0:00

Family Secrets is a production of I Heart

0:02

Radio. We

0:07

start tonight with a man hunt in Tulsa,

0:09

a murder suspect considered armed and dangerous.

0:12

That victim died this morning, and we hear from a

0:14

witness who says she tried to save his life.

0:17

The tornado warnings have expired,

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thankfully, but left behind plenty of flooding

0:21

in the area. Look at that impact. That's

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Stephen Romo, a thirty three

0:27

year old TV news anchor based in Houston,

0:30

Texas. To look at

0:32

Stephen is to see a dapper young man,

0:35

handsome, clean cut, as they

0:37

say, often wearing a jacket

0:39

and tie or a neatly pressed

0:41

collared shirt. He's

0:43

well put together, in consummate

0:45

control. But,

0:48

as is so often true, what we

0:50

see tells us only part of the story.

0:53

We easily judge others based on appearances

0:56

are our own fantasies of what someone's life

0:58

must be like. In Steven's

1:00

case, you might think he had a traditional,

1:03

comfortable, simple childhood, and

1:06

you would be wrong. I'm

1:15

Danny Shapiro, and this is Family

1:18

Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us,

1:20

the secrets we keep from others, and

1:22

the secrets we keep from ourselves. I

1:27

grew up in the

1:29

late eighties in a suburb just to

1:32

the south of Dallas, and

1:34

I had an older brothers three years older

1:36

than me. My dad wasn't

1:39

still is a big rig driver. My

1:42

mom was a stay at home mom at

1:44

the time. And growing

1:47

up, I hear a lot of people say

1:49

they didn't realize that their family

1:52

wasn't normal until they were

1:55

older, but that wasn't

1:57

true for me. I realized very early on

1:59

that my family was not

2:02

quite typical. Through

2:05

watching TV and just visiting neighbors.

2:09

I realized that my home life

2:12

was something to hide.

2:15

It was a secret. It was something that

2:18

I was ashamed of. One of my first

2:20

memories is standing

2:22

on a kitchen drawer

2:25

that I used to pull out so I could reach the

2:27

counter and grabbing

2:29

a jar of peanut butter and looking inside

2:32

and just seeing it was full of roaches

2:34

scurrying over each other and

2:37

dropping it and letting it roll away, and

2:40

that is that's one of my first memories.

2:42

And I knew that wasn't normal. I was disgusted

2:45

by it and angry at my parents for it,

2:48

but I knew it wasn't normal. So

2:50

that was the situation in our home

2:53

for a long time, but

2:55

my mom and my

2:57

dad went bankrupt and the bank foreclosed

3:00

in our house, so we had to move into

3:02

the home of my

3:05

great uncle, my mom's uncle,

3:08

and it was a duplex. It's

3:11

sort of out of nowhere. My mom decided

3:13

that we needed to get dogs.

3:16

It was like a necessity, she mentioned, so

3:18

we would know if anyone was going to break into

3:20

the home. It started off with to

3:23

Chihuaha's and they

3:26

had their own family, and

3:29

it was six chihuahuas at one point.

3:31

It was it was really hard to keep up, so

3:34

we gave them away and we collected others we

3:36

always had heard

3:38

of, mostly chouaa's. It's

3:41

funny too, because you think about what

3:43

one might think of as a guard dog, and

3:46

you don't immediate You don't immediately go to chihuahua.

3:49

Yes, I yeah, it doesn't make a

3:51

ton of since they did. I mean, we always knew anyone

3:54

was anywhere close to our house because they

3:56

yapped and I don't even want to

3:58

call it a park. It was just yap NonStop.

4:01

And I love those dogs

4:04

so much. I feel like my childhood would

4:06

have been much more empty

4:09

without them. That they dogs just accept

4:11

you and and love you and to get

4:13

excited when you come home. And I didn't necessarily

4:15

get that from my parents. But

4:18

at the same time, they were the source of

4:20

so much consternation.

4:24

They never went outside. They just

4:27

the carpet was their bathroom. Eventually we

4:29

had to rip up the carpet because it was

4:32

so you're in stained,

4:34

and that just made the roaches

4:37

seem like nothing to have to deal with that. The

4:39

roaches were just just a slight

4:41

distraction compared to them.

