The Not So Only Child with Rich Boerner | EP 466

What if a single moment in your grief revealed a truth that rewrote your entire identity? That’s exactly what happened to today’s guest, Rich Boerner, whose life changed forever after his mother’s passing. While cleaning out her apartment, Rich uncovered a long-hidden secret about his father—one that forced him to confront love, betrayal, forgiveness, and ultimately, healing.

This episode dives deep into the emotional terrain of family secrets, identity, and the surprising ways grief can open doors to growth we never expected.

🌟 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How growing up without a father shaped Rich’s beliefs about himself
• The shocking discovery that changed everything after his mother's death
• Why our family stories affect us long after childhood
• The emotional journey from anger to compassion
• How meeting his half-sister helped him understand the truth
• Why he felt called to write The Not So Only Child
• How humor, curiosity, and vulnerability became tools for healing
• What Rich hopes his story will teach his own children

📚 About Rich’s Book

Rich’s memoir, The Not So Only Child: My True Story, is a heartfelt, thought-provoking, and surprisingly funny exploration of identity and belonging. Perfect for anyone navigating complicated family dynamics, grief, or personal reinvention.

👉 Get the book: [Insert Amazon / Audible / Kindle link]
👉 Rich’s Website: [Insert link]

💬 Join the Conversation

Your experiences matter.

• Have you ever uncovered a surprising family truth?
• Did grief reveal something unexpected to you?
• What part of Rich’s story resonated most?

✨ Share your thoughts with us!
Leave a comment on YouTube, or join the discussion on https://grief2growth.substack.com

🔗 Connect with Rich

Website: [Insert link]
Instagram: [Insert handle]
Podcast / Audio Work: [Insert link]

