The World of Dogs

Chloe is an only child, but she’s not entirely alone. She has dogs. Meaningful, magical, ever-supportive dogs. With reserved parents and a habit of hiding her feelings, Chloe retreats deeply into her canine world, and the search to find herself, and free herself, takes years.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Brooklyn
Heights was an enchanting place to grow up, but as
far as I could see, it was also a world
that tended towards stiff lips and alcohol over transparency and
self reflection. A world a time too perhaps, that championed

(00:21):
achievement and less so emotional truth. Nothing was named in
this beautiful world. We were what we put on every day.
We were the stories we told. We were the food,
the wine, the linen. There's a strength to this approach,
a relentlessness of survival and success. And I learned early

(00:44):
that this works for some, that this for some will
always be enough. For others would be more than enough
and more than they had. I also learned that this
was not what I needed. That there was a danger.
Even when the choreography of life depends upon the denial
of so much of the rest, of all that is

(01:06):
messy and undeniable, of all that is human. Success even
becomes a wicked word when your own definition of it
is different from that of the ones hoping for you
to succeed. When it becomes clear that it's you who
is different. That's Chloe Shaw, author of the luminous memoir,

(01:31):
What Is a Dog? Chloe's story is tender and beautiful,
and at its center is about the secrets we hold
in our innermost selves, the ones that don't allow others
to know us and rob us of our voice. It's
also about the saving graces all around us, if only

(01:51):
we know where to look. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this
is family secrets, secrets that are kept from us, the
secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep

(02:14):
from ourselves. I'm an only child. We ended up when
I was about eighteen months old in Brooklyn Heights, New York,
due to my father's job as an architect. And you know,
I grew up in this pretty dazzling historic section of

(02:37):
New York City, a very tight knit community in many ways.
The first house we moved into, you know, I barely remember.
But the real big memory from that house is the
death of our first dog. It's easy. Who was my
parents first baby. I just remember her collapsing on the
kitchen floor and then I never saw her again, and

(02:58):
you were held. I was probably four. The first house
Chloe does remember well is on pure Pont Street, also
in Brooklyn Heights. She and her parents moved into the
three floor brownstone shortly after Easy has died. The house
is in a massive state of renovation when they move in.
Her father is an architect after all, but eventually the

(03:21):
work is finished and the house becomes a home. He
would walk up the front stoop and come into the vestibule,
and there was a big grandfather clock, a beautiful clock
that has been in my family for many, many years.
And you'd go up to the first floor, and that's
where the living room and the dining room in the

(03:43):
kitchen were. I feel like kitchens there where people collect.
So much happens there. So we spent a ton of
time in this tiny, tiny kitchen, where my mom um
had a catering business from for a bunch of years
of my childhood. And then upstairs on the second floor
were the bedrooms. We all had our spots in the house,

(04:07):
probably being an only child, but also just all of
us being the people we are and were. It wasn't
the kind of situation where we'd often be all hanging
around together in the living room playing a board game
or you know, unless there was a specific meal or
an event or friends over. What were your three spots

(04:28):
they were the kitchen usually for my mom. My dad
was in his study, so that was also actually on
the on the first floor, and I was in my
bedroom with my dog Agatha. Agatha, when I was six,
was a puppy. E is funny. In my mind, I
thought we had her for a few months at least,
but I talked it over with my mom. I think

(04:49):
it was just like a few days. It's amazing what
childhood is sort of, you know what trauma and and
and memory can do. So and Agatha was what kind
of job washing? So she was a Scottish terrier and
my dad had gotten her for me for Christmas and
she had parvo, so before we even got her, she

(05:10):
was gravely Oh and I actually just found this little
book that I wrote. It's just my scribble, and it
says we got a dog and I liked her, but
she died and I cried. Sorry, I mean to laugh.
It's an entire no I know. When I found this,
I thought, wait, I already wrote this book, because then

(05:31):
it says before we took her to the vet she
got very sick. I loved my dog, and I still cried.
And their pictures of me through out with this little
sad puppy, um who Yeah, it was never well and
she died and that was a really I mean, like
I said, I remember Easy dying. I remember watching her

(05:54):
collapse in our kitchen, Um, and the disappearance of her,
I guess is what really stays with me. He was
an Afghan hound and that's a big dog, and she
was just gone. I'm sure my parents did say something
about you know, I knew she had died, but I don't.
I didn't know what death was then. You know, that
was death. That was my first experience. And then after