4:44

Did your great uncle know what

4:46

was going on in the other part of the duplex? And did

4:48

did he have any response to any of that? Strangely,

4:52

no, he didn't have

4:55

much of a response. That His presence

4:58

was always a sort of a few for

5:00

my mom, and I didn't understand why.

5:03

For a long time he had

5:05

a key to the house. Obviously, and sometimes we would

5:07

come home and my mom would tell

5:10

my dad that she could smell my

5:12

great uncle's cologne and

5:15

that set her off into

5:19

I don't want to say hysterics. That sounds

5:22

extreme, but she was deeply

5:25

bothered by it. And

5:28

of course that made sense later

5:30

on, but at the time it didn't. It also

5:32

didn't make sense why he would see the way

5:34

the house was and not be

5:37

livid that we were destroying that

5:40

house. My brother Um

5:42

started punching holes in the walls when

5:45

he was about thirteen and ripping

5:49

the doors. Were cheap plywood

5:52

or particle would doors and he would

5:54

tear them down. Eventually we had no doors

5:56

in the house and there were giant

5:59

holes in the walls. And my great

6:01

uncle saw this and never

6:04

said anything about it. We saw him at family

6:06

gatherings, there was never any

6:08

mention of it, which was

6:11

bizarre to me, and it

6:14

stood out even though I couldn't

6:16

really put together why until later

6:19

on. Why was your

6:21

brother Why do you think he was

6:23

punching holes in the walls? I

6:25

think he was angry at our home situation too,

6:29

and my parents just

6:32

we just sort of were on our own, handling

6:35

things in our own way. And

6:38

my dad is a is a smaller guy. He's

6:40

about five six

6:44

and my brother and I

6:46

I'm six ft tall, and i've been I've been

6:48

taller than my dad. I think I was about fourteen. It

6:51

was the same thing for my brother, so he

6:53

could control us fine when we were smaller than

6:55

him, but as soon as we got bigger, it was just Um

6:59

you know, do whatever you want. You're on your own,

7:01

So sort of like that for my brother,

7:03

and he expressed

7:05

his anger by destroying

7:07

our house, destroying our walls. Well,

7:10

it's so interesting because it sounds

7:12

like your house was sort of being destroyed anyway,

7:14

So you know, how could the anti be uped

7:16

in some way? That's true. One

7:19

of the things that I always find so interesting

7:21

in thinking about family secrets is when

7:24

it seems like a

7:26

couple develop or

7:29

conspire to keep

7:31

something hidden or secret together.

7:35

Does it begin with one

7:37

of them or is it sort of something that grows

7:40

with both of them. Did it start with

7:42

your mom or your dad

7:44

or was it something that wouldn't have happened if

7:46

each of them had been with somebody else, but it happened

7:48

because they were together. I thought

7:51

a lot about it, and I really do

7:53

think that it is they were just sort of the perfect

7:55

storm together to

7:58

make this environment happen. I

8:00

think if either of them had been with another partner,

8:02

I don't see how this it

8:05

could have happened. My dad, he's the

8:07

eighth of nine children, and

8:09

his mother died when he was twelve years old, so

8:12

his home life was very erratic. He was mostly

8:14

raised by his older siblings.

8:17

My dad is Hispanic, and some

8:20

of his older siblings and his father

8:22

spoke Spanish, and he barely speaks

8:24

Spanish. They literally spoke different

8:26

languages. He was on his own a

8:29

lot as a child. My

8:31

mother was raised

8:35

by her grandmother and her mother

8:37

after her parents divorced, and

8:40

she never felt loved.

