Latest / How Hard Can It Be? with Diana Maria Riva / Family Lies: The Secrets, Surprises, and Survival of it all, with Carmen Rita Wong

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Family Lies: The Secrets, Surprises, and Survival of it all, with Carmen Rita Wong · How Hard Can It Be? with Diana Maria Riva

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  Speaker 1: Sometimes life imitates art, and other times art imitates life,
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  Speaker 1: and sometimes it is a straight up telenovela. My next
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  Speaker 1: guest is not only a successful businesswoman, professor and former
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  Speaker 1: CNBC host, but also the author of a best selling
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  Speaker 1: memoir that will blow your mind. Today we'll talk about
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  Speaker 1: family secrets, discovering them, surviving them, and asking how hard
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  Speaker 1: can it be?
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to this episode of How Hard Can It Be?
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  Speaker 1: I'm your host, Dan Mayo Reva and I cannot talk
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  Speaker 1: about midlife fantastic bullshit with this next guest because she
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  Speaker 1: knows a lot about it and we are excited to
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  Speaker 1: dive in at TV and radio journalist, former CNBC host,
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  Speaker 1: a personal finance expert, professor and author of a few
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  Speaker 1: incredible books, Generation Debt, Taking Control of Your Money, The
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  Speaker 1: Real Cost of Living, and the New York Times bestseller
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  Speaker 1: Why Didn't You Tell Me Where? The New York Times
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  Speaker 1: referred to her as a master storyteller. And when you
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  Speaker 1: read this book, and you should, you are going to agree.
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  Speaker 1: Carmena Walk, thank you so much.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
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  Speaker 2: I am so excited.
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  Speaker 1: And you know, it's really interesting about how we met
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  Speaker 1: because we kind of met on the instagrams.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just fell in love with you.
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  Speaker 1: I started following you and it's like, oh my god,
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  Speaker 1: this woman's story and she's so beautiful and she's Dominican
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  Speaker 1: and a lot of other things. And we did and
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  Speaker 1: we just kind of started interacting and falling in love.
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  Speaker 1: And we didn't meet in person until about two years
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  Speaker 1: later this past August, and it was a glorious reunion.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, while I've seen you on my television and
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  Speaker 3: I'm looking, I'm looking at your hair.
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  Speaker 2: I'm like, this woman is so gorgeous. This hair.
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  Speaker 3: Oh my god, I used to have hair.
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  Speaker 1: My hair is having a day because I'm in New
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  Speaker 1: York and I didn't bring enough products.
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  Speaker 3: So listen, this is what it is. This is what
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  Speaker 3: I do. I love that we finally got to meet
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  Speaker 3: me too. I was also a huge fan. I was
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  Speaker 3: so happy that you read my book that it really
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  Speaker 3: it touched you in some way that you reached out
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  Speaker 3: to me.
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  Speaker 1: Notes, highlights, discussions, and I like to start every episode
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  Speaker 1: by asking what was your This is kind of ironic,
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  Speaker 1: your oh shit is this midlife moment, but your entire
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  Speaker 1: life is full of oh shit.
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  Speaker 2: You know what is it?
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  Speaker 4: Mama?
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  Speaker 3: You don't even know, like it won't stop. So I
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  Speaker 3: am fifty four years old, I'm gonna be fifty five
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  Speaker 3: this year, and I'm just like gorgeous.
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  Speaker 2: We all need to listen.
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  Speaker 3: Listen. Aging is a gift. It completely and honestly, it
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  Speaker 3: really truly is am to know, absolutely, and I just
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  Speaker 3: it does not stop. I had more happen even just
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  Speaker 3: like two weeks ago, So yes, it doesn't, it doesn't stop.
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  Speaker 3: But I'll say, is the biggest kind of like, oh shit,
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  Speaker 3: midlife was a woman? Was just the woman was you know,
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  Speaker 3: all the changes that have happened in the past several
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  Speaker 3: years to all of us of course, right, and then
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  Speaker 3: your body changes and then your your kid grows up.
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  Speaker 3: And also but there is a moment where you sit
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  Speaker 3: there and maybe it's because I'm like, oh god, I
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  Speaker 3: gotta die my hair again. You know, it's the greatest
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  Speaker 3: or whatever that you just suddenly realized not only is
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  Speaker 3: this midlife, but yeah, damn I'm grown.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm grown. That's a great.
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  Speaker 3: Growing, like not just grown, but like really grown.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Now, you know, I.
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  Speaker 1: Mean I've had everything from moments like that when I
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  Speaker 1: realized I don't remember who it was. Maybe Martha Stewart,
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  Speaker 1: maybe Oprah, maybe some soul that's very wise and said
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  Speaker 1: something that caught my attention, saying, every time you go home,
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  Speaker 1: you revert to the age that you were when you
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  Speaker 1: left home. And I and that was probably around my forties,
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  Speaker 1: when I'm like, oh my god, every time I go
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  Speaker 1: back to Ohio and I see my parents, I become
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  Speaker 1: seventeen again, which I'm sure is you know, not glorious.
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  Speaker 2: For everyone, and put in myself.
