June 12, 2025 • 50 mins
Through the dual lens of a devoted sister and parent, Julie explores the emotional terrain of family illness and secrecy, puzzling over how she can care for others without losing herself entirely.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Most people in our community have no idea what's been
going on with Danny. For years, we've brushed off the
questions about what he is doing, where he is, He's
in school, he's finding his way. My parents were resolute
about preserving Danny's privacy. This is no one's business. We
don't want people to look at Danny that way. It'll
(00:29):
get better, and we don't want it to be held
against him. Over time, people stopped asking. Years from now,
it will be impossible not to question the real purpose
our secrecy served. Who was protecting whom and why? Of course,
we were worried about how people saw Danny. But were
(00:50):
we keeping the
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Secret for ourselves too?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
In choosing silence? Were we also protecting our family from
the stigma of mental illness? Were we hiding from our
own shame and grief that a member of our quote
unquote good family was so broken and lost? And what
was the cost of our silence to Danny? What was
it like for him to know that his life was
(01:15):
a secret.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
That's Julie Fingersh, journalist and author of the recent memoir Stay,
A Story of family, love and other traumas. Julie's is
a story of not one, but two happy families. But
coming from a happy family does not protect us from loss,
from grief, from trauma so intense that it becomes buried
(01:40):
within us. All we can do is attempt to make
meaning out of what life hands us. And by the way,
that's a lot. I'm Dani Shapiro, and this is family secrets,
(02:03):
the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I grew up in Prarie Village, Kansas, in a Jewish
community within a very non Jewish community, and.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
The landscape, the real landscape for me, was
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Just one of love and community and safety. My parents
had and have a wonderful marriage. My dad was a lawyer,
he worked very hard. My mom was a homemaker if
they called it back then. And I was the middle
(02:50):
child with an older brother, Paul, and a younger brother, Danny.
It was a much simpler life than our kids have today.
It was just homework and play and family time and
friends time, and a very idyllic life in most ways.
(03:12):
Paul's three years older than me, and Danny's was three
years younger. Than me, and so I think part of
what became so much part of the story was that
Paul was the cool kid who was off doing his
cool things with his cool friends. And Danny and I
were very much a team and partners in play and
(03:33):
always spent a lot of time together. Danny was the
beautiful boy. He was shy. He had what I always
think of as planet white eyes. He had these big
brown eyes and bushy brown hair, and his physicality is
so vivid.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
In my mind.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
He was always tan, he always was very lean, and he.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Was just very sweet. He was very sweet, and we
used to call him the noticer. He just noticed everything.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
We spent a lot of unstructured time together. We would
often on weekends come together and be like what.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Should we do?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And we'd rip up little pieces of paper and write
things like all the different ideas like lemonade stand and
picnic in the park, and riding our bikes around the
neighborhood and judging the houses of deciding which ones we'd want.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
To live in.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
We were really close and I think an anchor for
each other. You know, have school and you go out
into the world into school, and even though it was
a small school and it was a Jewish day school actually,
and reported to be very community oriented. There's still just
the usual dynamics of classes and hierarchies and all that,
(04:57):
and it was like always for me. I think about
how coming home opening my front door. I can still
hear the sound of my front door closing, and it
was like you were home. It was a sanctuary and
Danny was a part of that sanctuary for me.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
We just could be totally ourselves.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I think as a kid, you're not really aware so
much of all the dynamics the social stratus.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
But I was always very clear that.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
My family was part of a very strong and loving
and safe community. My dad came from very modest beginnings
and he became a very accomplished lawyer, and what I
can remember, I would go to his office, his law
office on weekends often, and one summer I worked there.
(05:51):
And he was just very revered in our community and
still is is just known to have a lot of integrity.
He's just very honest and very straight up. And my
mom is beautiful. She's beautiful, and she's dynamic, and she's
a magnet for people. So in my mind, my parents
(06:11):
were like giants in our community and whenever we were out,
they would just be approached and it was just clear
they were beloved. My family was really, I think, one
of the families that was in the center of that
Jewish community in lots of different ways.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
When Julie is a senior in high school, Danny is
a freshman, their older brother, Paul is a junior in college.
What's happening to Danny around this time? Begins? As Julie
calls it, like a whisper.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
It was very subtle. As I remember it, everything changed
when he changed schools and we all had gone to
a Jewish day school and then we all transferred to
a private high school. We were very much minorities in
terms of our Judaism, and we really were from a
(07:07):
different world. So we really were kind of worked out
of a cocoon and thrown into this very status oriented,
wealthy elitist place where socially it was really rough. And
I would say it wasn't that rough for Paul. It
was rough for me, and I think it was really
rough for Danny. So what I recall the way it
(07:29):
started was he started at the school and it was
hard to distinguish. I think we all would assume that's
a hard transition to make, but it was almost like
he wasn't able to make it.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
He became with.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
John and all the things that he and I used
to do together. We would often after school, we'd come
together and just go take the dogs for a walk
or hang out in the library. He didn't want to
do those things anymore. And so I think at the
time we thought, well, it's the new school, and then
(08:06):
he's been not a lescent. This is just a hard time,
and I certainly had a hard time, and I think
then he just gradually retreated.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, it's the old sort of frog and boiling water
in a way exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
It was absolutely that, And I think that's an apt
description because for so long we did not understand the
line between adolescens and something much bigger.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
After she graduates from high school, Julie goes off to
Swarsmore College, following in the footsteps of her older brother Paul.
Now Danny is the only child at home. Julie doesn't
share her worries about Danny with her new college friends,
not because it's a secret, but because it's private. The
men and women in Julie's family have different ways of
(09:00):
dealing with the crisis. Julie and her mom do talk
about it all the time, keeping it in the family.
Julie's dad and Paul tend to keep their feelings to themselves.
This split screen existence in Julie's early college life exacts
a cost, and Julie begins binge eating.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
What's interesting is that at the time, we would never
have considered it a secret. I think I was really
raised in a culture of privacy, so that on one hand,
we were very as a family, were outgoing and warm
and embracing. But then there's a line. There's a line,
(09:41):
and I think that when Danny started to retreat and
really started to struggle, it was really intuitive to us
that it just wasn't anyone's business and why would we
share that, Like he wouldn't want that to be shared.
And I think it's again, it's the frog in the
boiling water. It's like along the way, it went from
(10:03):
privacy to secrecy.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And I almost don't.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Know, I can't pinpoint when that happened, but I think
it was probably when things went from just retreating to
he was having a really hard time and things started
happening and the binge eating. At the time, I had no,
(10:28):
I made no connection between that and what was going
on in home at all. And then in terms of
the gender and the family dynamics, I think it was
an extension of who we are as people. My mom
and I are loquacious and we are big processors, and
we spoke to each other about it primarily because we
(10:49):
were preserving the family's privacy, and my dad and my
brother they aren't big talkers about struggle at all, and
so it was this natural rift between how we coped differently.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
And then in time, I think.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The secrets and the privacy starts to do its insidious work.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Danny's condition worsens. There are some good periods, bringing the
family a modicum of hope, but the stretches of stability
are rare, and in the wake of this hope comes
fear and defeat. Danny decides to visit Israel, a huge
relief to the family that he's up for such a trip,
but it's also laced with dread. They all hold their breath,
(11:35):
wondering is this going to help? Is he going to
be okay?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And he isn't.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
He comes home and starts exhibiting new levels of out
of control destructiveness, smashing windows violent episodes. These episodes signal
to the family that maybe his condition will require some
sort of medical intervention. He does get medically assessed, but
receives no diagnosis, aren't sure how to diagnose him. And
(12:02):
then graduation comes along. High school graduation typically a joyous affair,
but for Danny and his family, not so much.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
He walked across the stage with his gown unzipped, unlike
anybody else, and with kind of the frozen look on
his face. It was like this sense of foreboding of
the future. Graduation is supposed to be this moment where
you're there, you did it, You're ready to jump into
(12:34):
the rest of your wonderful life that you've been working for.