(06:21):
as the one, your mom took her to the vet. Right,
and another dog in your life and another being that
you love vanishes, that's right. As a child, what was
your relationship with your mother and with your father? Like

(06:42):
it's hard to talk about just one of them at
a time, which is kind of interesting to me as
I'm realizing that it feels sort of like my only child, miss,
where I kind of had one at a time. So
whatever was happening, often it was just my dad and me,

(07:03):
or my mom and me. Um, even if it was
like a conversation or you know, an event that was
happening when we were a threeso amount in the world.
It actually felt the strangest to me. Um, I think
I think it felt confusing, because I think I always
felt like I was a little bit like either on

(07:28):
my mom's side of whatever was happening or on my
dad's side. So to know me as myself was kind
of scary in a way. About six months after Chloe
loses her puppy Agatha to parvo, her family gets another dog.
They name her Agatha too. Agatha Too would be my

(07:53):
beloved until I was eighteen years old. I mean, she
was my whole childhood. Thing that I processed kind of
in retrospect was that my mom I found out only
in my thirties that she had had a miscarriage in
our old apartment was Easy, so when we moved, you know,

(08:16):
they lost their first baby easy and then their actual
second baby. So this would have been a younger sibling
for you, a younger sibling exactly. I mean, I don't
know how far along she was, but I know they
were kind of trying to figure out there that at
that point, their small little Brooklyn apartment and um, who
would sleep were kind of thing. But as we all know,

(08:38):
that grief was just carried along into the new house.
I always think about that and how much I knew
about that or didn't know, you know, and then to
have our puppy die so quickly, that's really interesting. So
you're saying you were in your thirties before you ever
knew that. I suppose miscarriages are often things that parents

(08:59):
don't talk about. Do you feel like it was um
somehow there in some way, shape or form, despite not
being talked about the way I think probably most things
that aren't talked about are yes, absolutely, And you know,
my family does tend in that direction completely, you know,

(09:22):
to just try to keep a stiff upper lip and
you know, carry on. So, you know, even the death
of Agatha one was so striking to me because that
was the little puppy who had par vot and it
was the first time I remember seeing my mom cry,
and one of the only times I feel like in
my life I've seen her cry. She came around the

(09:44):
corner to tell me that our puppy had died, and
my reaction to her crying was to laugh, and I
just I started laughing hysterically and like within a snap,
started sobbing because I realized what the reality was, but
the emotion there was so uncomfortable to me. Um, you know,

(10:06):
I think all those emotions that aren't shared are really
are really difficult and mirror everywhere. I mean, they kind
of just find places to sneak in Agatha two, let's
just call her Agatha from here on In is a
container for Chloe's secrets. Into this wee dog, Chloe pours

(10:27):
her whole self. She shares with her everything, as she
writes Squibbled inside the bright red cabin of her heart.
I would always just find her. I mean, my room
was a really special place to me. It felt like
a completely safe place that I made my own. But

(10:48):
almost even more than that was Agatha. So wherever she was,
I felt alive and I felt safe, and I felt
just adored and adoring. So we would have little event
just even in the house. You know, I would, I
mean the way I still do. Honestly. I lie kind
of nose to nose with her. I would kind of

(11:08):
breathe in her breath, and I just felt like I
felt more known by her, which is kind of a
strange thing to say, I guess, But she just was
calm and quiet and funny and just accepted me. However
I was I think, you know, in the bigger world

(11:31):
I grew up in, I felt a little bit more
like I was supposed to be the good girl all
the time, and I was supposed to, you know, look
presentable and hold myself together. And of course I didn't
always feel that way, but I don't remember feeling in
a way that I couldn't do that, except when I

(11:51):
would cry in front of Agatha. So she was my
little witness. My parents put on these incredible dinner parties
and just beautiful surroundings, beautiful people, and I was kind
of expected to show up and be present, and they've

(12:13):
always been much more social um and out in the
world in those beautiful ways, and where I've wanted to
kind of prolonge with the piano with my dog quite happily.
So you know, I found my favorite people. I made
it work, but it just was never I don't know,
it never felt natural to me, and I think partly

(12:36):
it was because I didn't feel seen or known in
those spaces. I felt a bit more like I was performing.
We'll be right back. This need to show up to

(13:10):
perform leaves Chloe feeling anxious. She has recurring fears and
an active imagination that tends to run away with itself.
She retreats into her room more and more, but her
fears find her there too. My room was kind of
my safe place, and I felt very known there, and