8:43

What I was mentioning about the great uncle I

8:45

found out later from

8:47

my mother and she sort of tearfully

8:49

admitted to me when I was fourteen, admitted

8:52

to me as if it were her something that she

8:54

had done wrong. She told me that

8:56

that great uncle had sexually abused

8:59

her, starting when she was

9:01

nine years old. While my

9:04

aunt was watching my

9:06

mom. He would come home on his

9:08

lunch breaks and

9:10

she would be pretending to be asleep often

9:13

and he would wake her up and take her to a different

9:15

part of the house and abuse her. A

9:18

lot of stuff clicked into place because of that, why

9:21

she was the way she was. Did

9:23

something precipitate her telling

9:25

you at this point when

9:28

she told you you had been living

9:30

in that great uncle's house for some period of time,

9:32

yes, yes, for a

9:34

few years. At that point. What

9:37

I think precipitated it? I was complaining

9:40

a lot more. I had started. I

9:43

had a younger sister, she's four years younger

9:45

than me, and I started

9:48

telling my mom that I

9:51

was going to call child protective

9:53

Services if we didn't

9:55

move, and I

9:57

was a smartass. Just to be frank

10:00

about it. I couldn't

10:02

go along with it anymore. I um.

10:05

I would say things like, you

10:07

feed the roaches better than you feed your own

10:09

kids. And I was just a

10:11

constant critic of

10:14

my father too. He was gone a lot, but

10:17

when he was there. Name

10:19

calling was a huge issue in my house. My

10:22

parents called me names, I called

10:24

my parents names. It was just a thing

10:26

that happened. Right before my

10:28

mom revealed that to me, I decided my dad

10:31

wasn't going to call me names anymore.

10:34

The word at the time was faggot

10:36

that he kept calling me. Excuse

10:38

the use of the word that I hate, but

10:41

it was that word. I decided it was never going to happen

10:43

again. So I sort of

10:46

charged at him and

10:48

you know, looked down at him because he was so much smaller

10:50

than me, and told him that he was not going to call me that

10:53

word ever again. And he shoved

10:55

me, and I shoved

10:57

him back and knocked him down and

11:00

he walked away, and that was the end of that.

11:03

My mom, she would have been at a grocery store. She

11:05

got home and my

11:07

dad told her what happened, and she came

11:09

into my room crying, and

11:12

instead of talking about that fight at all,

11:15

she sort

11:17

of abruptly told me about the sexual

11:19

abuse with her uncle. I've

11:22

got the impression at the time she was

11:24

telling me, sort of to say

11:26

that she had enough going on, that we

11:29

were living in his house and she

11:31

was going through enough turmoil that she just

11:33

wanted me to just stop

11:37

being so obstructionist and arguing

11:40

and disagreeing with them. I

11:43

think that's why she revealed it to me. Did

11:46

she ever draw any kind of connection

11:49

from her having been abused

11:51

as a child to the

11:54

way that she kept her home as

11:56

an adult, Oh no, not

11:59

at all. So it was really it was unconscious.

12:02

I definitely think it was unconscious. She

12:05

my parents both would blame us, the

12:07

kids and the dogs, thing we didn't help,

12:09

and we took food in our rooms

12:12

and in all these sort

12:14

of lame excuses that I never believed.

12:17

But she, no, it was never conscious. I don't think

12:19

that that's what she was doing. We'll

12:24

be back in a moment with more family secrets.

12:33

Stephen goes to school dressed in mismatched

12:35

clothes, dirty clothes, and

12:37

sometimes the roaches hitch

12:39

a ride in his backpack crawl out

12:42

of his lunchbox. Other kids

12:44

notice, of course, but Stephen invents

12:46

stories around why that's the case. I

12:52

was just a liar, and

12:54

I thought I was really good at it. But now looking

12:56

back, it just seems ridiculous the stuff I would

12:58

say, But it was anything too

13:03

disconnect me from the way

13:06

I was growing up. I watched

13:08

so much TV as a kid, uninterrupted

13:11

hours upon hours of TV any

13:13

and everything. We didn't have cable, so it's

13:15

just what I could get on the antenna. But because

13:18

of that, I invented so many stories

13:20

that were just completely made up about

13:23

trips to Europe and stuff that would have never

13:25

happened in a million years with enough

13:27

detail. I thought that I

13:29

was completely tricking all these kids

13:31

to think that I was actually like one

13:33

of them, or just wealthy.