And the way that ended, where when we went back,
when they filed off stage and all the parents and
families got together to await the arrival of the graduates,
and I'll just never forget that sense of dread and
(12:54):
almost denial.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Is he really not coming?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Is he really And just that failing of he didn't
come and what did that mean?
Speaker 1 (13:03):
What did that mean? Where did he go? And what's
going to happen next?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
It was this feeling of the hope that he was
able to do these things, and then there would be
like a dive that was deeper than where it had started.
And it just was like this cycle of hope in
psyching ourselves up, like he's going to be okay, and
he went to Israel, but he'd made it through his graduation,
(13:30):
and then when he didn't show up, there was just
such a sense of I.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Think fear, honestly fear.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
I think we all were just afraid of what that
meant for all of us and for him, mostly in
his future.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
And then that fear is just exacerbated dramatically when he
gets into an altercation with your father. Your father characteristically
loses his temper and out of just parental fear and
huge worry for Danny, and Danny grabs a knife.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
It was surreal that could happen in our kitchen, which
was the center of our home. My mom is an
amazing cook. We all spent so much of our time
in our childhoods around the family table, have bought holidays,
(14:35):
doing arts and crafts together as kids, doing our homework,
and the fact that we could be in that same
space and that could happen.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
(15:15):
Danny continues to spiral and is admitted to Meninger Psychiatric Hospital. Julie,
in the meantime, is trying to reconcile her two realities,
her brother's deteriorating health and her own bright future. She
graduates from college and gets a job as an editorial
assistant at BusinessWeek. She moves to New York City, meets
(15:36):
the man who will become her husband, and locks into
the beginnings of a rich and dynamic life, a burgeoning
career as a journalist, a wonderful partner, and yet the
other reality of her brother's condition is something that continues
to plague her.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
On one hand, it was this double life of and
in New York City, I'm living a dream. I'm going
to be a journalist. I really just I just had
that sort of naive idea of I'm just going to
do it and I'm going to be successful, and it's
that was the dream before going into it. And at
(16:16):
the same time this was happening with Danny, and so
there was just that double life. And then there was
the double life of my life in front of the
people I was living among and with, and then my
life behind the scenes on the phone all the time
with my mom and Danny and my dad and Paul too.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
That it was like there were these two double lives.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
And in some ways it was a refuge to be
able to be out in the world and not have
to have the people in my life know what was
going on behind. There was a relief in that, but
there was a cost to it too, and in many ways,
like the artist part, I think for siblings, when there's
(17:04):
a sibling that struggles, is that it's just impossible to
believe that your life going well is not making their
life worse. It was just impossible to not draw that line.
And so in the back of my mind that pulled
and pulled at me, and.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
It was like every success.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I can remember my first National byline, I don't even
know that.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I want to tell Danny it was like he was
in a mental.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Hospital, and I want to say too, you include in
your book some of Danny's notes and letters to you,
and he was like, so your cheerleader and so seemingly
without a malicious or envious bone in his body.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
You're right.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
So this wasn't coming from the kind of sibling thing
where it might be like, oh, you're getting all the
good stuff and look at me. It was the opposite
of that, when there's that terrible cat of if this
is going to be good for me, then somehow that
means it's going to be.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Bad for you.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I think that the phrase the terrible calculus is so
apt because in some ways to me, it was even
more painful that he never led on that he was jealous,
or that he looked at my life with envy, and
that was such a reflection of him and how good
(18:27):
he was and how sweet he was, And that just
made it worse to me because I knew, or I
thought I knew that. How could it not The contrast
between our lives was just getting greater and greater.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
After a year's stay with no improvement at Menninger, Danny's
doctors decided to try ECT electroconvulsive therapy, and scary as
this is, there is again that hope that maybe this
will be the thing that helps. Unfortunately it doesn't. Danny's
deterioration accelerates. Now it's May fifteenth, nineteen ninety six. Julie
(19:10):
and Dave are married and living in New York. They
don't have kids yet. The phone rings at one in
the morning and it's Julie's brother Paul.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
At this point, Danny had been struggling since he was
fourteen and now he was twenty seven. And so at
the time, I was on the phone with a friend
of mine late and it was call waiting back then,
(19:42):
and I saw it was my brother's number, and I thought,
oh my god. I mean, it was like I just
there was nothing else that could have been. And I
think that's one of those moments in your life where
it's like a before and after and you just go
into this state of unreality. And I clicked over and
my brother told me, just like that, Danny's going to die.
(20:05):
And I can just remember people talk about out a
body experience, and that is how it was, and this
feeling of my mind refused to hold it, even though
in some ways it was like your nightmare coming true
and all those years of imagining it and like suddenly
you're standing in it.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
And yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
We talked for a few minutes, and I asked where
my parents, like if they knew what had happened, And
what I remember is just that he said.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
You got to convince them not to go there.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
At that time, he was at a halfway house and
he actually was doing really well. He had a job
and he was really optimistic and things were looking up.
And he came home one day and greeted the guys
that he lived with and said, I in it hanging
to go upstairs and take a shower before dinner. And
(21:03):
he went up and what the fireman said was, you know,
he shared a bathroom and there was an aerosol can
Deodora and Danny had always I mean, it was sort
of poetic because he had always played with fire. He'd
always been fascinated with that. It was something like we
did as kids.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
We would use.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Magnifying glasses in the sun and burn sticks with it.
And then later on there was that Saint Elmo's Fire,
that movie that you may remember where Rob Low sprays
aerosol and then lights it.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And so what happened was Danny was playing with.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
It and he lit it with a lighter and the
cant exploded and because it was.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
A spray, it just exploded on him.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
And what the fireman said is that they didn't think
it was a suicide. They didn't think he could have
known that was going to happen. But I think that
for us there was some comfort in that but I
think there was also or I'll speak for myself, not
my rest of my family. It was a feeling of like,
I know that in some recess of his mind, and
(22:15):
particularly since he had attempted taking his life before that,
in some recess of his mind, that he was capable
of that and certainly capable of tempting it, and I
think had attempted it, and that day it was a calculation.
I think he couldn't have known. But he was taken
(22:36):
to the hospital and he said to the guys that
were his housemates were out there with them, and he
was still conscious, and he said, oh, hey, we'll see
you guys later.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
He didn't think he was going to die.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
And I think that once he got to the hospital
it was clear that the Barns were too severe to
save him.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Described to me the landscape of the family that you
and Dave made together in those years following this staggering loss.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
So we had moved, we'd moved from Boston to San Francisco.
Dave was doing a fellowship to be a doctor, a specialist,
and it was supposed to be for a year, and
Danny had died three years before, and it was before
(23:31):
our daughter was born that he died, so our daughter Jesse.
When we moved it was a year and a half,
and I would say, for me the landscape, the feeling
I had was I came to California giddy, Yes, so
(23:51):
happy to be somewhere new, and happy to be somewhere
exotic and foreign and beautiful. Most of all, happy to
move to a place where no one knew about Danny
or what had happened. And it was an amazing relief
(24:13):
and joy to start our family, to grow our family there.
And it's crazy because when I line my childhood up
with our kids, it's so much the same. It was,
though idyllic. We just had so much fun. Our son
Sam was born three years later. We ended up staying.
(24:33):
In part it was supposed to be for a year,
but I think we ended up staying because life was
so joyous there, and I'm sure no small measure, because
it was light without history, without other family there as
a reminder or as just a network. It was just
like we were reinventing ourselves. But it was so much
(24:56):
the same in the sense of what a loving and happy,
an idyllic childhood our kids had and we had as
new parents and young parents.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
That was a landscape.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
It was just a happy, safe, revelatory, light, beautiful life
we created as a young family.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Though Julie relishes in this revelatory and beautiful family life,
she also runs up against feelings of despair, wondering if
she did the right thing by choosing to stay home
when her kids were born. She writes, I've been spearheading
community projects, meeting with CEOs, sharing an events stage with
Secretary of State Colon Powell, fielding questions from the press.
