dad and it was my dad, but it led to the worst losses and I stopped believing who my mom was. I stopped believing what she told me as a pretty young kid and I no longer believed what I saw around me. What was was doubted. The loss of innocence was gone, and that's huge it is. It is we. Loss of innocence was gone and that's huge.
Speaker 2:It is. It is. We talked about grief just now, for my grief, when I learned of a secret recently. My mother was a drug addict. I was in kinship care with my grandmother. I found out that my father never knew where I was, that I wasn't in kinship. He didn't know who had custody of me. That was a big secret even to him.
Speaker 2:But finding out the control that she had, the grief that was there was I could have had a different life if she didn't have control. So therefore, could the system have worked for me? We all know the system's broken like, yeah, but in my mind, in my mind was I had to grieve the fact that I could have had something. You know, I believed for a long time that I didn't deserve it or it just was never meant for me. It wasn't meant for me. But then to find out that secret, that no, she manipulated the system. And then when you talk about trust, that's the hard part, because when you're learning secrets, who can you trust? Who's trustworthy? Yeah, it's hard to know who you are when there are questions that linger. But somebody has the truth to that, somebody has the answer to that. And for me, recently I was told someone had passed away a couple years ago. Who has answers to some of my questions? But they told me he died and he didn't. He just doesn't want to be found and the people don't want to tell me. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:So there you go. There's a secret out there that there's an answer to it and everybody is avoiding to tell me. And I'm 50 years old, I'm like OK, I think I'm old enough now, no matter how traumatic it was, because I've gone through trauma. I have been through trauma. I have out. You know, I've lived through things people said I never should have. How horrific can it be if they're still keeping that a secret?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I don't even know what I would do with that and the secret that they're keeping. How much bigger could it be than everything that you already know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly that was a shocker to get Something I got to work through.
Speaker 1:There was something that you said about that you trust yourself. I think that there's another layer to that, because I think when and I know this personally when someone tells you something that didn't happen when you actually saw it with your eyes, it's crazy making and it really does make you doubt yourself. It's like all of a sudden you're like wait a second and you don't trust your own self. Now that's the ultimate loss. I think too, you know, when you can't even trust yourself and silence creates fear, and that's an inner child killer.
Speaker 2:It is, and even it doesn't matter how old you are when you have faced abuse, and then you see that abuser or you see that somebody else and you know that they're telling somebody else a different story. And there's a part of me that, okay, I just had this happen to me and I'm just going to divulge it. My father's wife and I had a disagreement on a lot of things and when I went to talk to her about a small thing that I thought was what we were going to discuss from two years ago, she, brought up 30 years ago, continued to tell me these things that she was the martyr and I wasn't. And I tell you, when you question yourself, is you know she called me a drama queen? When somebody else looks at you and it's almost as if like it didn't happen and what it did was.
Speaker 2:It triggered me back to that 14 year old who was trying to be believed. And so you start to question yourself again. You know the truth, you know what happened. There's no like, oh, did I make that story up? You know that that happened to you. But when somebody else comes in and ripples that, you start to question things all over again and it's almost like you have to go back through that process of who am I now? Like this is me. I'm not that story that people were still making of me. The identity gets shaken a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, what about the loss of identity which we have touched on throughout, you know, different times of this podcast? When the truth unravels us, the ones that fracture who we are, which we're talking about here, the ones that twist your foundation and make you question everything, and those secrets really matter, I don't care what anybody says. They really matter. Mariska was made to think she was one thing, but she wasn't, and I've had those deep uphirds and I've had lies so deep I didn't know who I was. And you know what I think can even be worse is when the people holding the truth, or the one outing the truth to you, telling you they really possibly because this happened to me they dropped a bomb and they walked out the door, basically without a care in the world that they had just left me, as if a tornado had just burst my world and I couldn't even breathe and they didn't even care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep, I've had this happen again, like most recently, and it was nothing to them Like oh yeah, by the way, but to me it was like hold on, this is just like another layer, like wait, stop, I've got to process it. When I learned some of these secrets that were being held from me and then they told me it was really a whirlwind. It was really a whirlwind, especially the you know, the one girl who said you know, yeah, like my parents will say, foster you. And she was like they really tried to keep you. And I'm like stop. And then she disappeared, she ghosted me. I haven't been able to, but you're I'm left with that and you're like how do I even process it? It's a whole processing thing when you're trying to take in such a huge secret.