13:36

And I was made to dress poor

13:38

because my parents wanted to

13:40

keep me humble. Just

13:42

just ridiculous stories

13:45

that I made up just to try to defend myself,

13:47

and I was made fun of

13:49

of course, because that's what happens when

13:51

you're a kid. But I really feel

13:53

like the kids were easier on

13:55

me than they could have been. I could have had it much worse

13:57

than I did. You know, it's interesting

13:59

the whole idea of education through TV, you

14:01

know, and and through reading as

14:03

well, and the way in which I mean so

14:06

often on this podcast

14:08

I think about my

14:10

guests stories and the way

14:13

that if the

14:15

story had been playing out during a

14:17

time when the Internet existed, where

14:20

there was so much readily

14:22

available information, you could look something up, you

14:24

could call it by its name, you could find

14:26

out what it was, you could connect with

14:28

other people who might be going through something similar.

14:31

And there are things that are not

14:33

so great about that, but there's so many things that are

14:36

that really pierced people's sense of isolation.

14:39

Whereas when you were growing up that didn't exist,

14:42

and so your education was Mr.

14:45

Rogers neighborhood. That's such

14:47

a ordered, gentle

14:51

kind place, a place where there would never be

14:53

a cockroach, a place where there would never be anything

14:56

out of place or out of order. Did

14:58

you find all of that? It was like sort

15:00

of part of your coming of age.

15:03

Absolutely, I can't imagine what

15:06

my childhood would have been like without television.

15:09

It's how I knew that the way

15:11

I was living was unacceptable

15:14

and would made me start

15:17

as a young child trying to fight against it, trying

15:19

to force my parents to allow us

15:21

to move. Was just

15:23

from the story that I saw on TV.

15:26

They made me feel less

15:28

lonely. I felt more connected to the

15:31

characters on TV. Mr. Rogers,

15:34

Neighborhood and even shows

15:36

that weren't actually geared towards me was. I

15:38

was a super young child watching

15:42

the Oprah Winfrey Show and

15:45

seeing people who had gone through trauma

15:47

had come out just fine. It was

15:50

not geared toward nine year old boy, but watching

15:53

it made me realize that if these

15:55

people can overcome horrible things that happened

15:57

to them, uh, this and

16:00

could be true of me. And then getting a library

16:02

card and reading diary of Anne Frank and

16:04

seeing like this is nothing

16:07

that I'm going through. This is nothing compared

16:09

to what some people have survived. It

16:11

was invaluable that connection. I

16:14

feel like stories really did save me. I

16:16

think That's why I'm a a storyteller

16:19

now. It did create dissonance

16:22

for me as I was growing up and moving

16:25

on in my career that my job

16:27

was to seek out the truth and

16:29

to tell people's stories as truly as I could.

16:32

While I sort of

16:34

just pretended to be the

16:37

boy with no history that I

16:39

completely tried to cut myself off from

16:42

my past. There was a

16:44

dissonance there. And it's only been in the last year

16:46

or so that I've realized

16:48

the importance of being honest about where I

16:50

came from and sort

16:53

of the power in the telling of

16:55

the story. So

16:58

how did you get out, Like walk me through you

17:01

graduate from high school? And did

17:03

you know that you wanted to become a

17:05

journalist? What was your path initially?

17:07

Your path away from

17:10

that home and that environment. Well,

17:13

eventually I

17:15

I kept sort of fighting with my parents, and

17:18

I dropped

17:20

out of high school and

17:24

I kind of fight with my dad. I think it

17:26

was I got a job setting

17:29

up for a church nearby. Church they met

17:31

in a Y and c a. So I had to go and set up chairs

17:33

and you know, gymnasium and make

17:35

it into a church. And I get paid. I think it was

17:37

fifty dollars a weekend

17:40

when I did that Saturdays and Sundays, and I didn't

17:42

have a checking account because I was sixteen years

17:44

old. So I would give my parents the

17:46

checks and they

17:49

were supposed to give me the cash, but after they

17:51

had three fifty dollars,

17:54

they would not give me the money.

17:56

And so that of course caused a fight and

18:00

I just got sofa hit up that After

18:03

that fight, I moved down my

18:05

great grandmother for a little while, and

18:07

then I started renting a room. And I

18:10

had been out of high school

18:12

for about a year. I went ahead

18:14

and took some entrance exams

18:17

and got into community college and

18:20

stayed there for a couple of years and then transferred

18:23

to A and M. And it was it

18:25

sounds crazy to say it's so simply right

18:27

now, because it seemed

18:29

impossible what I was trying to do to

18:33

escape, and it was very hard,

18:35

and there was a lot of struggle, and

18:39

just to sum it up to a few sentences seems

18:42

it seems so crazy, But that's what happened.