(25:48):
And now now I sat cross legged in a circle
of new mothers, singing, ring around the rosie, with a
drooling baby on my lap. Now I was Jesse's mom,
walking around with little cascades of dry vomit down my shirt.
It was clear before I was many things. Executive director, writer,
strategic partner, program developer, fundraiser, community leader. Now I was
(26:12):
one thing. I lived in, a seven day a week
world of sing songy, high pitched tones. Conversations were limited
to baby talk, days of all the same thing caregiving.
No matter how I sliced it or how much I
loved being with Jesse, a stay at home mom was
a fraught designation.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
It was a big decision for me to stay at
home because I had always envisioned myself I.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Say, worshiped at the altered productivity.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
That was what I longed to value and achievement, and
that is also a very Jewish thing, and so the
idea of giving that up, it was like, then, who
am I going to be.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Like besides a mom?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
And I had this one seminal conversation with my brother
who basically said, you have your whole life to work,
and you have the privilege of being able to raise
your kids.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Why would you say no to that? You could always
go back to work.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And I think at the time I remember this sense
of he's right. On a logistical level, he's right. It
was also really hard for me to justify staying working
as a writer. At that time when I left, I
was running a nonprofit agency, but I assumed I would
go back to being a writer at some point and
(27:32):
the money I made it would cover a fraction of
what childcare was going to be. So it was to
me it felt like, if I stay at work, that
is a pure indulgence that is for my own development
and self actualization, and how can I put that in
(27:53):
front of our children's welfare, and so that is what
drove the decision.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
And I think at the beginning it was such a joy.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
It was like this guilty relief of, Oh my gosh,
I'm Jesse's a baby, Jesse's a toddler. Life is so
crystal clear that days were structured, the priorities were clear.
You feed them, you burp them, you poop them, you
go to the playground. It was a relief, and I
(28:24):
think what happened was it became fraught the older the
kids got, the more I immersed myself in that California world,
which was a lot of moms who had given up
their careers to be home with their kids. It was
just hard to imagine going back. But I think inside
there was always this voice that was saying, what are
(28:45):
you doing? Why are you giving everything up?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Who was I?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
What happened to that crazy, like ambitiously obsessed person that
I had been for the first thirty years in my life.
So then fast forward, Jesse was a senior in high
school and Sam was a freshman in high school, and
(29:11):
Jess started feeling this incredibly intense feeling of dread and
anxiety and grief. For the longest time, I thought well,
this is just this is what it is. It's like
any parent of a child leaving the nest is going
to be sad, but it felt like so much.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
More than that.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
And the day that it came to a head for
me was Jesse was a senior in high school. Like
I was saying, is like she was headed for the stars.
At that age. She had not gone through the Ringers. Socially,
she had really made her way with a lot of ease.
There had been terrible things that had happened at her
school outside of her, but in terms of who she
(29:55):
was and how she did. Sue was storing and one
day she came in to our house and I was
cooking chicken soup, and she tossed her wallet on top of.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
My onions and said, guess who called? And I said who?
She said, the Secret Service.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
And at that time it was actually that summer, the
summer after her senior year, the summer right before she
was supposed to go to college, she was interning for
the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
So she'd come home from her internship and said that.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
And I said, what Secret Service? Yeah, So it turns
out she said she was one of two interns chosen
to be part of Hillary's motorcade to take her around
to Tim Cook's house and all big wigs to fundraise,
and I was so proud and I just was looked
at her and she was shining and so happy, and.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I was so proud.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
And then it was like I can so vividly feel
that underneath there was like this crest, like this wave
of envy.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
That I had for her.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
And as a parent, you're allowed to feel a lot
of things, but you're definitely not allowed to feel jealous
of your own kid. This is not something we talk about.
We can stay jokingly I want to come back as
my kid in my next life. Okay, that's one thing,
but you're not really allowed to say I am jealous
of my child. And that is what I was feeling.
(31:21):
And that's when I knew something was very wrong, as
that feeling kept coming up more and more as it
like the march of time towards one shoes leaving for college.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
So that was the stage for our leaving and me feeling.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Very like tortured and guilty and not able to talk
about I mean talk about secrets.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
That was a secret.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I told my one of my best friends, my running partner,
and I think that's it for a long time, not Dave.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
No, I don't think I did.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
I think it was a long time before I told
Dave because I was ashamed.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
I was horrified.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
This is like the antithesis, and not to mention like,
I am so close to my daughter. We were one
of the mother daughters who people looked at as people
would always say, oh my god, you and Jesse.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
You're so lucky, so lucky.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
How she talks to you, and how you guys have
such a close relationship, which I always felt so then
to feel this feeling of envy.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
For her was just so awful.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
We'll be right back. Jesse goes off to Northwestern, but
before she does, she turns to Julie one day and asks, mom,
how are we going to do this? They're so close,
so used to knowing the daily minutia of each other's lives,
(32:55):
how literally, Jesse wonders, how are they going to navigate
being so far apart phone calls, texts, FaceTime. This is
always a huge moment between parents and their kids going
off to college, but in the case of Jesse and Julie,
it looms particularly large.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
The weekend we got to Northwestern for her orientation. She
started having stomach pain and having to go to the
bathroom a lot, and it got dramatically worse within a
couple of days, to the point where on moving day,
which is supposed to be this very classic iconic day
(33:35):
of the first day of the rest of your life,
this new phase, she had to stay in the hotel
because she just couldn't get out of bed, and Dave
and I and Sam helped to set up her room
and did it on her own.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
And then what happened is.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
That the day before we left her there, they have
this ceremony called the March through the Arch and all
the kids walk through this and we saw her and
it was so clear that she was in pain, but
the health services had said it was gastronritis and that
was going on. And then we met at the field
(34:12):
and her fists were bald up, and I just remember
thinking like, oh my god, are we really going to
leave her like this?
Speaker 1 (34:19):
We're really leaving her like this?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
And we just gently said, Jess, are you sure you
don't want.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Us to stay for a couple extra days just to
help you.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
No, I don't want you to just go and fine,
and so we did. And it's funny because, honestly, like
until this moment, it's such a bizarre parallel that never
occurred to me that just in the way that it
was Danny's graduation and this thing happened that was so
it was like foreboding. It was like a foreshadowing of
(34:51):
what was going to happen in the rest of his life.
It was the same thing on that orientation day. It
was such an emblematic moment standing in a hot field
and seeing that she was sick and feeling should we
stay or should we go? And the tension with adult
children that all they want is to be independent in
that moment, and you, as a parent, your job is
(35:13):
to support that.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
And yet when your child is clearly.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Something has gone wrong, your instinct is you can't leave them.
And it's like there's no playbook for that. When they're sick,
you know, when they're fine, you just know you leave.
Doesn't matter that they're sad, doesn't matter that you're sad.
But when they're sick, do you leave?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
But we did.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
It's so interesting to me that to me those parallels,
whether or not that was something that you were conscious of,
is that there was this kind of weird foreshadowing parallel.
You weren't conscious of it, but it was there, and
in a way like its own secret, it was present.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
I am so freaked out by that discovery right now.
I can't believe I never saw that.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
It's a secret you were keeping from yourself, because the
only reason why I know it is because you wrote it,
and you wrote it in a way that allowed me
to see it.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
It's so weird.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Just a week after arriving at Northwestern, Jesse calls her
mom with an update. Things have worsened.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
She called me and she said there was blood in
the toilet, and so I went back, I got on
the planet, went to the hospital, and she was diagnosed
with ulterative colitis and they put her on a medication.
