0:00

Family Secrets is a production of I Heart

0:02

Radio. Shame

0:05

is so powerful that the minute it

0:08

has a little bit of

0:10

the creep factor, like you give it a little bit

0:12

of room to breathe, it's it rolls

0:14

over you again. And it's so funny because

0:16

I live my life today not

0:18

being ashamed of my conduct, not being

0:20

ashamed of how I navigate this world.

0:23

Yet it lives in me. This

0:26

is Jane Mints. Jane

0:28

is an interventionist, which means

0:30

that she flies all over the world trying

0:32

to intervene when someone an

0:35

alcoholic, an addict needs

0:37

a serious amount of help. When

0:40

you want to bring the big guns in the person

0:42

who can handle all of it, the blood,

0:44

the gore, the vomit, the denial,

0:47

the life and death stakes of the addict

0:49

at the end of the line, that's Jane.

0:52

Because Jane's been there herself, right

0:54

in the center of that shame, that addiction.

0:58

It doesn't own me anymore, but it

1:00

is something that I battle every single day

1:02

and I just and I think that, um,

1:05

I feel better when I'm

1:07

able to help somebody that

1:10

is really sort

1:12

of unconsciously deciding if

1:14

they want to live or die. And

1:17

there is that moment when I'm

1:19

able to connect to somebody

1:21

for the moment they choose to live,

1:24

and that's the opening. So that's

1:26

the power of what wounded

1:29

people can do together. I'm

1:40

Danny Shapiro, and this is

1:42

Family Secrets, the secrets

1:44

that are kept from us, the secrets we

1:46

keep from others, and the secrets

1:48

we keep from ourselves. This

1:53

is a story about adoption, addiction,

1:55

recovery, identity, nature,

1:58

nurture, and well just

2:00

a little organized crime, but we'll get

2:02

to that. And like a soft

2:05

thrumming heartbeat beneath all of it,

2:07

shame. I've been thinking

2:10

a lot about shame during this first season

2:12

of Family Secrets, because so many

2:14

of these stories either originate in shame,

2:17

or cause shame, or both. In

2:20

Jane's case, her story begins

2:22

with being adopted. She's the eldest

2:24

of three adopted children, brought into

2:26

a wonderful, loving, privileged

2:28

family. So everything's

2:30

good, just as it ought to be. I

2:35

grew up and Shaker Heights, Ohio. My father

2:38

was a surgeon, my mother stay at home mother.

2:40

I had to adopted siblings

2:43

and we lad really an

2:45

idyllic life. Um, the rhythm

2:47

of life was terrific. I

2:50

had all the opportunity

2:53

that was afforded

2:56

me in terms of excellent education,

2:59

great camps, very feminist

3:01

you know, grow girl environment, private

3:03

schools and that kind of thing, lots of travel. My

3:06

family was incredibly social. We had

3:08

lots of extended family and friends, and

3:11

I was really supported and cherished

3:14

and celebrated as a

3:16

kid. But I was very lucky because

3:18

my life could have been the polar opposite,

3:21

and I knew that my whole

3:24

life. So when you say your

3:26

life could have been the polar opposite, it's

3:28

because you had the knowledge that you were adopted, and

3:31

so the sense of luck

3:33

of the draw or like being adopted into

3:36

one particular family that was loving and

3:38

privileged as opposed to another. Correct

3:40

it absolutely. And I didn't at that time

3:42

know anything about my birth history,

3:46

but I knew I was lucky. And I

3:48

had a relationship with my father, who's

3:50

passed on about five years now. Um,

3:52

that was extraordinary. Jane's

3:55

dad was a huge personality. She

3:57

describes him as the mayor of everything.