(13:31):
I felt like when I would get into my bed
at night, even when I did have this habit of
seeing sharks went through my room. I guess I was
always on my bed with me, so that made me
feel Okay, I can't describe them any better than they
are in my mind, but I saw these big sharks,
and I was terrified of sharks, and they would come

(13:52):
through my room. I was scared of wolves coming into
our Brooklyn apartment, and I guess I lived with this
controlled response, like I wanted to control all of that
as much as I could, um the same way I
wanted to control the world around me. I mean, making
someone upset or disappointed or like, whether it was a

(14:15):
friend or my parents or whoever, there could be nothing worse.
So I was. I was also just a constant peacemaker,
but at the great expense of I think who I
felt like I really was often and I think in
the world of dogs, you know, that's not that's not

(14:36):
a known thing, so it felt more comfortable. Did you
ever tell anyone at that time about the sharks and
the wolves? My parents knew that I was scared. I
was scared of the dark, so as long as I
was in my bed, I was okay. You know. I
didn't know how to communicate it in a helpful way, um,

(14:59):
and they didn't probably know how to hear it in
a helpful way. I think they loved me. They were loving,
but it was also just a very uncomfortable situation to
have come up for them, you know, to know how
to handle it, to be someone who's not okay. They
are both very loving people, but I think they've sort

(15:19):
of done the best job they could do with how
they were parented as well. You know, emotional honesty was
not a huge theme in their households either. As Chloe
continues to see sharks and wolves around her, she develops
obsessive behaviors as a way to exert control over the

(15:40):
otherwise uncontrollable world. She begins to bite her fingernails. She
begins to walk differently, like a horse galloping. She begins
to rip strands of hair from her head and tie
them to door knobs of the places she and her
family visit a way of whispering. Chloe was here. Thinking

(16:01):
back over that behavior, I almost see it as kind
of letting the world know I was there, you know,
because I often the most present feeling for me has
been wanting to disappear, to want to just not be seen,
even though that was probably what I most wanted, because

(16:23):
that's what I wasn't feeling was really known or seen,
you know, being visible. I was visible but not known.
So one of the things you write is these feelings
I was trying not to feel. We're starting to take
a toll. Yes, I think so often I was hiding,
not wanting to be found or not thinking I should

(16:45):
be found. But it does feel like there was a
message that I was kind of born into, of not
not actually being known for who I am specifically. But
Chloe doesn't always know who she is specifically either. She
grows increasingly confused about where and if she belongs. In

(17:09):
addition to hiding her feelings, she starts to physically hide
herself too. Under the piano at her parents parties was
Agatha at her side. She starts to dissociate, to just
kind of float away, even when she has her first kiss,
she's not exactly there. For Thomas a very nice kid,

(17:30):
but I didn't want to kiss them, and so, you know,
I agreed to because I thought that's what I should do.
But yeah, I just went off and I found his
dog in the other room and kind of just said,
all right, I get this done and went off somewhere.
So I do think that it was it was mainly

(17:52):
a feeling of not wanting to be where I was
and to be who I was Whenever there was a
big emotion, and it could be a really wonderful emotion
or it could be a really terrifying emotion. Both were
uncomfortable for me. I would kind of float off into
some other world, you know that I had. It could

(18:14):
be with my dog, and it could be walking like
a horse, which it was also a little bit obsessive,
but it could be just really becoming a horse. A
couple of years later, Chloe and her classmates are watching
the Space Shuttle Challenger launch, and with so many others

(18:34):
around the world, they witness its devastating explosion. This haunts Chloe.
It's an awful thing to witness, proof that life is
terrifying and tragedy is everywhere, and it's real, reaching far
beyond the sharks and wolves in her bedroom. But even
though so much of the world is grieving and scared,

(18:55):
Chloe still hesitates to feel her deep feelings. The world
she's going up in doesn't seem to tolerate such a
depth of emotion. I did feel deeply, and I found
outlets for those feelings in certain ways, and then when
I wasn't able to share them because they didn't feel accepted,

(19:17):
I do feel like they bottled up, and you know,
sometimes it would just they just happened, you know. The
Challenger was a big one for me and my mom.
She was it was almost like she didn't quite know
what to do. So she told me to write to
Ronald Reagan and I did and I got a letter

(19:39):
back from him, which was exciting, just to get a
letter from the president. But she could have had these ways,
and my parents had ways of orienting me a little bit.
When I think they didn't quite know what to do,
I think crying, you know, crying. It was a thing
in my childhood where it was very distressing to my
parents when I would cry, so I tried not to.