You seem to respond to it, and then that was
it for a while. We went back to our roles of.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Okay, you're independent, and wow, look at you.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
You made it through your first hurdle, and we made
it through your first hurdle, and now we're going to
let you live your life. And Jesse was very clear
she didn't really want us to be asking her about
it all the time. She wanted to focus on her
new life. But it was really interesting though that when
she was in the hospital. When I think about secrets
(37:05):
and I think about how different this.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Current family of mine handled.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
The situation differently than we did with Danny, is that
I can remember her being in the hospital and she
was missing her first week of college, and these people
didn't know her.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
This was a whole new world.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
And so listen to her talking on the phone to
herra and to her new roommate and to the new
people she met before orientations started.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
And the way she was already.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Integrating this new part of her life and being droll
about it with a sense of humor, like, oh, yeah,
I just figured my first week of college, I just
might as well start off in the hospital. And this
feeling of not really wanting to show or feel or
own or tell what was like the severity of what
(38:01):
had just happened and what was ahead.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Yeah, there's another beautiful passage from your book that I
just want to read here, because from this point on,
as the months go by and you're not talking about
it out of respecting her independence and young adulthood, and
she's got under control, her condition worsens takes a real turn,
and there's this passage that you wrote, which is for
(38:27):
months now, she'd carried out our family legacy of pursuing, prevailing, achieving,
but the family legacy had failed to win this one,
and a new teacher, the teacher of illness, was about
to prevail.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah, that's exactly true.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Perhaps partly in preparation for this next chapter in her life,
Julia signed up for a writing retreat in Montana. She's
thinking that it might be just what she needs, a push,
a deadline, a community of other writers to help her
get started again.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
And so I signed up.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
My plan was, We're going to drop Jess off at
school and a week later, I'm going to start over.
I'm going to start a new part of my life
and try to reconnect with the writer I used to be.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
And the irony of Jesse got thick.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
It was the week before I was supposed to go
on that retreat, and I can remember feeling I was
there in the hospital with her. The retreat was supposed
to start four days later, and I thought, wow, I
obviously I'm not going to go if she needs me here,
And I remember that thinking for the first time, it
was the first time I connected the story of Danny
with Jesse and how the irony and that the inner
(39:48):
conflict of my primary feeling was fear about Jesse and
what would happen, and wanting to save her and wanting
to make everything okay, and then this tiny voice in
the back of my mind going, but what about the
rest of your life? Are you putting that side?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Again?
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I wasn't even conscious of it. It really didn't become
conscious till much later, But I can see looking back
that that got put in motion, and she responded to
that medication and she was ready to go back to school.
And I went to that retreat a couple days late,
and then that was where that next part of my
journey began, of just like the part of my life
(40:29):
that was just for me, which I hadn't really touched
since I was in my twenties, you know.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
And it's interesting, Julie, like, it's so easily could have
been otherwise, the terrible calculus of basically, I don't get
to have this, I don't get to have this. I'm
not going to get to have my own identity that's
just mine in a way, the parallels are really extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
And I think the worst part is that I wasn't
really conscious when Danny was sick or when Jesse got of.
I didn't have the fully developed thought, Oh, I guess
I'm never gonna have something on my own. All I
felt was fear and dread for these two people I loved,
and then this nagging feeling of guilt that I was
(41:14):
even thinking about myself. It was that same thing with Danny,
like how dare I think about my little writing career
when he's failing it? And with Jesse it was like
who cares about like my little writing retreat? But there
is that tiny little part of you that wants that
voice of don't forget me.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
A few months after the first incident of Jesse's bleeding,
it seems the medication is working and that everything's under control.
But then Julian Dave get another call. Jesse's ulcerative colitis
has worsened again. She may be facing major surgery. That
possibility quickly turns into an inevitability as Jesse undergoes an
(41:58):
emergency procedure to remove her colon. This is a shocking development,
destabilizing for anyone, but all the more so for a young,
incredibly vital person. Jesse will then undergo two more reconstructive
surgeries over time in order to allow her to have
a quote unquote normal life. Jesse comes through these surgeries
(42:22):
with flying colors. She is incredibly resilient and determined. She
takes some time off from Northwestern to navigate her recovery,
and the family is together once again. They even get
a puppy that evergreen harbinger of joy and playfulness. But
Julie has a lot of self examination to do. There
has been so much trauma, trauma on top of trauma
(42:44):
past seeping into the present. She begins a course of
therapy called e MDR that has come up before on
this podcast. It stands for eye movement, Desensitization and reprocessing.
One of the hallmarks of this therapy is that it
allows the patient access to memory with no narrative. It's
not about connecting the dots. It creates the possibility of
(43:08):
a real breakthrough, and this happens for Julie. The dots
connect tell me what Jesse had known about her uncle,
who she never knew.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Jesse and Sam both knew I had a brother. They
knew Danny's name, and seeing lots of pictures and heard
lots of stories about him. But what they knew was
that he died in an accident, and that's really what
they knew. We never talked about depression, We never talked
about mental illness. And when I think about the architecture
(43:42):
of family secrets and what drives it, what drives you
to build them, and what drives you to have this
engine behind them, the whole concept of a family secret,
in some ways I recoil it that because it almost
feels as if you really understood the implies patience. But
for us, it was like, I didn't want my kids
(44:04):
to know what happened because it was horrible, it was traumatic,
and why they were kids? Why do they have to
know that? Why do they have to be burdened? Why
do they have to be scared to know that my brother,
that this happened to someone so close to them. But
I think what happened was this secrecy came to roost.
(44:26):
And I think it's so interesting because Jesse in this
story really became a teacher to me because she with
her illness, she made a choice early on that she
was not going to keep it a total secret, partially
just because she physically couldn't. So you can't tell she's sick,
(44:47):
but if you're close enough to her, you'll know by
her behaviors that she needs certain accommodations. But I think
that she taught me that it was just damaging. I
was damaging to hide it from my kids. It was
hard to know when they'd be ready to hear it.
But I think when the moment came where we talked
(45:13):
about her illness and she was saying, mom, please, it
makes everything worse when you and dad are constantly looking
for the solution and for the next big thing and
it's all behind this wall. It adds this burden, and
just let me have my illness, let me figure it
(45:38):
out myself. I think for me understanding the cost of
family secrets and understanding the cost of what happens to
us when we keep them, and how we end up
editing ourselves out of our own life in a certain way,
it really came to roost for me during this time
(45:59):
with Jesse when she very courageously.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Did tell people.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
And one of the big moments in my life was
being asked to speak at our high holiday services about something,
and I made the decision right then. I made the
decision that I was going to talk about Danny to
a community that I had been in.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
For twenty five years, and.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Maybe three or four or five people knew I even
had a brother, And going back.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
To earlier in the story, like the giddy.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Thing, it was like no one knew, no one knew,
And on that day I did tell it, and what
happened afterwards was so instructive, because what you hear anytime
there's a story like this, anytime someone really tells the truth,
they find out from everyone around them, me too, that
(46:52):
they too.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
There were all the people.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Who were coming and saying, oh my god, thank you
for sharing your story.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
We had no idea. We can't believe that would be you.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
In the same way that like, oh, the perfect Hay family,
how could that had been in your past? But it
was also in the release in telling, like making it,
like breaking through that secret and just making it information
about the whole of me and the whole of Jesse.
(47:23):
It was like the power of the secret evaporated. It's
been really one of the biggest lessons of my life.
How privacy turns into secrecy, and that secrecy and privacy
turns into isolation and loneliness, and what has happened to
all of us since we have come forward with call
(47:43):
them secrets or breaking through the privacy or whatever, is
that we are much more whole people. We don't have
to hide anymore. And we also found out that it
turns out not only does no one hold it against you,
but it's like that vulnerability and honesty is the fastest
path to connection. Like spose how we are all the same,
(48:09):
that we all do have so much of the same pain.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Here's Julie reading one last passage from her memoir Stay.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I was finally coming to understand that our birthright is this.