4:00

He was Cleveland's favorite eye doctor,

4:03

and Jane would tag along on his medical calls

4:05

to the hospital, into the emergency room,

4:07

even the operating room. He brought

4:10

home cow eyes, I'm sorry,

4:12

but you you and

4:15

taught her how to operate on them in the family's

4:17

basement. Jane's mom

4:19

was also a lovely human being, though Jane

4:21

felt less connected to her. She was

4:23

a beautiful entertainer, a great cook,

4:26

a classic nineteen sixties stay at

4:28

home mom. My mother

4:30

today is eighty six years old and reads three

4:32

newspapers a day and is glued to CNN

4:35

and ms NBC and the two. The thing that

4:37

we have most in common today as politics,

4:39

which is great. But we're very, very different

4:42

people. And while I love and appreciate

4:44

my mother, I never developed, you

4:46

know, that rapport that I had

4:48

with my dad. It was just a very different relationship.

4:51

And still, you know, deeply loving and

4:53

and all that good stuff. But we're just cut

4:55

from completely different class. So,

5:00

in terms of being adopted, were you told

5:03

that you were adopted at a particular age or was

5:05

it part of the fabric of growing

5:07

up for you always? How did your parents handle

5:09

it? I think from the time I could comprehend,

5:12

my mom and dad would read

5:14

me a little book called The Chosen One,

5:18

and that was the message from the time

5:20

I was a small child, is that I was chosen

5:23

and you know, very special because

5:25

of that, and so they normed out adoption.

5:28

The mistake of norming it out was

5:32

the misunderstanding that children

5:35

are blank slates. So

5:37

it was kind of an interesting dynamic where I always

5:39

felt very you know, loving and accepted

5:42

and come from this amazingly cool

5:44

family. It wasn't until

5:47

much later in my life that

5:50

I sort of stood in

5:52

my own truth and said I deserve to know. I

5:55

really deserve it. The

5:57

book Chain Remembers is actually titled

5:59

The Chosen Baby. Published

6:01

in the cover features

6:04

a whimsical drawing of a little boy

6:06

climbing out of his crib, and the book

6:09

is described as a universally

6:11

popular children's story about adoption.

6:14

The opening goes like this. The

6:18

first baby was a little boy with

6:20

blue eyes and curly blonde hair. He

6:23

laughed and played with a rattle. The

6:25

man and his wife watched the baby. Then

6:28

they shook their heads and said, this

6:30

is a beautiful child, but we know it

6:32

is not our baby. And

6:34

they were taken to see the next and

6:37

they're asleep. In the crib lay

6:40

a lovely, rosy, fat baby boy.

6:42

He opened his big brown eyes and smiled.

6:45

The wife picked him up and sat him on her lap.

6:48

The baby gurgled, and the man and

6:50

his wife said, this is our chosen

6:52

baby. We won't have to look any

6:54

further. We will have everything ready

6:56

for him by tomorrow and would like to take

6:58

him home. Then. I

7:01

am sure the book was well intentioned and

7:03

its author well meaning, and the parents

7:06

who read it to their children were ahead of their time,

7:08

those who were trying to tell the truth to their kids about

7:10

their adoption. And

7:12

yet, in Jane's words, the

7:15

whole idea was to norm it out,

7:17

to instill strongly the sense

7:19

that being chosen was

7:22

all that mattered. My adoption

7:24

was a private adoption. And what what

7:26

I think did go wrong over time is

7:29

that while it appeared to be

7:31

transparent, you know, in terms of me knowing

7:33

I was adopted, my parents

7:35

claimed they knew nothing about my

7:39

adopted family, which is not true.

7:42

So it took me getting my grandmother

7:45

really drunk and imploring

7:47

her to show me my original birth certificate,

7:50

which had been altered. My

7:52

grandmother, my mother's mother,

7:55

was just

7:57

this little pocket person, but she was

7:59

all ry. I mean, she was no joke at all.

8:02

And um, I think that when

8:04

I was born, my parents gave my grandfather

8:06

and my grandmother my original birth certificate, and

8:09

somehow I had gotten wind of that at around

8:12

seven years old. So I went over to my grandmother's

8:14

house and she used to smoke Lucky Strikes cigarettes

8:16

and drink scotch. So we started

8:19

drinking scotch and smoking Lucky Strikes

8:21

cigarettes together, and I just said

8:23

to her, I have to know. And her

8:25

whole thing was, well, if your mother ever found

8:27

out, I would never be able

8:29

to recover from that because they were very, very bonded

8:32

and had, you know, beautiful relationship.