(20:02):
I think, don't cry was kind of a refrain in
my house. How would they respond if if you started
to cheer up about something, my mom would ask, you know,
why are you crying? Don't cry? You know, that would
be kind of a response, which she and I've talked
about as as I've been an adult, and you know,

(20:23):
she's always saying how she didn't want me to feel
the pain. But I was also trying to say it.
But that's real, and I think the refrain was similar
in her house. It wasn't emotionally open, like crying is
fine or saying I love you, you know. I Mike
er Biglia, who is one of my favorite comedians, He
always talked about how his parents say I love you

(20:45):
by saying take care, and I just think that's the
funniest thing ever. You know, that's not the similar in
my house. I know I'm loved, but it also means
something to say certain words and also just be seen
for who you are and for what your emotions are
at any moment. Crying is a release, and if we're

(21:09):
told not to cry, all that sadness has no place
to go. It's a little like keeping a secret. Keeping
a secret doesn't mean it vanishes. It just means it
gets stored somewhere not very comfortable, and one way or
another it finds expression, usually in a distorted, toxic way.
It's the same with Chloe's pent up tears. They just

(21:31):
have to go somewhere else, somewhere hidden. I think the
three of us, my parents, and I have spent multiple
occasions all being terribly sad or stressed out, and the
main work that's happening is to not cry. We'll be

(21:56):
back in a moment with more family secrets. When Chloe's
in the eighth grade, she's walking home from school one

(22:17):
afternoon and that feeling of wanting to disappear overtakes her.
There's a group of boys trailing behind. Some are her friends,
but she'd rather just keep moving, not say hello. But
then one boy catches up to her and gropes her.
This is horrifying enough, but the other boys in her
group her friends, just stand there and laugh. They don't

(22:39):
help her. A herd mentality kicks in and for a
few painfully long minutes, it's Chloe versus them. Chloe eventually
gets herself out of the herd and heads home to safety.
She does not tell her parents or even her closest friend.
Just like the trying, I held it somewhere in my body,

(23:02):
but I didn't feel it. I was already pretty scared
of the kid who actually growed me, and I just
kept a distance from him and the sad necessor the
tears or you know, any emotions. I kind of shoved
it somewhere, and my parents didn't know about that until
I wrote an essay about it, maybe seven years ago.
Six years ago. It's an interesting sort of statement about

(23:25):
communication with them. Definitely. Yeah. The following year, when Chloe
is a freshman in high school, she meets Josh, who's
a senior. They start dating and they stay together when
he goes off to college at Princeton, which is not
too far. They fall in love. He really sees Chloe
and knows Chloe something she's not used to. So I

(23:48):
definitely allowed him access to myself. You know. I think
we experienced so many first together, and I really really
loved his mother and his father and his family in general.
I think that household offered me a place of greater

(24:11):
emotional support. And just you know, they would yell at
each other, they would It was just really something I
had not quite seen before because I thought you had
one argument, well, there goes that relationship. So was there
this sense of almost break ability in the house that

(24:32):
you grew up in, Like there was a need to
be careful with each other, like somehow like the messiness
of life, the flaws, the messy feelings were threatening or dangerous.
Definitely in my house, my parents when they had to
have some intense conversation or if emotions ran high, they

(24:56):
would usually close themselves behind the door or you know,
and I understand as the parents, there are times and
that's appropriate, but there were also just things that involved
me and in Josh's family, when you would be there,
what was the contrast? What was that like? They overwhelmed me?
To be honest, um, at first, I mean they were.

(25:19):
They were only nice to me, but they were overwhelming.
All their emotions seemed on the surface, so if someone
was in a bad mood or if someone was really excited,
it all was right there, whereas you know, with my family,
it was just a much more guarded situation where you
could just feel that, or at least I could, and

(25:39):
it felt terrible, you know, to not know how everyone
was feeling in the room, and even if it was
something that you weren't feeling. Can't we talk about that?
I think I felt so much inside that couldn't be seen,
and I feel like Dasha's family both saw it um

(26:01):
but also just made a space for all of that
to be acceptable. Finally, with Josh's family, Chloe is surrounded
by people who aren't afraid to own their feelings. Just
when Chloe thinks she might be able to sustain this,
to own her feelings, Josh's mom becomes sick with cancer