We are entitled to our own lives. No matter what
happens to those we love. We are entitled and we
don't have to be anything.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Other than who we are.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
When the people we love struggle, we can love them
and we can try our best to help them, but
we cannot save them. It is enough to learn how
to save ourselves.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Zakoor 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 eight eight
Secret Zero. That's the number zero. You can also find
(49:29):
me on Instagram at daniwriter and if you'd like to
know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check
out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or Everett you listen to your favorite shows
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Most people in our community have no idea what's been
going on with Danny. For years, we've brushed off the
questions about what he is doing, where he is, He's
in school, he's finding his way. My parents were resolute
about preserving Danny's privacy. This is no one's business. We
don't want people to look at Danny that way. It'll
(00:29):
get better, and we don't want it to be held
against him. Over time, people stopped asking. Years from now,
it will be impossible not to question the real purpose
our secrecy served. Who was protecting whom and why? Of course,
we were worried about how people saw Danny. But were
(00:50):
we keeping the
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Secret for ourselves too?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
In choosing silence? Were we also protecting our family from
the stigma of mental illness? Were we hiding from our
own shame and grief that a member of our quote
unquote good family was so broken and lost? And what
was the cost of our silence to Danny? What was
it like for him to know that his life was
(01:15):
a secret.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
That's Julie Fingersh, journalist and author of the recent memoir Stay,
A Story of family, love and other traumas. Julie's is
a story of not one, but two happy families. But
coming from a happy family does not protect us from loss,
from grief, from trauma so intense that it becomes buried
(01:40):
within us. All we can do is attempt to make
meaning out of what life hands us. And by the way,
that's a lot. I'm Dani Shapiro, and this is family secrets,
(02:03):
the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I grew up in Prarie Village, Kansas, in a Jewish
community within a very non Jewish community, and.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
The landscape, the real landscape for me, was
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Just one of love and community and safety. My parents
had and have a wonderful marriage. My dad was a lawyer,
he worked very hard. My mom was a homemaker if
they called it back then. And I was the middle
(02:50):
child with an older brother, Paul, and a younger brother, Danny.
It was a much simpler life than our kids have today.
It was just homework and play and family time and
friends time, and a very idyllic life in most ways.
(03:12):
Paul's three years older than me, and Danny's was three
years younger. Than me, and so I think part of
what became so much part of the story was that
Paul was the cool kid who was off doing his
cool things with his cool friends. And Danny and I
were very much a team and partners in play and
(03:33):
always spent a lot of time together. Danny was the
beautiful boy. He was shy. He had what I always
think of as planet white eyes. He had these big
brown eyes and bushy brown hair, and his physicality is
so vivid.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
In my mind.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
He was always tan, he always was very lean, and he.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Was just very sweet. He was very sweet, and we
used to call him the noticer. He just noticed everything.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
We spent a lot of unstructured time together. We would
often on weekends come together and be like what.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Should we do?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And we'd rip up little pieces of paper and write
things like all the different ideas like lemonade stand and
picnic in the park, and riding our bikes around the
neighborhood and judging the houses of deciding which ones we'd want.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
To live in.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
We were really close and I think an anchor for
each other. You know, have school and you go out
into the world into school, and even though it was
a small school and it was a Jewish day school actually,
and reported to be very community oriented. There's still just
the usual dynamics of classes and hierarchies and all that,
(04:57):
and it was like always for me. I think about
how coming home opening my front door. I can still
hear the sound of my front door closing, and it
was like you were home. It was a sanctuary and
Danny was a part of that sanctuary for me.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
We just could be totally ourselves.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I think as a kid, you're not really aware so
much of all the dynamics the social stratus.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
But I was always very clear that.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
My family was part of a very strong and loving
and safe community. My dad came from very modest beginnings
and he became a very accomplished lawyer, and what I
can remember, I would go to his office, his law
office on weekends often, and one summer I worked there.
(05:51):
And he was just very revered in our community and
still is is just known to have a lot of integrity.
He's just very honest and very straight up. And my
mom is beautiful. She's beautiful, and she's dynamic, and she's
a magnet for people. So in my mind, my parents
(06:11):
were like giants in our community and whenever we were out,
they would just be approached and it was just clear
they were beloved. My family was really, I think, one
of the families that was in the center of that
Jewish community in lots of different ways.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
When Julie is a senior in high school, Danny is
a freshman, their older brother, Paul is a junior in college.
What's happening to Danny around this time? Begins? As Julie
calls it, like a whisper.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
It was very subtle. As I remember it, everything changed
when he changed schools and we all had gone to
a Jewish day school and then we all transferred to
a private high school. We were very much minorities in
terms of our Judaism, and we really were from a
(07:07):
different world. So we really were kind of worked out
of a cocoon and thrown into this very status oriented,
wealthy elitist place where socially it was really rough. And
I would say it wasn't that rough for Paul. It
was rough for me, and I think it was really
rough for Danny. So what I recall the way it
(07:29):
started was he started at the school and it was
hard to distinguish. I think we all would assume that's
a hard transition to make, but it was almost like
he wasn't able to make it.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
He became with.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
John and all the things that he and I used
to do together. We would often after school, we'd come
together and just go take the dogs for a walk
or hang out in the library. He didn't want to
do those things anymore. And so I think at the
time we thought, well, it's the new school, and then
(08:06):
he's been not a lescent. This is just a hard time,
and I certainly had a hard time, and I think
then he just gradually retreated.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, it's the old sort of frog and boiling water
in a way exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
It was absolutely that, And I think that's an apt
description because for so long we did not understand the
line between adolescens and something much bigger.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
After she graduates from high school, Julie goes off to
Swarsmore College, following in the footsteps of her older brother Paul.
Now Danny is the only child at home. Julie doesn't
share her worries about Danny with her new college friends,
not because it's a secret, but because it's private. The
men and women in Julie's family have different ways of
(09:00):
dealing with the crisis. Julie and her mom do talk
about it all the time, keeping it in the family.
Julie's dad and Paul tend to keep their feelings to themselves.
This split screen existence in Julie's early college life exacts
a cost, and Julie begins binge eating.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
What's interesting is that at the time, we would never
have considered it a secret. I think I was really
raised in a culture of privacy, so that on one hand,
we were very as a family, were outgoing and warm
and embracing. But then there's a line. There's a line,
(09:41):
and I think that when Danny started to retreat and
really started to struggle, it was really intuitive to us
that it just wasn't anyone's business and why would we
share that, Like he wouldn't want that to be shared.
And I think it's again, it's the frog in the
boiling water. It's like along the way, it went from
(10:03):
privacy to secrecy.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And I almost don't.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Know, I can't pinpoint when that happened, but I think
it was probably when things went from just retreating to
he was having a really hard time and things started
happening and the binge eating. At the time, I had no,
(10:28):
I made no connection between that and what was going
on in home at all. And then in terms of
the gender and the family dynamics, I think it was
an extension of who we are as people. My mom
and I are loquacious and we are big processors, and
we spoke to each other about it primarily because we
(10:49):
were preserving the family's privacy, and my dad and my
brother they aren't big talkers about struggle at all, and
so it was this natural rift between how we coped differently.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
And then in time, I think.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The secrets and the privacy starts to do its insidious work.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Danny's condition worsens. There are some good periods, bringing the
family a modicum of hope, but the stretches of stability
are rare, and in the wake of this hope comes
fear and defeat. Danny decides to visit Israel, a huge
relief to the family that he's up for such a trip,
but it's also laced with dread. They all hold their breath,
(11:35):
wondering is this going to help? Is he going to
be okay?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And he isn't.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
He comes home and starts exhibiting new levels of out
of control destructiveness, smashing windows violent episodes. These episodes signal
to the family that maybe his condition will require some
sort of medical intervention. He does get medically assessed, but
receives no diagnosis, aren't sure how to diagnose him. And
(12:02):
then graduation comes along. High school graduation typically a joyous affair,
but for Danny and his family, not so much.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
He walked across the stage with his gown unzipped, unlike
anybody else, and with kind of the frozen look on
his face. It was like this sense of foreboding of
the future. Graduation is supposed to be this moment where
you're there, you did it, You're ready to jump into
(12:34):
the rest of your wonderful life that you've been working for.