8:35

But she sort of at that moment, there

8:37

was this crack and I was able

8:39

to slip through and she gave

8:41

me my birth certificate, which then

8:44

gave me the actual doctor

8:47

and the town that I was born. After

8:50

she finally finds her birth certificate. Jane

8:53

hires a private detective. Jane

8:55

is twenty six years old. She's in retail

8:57

computer sales. Her career is on hire.

9:00

She's a hard partying up and comer. Within

9:04

three days, she was able

9:06

to find everything

9:09

out that I needed to know. And she

9:11

called me and she said, UM,

9:14

you better sit down, and I, boy,

9:16

did I sit down, and she

9:18

told me I found her This is where she is

9:21

um. She would like to talk to you. She

9:24

wanted me to tell you. You know, she's

9:26

been waiting for you your whole life. And

9:29

I said, okay, have her call. And of course, at

9:31

that time, I was drinking like a fish,

9:33

and I grabbed a Scotch bottle and I sat on the

9:35

edge of my bed and the phone rang, and

9:38

she said exactly those things

9:40

to me. She said, I've been waiting

9:42

for you all my life. And

9:46

and then we agreed to meet. We're

9:51

going to pause for a moment before

9:58

we get to the moment when Jane first eats

10:00

her birth mother. I want to know more

10:02

about the whole inside Jane, inside

10:04

so many of us whose origins have been kept

10:06

from us. After all,

10:09

she's had it pretty good. What sends

10:11

her to the private detective and ultimately to

10:13

her biological mother? I mean,

10:16

what is that confusion? What

10:18

is that sense of emptiness all about? Well,

10:21

it's interesting when you live in such

10:24

a beautiful bubble and you

10:26

have nothing but really good things happening

10:28

to you all the time. And I was successful, I

10:30

was had great friends, I had great family.

10:34

My whole life, I felt like there was a black

10:36

hole in my soul that was so

10:38

deep and wide, and I felt like I didn't

10:40

deserve to feel that way,

10:42

and that I felt really

10:44

ashamed of having

10:47

these feelings and not being able to really identify

10:49

what that was about. And you

10:52

know, I think shame is is what I learned

10:54

to feel about myself my whole life,

10:57

even though there was no evidence

10:59

that I should be ashamed. But I felt

11:01

ashamed for wanting

11:04

to know more about myself and

11:07

sort of being acculturated.

11:10

I can't really describe it, but you

11:12

never you always feel on the outside of life,

11:15

always, and then there's

11:18

no evidence for why you should feel

11:20

that way, so that there's an incongruence.

11:24

Yeah, I can't tell you how much I relate

11:26

to that, Okay, Yeah, I know that

11:28

the feeling of I

11:30

don't have a right to this pain. I

11:33

mean, you know, look

11:35

at me, look where I live, Look look

11:37

at this privilege, and you know this

11:39

environment in which really nothing has gone wrong, that's

11:41

right, But the feeling of something being terribly

11:44

wrong, right, and that being an extremely

11:46

confusing thing for a kid. It it

11:48

really is. And you know, you and I were

11:51

talking a little bit earlier that adoptive

11:53

kids have a very high rate

11:55

of addiction. And process addictions,

11:58

which means being addicted to anything

12:00

other than a substance. And my

12:03

family were big cocktailers, and

12:05

I can remember it nine years old, clearing

12:09

the cocktail glasses and then taking

12:11

my first drink, and

12:14

that feeling of being different

12:17

or separate or not a part of went

12:19

away. So it's a classic

12:21

when substance meets solution. And that

12:23

was the story of my life. So rather

12:26

than try to seek an inward journey,

12:29

until I learned to do that, everything was

12:31

external. Everything was an external fix.