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  Speaker 1: And that's when I made a conscious decision of no,
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  Speaker 1: I'm grown.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think you know, look, has it been happy? No,
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  Speaker 3: My I'm grown happened because I had a lot of
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  Speaker 3: tragedy happened. My brother passed away at my after only
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  Speaker 3: one year of with cancer, simultaneously as the pandemic happened,
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  Speaker 3: simultaneously as my daughter became very ill from the panemic.
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  Speaker 3: So all of these things happened all at once to me,
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  Speaker 3: and wildly enough, it shaped me and changed me in
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  Speaker 3: such a way and that terms of like, Okay, now
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  Speaker 3: I'm grown. That it was a tremendous gift. I had
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  Speaker 3: no control over all of this stuff, but I did
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  Speaker 3: have a lot of control over what I was going
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  Speaker 3: to do to pick myself up and keep going. And
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  Speaker 3: I did that and it really I can't tell you
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  Speaker 3: how much it's like blessed my life. And a lot
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  Speaker 3: of it is to your point about you go home
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  Speaker 3: and your kid again. The only part of me that's
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  Speaker 3: a kid again is that twelve year old girl who
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  Speaker 3: had lots of hopes and dreams and really enjoyed just
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  Speaker 3: being by herself. Mm hmm, like truly, yeah, being by
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  Speaker 3: herself and just enjoying my own company and enjoying the
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  Speaker 3: things that I enjoyed again. And it was that part
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  Speaker 3: of me that is still there that I needed to
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  Speaker 3: reconnect with and that I've taken her along with me
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  Speaker 3: with a lot of boundaries, baby.
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  Speaker 1: Boundaries, multiple episodes on boundaries because I was just introduced
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  Speaker 1: to a new one the other day that I'm like,
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  Speaker 1: I need to work on that boundary.
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  Speaker 2: It's a new one for me and I need to
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  Speaker 2: figure it out.
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  Speaker 1: And you know, but this person that you are who
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  Speaker 1: decided the things that are happening I will experience by
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  Speaker 1: way of how I respond to them, says a lot
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  Speaker 1: to you. You're you're a scrapper and you are resilient.
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  Speaker 1: You're like all the words scrapper, resilient, tough, strong, courageous,
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  Speaker 1: and in this story which I want to dive into,
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  Speaker 1: I don't want to give it all away, but I
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  Speaker 1: want the audience to know enough so that there Because
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  Speaker 1: there are things in life that we will discover that
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  Speaker 1: we never knew, Carpets taken out from under you by
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  Speaker 1: way of family secrets of which this is a multi
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  Speaker 1: layered one, or just discoveries about self and how do
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  Speaker 1: we respond to them, especially when you've only known one
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  Speaker 1: thing for so long and you find out that's not
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  Speaker 1: what it is.
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  Speaker 2: Now.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, let's start at the beginning. Well, we have an hour,
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  Speaker 1: so let's.
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  Speaker 2: Let's start out where were you?
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  Speaker 1: Maybe a beautiful story of being the daughter of an
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  Speaker 1: immigrant and your mother's Dominican, and your father, Peter was Chinese. Bobby, Bobby, Bobby,
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  Speaker 1: remember Bobby Chinese, and that's who you knew as your dad.
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  Speaker 2: That's as Bobby.
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  Speaker 1: I can't say dad because dad was Somebody asked Bobby, okay,
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  Speaker 1: And that was a life growing up of multicultural You
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  Speaker 1: had the Dominican here in New York and then you
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  Speaker 1: guys would go to Chinatown.
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  Speaker 3: So mostly I was mostly uptown I was mostly what
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  Speaker 3: you know they now call Morningside Heights. We knew it
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  Speaker 3: as Harlem back then. With my cousins. My ideas, everybody
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  Speaker 3: was like across the street, around the eat up the block,
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  Speaker 3: a couple in the bronx, you know that sort of thing.
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  Speaker 3: That was my family. My family was all here. They
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  Speaker 3: all came together in the fifties, early fifties, really early.
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  Speaker 3: Myabela on the Cleaner's tailors on the corner on one
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  Speaker 3: twenty fifth in Broadway which is now turned into a Starbucks,
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  Speaker 3: of course, but he had that for many years. And
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  Speaker 3: you know, Poppy would come. They split when I was
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  Speaker 3: right after I was born, so they would come and
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  Speaker 3: pick up my older brother and I. Poppy would come
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  Speaker 3: and he spoke English and Spanish as well as like
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  Speaker 3: a Chinese dialects, and he would pick us up and
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  Speaker 3: then you know, we'd go to Chinatown for a whole
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  Speaker 3: nother life as a brown Chinese kids.
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  Speaker 1: He was the dad that would come on the weekends
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  Speaker 1: and thank you for his dad visitation.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, ken times and peel off the money, you know,
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  Speaker 3: off the roll in his pocket. Charismatic, Yeah, I got
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  Speaker 3: my barbies. You know, that's a very charismatic person there was.