And the way that ended, where when we went back,
when they filed off stage and all the parents and
families got together to await the arrival of the graduates,
and I'll just never forget that sense of dread and
(12:54):
almost denial.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Is he really not coming?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Is he really And just that failing of he didn't
come and what did that mean?
Speaker 1 (13:03):
What did that mean? Where did he go? And what's
going to happen next?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
It was this feeling of the hope that he was
able to do these things, and then there would be
like a dive that was deeper than where it had started.
And it just was like this cycle of hope in
psyching ourselves up, like he's going to be okay, and
he went to Israel, but he'd made it through his graduation,
(13:30):
and then when he didn't show up, there was just
such a sense of I.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Think fear, honestly fear.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
I think we all were just afraid of what that
meant for all of us and for him, mostly in
his future.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
And then that fear is just exacerbated dramatically when he
gets into an altercation with your father. Your father characteristically
loses his temper and out of just parental fear and
huge worry for Danny, and Danny grabs a knife.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
It was surreal that could happen in our kitchen, which
was the center of our home. My mom is an
amazing cook. We all spent so much of our time
in our childhoods around the family table, have bought holidays,
(14:35):
doing arts and crafts together as kids, doing our homework,
and the fact that we could be in that same
space and that could happen.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
(15:15):
Danny continues to spiral and is admitted to Meninger Psychiatric Hospital. Julie,
in the meantime, is trying to reconcile her two realities,
her brother's deteriorating health and her own bright future. She
graduates from college and gets a job as an editorial
assistant at BusinessWeek. She moves to New York City, meets
(15:36):
the man who will become her husband, and locks into
the beginnings of a rich and dynamic life, a burgeoning
career as a journalist, a wonderful partner, and yet the
other reality of her brother's condition is something that continues
to plague her.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
On one hand, it was this double life of and
in New York City, I'm living a dream. I'm going
to be a journalist. I really just I just had
that sort of naive idea of I'm just going to
do it and I'm going to be successful, and it's
that was the dream before going into it. And at
(16:16):
the same time this was happening with Danny, and so
there was just that double life. And then there was
the double life of my life in front of the
people I was living among and with, and then my
life behind the scenes on the phone all the time
with my mom and Danny and my dad and Paul too.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
That it was like there were these two double lives.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
And in some ways it was a refuge to be
able to be out in the world and not have
to have the people in my life know what was
going on behind. There was a relief in that, but
there was a cost to it too, and in many ways,
like the artist part, I think for siblings, when there's
(17:04):
a sibling that struggles, is that it's just impossible to
believe that your life going well is not making their
life worse. It was just impossible to not draw that line.
And so in the back of my mind that pulled
and pulled at me, and.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
It was like every success.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I can remember my first National byline, I don't even
know that.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I want to tell Danny it was like he was
in a mental.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Hospital, and I want to say too, you include in
your book some of Danny's notes and letters to you,
and he was like, so your cheerleader and so seemingly
without a malicious or envious bone in his body.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
You're right.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
So this wasn't coming from the kind of sibling thing
where it might be like, oh, you're getting all the
good stuff and look at me. It was the opposite
of that, when there's that terrible cat of if this
is going to be good for me, then somehow that
means it's going to be.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Bad for you.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I think that the phrase the terrible calculus is so
apt because in some ways to me, it was even
more painful that he never led on that he was jealous,
or that he looked at my life with envy, and
that was such a reflection of him and how good
(18:27):
he was and how sweet he was, And that just
made it worse to me because I knew, or I
thought I knew that. How could it not The contrast
between our lives was just getting greater and greater.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
After a year's stay with no improvement at Menninger, Danny's
doctors decided to try ECT electroconvulsive therapy, and scary as
this is, there is again that hope that maybe this
will be the thing that helps. Unfortunately it doesn't. Danny's
deterioration accelerates. Now it's May fifteenth, nineteen ninety six. Julie
(19:10):
and Dave are married and living in New York. They
don't have kids yet. The phone rings at one in
the morning and it's Julie's brother Paul.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
At this point, Danny had been struggling since he was
fourteen and now he was twenty seven. And so at
the time, I was on the phone with a friend
of mine late and it was call waiting back then,
(19:42):
and I saw it was my brother's number, and I thought,
oh my god. I mean, it was like I just
there was nothing else that could have been. And I
think that's one of those moments in your life where
it's like a before and after and you just go
into this state of unreality. And I clicked over and
my brother told me, just like that, Danny's going to die.
(20:05):
And I can just remember people talk about out a
body experience, and that is how it was, and this
feeling of my mind refused to hold it, even though
in some ways it was like your nightmare coming true
and all those years of imagining it and like suddenly
you're standing in it.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
And yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
We talked for a few minutes, and I asked where
my parents, like if they knew what had happened, And
what I remember is just that he said.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
You got to convince them not to go there.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
At that time, he was at a halfway house and
he actually was doing really well. He had a job
and he was really optimistic and things were looking up.
And he came home one day and greeted the guys
that he lived with and said, I in it hanging
to go upstairs and take a shower before dinner. And
(21:03):
he went up and what the fireman said was, you know,
he shared a bathroom and there was an aerosol can
Deodora and Danny had always I mean, it was sort
of poetic because he had always played with fire. He'd
always been fascinated with that. It was something like we
did as kids.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
We would use.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Magnifying glasses in the sun and burn sticks with it.
And then later on there was that Saint Elmo's Fire,
that movie that you may remember where Rob Low sprays
aerosol and then lights it.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And so what happened was Danny was playing with.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
It and he lit it with a lighter and the
cant exploded and because it was.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
A spray, it just exploded on him.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
And what the fireman said is that they didn't think
it was a suicide. They didn't think he could have
known that was going to happen. But I think that
for us there was some comfort in that but I
think there was also or I'll speak for myself, not
my rest of my family. It was a feeling of like,
I know that in some recess of his mind, and
(22:15):
particularly since he had attempted taking his life before that,
in some recess of his mind, that he was capable
of that and certainly capable of tempting it, and I
think had attempted it, and that day it was a calculation.
I think he couldn't have known. But he was taken
(22:36):
to the hospital and he said to the guys that
were his housemates were out there with them, and he
was still conscious, and he said, oh, hey, we'll see
you guys later.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
He didn't think he was going to die.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
And I think that once he got to the hospital
it was clear that the Barns were too severe to
save him.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Described to me the landscape of the family that you
and Dave made together in those years following this staggering loss.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
So we had moved, we'd moved from Boston to San Francisco.
Dave was doing a fellowship to be a doctor, a specialist,
and it was supposed to be for a year, and
Danny had died three years before, and it was before
(23:31):
our daughter was born that he died, so our daughter Jesse.
When we moved it was a year and a half,
and I would say, for me the landscape, the feeling
I had was I came to California giddy, Yes, so
(23:51):
happy to be somewhere new, and happy to be somewhere
exotic and foreign and beautiful. Most of all, happy to
move to a place where no one knew about Danny
or what had happened. And it was an amazing relief
(24:13):
and joy to start our family, to grow our family there.
And it's crazy because when I line my childhood up
with our kids, it's so much the same. It was,
though idyllic. We just had so much fun. Our son
Sam was born three years later. We ended up staying.
(24:33):
In part it was supposed to be for a year,
but I think we ended up staying because life was
so joyous there, and I'm sure no small measure, because
it was light without history, without other family there as
a reminder or as just a network. It was just
like we were reinventing ourselves. But it was so much
(24:56):
the same in the sense of what a loving and happy,
an idyllic childhood our kids had and we had as
new parents and young parents.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
That was a landscape.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
It was just a happy, safe, revelatory, light, beautiful life
we created as a young family.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Though Julie relishes in this revelatory and beautiful family life,
she also runs up against feelings of despair, wondering if
she did the right thing by choosing to stay home
when her kids were born. She writes, I've been spearheading
community projects, meeting with CEOs, sharing an events stage with
Secretary of State Colon Powell, fielding questions from the press.