18:45

Yeah, it's it's always the in between,

18:48

right. I teach writing, and occasionally

18:50

I give my students this exercise where

18:53

I asked them to write

18:55

a list. Um, it's a sailing

18:57

term, but like the tacking points in their life, like

18:59

where when you sail from point A to point B. You

19:01

don't go in a straight line. It's like, you know, you

19:04

the boat, you know, sails into the wind or away

19:07

from the wind. And then after they've done

19:09

that, I asked them to

19:11

take two of these attacking points

19:13

that are side by side and fill in

19:15

the middle because it's always the middle,

19:17

right, Like what you're describing is like, yes,

19:20

you're summing it up, but you did. I

19:23

mean, ultimately you went from

19:25

having dropped out of college and being this really tough

19:27

position two finding

19:29

your feet. You know, that's it's

19:31

it's it's a messy process, but you found your

19:33

feet. Yeah, i'd

19:35

like to think so when

19:37

I was in college, my mom because

19:40

my mom died and so that was definitely another

19:43

attacking point. It's it's

19:46

hard, and we didn't have a resolution.

19:48

Really she died sort

19:50

of it I wouldn't.

19:52

I guess it's it's hard. I mean, it's always it always

19:54

feels sudden when someone dies, if

19:56

feel like but she had asthma and several

19:59

health problems from just the way she sort

20:01

of lived her life. She was I

20:04

think she was addicted to prescription painkillers.

20:07

She would argue otherwise they

20:10

were prescribed to her by a doctor, she would say, so

20:12

they're not. She wasn't addicted, but

20:15

basically her organs started shutting down.

20:17

And I drove up from Texas

20:19

A and M It's like a three hour drive to the

20:21

hospital, and really

20:23

wanted to to talk to her. And

20:26

she had a breathing tube. She

20:28

was conscious when I went in there and aware,

20:32

but she couldn't speak, so and the

20:34

the doctors had told us that things didn't

20:36

look good. It was really hard for me to believe that she

20:38

could actually die. She was forty three,

20:41

but I tried to push myself to

20:44

be more sincere I have the

20:46

habit of trying to

20:48

make jokes or being sarcastic, but I really tried

20:50

to have a moment with her and

20:53

speak to her and tell

20:55

her that I wanted her to get

20:57

better, and that no matter what had

20:59

happened between us, that she

21:02

was a part of us and that she

21:04

belonged to us. And she

21:07

couldn't say anything, but she grabbed

21:09

my arm

21:12

almost like she thought she could sort

21:14

of compel her whatever she was trying to say

21:17

into me, and she just stared

21:20

at me h and

21:22

cried. And then visiting

21:24

hours were over, and so I sort

21:26

of got pulled out of there. But having

21:29

to to face that,

21:31

having to sort of realized

21:34

that there would never be the reconciliation that

21:36

I always thought would happen with her sort

21:38

of made me confronted. I had

21:40

to sort of find my own reconciliation. So

21:42

I think that's sort of made me more aware of it too.

21:47

Now Stephen's working in a TV station

21:49

in Houston. He's embarked

21:51

on his successful adult life, and

21:53

what he does is push his past away.

21:56

He doesn't lie about it. Lying

21:59

making up fantastical stories is

22:01

a thing of his past. He simply

22:04

omits. He doesn't talk about

22:06

his family history, not with his friends,

22:09

not with anyone. And then

22:11

one day he's in the newsroom on a

22:13

break when he gets a text from his sister

22:15

was a link to a news story.

22:18

So my sister and I talked about the way we grew

22:20

up a lot, and um,

22:23

she sent me a story.

22:26

She knew I was on the newscast, so

22:28

she she sent it, and

22:31

I assumed we would talk about it later and I wouldn't

22:33

read it right then. But as soon as I saw

22:35

what the headline was about children

22:38

living in the roach

22:40

infested at home, I couldn't help it.