12:34

And that's even more disregulating

12:37

because there's no you know, you're it's

12:39

not an authentic journey at that point, right,

12:42

And ye know what's going through my head is what possible

12:45

tools? Would you have had to know that an inward

12:47

journey was possible exactly? And

12:50

it wasn't until I landed in treatment

12:52

that that I started to connect

12:54

with Native American spirituality and ritual

12:57

and all this kind of stuff and really realized that

12:59

there was a huge spiritual part

13:01

of myself that I never knew existed.

13:04

I didn't know existed for anybody else.

13:06

Would you have though, like in middle school

13:09

in high school, would you have been

13:11

able to identify this. If somebody had

13:13

asked you, are

13:16

you good with what you know about yourself?

13:18

Or is that does it feel like there's something

13:20

more that that you're seeking that would

13:22

you have been able to articulate that I would have.

13:24

I would have, but I

13:26

was never asked, and I didn't

13:29

look to somebody to, you know, ask

13:32

me that. Well,

13:34

that goes back to the narrative of I

13:36

was chosen. I've been so blessed,

13:39

right, I'm so lucky. Yeah, I should just

13:41

shut up and shut up and enjoy it,

13:43

right, But

13:45

you can't if something is so it's

13:47

it's cellular, and it's also I'm

13:50

a big YOUNGI in so the collective unconscious

13:53

is you know, is always so intriguing

13:55

to me, and there's there's

13:58

a real disconnect and when you're in disharmony

14:01

with the universe, you know, starting

14:04

with yourself. Everything we

14:06

talked about running around your back hand, that's what happens,

14:08

is that you just end up course correcting

14:11

all the time. When

14:14

Jane talks about running around her backhand, this

14:17

is a phrase that originates in her youth as a tournament

14:19

tennis player, and one I love so much

14:21

I'm gonna start using it myself. I

14:24

was also a tournament tennis player, though probably

14:26

not as good as Jane, and I remember

14:28

that coaches love to say this, don't

14:30

run around your back hand, meaning don't

14:32

compensate or overcompensate,

14:35

don't be afraid of your weaknesses, running

14:38

around whatever your truth is, whatever

14:40

you know deep down is the right thing to do.

14:42

So you're only playing with half your game because

14:45

you're so worried about failing or missing your shot.

14:48

Or in Jane's case, if

14:50

she was enough of a winner, is she nailed

14:52

every shot, she would continue

14:54

to be the lucky chosen

14:57

baby. In my own mind,

14:59

now that I can construct some of the stuff it

15:01

was, they can't possibly

15:03

give me back if I'm

15:05

this good. So

15:09

now Jane is twenty six years old, and

15:11

she's sitting on the edge of her bed with her bottle of scotch

15:14

and hearing the sound of her birth mother's voice

15:17

for the first time in her life. When

15:19

I heard her voice, it's

15:23

like my my cell started

15:25

knitting back together. It

15:28

was terrifying and exhilarating

15:30

at the same time. So

15:32

I decided, you know, on that phone

15:35

call with my birth mom her name is Linda, to

15:38

meet her and I

15:40

flew to Dallas the next week and

15:43

I was my uniform at the time probably

15:45

still is today, was you know, cowboy boots, jeans

15:47

and a white shirt. And I walked

15:50

off the plane and at that time, people could

15:52

meet you at the gate, remember that like back in the Stone

15:54

ages. Uh. And there was my

15:56

mother in a white shirt, jeans and cowboy

15:59

boots and we're

16:01

doppelgangers, were dead lookalikes.

16:06

When you see somebody that you're

16:08

a dead ringer for. I

16:10

mean my mannerism,

16:12

the cadence of my voice, the way I wore my

16:15

hair, my blue eyes, my whole It

16:17

was the most soul shattering moment,

16:21

and I think sometimes you

16:23

have to fall apart to put yourself back

16:25

together. And that was that brought

16:28

the house down for me. And

16:31

then I started to learn to live. And

16:33

it was because I felt finally

16:37

that that I did belong somewhere.