(25:48):
And now now I sat cross legged in a circle
of new mothers, singing, ring around the rosie, with a
drooling baby on my lap. Now I was Jesse's mom,
walking around with little cascades of dry vomit down my shirt.
It was clear before I was many things. Executive director, writer,
strategic partner, program developer, fundraiser, community leader. Now I was
(26:12):
one thing. I lived in, a seven day a week
world of sing songy, high pitched tones. Conversations were limited
to baby talk, days of all the same thing caregiving.
No matter how I sliced it or how much I
loved being with Jesse, a stay at home mom was
a fraught designation.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
It was a big decision for me to stay at
home because I had always envisioned myself I.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Say, worshiped at the altered productivity.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
That was what I longed to value and achievement, and
that is also a very Jewish thing, and so the
idea of giving that up, it was like, then, who
am I going to be.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Like besides a mom?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
And I had this one seminal conversation with my brother
who basically said, you have your whole life to work,
and you have the privilege of being able to raise
your kids.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Why would you say no to that? You could always
go back to work.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And I think at the time I remember this sense
of he's right. On a logistical level, he's right. It
was also really hard for me to justify staying working
as a writer. At that time when I left, I
was running a nonprofit agency, but I assumed I would
go back to being a writer at some point and
(27:32):
the money I made it would cover a fraction of
what childcare was going to be. So it was to
me it felt like, if I stay at work, that
is a pure indulgence that is for my own development
and self actualization, and how can I put that in
(27:53):
front of our children's welfare, and so that is what
drove the decision.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
And I think at the beginning it was such a joy.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
It was like this guilty relief of, Oh my gosh,
I'm Jesse's a baby, Jesse's a toddler. Life is so
crystal clear that days were structured, the priorities were clear.
You feed them, you burp them, you poop them, you
go to the playground. It was a relief, and I
(28:24):
think what happened was it became fraught the older the
kids got, the more I immersed myself in that California world,
which was a lot of moms who had given up
their careers to be home with their kids. It was
just hard to imagine going back. But I think inside
there was always this voice that was saying, what are
(28:45):
you doing? Why are you giving everything up?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Who was I?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
What happened to that crazy, like ambitiously obsessed person that
I had been for the first thirty years in my life.
So then fast forward, Jesse was a senior in high
school and Sam was a freshman in high school, and
(29:11):
Jess started feeling this incredibly intense feeling of dread and
anxiety and grief. For the longest time, I thought well,
this is just this is what it is. It's like
any parent of a child leaving the nest is going
to be sad, but it felt like so much.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
More than that.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
And the day that it came to a head for
me was Jesse was a senior in high school. Like
I was saying, is like she was headed for the stars.
At that age. She had not gone through the Ringers. Socially,
she had really made her way with a lot of ease.
There had been terrible things that had happened at her
school outside of her, but in terms of who she
(29:55):
was and how she did. Sue was storing and one
day she came in to our house and I was
cooking chicken soup, and she tossed her wallet on top of.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
My onions and said, guess who called? And I said who?
She said, the Secret Service.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
And at that time it was actually that summer, the
summer after her senior year, the summer right before she
was supposed to go to college, she was interning for
the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
So she'd come home from her internship and said that.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
And I said, what Secret Service? Yeah, So it turns
out she said she was one of two interns chosen
to be part of Hillary's motorcade to take her around
to Tim Cook's house and all big wigs to fundraise,
and I was so proud and I just was looked
at her and she was shining and so happy, and.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I was so proud.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
And then it was like I can so vividly feel
that underneath there was like this crest, like this wave
of envy.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
That I had for her.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
And as a parent, you're allowed to feel a lot
of things, but you're definitely not allowed to feel jealous
of your own kid. This is not something we talk about.
We can stay jokingly I want to come back as
my kid in my next life. Okay, that's one thing,
but you're not really allowed to say I am jealous
of my child. And that is what I was feeling.
(31:21):
And that's when I knew something was very wrong, as
that feeling kept coming up more and more as it
like the march of time towards one shoes leaving for college.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
So that was the stage for our leaving and me feeling.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Very like tortured and guilty and not able to talk
about I mean talk about secrets.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
That was a secret.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I told my one of my best friends, my running partner,
and I think that's it for a long time, not Dave.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
No, I don't think I did.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
I think it was a long time before I told
Dave because I was ashamed.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
I was horrified.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
This is like the antithesis, and not to mention like,
I am so close to my daughter. We were one
of the mother daughters who people looked at as people
would always say, oh my god, you and Jesse.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
You're so lucky, so lucky.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
How she talks to you, and how you guys have
such a close relationship, which I always felt so then
to feel this feeling of envy.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
For her was just so awful.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
We'll be right back. Jesse goes off to Northwestern, but
before she does, she turns to Julie one day and asks, mom,
how are we going to do this? They're so close,
so used to knowing the daily minutia of each other's lives,
(32:55):
how literally, Jesse wonders, how are they going to navigate
being so far apart phone calls, texts, FaceTime. This is
always a huge moment between parents and their kids going
off to college, but in the case of Jesse and Julie,
it looms particularly large.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
The weekend we got to Northwestern for her orientation. She
started having stomach pain and having to go to the
bathroom a lot, and it got dramatically worse within a
couple of days, to the point where on moving day,
which is supposed to be this very classic iconic day
(33:35):
of the first day of the rest of your life,
this new phase, she had to stay in the hotel
because she just couldn't get out of bed, and Dave
and I and Sam helped to set up her room
and did it on her own.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
And then what happened is.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
That the day before we left her there, they have
this ceremony called the March through the Arch and all
the kids walk through this and we saw her and
it was so clear that she was in pain, but
the health services had said it was gastronritis and that
was going on. And then we met at the field
(34:12):
and her fists were bald up, and I just remember
thinking like, oh my god, are we really going to
leave her like this?
Speaker 1 (34:19):
We're really leaving her like this?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
And we just gently said, Jess, are you sure you
don't want.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Us to stay for a couple extra days just to
help you.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
No, I don't want you to just go and fine,
and so we did. And it's funny because, honestly, like
until this moment, it's such a bizarre parallel that never
occurred to me that just in the way that it
was Danny's graduation and this thing happened that was so
it was like foreboding. It was like a foreshadowing of
(34:51):
what was going to happen in the rest of his life.
It was the same thing on that orientation day. It
was such an emblematic moment standing in a hot field
and seeing that she was sick and feeling should we
stay or should we go? And the tension with adult
children that all they want is to be independent in
that moment, and you, as a parent, your job is
(35:13):
to support that.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
And yet when your child is clearly.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Something has gone wrong, your instinct is you can't leave them.
And it's like there's no playbook for that. When they're sick,
you know, when they're fine, you just know you leave.
Doesn't matter that they're sad, doesn't matter that you're sad.
But when they're sick, do you leave?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
But we did.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
It's so interesting to me that to me those parallels,
whether or not that was something that you were conscious of,
is that there was this kind of weird foreshadowing parallel.
You weren't conscious of it, but it was there, and
in a way like its own secret, it was present.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
I am so freaked out by that discovery right now.
I can't believe I never saw that.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
It's a secret you were keeping from yourself, because the
only reason why I know it is because you wrote it,
and you wrote it in a way that allowed me
to see it.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
It's so weird.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Just a week after arriving at Northwestern, Jesse calls her
mom with an update. Things have worsened.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
She called me and she said there was blood in
the toilet, and so I went back, I got on
the planet, went to the hospital, and she was diagnosed
with ulterative colitis and they put her on a medication.