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  Speaker 3: You know, later, much later in life, of course, I
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  Speaker 3: learned what all this charisma and bills in his pockets
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  Speaker 3: was all about. But when you're a kid, it was
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  Speaker 3: very glamorous. You know, Maabuella, she was a seamstress for
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  Speaker 3: Oscar Delaarento.
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  Speaker 1: So when then Poppy and your mom, yeah, loupe guy,
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  Speaker 1: they divorce and your mother remarries Marty, your stepfather. Now
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  Speaker 1: you had seen Marty before, No, you hadn't seen party before.
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  Speaker 2: Later in life you saw.
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  Speaker 1: It, and you go, guys, leave this world that you
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  Speaker 1: know here in.
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  Speaker 3: New colorful, family filled love.
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  Speaker 2: Aila down the street, she has her job, Abelo and
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  Speaker 2: his business, the cousins, the food, Chinatown.
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  Speaker 1: You leave it all, and you moved to and Marty was.
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  Speaker 2: Italian America, Italian America, and.
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  Speaker 1: You guys moved to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Hampshire, sorry,
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  Speaker 1: New England.
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  Speaker 3: Keep north, yeah, even more north, even more dark and
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  Speaker 3: very even more cold.
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  Speaker 1: So you go, and there's chapter two of your young
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  Speaker 1: life already.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean we were it. I mean New
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  Speaker 3: Hampshire and Massachusetts. That whole area, which is like a
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  Speaker 3: tech zone, is much more diverse than when we were there,
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  Speaker 3: we were it. We were the darkest, strangest, wildest things.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, my mother didn't know how to drive yet,
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  Speaker 3: so he would come home. My stepfather would come home
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  Speaker 3: and teach her how to drive. Like in the dark.
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  Speaker 3: In our neighborhood, we get pulled over because there's a
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  Speaker 3: brown person driving a car because they tell us the
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: cops says, someone reported their Puerto Ricans Puerto Ricans Caselin neighborhood.
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  Speaker 3: He stopped us this right on our own street.
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  Speaker 2: You could point to your house.
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  Speaker 3: I could see my house. Yeah. So that was what
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  Speaker 3: we entered. And also Catholic school, French Canadian Catholic school girls,
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  Speaker 3: very big difference. And also this new world where they
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  Speaker 3: really f fell into. You know, Spanish was my first language.
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  Speaker 3: I grew I was bilingual as a kid. We go
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  Speaker 3: to New Hampshire and this new father was very much
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  Speaker 3: about assimilation because his father had come before. His father
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  Speaker 3: had come before and been beaten as a child for
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  Speaker 3: speaking Italian when he was in kindergarten.
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  Speaker 4: You know.
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  Speaker 3: So that's the kind of environment and that was it.
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  Speaker 3: No more Spanish in the house, no more Latin food,
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  Speaker 3: no Chinese food, no ethnic food, no shows, no nothing,
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  Speaker 3: no music. It was like being completely robbed of everything
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  Speaker 3: I knew and being placed on a whole other planet.
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  Speaker 2: And at this point you were around how old.
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  Speaker 3: Oh gosh, I was only like first grade?
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  Speaker 1: Oh so much in your first five years of life.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah that you remember, Yeah, that's in here, Okay.
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  Speaker 3: It was imprinted on my brain so hard, partially because
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  Speaker 3: I had lost it, so I held onto it. It
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  Speaker 3: was home in my mind, and it was everything I knew,
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  Speaker 3: and it was what I saw when I looked in
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  Speaker 3: the mirror. So and my brother, my older brother, and I,
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  Speaker 3: and he got even the worse of it because he looked,
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  Speaker 3: you know, he looked blacker than I did. So he
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: looked and with the wong last name, you know, everybody
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  Speaker 3: was just giving him a lot of crap. And he
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: was a boy and he was older. So we really
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  Speaker 3: bonded in that change and kind of were the only
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  Speaker 3: two people we could talk to about it, because you know, mommy,
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  Speaker 3: you know parents in those days, you didn't go to
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  Speaker 3: them and start complaining about it. Could you imagine?
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  Speaker 4: Could you imagine if I went to go out a
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  Speaker 4: little bit and as their mommy would be Mommy's so
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  Speaker 4: mean to me, you.
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  Speaker 3: Know whatever, and she would just be like, do you
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  Speaker 3: know what I have sacrificed?
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  Speaker 2: Yes? Do you know.
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  Speaker 1: The book has this these wonderful ways of giving you
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  Speaker 1: little clues along the way, and you're.
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  Speaker 2: Like, oh shit, oh shit.
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  Speaker 1: It's like when somebody, you know, when you're watching a
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  Speaker 1: show and they close the door and they start doing
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  Speaker 1: the back point of view of somebody's walking and you're like,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: somebody's behind you, girl, what's it? And there was a
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  Speaker 1: moment where you went to You're in your all girl
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  Speaker 1: Catholic school, which I know those very well, and you're
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  Speaker 1: getting straight a's and the non sister Rachel's there talking
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  Speaker 1: to your mom and she says she's so smart.
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  Speaker 2: Coming is so smart.