16:40

Jane's mother, Linda, Her life

16:43

is complex. Jane describes

16:45

her as an extraordinary, very

16:47

wounded person with a loose grip on

16:49

reality. Linda also

16:52

has another child, one she has raised,

16:54

Jane's half brother, who has

16:56

mixed feelings about the discovery that he has a

16:59

sibling. He had never known about On

17:01

her end, she had kept me

17:04

a secret from my half

17:06

brother and the family,

17:08

so she had to come clean. So

17:10

we went over and we met my my half

17:13

brother, who was not

17:15

really buying into this whole thing. He'd been the

17:17

golden child and his family, but they had

17:19

lived a very challenging life,

17:21

I mean, just needless to say. And

17:24

so I met him, I met his two

17:26

little kids and his wife at the time,

17:28

and the three of us just decided to

17:30

go out and do some skeet shooting and

17:33

that was really great. Um. And

17:35

that's the other thing is, from the time I was a small

17:37

child, I could ride and shoot

17:40

like nobody's beeswax. Skeet

17:42

shooting as a bonding activity doesn't

17:45

seem to quite go together with Jane's

17:47

Shaker Heights, progressive Jewish upbringing.

17:49

Yes, a liberal Jewish

17:52

progressive Democrat, you know. I mean we

17:54

we didn't shoot guns, we didn't do

17:56

all that kind of stuff. But I went to these this

17:58

fabulous summer camp where we did all that, and

18:00

that was just such a part of my d

18:03

n A because that's my whole family.

18:05

We're all you know, outdoorsy

18:08

outlaws, addicts, you know, really

18:10

colorful group of people. So

18:13

we just blew stuff up and it was sort

18:15

of this cathartic cool bonding. D

18:20

N a d oxy ribonucleic

18:23

acid. There's a mouthful

18:25

for you. Here's a definition

18:28

the fundamental and distinctive characteristics

18:30

or qualities of someone or something,

18:33

especially when regarded as unchangeable.

18:38

What is it to recognize the characteristics

18:40

or qualities of yourself in someone

18:42

else for the very first time.

18:46

I remember when I first laid eyes on my biological

18:49

father. The first time I saw him

18:51

was on a YouTube video. He

18:53

was giving a lecture, and what I felt

18:56

watching him was a shocking

18:58

sense of familiarity. His

19:00

gestures, his facial expressions,

19:02

his very nature was like an overlay

19:05

of my own. The one

19:07

thing about my mother, uh Linda,

19:10

was that she was dynamic. I mean,

19:12

there was just something She would just weave a spell

19:14

around you. Her charisma was extraordinary,

19:17

and as she started to tell me a little bit

19:19

about her life, she started to answer

19:21

a lot of questions about how

19:24

I operated. Because I'm sort

19:26

of an outlaw at heart,

19:29

but I've been refined and I've been educated,

19:31

and I have a very

19:33

distinct moral compass and sort of code

19:36

of conduct. But my mother,

19:39

who polished herself, up ended

19:41

up leaving home at

19:43

fifteen or sixteen years old, found

19:45

her way into the St. Louis Mob

19:48

and became a very high ranking U

19:50

copo. Just hold

19:53

on a second here. In all the fantasies

19:55

that adopted children have about who their birth

19:58

mother might be, you know, famous

20:00

actress, foreign royalty, I

20:02

wonder if high ranking capo

20:05

in the St. Louis Mob has ever

20:07

made the list. Jane's

20:09

mother with a mobster.

20:12

She drove getaway cars, She

20:15

used her beauty to lure men into rooms

20:17

where bad, bad things happened. She

20:20

fell in love with Kurt Flood, a

20:22

Hall of Fame baseball player, and

20:24

even tried to run away with him. Jane

20:26

describes Linda as a black widow type,

20:29

dark and dangerous in a glamorous

20:31

package. So many

20:33

of the stories that she told me about

20:36

that part of her life, which were really

20:38

the glory days of her life, started

20:40

to help me make sense of the mobster

20:43

and me. And it was just

20:45

an unbelievable like, oh my god,

20:48

now I get it, I get why

20:51

I think this way, I get so. It

20:53

was just a kind of a a chicken

20:55

and egg thing. You know, when you

20:57

can't figure out why you're

20:59

you operate this like as a little Jewish

21:02

girl from Shaker Heights. There would be no reason

21:04

for me to be as street smart as I am.