Speaker 1:It's a whole different layer, when the person who had been keeping this secret, they've been holding it and then they just drop it and they're just like see ya, it's not a big deal to me, it can be very devastating to the other person. See ya, it's not a big deal to me, it can be very devastating to the other person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been trying to process some of the things that I've learned over the last month and it's been difficult. It's been, and I'm in therapy, thank God, because I don't know that I would have managed through some of it. I mean, I'm still processing it all. When you grow up with these secrets, they identified you Like you're the pawn in the story. Right, I'm a pawn in their story and so, however, I fit into their story within these secrets and within these things. That's who I've been, but I'm not you know.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's devastating absolutely when silence becomes your survival. It's devastating absolutely.
Speaker 1:When silence becomes your survival, there is something wrong. And to our listeners, is there a story in your family that's gone untold? Are there pieces of yourself you've only recently discovered? Whatever you find beneath the surface, let me tell you this it doesn't make you less. Don't let their shame become yours. Once something is hidden, it becomes big, and don't let it be the weight that you carry.
Speaker 1:And I just had recently, like I said, something told me and I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it. Yet I don't know what I'm going to do with it, and that's okay, and I think that we need time to sit in it. Sometimes, some way, I need time to process, to figure it out, and I'm a very compartmentalized person and I have this and this and this, you know, and it's really been good for me, it's really helped me get to my next day to be that joyful person, to be that person that can hear something earth shattering, and then put that down and go help my kids do what they need, and that's what I've had to do. Yeah, and people have said to me oh my gosh, you know how. Well, I think that that's really important how. And you know, and we're not all made that way. We're not all made.
Speaker 1:We're not all able to be able to put it down, to put that secret down, that bomb that just somebody important I mean it can really consume us, but it's also really important for it not to, and for us to go still, do our things, but come back, revisit, okay, you know, sit in it for a little bit and go live sitting in it for a little bit because I'm telling you it will continue to grow and change and do what it needs to while we're living, and I think that that's really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you, so for me I'm opposite. I'm opposite. I really kind of it consumed me and it was really hard for me to take that next step Like I didn't. It was almost like you're walking and all of a sudden you hit a curb and you can't even figure out how to get your foot up on the curb to even walk further. And so that happens. It definitely happens Again.
Speaker 2:I'm a big opponent for therapy because I know, I know, I think I would have been still stuck, and I still am. I mean, like I said, you know, 50 years old and I'm learning all these things that people knew and no one told me. And so I have two kids. Obviously they're older, but I have a special needs son, and so his life doesn't stop because I'm thrown a shell. But at the same point I'm navigating that being a parent and holding on to the weight of these secrets that were just revealed to me. But you're right, you can't live in them. This is something for me. I'm so tired of the secrets, I'm so tired of not letting other people see who I am because of the things that happened to me.
Speaker 2:Obviously, we don't always divulge everything, but when we keep the secrets that were even told to us like it's this, everything is a secret. We're then not authentically ourselves. You know, like I said, like I didn't know the reason why my father wasn't allowed near me. Say this my father was a drug addict as well. It's glad you know it was a thing that he should not have been near me. Nobody ever told me why. Nobody said he was being threatened, nobody would ever. But it's also one of those things where you know I'm like, oh my God, like did that really happen? You're almost shocked. The family secrets we have family secrets that didn't just affect me, but I've been the only one to say, hey, you know what that happened, that happened. And so there's also, when you're able to do that, it's a strength. It's scary, it's absolutely scary and overwhelming to not hold on to your secrets. But yeah, it's hard when somebody throws the bombshell and you still have to live life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there were a couple big ones and I, you know, I want to tell you something. If you are still carrying, those secrets.
Speaker 1:Decades later, it's time to put them down, and the emotional toll of silence is heavy and it chips away at your sense of truth, your identity and sometimes even your sanity, as you carry what was never meant to be yours anyway. And you know, I want to say this because I believe, and I'm going to tell you why, because, as I mentioned earlier, I have five kids, all adopted, and I was adopted and I made a vow no secrets is knowing the truth in age-appropriate ways. Like I said, I didn't want anything to be hidden and it's kind of funny because my son, even now, at eight years old, still asks what was it like when I was in your belly? And he knows that he was adopted, he knows who his biological mom is, he knows all of it, but it's really important to him for me to be that person that carried him. I don't know why it just is, and so we kind of pretend with the facts at hand.
Speaker 1:And he absolutely knows, and I'll say that to him and he'll say I know, but I just want to do this. I'll say that to him and he'll say I know, but I just want to do this, and that's fine. You know, it's the narrative that he wants to play out and for some reason it's really important to him. And I had to dig for the truth. I had to and I don't want my kids to have to dig for the truth and some things, like we said, they were taken to their graves and other things were outed in a way that it was wrong. The way that they were outed and that kind of control over someone else's truth, it's not protection when somebody goes to their grave with it, that's erasure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have to say this, when you were talking about you know, never keeping secrets from your kids. I kept my childhood a secret from my husband of course my kids.