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  Speaker 1: It must be the Chinese side of her. And your
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  Speaker 1: mother just smiles.
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  Speaker 2: And said sure, yeah, uh huh. First of all, before
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  Speaker 2: all the realities get exposed.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know I would have been like, no, I'm sorry,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: but you doubled down on that. She says, I'm smart
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  Speaker 1: because I'm I'm half Asian.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. I had hoped. I think in the moment that
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  Speaker 3: my mother would have stood up for herself and for
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: me because she was the one raising me and I
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: didn't believe that genetics had anything to do with the
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: intelligence and the sense of like he wasn't there. It's
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  Speaker 3: not like he was the one telling me to get
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  Speaker 3: straight a's and study and all that and giving me ambition.
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  Speaker 3: So but she didn't. But she had a very sly
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  Speaker 3: smile on her face that's stuck in my brain that
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  Speaker 3: I can see it to this day. You were in
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  Speaker 3: this little Honda minivan, you know, the first minivan ever made,
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: you know. Of course, of course she had to get
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: that one. That was that was her gift. And I'm
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: looking at her, and she has this little smirk on
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  Speaker 3: her face of satisfaction that I read with mixed as in,
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  Speaker 3: I feel like you're hiding something. I don't know what
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  Speaker 3: it is. Maybe it's because you know it's you, or
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  Speaker 3: you're just proud, or I don't know, but something's going
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: on here.
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  Speaker 2: Something's going on here. It's not out and okay, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: you go on. Then I'm gonna jump away for a
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: little red flag. There.
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  Speaker 1: You go on, you go to school, you get married,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: The marriage is good until it's not.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: I almost forgot that one, shall I tell you? Oh
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  Speaker 3: I did, I did?
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  Speaker 1: Okay, I know, I often forget I've been married twice,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: snap and forget.
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  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, yes, so.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes I forget about the starter one, you know, yeah, yes,
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  Speaker 3: the starter marriage.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: You can have an entire conversation about starter marriages and
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: what we learned. Pablo earmarked that so that we can
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: come back to that. Yes, that is a thing. So
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: but you know what happened there, of course, you know.
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  Speaker 1: But when I say that is maybe you realized that
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  Speaker 1: your ambitions and your dreams of wanting to have a
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: bigger life because you knew there was a bigger world.
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  Speaker 1: You did not compromise in this marriage that had become
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: unfulfilling and dishonest, by the way, because he went instantly yes,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and you said I'm going to grad school and he
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: said you don't need to. You're married and you have
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: children that we're going to have. We're gonna have children
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  Speaker 1: some day for you to raise.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: And you're like, I'm now.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: I was like, what's the schedule, Oh, busta, yeah, I don't.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was a whole bunch of things
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: happened all at once and very quickly. It was one
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: of those marriages that I knew it was wrong for
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: me to do. The day I got married, I was like,
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: what the hit I just do?
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: We can talk about that too.
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  Speaker 1: One of the things I want to pass down to
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  Speaker 1: my daughter now, sooner than later, is that women have
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: this phenomenal ability of ignoring the red flags. And I
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: was one of them, saying, and I'm less today, but
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  Speaker 1: it's still an ongoing thing. I can sharpen a curve
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  Speaker 1: and I can talish a polish a turd for quite
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  Speaker 1: a bit of time before I realize this isn't happening.
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  Speaker 3: But you know, you know what I realized in this
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  Speaker 3: grownness of course of what it was really is because
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: first of all, we i'll talk about myself. I wanted
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: to be loved so much. Yeah, I didn't feel loved.
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  Speaker 3: My version of feeling loved with my parents was accomplishment.
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  Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
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  Speaker 3: It was the only way in time that I got love.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 3: I wasn't seen, I was projected upon. So I became
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  Speaker 3: used to that. So I didn't sit there and say,
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: who am I going to choose to be with me?
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  Speaker 3: It was who was choosing me? And then I had
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: to deal with all of their bs.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Interesting, you should say that I don't think i've ever
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  Speaker 1: attributed that who was choosing me? Because I definitely walked
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: that story. Yeah, that's really great to hear it the
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  Speaker 1: d Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And I really because you know, you look back and
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: you see the patterns, and I'm like, how did I
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: come on? I knew, but it was what I was
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: accustomed to. And frankly, I married my mother the first time,
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: so interesting, and it was I was trying to master
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: something I couldn't master when I was a kid. He
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: was Latino. He you know, his parents had an apartment
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: up on Dykeman, the plastic covered furniture. It was my
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: childhood all back and that's what I was trying to
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: get back. And I was trying to get that love
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: and to get that accepted all this stuff. And he
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: was a bindayhood like you wouldn't believe.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Well I read, I read, and I was all right,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: you keep going. And you're in your thirties. I think
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: it was when your sister shows you a picture that
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: was found in an attic. Yeah, and that picture had
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: is your mother holding you as a baby, so and Marty,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: your stepfather, holding another baby and another woman. And the
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: idea of the picture was is that all these friends
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: d But when you were a baby.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: Your mother was with Poppy, Poppy, I was a new
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: born in that picture.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, so the Chinese father Poppy was your father. What's
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Marty doing in the picture like six years before?