21:07

There would be no reason for me to be able

21:09

to read a room as quickly as

21:11

I can, um

21:14

no frame of reference for any of this

21:16

stuff, and very different than my other siblings and

21:18

even my parents. The nature

21:21

is so strong, you know. The nurture

21:23

is important, but what I learned was

21:26

over my lifetime was to appreciate so

21:28

much the cellular knowledge

21:32

that is transferred from one generation to another,

21:35

which it could be argued,

21:39

is why it's so important, why

21:41

the child is not a blank slate.

21:44

Oh my gosh, it's so true.

21:46

And without somebody being

21:48

able to claim

21:51

their history and to understand their history,

21:55

most people feel fraudulent and

22:00

out of congruence. It's

22:02

a terrible way to live. And that

22:05

school of thinking. School of thought has

22:07

destroyed so many people. And

22:11

today, you know, after my own

22:13

journey of my own addiction, my

22:16

job every single day

22:19

is to be rigorously honest with myself and

22:21

other people. And telling

22:24

the truth is a hard

22:26

thing to do, and reconciling

22:29

the truth is a hard thing to do. So

22:32

Jane meets her birth mom and the rest

22:34

of her birth family and learns so

22:36

much about herself that black

22:38

hole, that yawning empty space

22:40

inside her is all filled

22:42

up. She no longer feels the need

22:45

to drink. Cue the

22:47

violence. In

22:50

the Hollywood version of Jane's life, that's

22:53

what would happen right the moment

22:55

she meets her mother, her biological mother,

22:57

she would have everything she needs, her

23:00

questions all would be answered, and

23:02

her addiction, well, that would just go away.

23:06

But life is not a Hollywood movie. Jane

23:09

is in her mid twenties when she meets Linda,

23:11

and it takes her until the age of forty

23:13

to get sober. Because

23:16

I was carrying a secret, and

23:18

that destroyed me, ultimately destroyed

23:21

me, and I ended up working my

23:23

whole life around protecting that secret

23:25

of having met her, establishing

23:28

a relationship with her, you know,

23:30

being forced to live a double life because

23:33

I was immediately welcomed

23:35

in to my birth family, all

23:38

the while remaining staunchly

23:41

a part of my adoptive family. And

23:45

I should have felt like I was complete,

23:47

but I felt like I had betrayed that

23:49

I was, had been treacherous and deceitful,

23:52

that if my family ever really

23:54

found out that I had

23:56

done this, that I would be disowned, that

23:59

the relationships would be forever fractured.

24:02

And that's actually pretty much what happened.

24:04

I had to end up telling my

24:07

father, my beloved father,

24:10

because my brother was coming to town. My half

24:12

brother was coming to town to visit me, and

24:15

I just it's such a close knit community

24:17

that we look so much alike my birth

24:19

mother and looks at that. I knew that the minute

24:21

he came to town, it was the cat was out of the

24:23

bag. So I ended up telling my dad

24:26

about this. Course he was shattered, and he

24:28

went and told my mother about

24:30

this, and I don't know that she's ever recovered.

24:33

And that was the last anybody ever spoke of it. So

24:35

that's another wound, right.

24:38

But it strikes me that you didn't have to have your

24:40

half brother come to town, so

24:43

you must have on some level needed

24:45

to bring this to a boil, no question about

24:48

it. And you know, some of

24:50

that's really a blur, and I think instinct

24:53

kicks in. I wanted my children to meet him,

24:56

um, I wanted my then husband

24:58

to meet him, and I

25:00

needed some support. I needed people

25:03

to share this burden

25:05

with me, which it's a weird

25:07

word to use, but that's what it was. We're

25:11

going to take a quick break. We'll be back in a moment.