22:42

I mean, there's two minutes left in our commercial

22:44

break. But I clicked on it and um

22:48

started reading it, and UM,

22:50

I didn't just read the article. I

22:53

violated my own rule of not

22:55

reading the comments and read the comments

22:58

and people just expressing their

23:01

disgust at the situation, but

23:04

they're also just their hatred for

23:06

these parents who

23:10

clearly had to been going through something

23:13

for them just themselves, and

23:16

more than anything, it was just

23:19

the sense of of shame that

23:21

I remember, and I thought about it. It was their

23:24

young girls in this home. I was just thinking about those

23:26

girls. The oldest was thirteen,

23:28

and I was remembering what it was like to be a thirteen year

23:30

old in a house like that, and imagining

23:33

if there had been a news article about

23:36

it, how mortified

23:38

I would have been. It

23:41

just something hit me that by

23:44

omitting where I came from,

23:48

I was perpetuating that same secret

23:50

that I had been carrying since childhood.

23:53

And also, of course,

23:55

with secrets is often shamed, so I was also

23:58

just experiencing that same shame. And if

24:00

if I could just to that one family

24:03

in Idaho, that was those girls who

24:05

were going through this, but I could just make

24:07

them feel better or less alone, it seemed

24:10

worth it just to share some

24:12

of what I went through. So

24:15

then one thing that struck me

24:17

is the break is over and

24:19

you've got to go back on the news. The cameras

24:21

are rolling and your

24:24

co newscasters looking at you like are you okay?

24:26

And the camera start rolling and you know your

24:29

your teeth up to go, and you do, which

24:32

is something that I I

24:34

see again and again and I also really relate to,

24:37

because you have sort of metabolized

24:40

that trauma for

24:42

all those years and just packed it away and

24:44

put it somewhere, and it wasn't even

24:46

particularly conscious for you or

24:48

visible to you, so it was possible

24:51

to function at this really high level and

24:53

just finish up the news. No

24:55

one looking at you would ever have known what was

24:57

going on inside of you right at

25:00

sort of the story

25:02

of my life, right no one could even

25:04

tell if there's anything wrong. I

25:08

think that's the story of so many people

25:10

whose lives have been haunted by family secrets.

25:13

We live in a sort of split screen existence.

25:16

On one side of the screen you have

25:18

the secret, and on the other side

25:21

we pack that secret away so that we can function

25:23

at a high level in the world. And

25:26

when you're on the high functioning side. It's

25:28

almost like the secret doesn't exist, except

25:32

of course it does. It never goes

25:34

away. It can recede

25:36

for a period of time, but it never

25:38

disappears, not completely. Around

25:42

the same time as Stephen's sister sent the link

25:44

to that news story, Stephen's producer

25:47

had sent a request of all the news anchors

25:50

for childhood photos old school

25:52

photos, a fun promotion for

25:54

that back to school time of year, so that

25:56

viewers could see what the anchors look like as kids.

25:59

That emailed to the producer saying, and actually been

26:02

sitting in my inbox for a couple of weeks.

26:04

I just finally I decided to

26:06

sort of take it on. And I have a bunch

26:08

of photos on my phone. A

26:11

few years ago, my sister was moving and I she

26:13

had a big box of photos, and so I

26:15

just sort of use my phone to take pictures

26:18

of them all and hadn't looked at them in a really

26:20

long time. So I made myself

26:22

go through and I included some

26:24

of those in the essay. It's

26:26

amazing to me how many, I mean, the photos

26:29

of the worst of it never survived, Like, who's

26:31

going to want to take pictures of roaches in

26:33

the corner, you know what the dogs

26:35

leave behind, so they weren't even as bad

26:37

as I remembered that being it's not an

26:39

ideal childhood, but I had to

26:42

go through and and choose one. And normally

26:45

with that entails as me trying to crop out

26:48

anything that, you know, if my

26:51

my jeans were rapped or my shirt

26:53

is stained, or I mentioned in

26:55

there, the bugs leave behind this

26:58

amber colored dust on everything, which

27:01

really, for some reason just stakes to photos

27:03

and it's really hard to to

27:06

move around it. I'm trying to crop all that

27:08

out, but I just sent one

27:10

in without doing all that treating. And I

27:12

always thought that if I did that that

27:15

someone would ask, you know, what it was, or

27:17

someone would inquire about it. But

27:19

no one, of course even noticed

27:22

it, or if they did, they didn't say anything about

27:24

it. It was not at all

27:27

a big deal. So maybe

27:29

next time I can save myself the

27:31

trouble and just send in a photo. Amber

27:35

colored dust the stuff

27:37

cockroaches leave behind. Stephen

27:40

and his siblings referred to this when they were

27:42

children as bug dust, sort

27:45

of like fairy dust, only

27:47

not really not so.