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: That's what I was, That's what I was asking.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Before he made some okay thingding. So cut to life continues.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: You go on and you okay because it's such a crossroad.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: You come to a place where your mother's diagnosed with cancer,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: calling cancer, and at some point somebody wants to have
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: a conversation with you because her prognosis is not looking good.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: And that's Marty. Correct, my stepfather.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Marty calls you and says, can we have a talk?
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: And you go over and you sit down, not knowing
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: where this is gonna lead.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: I had no idea. I thought he wanted to do
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: his will or something, because we all we talked about
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: really was business, you know, So I didn't know. I
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: thought it was his will. And he sits me down
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: and he's like, I got something to tell you. And
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: the only reason he told me is because they had
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: divorced and he was dating a woman that he told
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: this secret to and the woman was like, you're gonna
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: let this woman die the mother. You know you're gonna
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: let her mother die with this secret. So he tells me,
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: He says, you know, Star Wars style, I'm your father,
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: and I just burst into tears. It was it was
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: a mix of a lot of disappointment, of course, anger, sadness, heartbreak.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Your parents are supposed people in your family are supposed
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: to love you safely. They're supposed to not betray you.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Your parents' relationship with your parents are the first people
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: you have to build trust with. So to hear that
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: my parents not only have been keeping a secret about themselves,
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: but I was the secret beyond devastating to me.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: And you were remind me how old you were at
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: this time.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, so.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Thirty not even yeah, even you're a full ass adult.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: I was a full ass adult.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: And my mother was dying and she didn't even tell
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: me she was going to take it to her grave.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: So I don't even know where one begins to be
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: angry first, where or shocked? You have this man telling
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: you that he's your father, Your mother who's dying, hasn't
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: even told you that these four women over here your
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: sisters are now actually your sister's not your half sisters, so.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: Well, I thought, so yes, And what happened was too
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: is that don't forget I was raised in this new culture.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: It's very American culture. That was made a really strong
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: point that actually I was very very proud to be
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: Dominican Chinese, like it was this is my this was
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: who I was. My identity I grew up is God
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: Matrito Wong. It's just who I am. And my sisters
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: had a different last name. And when I was very young,
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: I had wanted to be adopted by my stepfather because
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: I had wanted to be a part of their family
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: because Poppy wasn't around anymore, which you know, tell a
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: novellas thought, we'll get into that one. I wasn't Poppy around,
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: he was in jail, So you know, it was all
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: about acceptance and wanting love and in the end to
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: find out that, you know, the anger said, I wanted
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: your love so bad, and you're gonna tell me all
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: this time that you and you chose to not love
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: me as your own girl?
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Shed Are you mad at him? Are you mad at
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: your mom? Are you mad?
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: That's why I don't know how you decide who to
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: be mad at first? And how mad and yet she's not,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: she's dying.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: You know, I was more. I was more. I was
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: angry at than both, of course, but I was more
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: angry at him because he had a lot of privilege,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: he had a lot of ability. He had no reason
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: to lie besides my mother's control. And as he would
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: say later, you know I wanted to keep the peace.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well for other reasons.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: But how how everybody was It's almost like everybody was
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: appeasing their own conscience and not giving any thoughts to yours.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: And I didn't matter, yeah.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: At all, because you know children this and it.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Just children and no longer a child, no longer.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: This is exactly okay.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Then you go and you approach your mother, who's his
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: grim diagnosis, now like two months left to live. How
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: do you approach your mother with this truth that's layered
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: with so much anger, so much hurt, so much pain,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: and she's on her deathbed? Essentially, how do you approach
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: her with the empathy for the fact that she's dying,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: but the fact that you have lived thirty something years
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: of her life with the lie that she's responsible for.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: Empathy was not exactly at the forefront of me, but
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: Here's what I did is I showed up with reinforcements.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: I got two of my sisters to go with me.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: We rolled up, We rolled up a little lead and
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: with very much. I was very much the grown up
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: in the house, even as a kid. My mother was
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: a kid, you know, you know how it is, you know,
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: And so I rolled up with a lot of authority.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: Let's just say, I'm just like, okay, lady, now it's
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: time for you to tell me what's up.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: And she.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: Really, of course made it very mudramatica you know, the
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: crying and the tissues, and I had to do and
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Poppy loved me, and he didn't and I was going
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: to have an abortion. I was going to you know,
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: not have you and and Marty wanted to pay for it,
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: and so Poppy came rolling and said don't do it
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: while I was in the car.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: And the way she really.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Created a movie, like mean, it was, It's really something.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: How did that conversation end?