25:23

This idea of being burdened feels like an

25:25

important one. Whenever

25:27

a family secrets, who carries that burden?

25:30

And why does the burden shift

25:32

from one family member to another? Does

25:35

the burden exist if the secret manages

25:37

to stay secret? What are

25:39

all the implications of the hidden, the

25:42

unseat, the unknown. Can

25:45

you talk more about shame, because it

25:47

seems to me there are a few through lines

25:50

both in my story and all the stories

25:52

with the people that I've been in

25:55

conversations with for this podcast,

25:58

and one of those through lines is shame. Another

26:01

is a close cousin to shame,

26:03

which is this feeling of not deserving. And

26:06

so it seems to

26:08

me that when someone has been raised

26:11

in the atmosphere of

26:15

the unseid in some way,

26:18

even if you know child, a child doesn't

26:20

know necessarily what

26:23

the what that thing is. It's just

26:25

this feeling of not having

26:27

all the information and somehow not having a right

26:30

to it, or not having a right to one's

26:33

own reality,

26:35

right oh you, just like I feel

26:38

like i'm you know, a little unglued

26:40

because you've just hit me so hard

26:42

with you know, those are the through lines

26:44

of my life, are feeling

26:47

worthy. And my sense

26:50

of worth was in my accomplishments, and

26:53

people in my life were very happy to wear

26:55

my accomplishments on their sleeve. So

26:58

then I was validated socially and

27:01

all for all of that. But that was such

27:03

an external thing.

27:06

And then shame is another thing

27:09

that I still, you know,

27:11

at fifty eight years old, battle every day

27:13

of my life. And I really do look in the mirror and

27:15

say, what do you have to be ashamed of?

27:18

Like You're a cool person, You've raised

27:20

great kids, you have great business, you help

27:22

people, you do it. But deep in my

27:24

soul, I have never been able

27:27

to

27:29

heal that, you know, even with

27:31

as much work as I've done, you

27:33

know, in my own growth and my own sort

27:35

of therapeutic growth, I can't

27:38

get it right. It's like such a

27:40

broken piece of me and I

27:42

just don't quite know how to do it, but I keep

27:44

trying. Jane

27:47

has some years of heading down a parallel track to

27:49

Linda's. Linda is a pill addict.

27:52

Jane is an active alcoholic. This

27:54

is something they have in common, something

27:56

also likely rooted in their shared biology.

27:59

But in Jane finally gets

28:02

sober and Linda, Linda

28:05

does not. I just had a sort

28:07

of a flash of insight here. But I

28:11

lived just culturally differently.

28:14

But I lived the same story as my mother of

28:16

feeling on the outside, you

28:19

know, finding ways to belong

28:22

um, dealing with

28:24

the trauma of trying

28:26

to fit in and figure out where you exist.

28:30

And ultimatelyly my

28:32

mother destroyed herself. I

28:34

didn't, and I was able to

28:37

catch myself before I

28:40

died prematurely. But

28:43

that same desire to want to destroy one's

28:45

self I share with my mother. Now

28:49

I was clean and sober, and

28:51

she was starting to fall further

28:54

further into depression, um

28:56

compensatory behaviors. She was

28:59

a terrible cigare at smoker, and

29:01

um she was an alcoholic, but she was prescription

29:05

painkiller queen. And

29:08

I just saw mental illness started roll

29:10

over her and there was no

29:12

stopping it. And then, you know, as somebody

29:14

new in recovery, you want to

29:16

share that and you want to talk about it. Well,

29:19

that's the last thing that somebody wants to talk about

29:21

when they're in active addiction. Linda

29:26

dies in two thousand seven, destitute

29:28

and alone in government housing

29:31

in rural Missouri near the Ozark

29:33

Mountains, in a tiny house filled

29:35

with the stench of cigarettes, every

29:38

surface covered with tar. Jane

29:40

had already completed her graduate degree and

29:43

by that time was well on her way to doing her

29:45

work as an interventionist. Ultimately,

29:50

she ended up perishing, and the

29:53

the talk about the shame of not being

29:55

able to save her, you

29:57

know, and then really watch her

30:02

die and then discover

30:04

her in the condition,

30:07

her living condition, which I knew nothing about,

30:10

thank god, because I would have bankrupted myself

30:13

to provide some kind of lifestyle

30:15

for her. I mean, what a mess.