27:51

Stephen is looking at these photos and thinking about

27:53

the news story, and he just

27:55

doesn't want to pretend any longer. The

27:58

fakeness of social media, the pretense.

28:01

He doesn't want to be a part of it, not at

28:03

this moment. In an essay

28:05

he later wrote in the Huffington's Post, he says,

28:08

honesty keeps us connected, it's

28:11

pretense that closes us off.

28:13

He doesn't want to curate himself, he

28:15

doesn't want to pretend. So

28:18

there he is sitting in the middle of a multimillion

28:20

dollar news set, and something

28:23

just kind of cracks open. You

28:26

do something really

28:29

interesting, you send out a tweet.

28:32

Yeah, news

28:35

all the time, so it doesn't seem

28:37

like a big deo. I'm sure it sounds like nothing. Just

28:39

so he tweeted something. But I

28:42

didn't just tweet news. Here's

28:45

Stephen's original tweet. He

28:47

wrote, we cover a lot

28:49

of horrible things, but this one really hit home.

28:52

It sounds almost identical to the house

28:54

my siblings and I were raised in. I

28:56

wish I could tell these kids, especially the thirteen

28:58

year old, they're not to find by their

29:00

parents mistakes. And he

29:02

tweeted it just like that.

29:06

So often my co

29:08

workers and other

29:11

people I have to interview politicians

29:14

and officials, they just assume

29:17

that my background is

29:20

not too different from theirs, and

29:22

I don't fault them for that. It's absolutely

29:25

what they would expect. What was

29:27

the feeling in the moment when

29:29

you did that? Did you sit back and think about

29:31

it for a while and then tweet? Was it impulsive?

29:34

Was it just something that sort of you

29:37

just did and then you

29:39

know, I thought like, oh, I

29:41

am sort of a compulsive overthinker.

29:44

I analyze and just

29:47

ponder stuff like I'm very careful, very

29:49

self protective naturally,

29:51

But for that, I wrote it and

29:54

sent it very impulsively,

29:56

which is very unlike me. I am very

29:58

careful about what I tweet

30:01

and posts and just put out there.

30:03

So there was as soon

30:06

as I sent it out, it was sort of like, well,

30:08

there, there it is. It's it's

30:10

up there. I purposefully did

30:12

not look at my phone for a while,

30:14

which is also very rare for me. I

30:17

could feel the vibrations of getting

30:19

alerts and I had I just couldn't bring myself

30:21

to see it for a little while. It wasn't until

30:23

I was in my car about to go home

30:26

that day that I made myself look at the

30:29

reaction. And people were very kind,

30:31

people I knew and people I didn't know extremely

30:33

kind, so it was pretty

30:35

impulsive. I would like to say

30:37

that I was just being brave and didn't have any fear,

30:40

But I've always been afraid that if

30:42

the people who were in control knew where

30:44

I actually came from, that maybe it would limit

30:46

career opportunities. You know what, network's

30:49

gonna want some anchor

30:52

in a high profile role to

30:55

be the roach kid. Like. That's always

30:57

been a fear. And I would love to tell you that it's

30:59

not fear right now, but in the back of my mind

31:02

it's it's still there. But there's

31:04

a risk in being honest

31:06

about where I came from. But the reward

31:08

seems so much better just for myself just

31:11

to own where I came from,

31:14

but in for other people going through it as well,

31:17

that the connection I mentioned is

31:19

so much more valuable than the pretense.

31:22

Because if we can't be

31:24

humans, and I'm speaking mostly

31:27

about journalists, if we we try

31:29

to tell other people's stories and

31:31

sort of just float from story to story, from

31:33

tragedy to tragedy and

31:36

don't take a moment to connect to the humanity

31:38

of it, I feel like it is just not worth anything.