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: How did it end? I don't know if I remember
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: how it ended. I know that I did not drop
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: a tear.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Mm hmmm.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: I was cold, and I was I was my sister's
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: you know, cried a bit, but I was pretty cold,
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: and and it was just a matter of I just
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: can't believe you people. But I wrote this book because
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: mostly to understand. That's why it's called why Didn't You
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Tell Me? Is to figure out why and how somebody
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: your mother would keep something like this from you to
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: her grave? Who is this person? I didn't like, I
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: didn't know this person. Who is this person? So I
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: had to go back and figure it out. And frankly,
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: it's like, this was a woman who was raised in
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: a brutal household. My willow was brutell and she was
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: born a female person, and so she had to do
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: what she needed thought she needed to do to survive.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: And that's what she did. And she wanted me to
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: have a backup and a backup and a backup in
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: terms of fathers.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: That's really wow. A plan B.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: She had a plan A plan B say, I had
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: a pastor offic this one. I'm gonna passor off this one,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: and this one's gonna help rather, and this one's gonna
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: have her name and this one and she just really
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: kind of built this system to sustain me but also
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: to sustain her reputation.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: This story goes on before the book is written and
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the birth of ancestry dot Com and twenty three and
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: me and the genealogy tests that are causing a lot
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: of uproar and a lot of lives out there, and
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: some beautiful discoveries too. But you end up finding out
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: there's more to this story.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, I got up finding out that there's
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: daddy number three.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: You go and you take one of these tests.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: I take a test and I'm not Italian. Now, mind you,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: I also a Chinese.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: No, girl, you're not Chinese. I'm just but this.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: I'll say this, I'm not genetically Chinese, but I'll always
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: be along.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: We're gonna get to that too, because there's something so
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: full struggle with. So you find out, Okay, so it's
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: not your dad and Ney there is Marty.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: Uh Nope, I am oh my daddy. Okay.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Well, and it was.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Hard to see because being Dominican, of course we are mixed.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: So I'm a little over a quarter African, right, and
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: then Spanish and Portuguese, but all the rest is Spanish
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: and Portuguese, so that didn't give me any answers, right,
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: But I call it my brother, who's my bestie, And
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh my god, like I'm not even that
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: was an absolute mind f like you wouldn't believe I was.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: That was insane. But I had a feeling though Dean,
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: I had a feeling.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: Our guts, man, I've also learned this, you must listen
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: to your gut. I had a feelings that I had
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: a feeling that Marty was also not my father.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: What gave me that feeling?
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: I didn't feel connected, I didn't feel and also my
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: sisters they were too different. Everybody in my world was
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: too different from me. The only person that was like
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: me really was my brother, which is why it was
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: more easily and easy to be identified together. And then
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: even we were so different. He was so Chinese and
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: I was so Latina.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: What prompted you to go take the genetic test? Just
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: shits and giggles or you're like you knew at this
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: point there was a lot of inconsistencies.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: I wanted answers.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, and this is what I love.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I read that you just basically kept hitting refreshed like
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: every three months, to see.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: If every day, like three times of the day, until
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: I stop.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: All of a sudden, there'd be matches with siblings or
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: cousins or something because somebody submitted their DNA, so you
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: would go and just refresh and see if there's any connections,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you discover okay, you
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: did your mother had passed. At this point, girl, I
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: hand it in the book.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: The book was sold, it was done, And the whole
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: idea was like, look this writing about this. This is
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: not about who's the daddy. This is about who are
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: our mothers? And who are we?
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Who am I?
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: Who am I? Right? And we are a product of
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: their architecture, right, I say, she's you know, she sketched
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: the architecture or whatever. The player the foundation, Yeah, and
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: I built the building, right, So we all do that.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: They pour the foundation, we build the building. So I
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: was like, okay, I need to figure out who this
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: person is, who poor this concrete? And that's what the
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: book was about. So agents happy, everyone's happy, editor's happy.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: All great. I literally handed in the draft of the book,
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: had the deal, everything was all in process, and I
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: hit refresh one more time. God on ancestry. I hadn't
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: touched it in ages, and there it was.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: I don't even know, I don't even know, And you
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: really like.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: My hands were shaking, so I had to I was like,
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: what it was? My niece popped up, and then I
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: had to call my agent, call my editors. Don't don't no,
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: I said, I got to write an eplog that's going
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: to belog. I just found my daddy, but I had
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: to see, like would she respond to me? You don't know,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: And that's the whole like incredible vulnerability that you live
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: in when you kind of are raised with these lies
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: and you start finding truth that you are vulnerable to
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: this family, Like are they gonna talk to you? Are
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: they gonna want you? Are they gonna even? Oh god,
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: I want to talk to you. She responded. I wrote
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: this young lady a note and she responded less than
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: twenty four hours wow, and was like, my mom's happy
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: to talk.
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: She knew about you, God, oh my god, megad.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, she didn't know about me, but she knew
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: that me. She knew there was okay yeah wow yeah. Yeah.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: So hence the epilogue. Got to read it.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: You wrote the book and it was published in twenty two, yeah,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: twenty two, yeah, and here it is twenty twenty six, yeah,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: and it is still unfolding. You just returned from two
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: weeks ago. I reached out and asked you if you
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: would be on the show. And you're like, I'm on
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: my way to the Canary Islands to meet my father's family.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: I'm like, girl, you're gonna need a part two.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: What do you mean, apple hog?