30:17

But um, what it did

30:20

for me is it woke me up. And

30:24

I'm a light keeper today. And

30:26

unless you've lived in the dark, you don't

30:28

know what light is. You think you do, but

30:31

you don't, you know. Fifteen years

30:33

down the road now, Um, I

30:35

feel like I've lived several lifetimes in this

30:38

lifetime. But this is where I belong

30:40

because for some reason I have that ability

30:43

to reach in up to

30:45

the dark and pull people out, or

30:47

be a part of pulling people out. I don't want to

30:50

you know, sound like a grandized but

30:53

it's kind of an amazing thing. Well,

30:57

you aren't afraid of it, no, and

31:00

you are able to recognize it. And I'm strong,

31:03

you know, I've survived. Yeah,

31:06

it's so interesting, isn't it? The way that it can

31:08

all coexist? And

31:12

it's still so confusing. While

31:14

I have lots of pieces and parts, it's not

31:17

completely integrated. And I think that

31:19

that's my sole journey this time around, is

31:21

to you know, continue

31:24

to seek the truth and to

31:26

be of service to others. And

31:28

that's part of my healing and my journey

31:31

and my self actualization. But

31:34

it's all very confusing. Jane

31:37

uses a lot of imagery in her conversation, and

31:40

this makes sense to me. Images

31:42

are often easier to hold onto the language

31:44

than words. She described

31:47

herself earlier as a huge young

31:49

Gian Carl Jung, the

31:51

psychoanalytic poet of the unconscious.

31:55

When Jane studied for her master's degree, she

31:57

was drawn to the work of Clarissa Pincola

31:59

s d. Is one of the great Indian

32:01

analysts of our time. She's

32:05

told the story of the Zygote Baby

32:08

and effectively, Um, and I'll probably butcher

32:11

this, but you'll get it is that the

32:13

stork is flying across the sky with a big

32:15

basket on its back, and all these little

32:17

babies are in the basket, ready to be delivered

32:19

to their intended families.

32:22

But there are always these the

32:24

little ones that like over percolate,

32:27

and they're so excited that they end

32:29

up falling out of the basket into the wrong

32:31

family, and they spend

32:34

their whole lives trying to reconcile

32:37

their difference. They're they're sort of intuitive,

32:40

knowing difference from where they

32:43

landed to who they are as human beings.

32:45

That's the story of my life. And

32:48

while I don't feel that my family was

32:50

wrong, I felt that I did

32:53

unnaturally land in my family. I

32:56

am that zygote baby, and

33:00

I think that many adoptive kids feel

33:02

that way. But we end up

33:04

actually being the most dynamic,

33:07

resilient, powerful people because

33:10

of everything that we've had to endure

33:12

to get to our truth. I'd

33:21

like to thank my guest Jane Mints, for sharing

33:23

her family secret. You can find

33:25

out more about Jane and her work at

33:27

Jane mints dot com.

33:30

Family Secrets is an I Heart Media production.

33:33

Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer.

33:35

Andrew Howard and Tristan McNeil are

33:38

the audio engineers, and Julie

33:40

Douglas is the executive producer. If

33:43

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

33:45

can get in touch with us at listener mail at

33:47

Family Secrets Podcast dot com,

33:50

and you can also find us on Instagram

33:52

at Danny Ryder, and Facebook

33:54

at Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter

33:57

at Fami Secrets Pod. That's Fami

33:59

Secrets. For more about

34:01

my book, Inheritance, visit Danny

34:04

Shapiro dot com