31:43

After his story comes out, Steven

31:45

starts hearing from people, including some

31:48

who he's interviewed as a journalist. A

31:50

woman he had interviewed who had lost her daughter

31:52

in a hit and run crash, sends

31:54

him a message letting him know that she

31:56

could tell, even through the polish

31:58

and veneer of his teeth, the anchor presence

32:01

that he'd experienced trauma, that

32:03

he was connecting with her as someone who had also

32:06

been through really hard times. How

32:10

long has it been since that tweet? I

32:12

think it's either late July or

32:14

early August last year, so

32:17

it's a matter of months, right, Yeah,

32:21

not very much time at all. A

32:24

simple tweet, a moment of reckoning

32:27

that opens the door to a whole new vista.

32:31

As you said earlier,

32:33

where there are secrets, there's

32:36

almost inevitably always

32:38

shame. That is what is keeping

32:40

that secret hidden, you know, unspoken,

32:42

unset, unshared, And you know

32:45

there's the shame that you talk

32:47

about of just you know, fearing that

32:49

you'll be seen as damaged or that people couldn't

32:52

possibly understand, or that it will limit

32:54

your opportunities or have people see you

32:57

differently, when in fact, almost

32:59

in every Doblee the opposite

33:01

happens, and you

33:04

know, people feel that they

33:06

can connect even if their

33:09

experiences radically

33:11

different. You're showing yourself

33:13

in your own humanity, and that's

33:15

a gift to everyone who

33:17

experiences that, because then it allows them to

33:20

be more profoundly human, whatever

33:22

that means. Yes, it's

33:25

absolutely been the case since

33:27

the essay was posted.

33:30

I can't even count how many people have contacted

33:33

me saying they went through something just

33:36

like I did, or, as

33:38

you mentioned, not really at all

33:40

like either, but the feeling, the

33:42

isolation and the shame reminded

33:45

them of something that they had gone through. That's

33:48

why I mentioned that the

33:51

pretense is not worth it, and

33:54

the risk of being honest has

33:56

proved so worth

33:59

it and over rewarding. And U

34:02

sort of Since then, I've written I

34:04

don't really know what it started off as, but it's become as sort

34:06

of draft as a as a memoir, and it's

34:09

made me realize so much of

34:12

it helps you. I mean, you know, I'm sure you've

34:14

written several that helps me to contextualize

34:17

the way things are. And I've

34:19

realized a lot of stuff about my

34:21

parents, and people have

34:23

asked that question, how can

34:25

you forgive your parents

34:28

and how can you continue

34:31

my mom's past obviously, but I have a relationship

34:33

with your father. When you live that way, yeah,

34:36

it just begins to open the door. And also,

34:39

as you say, by writing about it, that's

34:42

its own process of discovery. It's

34:44

not just about setting down what happened. It's

34:46

really discovering what happened

34:48

and how it connects and what belongs to what.

34:51

And it's made me realize through this whole

34:53

thing, which would not have happened if I had not been honest

34:57

enough to tweet that that my

34:59

parents they couldn't take care of themselves,

35:01

like of course they couldn't take

35:03

care of us. I couldn't expect

35:06

them to give me something they lacked,

35:08

so it wasn't even necessarily forgiving them. And it's

35:10

just accepting the way it was. All

35:13

of these sort of epiphanies

35:17

I wouldn't have had if I had not just been open

35:19

about that secret. I'd

35:30

like to thank today's guest, Stephen Romo.

35:34

You can find Stephen on Twitter at

35:36

Steven Romo. Family

35:39

Secrets is an I Heeart media production. Dylan

35:42

Fagin is the supervising producer, and

35:44

Julie Douglas and beth Ann Mcaluso

35:46

are the executive Producers. Special

35:49

thanks to Derek Clements for his help with this episode.

35:53

If you have a family secret you'd like to share,

35:55

you can get in touch with us at listener

35:58

mail at Family Secrets Podcast Come.

36:01

You can also find us on Instagram at

36:03

Danny Ryter, Facebook at

36:05

Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter

36:08

at FAMI Secrets Pod. For

36:10

more about my book Inheritance, visit

36:12

Danny Shapiro dot com.

36:27

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36:30

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36:32

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.