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: And because that father had passed away nineteen.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: Years ago, a long time, A long time, Yeah, two
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: years before my mother.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Yeah, and you met the family.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: Canarian family, Canary Islands, yep.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Two weeks ago.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: A journey that started with a discovery a truth being
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: told in your thirties.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: Thirty years old.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you still have people unfolding the truth in
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: front of you.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: And you sit here so glowing and so radiant, and
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: so I'm sure you have your days in your moments,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: but you have such a peace and harmony about you.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: How do you go and approach them with that and
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: keep yourself open to hearing the rest of the story.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: Fifteen years of therapy, okay, and working on myself. Because
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: you can go to therapy, like you tell my daughter,
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: you can go to therapy all the time, but if
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: you're not doing the work yourself in your head, it's
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: real homework. Yeah, but I've always wanted to have more
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: peace in my life, more peace in my head, be
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: at peace with myself and where I'm at and be,
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: and that makes me better as a mother to my daughter.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: And that's when I started doing the work very much
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: was after she was born. I needed to be better
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: for her.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: That's one of the questions I had for you, is
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: that in writing this book, was there a part of
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: it that was meant to be a gift to your daughter.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: She won't read the book though, she won't not yet. No,
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: she's like, mom, your life. She knows a lot about it,
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: and she's like, I can't handle it. And she has
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: the self awareness to know. She's like, I can't handle
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: it yet, fair enough, because I do have some dark
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: times in this book, things that happened to me and
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: people who do things to me and all that stuff.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: She's like, I really can't handle it right now. Because
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: she she's a witness to my pain in my life.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: I don't hide things from her. I have good bound
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: with her, but I you know, she knows, and yeah,
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: she is the reason. And you know, you don't have
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: to have kids for that to happen. I was already
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: always trying to figure myself out. And you know, listen,
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: that's why I went to grad school for psychology, you know,
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: and also for work. But I I really knew that
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: I wanted to mother her in the way that I
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: wish I had been mothered. And I had to make
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: that reality for her. And it's a continuous.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Process, yes, it is.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: And it also folds right back into you know, you
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: choosing you and you want to be the kind of
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: mother that does this and gives this.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: To your daughter.
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: Well, now she's grown.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: She is grown, but so she is, she could have grown.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: And this is what I say that when you have
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: children who have been through trauma because of whatever was
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: they were exposed to, and you don't want to run
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: or control their life, but you're running alongside them and
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: keeping an eye with them and letting them know you're here.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: It's a conscious decision that you don't want to manage
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: their life, but you certainly want to be there for support.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: But you made a decision that all of this stuff could.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Have spiraled you into a bunch of different results, and
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: it could have also resulted in a mothering that just
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't available.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: Yes, and I got to tell you. I don't want
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: to sugarcoat it in any way. I want to be
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: very honest with you. I really like who I am now.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: I really feel, to your point, much more grounded, much
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: more myself, much more everything. But it's a person that's
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: not as available to people.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I keep hearing that, my guess we're talking about this,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: and I have said those words, so sad.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, we don't need to be available.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: To everybody, especially when you feel when you feel it,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: you're making yourself available to this person is self serving
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: to them and not to you.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: And we've done that most of our lives, right, absolutely,
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: and that's the way we were raised. Yeah, so I'm
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: not that available. I'm a little grumpier. I like her.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: She's a little grown, shey, little villainous, she's a little
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: she doesn't need to be liked so much. I need
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: to just live as me. And it's just it's it's
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: a much I can't explain to you, especially if, like
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: anybody young is listening to this, the relief that comes
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: to you with age and wisdom and saying I'm good
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: a little more than saying oh yeah, okay, yeah, no no,
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: and running around like it's it's just yeah, it's kind
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: of amazing. So my daughter's grown, so now it's about me. Yes,
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: it is because that you know, yes, your kids need
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: you their whole lives. But you get to a point
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: where now you know she's in college. Okay, now it's
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: just for me at this point.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: So there's plenty of women that could listen to this
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and men who could listen to this story, yeah, and
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: apply it to some truth that was revealed to them
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: later in life and whatnot. And it is it is
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: a masterclass in how do you let the decisions made
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: by other especially parents, not let their if you want
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to call it a mistake, if you want to call
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: it their self serving or whatever it is, because it's layered,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: it's not that black and white. How you don't take
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: that on as to it reflecting on you that it
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: wasn't actually about you. It was about them and their
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: decisions and their and those decisions created a lot of
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: their decisions create a lot of pain and hurt. And
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: how do you detach yourself from you did this to
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: yourself and unfortunately it had ramifications on me, and not
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: blame yourself for any of it.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Oh God, we can't take responsibility for them at all.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: You can imagine that if people go through something like
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: this or someone I mean this, that they can take
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: they can think, well maybe if I had been Yes.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: There is a part of me that was like, I
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: cannot be loved. Well, that's why we end up with
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: these pendejos No, so so I cannot be you know,
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: I don't deserve you know, maybe I'm unlovable, maybe because
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: if my own parents couldn't love me, maybe I'm unlovable.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: So you do have to get through that. I think