(26:22):
and Agatha is also sick. Chloe starts to dissociate again,
and she does what she's done before. She floats outside herself, numb, unfeeling.
It really felt like that time in my life that
I couldn't show up. I mean, I think, you know,
Josh and I had this lovely, beautiful relationship and between

(26:46):
our families as well, But when it came to something
as real as his mother, you know, potentially dying, I
didn't face it the way I wished I had. I
kind of left college and abandoned everything behind and broke
up with him. Yes, yes, that's right. It's like the

(27:07):
way you describe your parents leaving the first department in Brooklyn,
you know where all that all that hard stuff happened,
your mother's miscarriage and easy dying, and just this feeling
of wanting to get away from all that loss, and
all of the feeling that would went along with all
that loss for the possibility of loss. Yeah, Josh's mom

(27:34):
ultimately does die, so does Agatha. Loss upon loss, sharks,
and wolves. Chloe weathers these storms, stabilized by her life
at Williams College. She finds important mentors and begins to
reinvent and discover herself there. She graduates and moves back

(27:54):
to New York City. For the first time in her life.
She is dogless. She does, however, have two cats, good company,
but not quite the same. The sensation of floating stays
with her throughout her twenties. She tries to write to
build a life. Her parents are still living in Brooklyn,
so they meet up occasionally, but often Chloe doesn't want to.

(28:19):
They feel disappointed, she feels guilty, and this dance goes
on for some years. She has a boyfriend and a breakup.
She floats, But when Chloe is thirty two, her friend
Sid convinces her to meet a guy named Matt. Matt
has a dog, a dog named Booker. There was really

(28:41):
him an instant love I think for all three of us.
He was standing by a big boulder near a trail
in Brantford, Connecticut, and Sid drove me and her dog
j J out to meet them, and we went for
this beautiful hike through the woods and we just kept

(29:02):
looking over said at each other and all talking the
whole time. And Booker, a fairly large dog, was a
big leaner, so he would he would just press his
body up against your legs. Matt set up the time
you're part of the pack, and uh, we started emailing,
and I think it was two weeks later we started

(29:24):
going back and forth from Brooklyn to Connecticut. We I
don't think spent a weekend apart for like a year
and a half. And then I moved in with them,
and Booker became an incredibly important dog to you. He
really did. Yeah, yeah, I mean it really was, apart
from what an exceptional dog he was. And I it's

(29:46):
it's interesting to think of him kind of based on
his death, but I have to say it really was.
I feel like taking care of him all those years
as his kind of you know, home dog parents, and
then really planning his whole death. I think I put

(30:09):
almost every loss I've ever felt into that. Um, you know,
I think I was finally ready to be so present.
I mean, my I lost my really beloved grandfather who
I called Seaweed before that, but I it was too
hard for me to even I went to his memorial service,

(30:29):
but it was actually quite hard for me to even
go visit him in the last year of his life.
He just had all these symptoms and was getting a
little paranoid, and it really, I don't know, I couldn't.
My mom would go religiously, which I really respect, but
it was it was too hard for me. And I
think Booker kind of broke something open in me that

(30:52):
allowed me to just finally feel all those things and
actually not care who thought, what about whatever where I
was feeling. And we sobbed and sobbed, you know, and
buried him and he's in our backyard and it really
was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen,
brutal but beautiful. By the time of Booker's brutal, beautiful burial,

(31:19):
Matt and Chloe have started their own family. They have
a son, a daughter, and another dog, Safari. So as
heartbreaking as Booker's death is Chloe is far from alone.
The heartbreak is shared and collective, as is the healing.
Even as a parent and having to deal. You know,

(31:40):
it actually gave me, given my background, it gave me
some pretty tremendous anxiety two shepherd my own kids through
big emotions, because I feel like another big challenge I
came up against was when I had not one kid,
but two kids and had to mother siblings and all

(32:03):
their real, very very surface emotions, and it was more
than I could manage. At times, I just thought, this
is when you don't ever talk to each other again.
But that wasn't true. They would, you know, they could
be mad at each other, but just like friends that

(32:23):
I had as a kid who had siblings, they just
kind of learned from each other too. But I had
to kind of shepherd them through this loss, this tremendous
loss um. And my daughter was only two and my
son was five, and they had completely different responses. Ray