You seem to respond to it, and then that was
it for a while. We went back to our roles of.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Okay, you're independent, and wow, look at you.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
You made it through your first hurdle, and we made
it through your first hurdle, and now we're going to
let you live your life. And Jesse was very clear
she didn't really want us to be asking her about
it all the time. She wanted to focus on her
new life. But it was really interesting though that when
she was in the hospital. When I think about secrets
(37:05):
and I think about how different this.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Current family of mine handled.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
The situation differently than we did with Danny, is that
I can remember her being in the hospital and she
was missing her first week of college, and these people
didn't know her.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
This was a whole new world.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
And so listen to her talking on the phone to
herra and to her new roommate and to the new
people she met before orientations started.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
And the way she was already.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Integrating this new part of her life and being droll
about it with a sense of humor, like, oh, yeah,
I just figured my first week of college, I just
might as well start off in the hospital. And this
feeling of not really wanting to show or feel or
own or tell what was like the severity of what
(38:01):
had just happened and what was ahead.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Yeah, there's another beautiful passage from your book that I
just want to read here, because from this point on,
as the months go by and you're not talking about
it out of respecting her independence and young adulthood, and
she's got under control, her condition worsens takes a real turn,
and there's this passage that you wrote, which is for
(38:27):
months now, she'd carried out our family legacy of pursuing, prevailing, achieving,
but the family legacy had failed to win this one,
and a new teacher, the teacher of illness, was about
to prevail.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah, that's exactly true.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Perhaps partly in preparation for this next chapter in her life,
Julia signed up for a writing retreat in Montana. She's
thinking that it might be just what she needs, a push,
a deadline, a community of other writers to help her
get started again.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
And so I signed up.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
My plan was, We're going to drop Jess off at
school and a week later, I'm going to start over.
I'm going to start a new part of my life
and try to reconnect with the writer I used to be.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
And the irony of Jesse got thick.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
It was the week before I was supposed to go
on that retreat, and I can remember feeling I was
there in the hospital with her. The retreat was supposed
to start four days later, and I thought, wow, I
obviously I'm not going to go if she needs me here,
And I remember that thinking for the first time, it
was the first time I connected the story of Danny
with Jesse and how the irony and that the inner
(39:48):
conflict of my primary feeling was fear about Jesse and
what would happen, and wanting to save her and wanting
to make everything okay, and then this tiny voice in
the back of my mind going, but what about the
rest of your life? Are you putting that side?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Again?
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I wasn't even conscious of it. It really didn't become
conscious till much later, But I can see looking back
that that got put in motion, and she responded to
that medication and she was ready to go back to school.
And I went to that retreat a couple days late,
and then that was where that next part of my
journey began, of just like the part of my life
(40:29):
that was just for me, which I hadn't really touched
since I was in my twenties, you know.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
And it's interesting, Julie, like, it's so easily could have
been otherwise, the terrible calculus of basically, I don't get
to have this, I don't get to have this. I'm
not going to get to have my own identity that's
just mine in a way, the parallels are really extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
And I think the worst part is that I wasn't
really conscious when Danny was sick or when Jesse got of.
I didn't have the fully developed thought, Oh, I guess
I'm never gonna have something on my own. All I
felt was fear and dread for these two people I loved,
and then this nagging feeling of guilt that I was
(41:14):
even thinking about myself. It was that same thing with Danny,
like how dare I think about my little writing career
when he's failing it? And with Jesse it was like
who cares about like my little writing retreat? But there
is that tiny little part of you that wants that
voice of don't forget me.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
A few months after the first incident of Jesse's bleeding,
it seems the medication is working and that everything's under control.
But then Julian Dave get another call. Jesse's ulcerative colitis
has worsened again. She may be facing major surgery. That
possibility quickly turns into an inevitability as Jesse undergoes an
(41:58):
emergency procedure to remove her colon. This is a shocking development,
destabilizing for anyone, but all the more so for a young,
incredibly vital person. Jesse will then undergo two more reconstructive
surgeries over time in order to allow her to have
a quote unquote normal life. Jesse comes through these surgeries
(42:22):
with flying colors. She is incredibly resilient and determined. She
takes some time off from Northwestern to navigate her recovery,
and the family is together once again. They even get
a puppy that evergreen harbinger of joy and playfulness. But
Julie has a lot of self examination to do. There
has been so much trauma, trauma on top of trauma
(42:44):
past seeping into the present. She begins a course of
therapy called e MDR that has come up before on
this podcast. It stands for eye movement, Desensitization and reprocessing.
One of the hallmarks of this therapy is that it
allows the patient access to memory with no narrative. It's
not about connecting the dots. It creates the possibility of
(43:08):
a real breakthrough, and this happens for Julie. The dots
connect tell me what Jesse had known about her uncle,
who she never knew.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Jesse and Sam both knew I had a brother. They
knew Danny's name, and seeing lots of pictures and heard
lots of stories about him. But what they knew was
that he died in an accident, and that's really what
they knew. We never talked about depression, We never talked
about mental illness. And when I think about the architecture
(43:42):
of family secrets and what drives it, what drives you
to build them, and what drives you to have this
engine behind them, the whole concept of a family secret,
in some ways I recoil it that because it almost
feels as if you really understood the implies patience. But
for us, it was like, I didn't want my kids
(44:04):
to know what happened because it was horrible, it was traumatic,
and why they were kids? Why do they have to
know that? Why do they have to be burdened? Why
do they have to be scared to know that my brother,
that this happened to someone so close to them. But
I think what happened was this secrecy came to roost.
(44:26):
And I think it's so interesting because Jesse in this
story really became a teacher to me because she with
her illness, she made a choice early on that she
was not going to keep it a total secret, partially
just because she physically couldn't. So you can't tell she's sick,
(44:47):
but if you're close enough to her, you'll know by
her behaviors that she needs certain accommodations. But I think
that she taught me that it was just damaging. I
was damaging to hide it from my kids. It was
hard to know when they'd be ready to hear it.
But I think when the moment came where we talked
(45:13):
about her illness and she was saying, mom, please, it
makes everything worse when you and dad are constantly looking
for the solution and for the next big thing and
it's all behind this wall. It adds this burden, and
just let me have my illness, let me figure it
(45:38):
out myself. I think for me understanding the cost of
family secrets and understanding the cost of what happens to
us when we keep them, and how we end up
editing ourselves out of our own life in a certain way,
it really came to roost for me during this time
(45:59):
with Jesse when she very courageously.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Did tell people.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
And one of the big moments in my life was
being asked to speak at our high holiday services about something,
and I made the decision right then. I made the
decision that I was going to talk about Danny to
a community that I had been in.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
For twenty five years, and.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Maybe three or four or five people knew I even
had a brother, And going back.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
To earlier in the story, like the giddy.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Thing, it was like no one knew, no one knew,
And on that day I did tell it, and what
happened afterwards was so instructive, because what you hear anytime
there's a story like this, anytime someone really tells the truth,
they find out from everyone around them, me too, that
(46:52):
they too.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
There were all the people.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Who were coming and saying, oh my god, thank you
for sharing your story.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
We had no idea. We can't believe that would be you.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
In the same way that like, oh, the perfect Hay family,
how could that had been in your past? But it
was also in the release in telling, like making it,
like breaking through that secret and just making it information
about the whole of me and the whole of Jesse.
(47:23):
It was like the power of the secret evaporated. It's
been really one of the biggest lessons of my life.
How privacy turns into secrecy, and that secrecy and privacy
turns into isolation and loneliness, and what has happened to
all of us since we have come forward with call
(47:43):
them secrets or breaking through the privacy or whatever, is
that we are much more whole people. We don't have
to hide anymore. And we also found out that it
turns out not only does no one hold it against you,
but it's like that vulnerability and honesty is the fastest
path to connection. Like spose how we are all the same,
(48:09):
that we all do have so much of the same pain.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Here's Julie reading one last passage from her memoir Stay.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I was finally coming to understand that our birthright is this.
We are entitled to our own lives. No matter what
happens to those we love. We are entitled and we
don't have to be anything.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Other than who we are.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
When the people we love struggle, we can love them
and we can try our best to help them, but
we cannot save them. It is enough to learn how
to save ourselves.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Zakoor 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 eight eight
Secret Zero. That's the number zero. You can also find
(49:29):
me on Instagram at daniwriter and if you'd like to
know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check
out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or Everett you listen to your favorite shows
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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