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: that's the biggest blame element. But you know, one thing
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: what a Lupe gave to me was always taking responsibility
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: for my choices in life and all of that. So
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: that's very important. So when you realize that you're responsible
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: for that, they're responsible for theirs. They were responsible for
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: how they raised you. So let that responsibility remain with them. Now,
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: how do you deal with it? You know, later you
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: realize there are human beings. They made bad choices. Those
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: choices are not yours. I was like to say, because
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: of course I have. You know, Poppy ended up in jail.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: He ended up with I was like, you know, I'm
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: not my father's sins. I am not my mother's negligence.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: I'm not my mother's lies. I'm not my three fathers lies.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: I'm not any of theirs. And as my daughter says,
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: is the young generator and we didn't have to be born.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: M hm okay, So now we're here. They're gone in
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: my life, they're gone. So now it's up to me
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: to really make peace with and understand that we all
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: have the ability to be loved, yes, regardless of what
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: our parents did.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: And I just want to give you a lot of
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: light and recognition because someone could be going through a
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: journey that that started in their home and their and
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: their fam with their family of origin, that they've been
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: carrying the weight of it and trying to figure it
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: out and combe through it for a couple of decades
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: like you have, and yet you're not. It's not a
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: linear journey and it's not supposed to be a perfect journey,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: but you have walked through it with so much grace intact.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: And I want to ask you.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: I want to read something here, a couple of two
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: quick paragraphs about this towards the end, and then I'll
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: ask you a question. Mom's gone, she took her answers
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and her stories with her. But I've settled in with
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: what may have been, and in so many ways I'm
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: grateful to her. I should be glad for those men
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: in my life, each a father in their own way,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: and it all could have been better, but I turned
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: out okay. So is there forgiveness? Then I forgive myself
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: for what.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: For thinking I was something was wrong with me. It's
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: a happy ending because even if I'm going to say
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: something controversial, but I don't forgive them, because forgiveness requires
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: two things. To me, First, you got to apologize no
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: one ever did. And to you need to change your behavior.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: So when I gave my stepfather the opportunity to apologize
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: and to acknowledge my pain, he chose not to. There's
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: no ill feeling, though you have to understand, there's no
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: The angers completely that I have now is superficial. It's
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: not even that deep, because now I see my mother
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: as a human being, a separate human being for me.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: I see Marty, I see Poppy. I say, you know
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: I buried Populin a couple of years ago and embarrassed.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: It's creamated know we're Chinese, but I it's not forgiveness
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: it's understanding. And when you understand these people as separate
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: human beings, it releases you. You know how people say
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: forgiveness like is for you? You have to forgive yourself.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: And that's the lightness that I feel and the freedom
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: that I feel. And I did turn out okay, Yeah.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Well okay, so if I can bring it to a moment, now,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: what don't you have? What don't you have? Figured out?
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: And I like to end my segments with is it
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: just me?
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Or is anybody else? Blank?
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: And how would you apply that There's there's something that's
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: gnawing on you completely aside from this is it just me?
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Or is anybody else blank?
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: Will look Professionally, I've retired from finance years ago. I
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: have a film that's finishing up, that's wrapping up, a
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: documentary on race and beauty made Dominican Republic of Shade
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: that's coming, have a novel coming next. So creatively, my
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: mojo is on fire, on fire, Yes, but my mojo
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: went on fire because girl, I have been focused for
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: the past six years on healing from lots of things
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: and taking care of my daughter and building myself back
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: up and all of these things. Longest time I've been
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: single in my life. I don't regret it. I think
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: it's great. I think we find our peace at this age.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: Like I said, like, I'm enjoying rediscovering myself. But I
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: also came out of the closet real late.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, here's it just me. Here's anybody else still in
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: the closet? Is anybody else?
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: All the ladies, let's get together. I came out in
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: my forties, and it's not something I addressed in my
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: book or anything, or it's just it's just I just
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: have always been at this point, it's very just busy
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: with life. So and I also just am okay with
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: not you know, really diddy. But yeah, is it just me?
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: I'm just starting to get you know, revved up again,
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: being like all right, let me explore this other part
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: of me which I did not feel like I could have.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: I didn't feel like I had the opportunity. I was ambitious.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: I was already friggin' afro, Latina, woman, Chinese, name all
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: these things. Do you think I was going to succeed
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: professionally if I came out a squeer?
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: I mean there was a lot on there.
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a full plate it's a whole six course meal.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: So I decided to, you know, wait till the end
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: of life. So maybe one day, I think that that's
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: like something as I take care of myself, I think
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: that I'm very interested in how that's going to unfold.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: I am so thankful that you're here.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: I'm so thankful that I found you and fell in
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: love with you on the Instagrams and attacked you with
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: the most giant hug when I finally got to meet
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: you in person. And I'm thankful that you shared your
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: story with us so beautifully and generously, and we're here
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: for chapters the second and third installment.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, but thank you so much for
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: having me. I adore you and what you're doing and
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: this is fantastic.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: We love you, Okay, thank you so much. Gotman the one?
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: How Hard Can It Be?
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: With the animade Ariva is a hyphen Media group production
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: in partnership with Iheart'smichael Gura podcast network. For more of
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.