(32:46):
who's too. She she kind of said how sad it was,
but she didn't know how to, you know, she wasn't
gonna cry necessarily about that. But this giant dog, I mean,
he was huge and he occupied a lot of her
life was gone. So we painted rocks and took them
down to his grave, and Jackson, my son, who was five,

(33:11):
you know, he just kind of he said, oh, I'm fine,
you know, I'm not sad, And then that night just
had a huge, huge melt down and finally let me
hug him till he sobbed and sobbed, and it was
so relieving to me. It was so relieving to me

(33:31):
to have him be able to do that well. And
he was able to do that because you made the
space for it. Yeah, And I think that's what it
felt like for me too. After Booker's death, Chloe is
in therapy and finds that now, unlike her child's self,

(33:53):
she cannot stop crying. Her floodgates have opened, and her
secretive way of processing the world, her silence, is no
longer possible. She writes, I was still in the process
of breaking down, of breaking systems down, systems that had
formed me, Systems I had relied on since before I

(34:14):
knew the word system. Systems that might have helped in childhood,
but we're failing me as an adult. So when I
was a child and I relied on dogs so heavily,
I think that was my coping mechanism for a lot
of difficult situations, just being under the piano with Agatha.

(34:36):
When I met Booker, you know, honestly just lying with him,
walking him, getting to know him, and then wanting this
other dogs safari in our life. But as I I
got I had been married to Matt and then had
my kids, I was also starting to realize, even though

(34:57):
there are parts of me that probably will always be
a little bit more solitary, and maybe that's just my nature.
I also, like I used the phrase being the dog
a lot in the book, being the dog started to
become something that felt avoid in my family life, my
own family life, so with my kids and my husband.

(35:20):
So I think that's where it just suddenly felt like
in therapy talking about it, processing all of my childhood
and then coming to this place where I could actually
make limitations. You know, I could say no, I could
say what I felt and it would be okay, whether

(35:41):
I was with a dog or a human, or it
would just become a conversation you know that had to
be worked out, whether with my husband or my kids.
I just could let go a little bit more of
that constant need to perfect something, or just be so
reliable to control everything, you know. I feel like I

(36:05):
was able to start being able to be the human
but still loved docs. Chloe also finds therapy in being
physically active. She enrolls in a class called Tough that's
t u f F Girl Fitness, Tough Girl Fitness. She

(36:26):
feels at home the instant she walks through the doors.
This class is fun and well tough, but that's not all.
It's the antidote to floating away. To use the words
strong to describe myself in any way I wouldn't have
felt appropriate before I started going there. And yes, I

(36:49):
became more physically strong, but I have to say it
led into a greater understanding and appreciation for just choices
I've made. And you know, like we all of us
getting through our childhoods, it can be a lot to
then become a full grown person, you know, whether that's

(37:11):
someone who sort of follows the path that you were,
the way you were raised, or if you choose something
completely different. And I think I've always felt a little different,
not just a little, I think a lot different. And
I think that place allowed me to lift a really
heavy kettle bell and scream and sweat and have people

(37:34):
cheer for me. I mean, I I've never done that before,
and it really did kind of lend such a huge
helping hand to the to the rest of my growth.
I have to say, just emotionally, yeah, I love that. Yeah,
to be seen, to be seen, and you know, I
just I just had this image of you lifting a

(37:56):
kettle ball and screaming, and you know, imagining anything like
that remotely happening in the in the home of your childhood. Oh,
I'd never screamed. I'd never screamed before. This wonderful woman
who goes there. She's a photographer, and she did these
photography sessions where she would photograph whatever you wanted, you know,
at the gym, and I was like, yeah, I'm doing that.

(38:19):
And so during ours we were talking and I was
starting to talk about my family and my emotional history
and all that, and she she just looked right at me,
like after five minutes and said, have you ever screamed before?
And I said no, I would never scream And she said,
do you want to? And so she took this picture

(38:43):
of me screaming at the top of my lungs and
she said, I'll do it with you, and so she
took a picture as she screamed at the top of
her lungs, and we both started sobbing. It was really
really beautiful. Yeah. Family Secrets is a production of I

(39:12):
Heart Radio. Molly Zachor is the story editor and Dylan
Fagan is the executive producer. If you have a family
secret you'd like to share, please leave us a voicemail
and your story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our
number is one eight Secret zero. That's the number zero.
You can also find me on Instagram at Danny writer.

(39:35):
And if you'd like to know more about the story
that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For

(39:57):
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Read Adeo app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.