Speaker 2:My son has autism, so he'd never know. But I kept my childhood a secret from friends not very close. I mean. My close friends are a few that knew, but everybody else I kept a secret from friends not very close. I mean my close friends are a few that knew, but everybody else I kept a secret from. I kept a secret from my husband because I didn't want him to see me as the past. I wanted him to see me as the present. And I kept the secret from my you know daughter. Just because there is that part of shame when you've had so many traumatic things happen to you, you're always keeping a secret. And I want to say that I didn't lie, I just never said anything.
Speaker 2:And so, as I've, she's 21 now. My husband does know things happen to me. He chooses that he doesn't want to know specific because it's hard for him. But he knows now that, yeah, I didn't have a. I mean, he had an idea. He's never liked my family when they were in our lives. But my daughter it's interesting because, as she has known now the truths, she said something to a friend of mine she's like my mom's, stronger than I ever thought she was, and so there's something in that because it also when you are able to be you and say, yeah, these things happen to me, or be able to tell some of the secrets, it's amazing. My daughter always kept saying, oh, you're so strong, you're so strong. And then when she heard some of the things and I didn't tell her till she was well, actually this year is when she found out and like it's amazing because they see you in a you know already as this, I guess, the superhero. I like to think that that's what she always thought me of and now I'm an extra superhero.
Speaker 1:That's cool.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, yeah, but it's. That's the thing too. It's like, you know, how do you? You don't want her to ever have to keep secrets about anything, and we've we've raised our kids that way. You know, my mother called social services on me and when they came, I said, you know to my kids well, my daughter, I'm like there's nothing for you to hide. You tell everything, answer everything. There are no secrets. I remember saying that there are no secrets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see, that's really important. And I was told don't tell, no matter what, don't tell.
Speaker 1:Yeah me too, and we deserve the right to grieve, we deserve the right for that history to be a part of us and we deserve for it to shape us.
Speaker 1:You know, moving forward, and I can tell you you don't want to be on your deathbed like my mom was when she was dying and in hospice and made some really horrible choices to keep secrets hidden, secret's hidden, and I did find out later and you know I don't want to be that person where I'm actually having somebody else to go in my house and grab things that I need to hide so nobody can find out, so I can take it to my grave and fortunately somebody did tell me that they did that and I still don't know what was on those papers. And I I have an idea, yeah, but you know it isn't important. Maybe and maybe not, maybe maybe not. You know, I mean that's a question. Is it going to change? When I found out the dad that I had thought was my dad all those years, in a second on a phone call, found out he wasn't. Does that change me? I?
Speaker 1:don't know and I don't think I should let it change me because somebody decided to drop a bomb. I'm still me. I'm still who I am. I may never know what's on those papers, I may never know which I did because of DNA and you know all that cool stuff. And my brother came up in Ancestry, dna or whatever yeah, ancestrycom, and we were so closely matched. It was crazy how close we were matched and he doesn't look far from me and we never met. We chose not to. Well, he did, really, but that's okay. Is it going to change me because we didn't meet? Because the history behind us is too hard for us to come together and it has nothing to do with either one of us. It has to do with the decisions that were made before us in the other generation, and that's okay. I got to meet some people on my dad's side and the things that I found out about him was a horrible person. He was a horrible person, a really, really bad man. Does that change me? No, it doesn't change me. It actually makes me better because, in spite of all of those things, look at who I am and look at what I've become, and that's what this podcast has always been about. This is what the platform is always about.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter what's happened to you or what people have done to you. You still have the right to be who you are and not allow it to. You know, get inside. You know. That's just. I'm just putting that out there because it's been.
Speaker 1:Really, those kinds of things can be really hard. Are secrets protecting or are they a prison? What secrets shaped you, even if you didn't know it at the time? Were you carrying secrets before you even understood what you were carrying? Carrying secrets before you even understood what you were carrying? When fear becomes the language that you speak and survival becomes your only mode of living, grief is not just losing people. It's about losing illusions of who you are, of everything about you. To anyone carrying the weight of a family secret, especially one that was never yours to keep, we see you. To those still navigating the grief of learning the truth late, we hear you To the ones wondering if they should ask or let it go. You get to choose. Your healing is valid, however it unfolds. And to anyone afraid that telling the truth will break something. Maybe it will, but maybe that thing needed to break so you could finally breathe.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Yes, yes. One of the things and I'll respect my father for this is that he said you have no idea the cycles that you have managed to break despite all the secrets that were kept. I appreciate that, despite the secrets, I have been able to break all these generational curses, if you will, or cycles of abuse or whatever it is. So even though you have secrets, like you said, it doesn't change who you are. Maybe it makes you a little bit stronger, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think so. It's what you do with it. You know, I knew that all the pieces weren't there. I've always known that there's been secrets. My family was all about secrets. Oh yeah, I was made to keep them as well and I've decided to be different and I've decided not to tell secrets and I want the freedom I mean there is so much. It is a prison If you choose to live, and I know people that they live by their lies and their secrets. Yeah, they are constantly trying to cover up and trying to remember their lies and their, you know.
Speaker 2:They catch up with you. Yeah, it catches up with you. You can't keep the story straight. If it's a lie, it's going to constantly change. If it's the truth, it stays the same.
Speaker 1:No matter how hard it is. I think you just need to be honest, and if you're honest from the very beginning, it isn't something that has snowballed and gotten bigger and bigger through the years and that you finally need to tell. You know, just be honest from the very beginning, and I know that there's lots of people that it's too late because the secrets have been kept and you know, maybe it's just time to tell it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just sit the person down and let them know. This is what I did. It would have been really nice if my mom would have said, my adopted mom would have said to me I did this.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry and I'm sorry. Do you know what that would have done? I mean, I didn't hold her hand when she passed away because there was so much between us, there was so much hurt between us, and I know I'm autistic and I know that I don't touch people anyway, but I had that kind of relationship with her that I really never touched her and I really believe that it had to do with the way she handled everything after my dad passed away and I wasn't included in the story, the narrative of what was going on behind the scenes, and I was told something different. And that's not okay, no, just not. No. And so it does affect you. And maybe I would have held her hand at the end, maybe it wouldn't have been a nurse that held her hand at the end instead of me, and I just watched her.
Speaker 1:And then, as I walked out the door and then I did have a balloon that had been attached to her bed and I was with one of my kids she was pretty young at the time and she decided to stay with me while she was passing away. After she passed away, my daughter and I we walked out, we got in the car. I had the balloon that was attached to my mom's bed and I got out to get gas. And I am not kidding you, the balloon was secured in that car. It was secured, it wasn't getting out. It forced its way into the front and out of the car and it just went up.
Speaker 2:And it took all of the struggles with it from you like was it a release?
Speaker 1:my daughter and I just went because it was not a normal. Okay, the ball, the balloon flew out of the car because we opened the door. It wasn't like that. Yeah, it was something else. It it was so strange and then I had to get. I instantly went and I got the faith and the dove releasing, because that's what I felt. Yeah, I have been able to be me and be more of who I am and live free since she passed away, and you and I have talked about this before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have, yeah, and it's really a shame that when even the secrets go down into somebody's grave and you're never even going to know the answers, you get to the point where it's okay because I can finally live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, like I said, I'm a seeker, I like to. I want the truths to be built, but at the same point, like you said, if you have somebody who took them with them, you have to come to the accept that you're not going to know that truth. Yeah, I had to let it go. There's some of us who I don't know. I just want to know. I just want to complete myself. That's how I always felt. If I just complete myself with whatever I know, there's many secrets still out there and it's not going to just because a puzzle gets complete, it doesn't mean it tells the whole story.
Speaker 1:No, and you know, and that's really important, and we can keep trying to, like I did the puzzle analogy earlier. I mean you throw another piece on there and it changes the whole story of the puzzle. What story do we want? And that's really up to us. Do I want to take in what somebody told me about my dad, what somebody told me about my biological mom and I have lots of stuff about that and a lot of other people in my life or do I just want to be who I am, me right now? Are those things important? And I think that those are all things that you have to answer for yourself.
Speaker 1:But I want to say this to everybody out there right now you know, everybody 97 percent, it said in the stats had lived with secrets. Every single family out stats had lived with secrets. Every single family out there just about has had secrets. I can't believe that there's 3% of families that don't have any secrets. I mean that's really amazing to me. So anyway, I was not in that 3%.
Speaker 1:But you know, there's purpose in our pain and there is hope in our journey, and that's what we say every single time that we do Real Talk with Tina and Anne, and I want to thank you, denise, for being here today. This has really meant the world to me to have this discussion, because a lot of things have unfolded in the last 48 hours of my life and I've been interviewing a lot of people and I said you know what? Let's just do this. You and I can just have a regular conversation, and this has really been, I want to say, fun, but it's been intriguing and it's been eye-opening and hopefully revealing the secrets and hopefully, you know, we didn't open up too many Pandora's boxes. I'm not really sure, but you know, I want it to be a positive thing. I want this to be positive growth for everybody out there as you're dealing with whatever secrets come your way. So thank you so much again for listening and we will see you next time. Bye.