❤️ Support the Show

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Transcript

0:51

Close your eyes and imagine. What if the things in life that caused us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges. Challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried, but what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth, and I am your host, Brian Smith. Hi, I'm Brian Smith, host of Grief to Growth, and whether this is your first time joining me or your longtime listener, I want to say welcome to you. On this show, we explore life's deepest challenges and life's greatest mysteries. We look at grief not as an end, but as a doorway into growth and the healing and a clearer understanding of who we are, why we're here, and where we're going. Today, I'm honored to be joined by Rich Berner, an award-winning audio creator, producer, and now debut author. Rich has worked with A-list talent in major media powerhouses like Spotify, Fox, CBS, and more. But beyond that impressive resume is a deeply personal story, one of love, loss, identity, and the hidden truths that grief can sometimes sometimes uncover. In our conversation, Rich will open up about the loss of his mother and how mourning her didn't just bring grief, but also surfaced longtime buried family secrets that completely rewrote what he believed about himself. Imagine waking up one day and realizing everything you thought was true about your identity has changed, and that's exactly what happened to Rich. We'll talk about how we transform feelings of betrayal and heartbreak into a pathway toward healing. The role that humor played in helping him find his footing again, and how telling its untold story became both a painful and a liberating experience. Rich's journey from shattering revelations to redemption and renewal isn't just compelling. It's a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Rich's debut novel is called The Not So Only Child, and it dives deep into these themes, blending real-life emotion with storytelling that's as moving as it is thought-provoking. So whether you're navigating grief, questioning your identity, or simply looking for inspiration on how to rebuild when your foundation has been shaken, this episode's for you. And don't forget after the episode is over, head over to grief2growth.substack.com, where I've written an article about this conversation. You can leave a comment, ask a question, and connect with me and other listeners as we continue this dialogue. So now let's dive in. I'd like to welcome Rich to Grief 2 Growth. Thank you, Brian. Yeah, when I hear an introduction like that, it was so well spoken, so well said, I'm like, wow, who is this guy? You know, because I've always said that, folks, because I've always just been me. In my brain, I'm still, you know, the 10-year-old kid eating the frozen dinner in front of the TV screen and whatnot. So thank you. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for doing this podcast. Yeah, well, I'm really excited to have you here. And I know the feeling when someone reads your introduction, you're like, yeah, is that me? I've been through all that. And that's one of the things I love to explore in this program is the resilience of the human spirit and our all-over experiences here. So I know that you, I think your story kind of begins with the loss of your mother. So start wherever you like, but I'd like to hear about your mother also. Yeah, yeah. Well, I grew up as, you know, the name of the book is The Not So Only Child, but I grew up in my brain. I was an only child with a single mom, and this was the 1970s, so it was not something that you went out and wore as a badge. Not that it's a badge of honor for anyone, but you tried to hide it. And it also came from a family that my mom had me when she was a little older. So all my relatives were older, you know, at least a decade or more older, even for cousins, older than me. So it, they basically didn't talk about controversial stuff. They didn't, you know, I don't know there a lot. I didn't know a lot of whatever their beliefs were on controversial things because we'd never talked about it. They seemed like nice people. They were nice people. They treated others, you know, uh, well, so I was like, okay, they're good. They're good folks. But my mom was this kind of, um, it was interesting. She was this Ibullian personality, laughing, always laughing. She had a laugh that was like, um, uh, they were as a cartoon when I was a kid called the wacky racers and his dog came named Muttley and had his breathy, like, but that was her laugh. In fact, I used to bring my friends in and go, mom, laugh like Muttley so they can hear mom. And she'd be like, I can't laugh on it. And a big, a huge baseball fan. She had been a Brooklyn Dodgers fan as a kid, heartbroken when they left New York, when they left Brooklyn and then became Mets fan because that's what most Brooklyn Dodgers fans did and whatnot. So the Yankees were the evil enemy. So I became a Mets fan during a time when it was, I mean, well, I mean, it's up and down for the Mets. But anyway, it's in my, it's in my DNA at this point, uh, as a Mets fan, um, loved Broadway musicals and movies. That was her thing. We'd watch even when I was a little kid, we'd watch the King and I on television, all these, all these Broadway musicals and West Side Story and all this stuff. When I was a little kid watching, anytime they came on, um, and, um, she was just, she seemed fun, uh, but not fun to the point she would not have been the life of the party. She would have gone to the party and it would have taken her an hour to start really interacting. You know, she was not the person who walked in the room and went, Regina's here. You know, there are those folks and they're magnetic. Uh, but when she left, she would have the six people that she really connected with and bonded with, which is interesting because throughout my life, I obviously genetics and also there's conditioning from growing up. I feel like I've been the same way. I'm not going to walk into a room and everybody stops. There are folks who are like that. And we know, we all know them. We all and it's, it always amazes me at their, uh, strength and resilience to just walk into a brand new situation and just, I got it. I'm good. I'm hitting home runs. Here we go. Um, but, uh, it was, uh, you know, I was sad because I didn't have a dad and wasn't like everybody else, but I wasn't sad with mom ever. I mean, we struggled too, but I didn't care because she was just me, mom taking care of me. And, you know, I had friends in the neighborhood and we went about business. Um, so yeah, I mean, it wasn't until I got to like teen years and whatnot. And then I was like, wow, I wish I had somebody I could ask questions to, cause I know I can't ask these questions. Any, you know, anything as I'm maturing and everything, I can't ask my mom. I'm embarrassed. I'm not, I'm not going to ask mom. I need somebody to ask me. And so there was a lot of, you know, as figuring it out with your friends, a lot of wrong information, a lot of that stuff. But I mean, you know, in, in retrospect, it was a good life, but I held, I still held like in my backpack. I held that I got ripped off, you know, that one, that one canister of, I got ripped off and I'm going to prove to the world, I'm as good or better than everyone else who's quote unquote normal. When we all know at this point, there is no normal. Right. Right. Well, you're not, did you think there is, right? You think there's some ideal that, that people have that you don't, that you're missing out on? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You look at any, you know, I think of just my friends growing up and I look at their parents and, you know, there was up to like the group of six of us, there was like one other household. I might've been like, yeah, I can, I can live in there. I, cause the other parents were, some of them were like, well, you got the angry dad, you got the, you know, and that, that seems weird and everything else like that. So I just kind of felt like an observer for a lot. You know, I got to spend, because my mom had to work and ultimately my aunt who took care of me, she went back to work too. So I got to spend a lot of time as a latchkey kid alone. And that's where I think a lot of my ability to just create, I would always create, even when I was little, my mom was like, you're a storyteller, are you telling stories? In other words, telling the truth. Sometimes then, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but I could on a whim, I could just start going and go. And, you know, when I was home alone, besides discovering where every piece of candy was or anything, every nook and cranny in the house, I would just start to create stuff, you know, and that ultimately became a career in radio. Okay. Yeah. So at some point, your mother passed away. So tell me what happened there. So flash forward to I'm an adult and working in radio, I have, I'm married and have a small child. And I was in Orlando working at a station, talk station in Orlando, which was very popular. And this is all in the book, whatever. So I won't give away too much detail, but there's a lot of trauma and stress that goes there. In the process of I got a job and was moving to San Francisco, a job which I had for a year there to put a new radio station on the air. When I called my mom, because my mom and my eldest, who was only three at the time, Shannon, they, they just bonded, you know, sometimes people just bond. And I know this caused tension with my, my ex wife's mother, because it's like, why is why? Why is it? Why is she going to her? And you know, I'm as like, it was like, it's not a competition, that could change, you know, I mean, because what that happens with kids, sometimes they're attached to ones, and then they just bonded. They were really tight. And we moved across. So I asked if she could fly out because she was still back in New York. She lived in the same apartment, the one I grew up in, tiny little apartment for 40, 35 years, whatever. And I said, can you come out? This would be great opportunity. Can you come out and stay with Shannon for a weekend while we go and I do my final interview when we look for places to live. Sorry, this was moving from San Francisco to LA. And, and she that's when she started to cry on the phone. And I was like, whoa, what's up, because I wasn't you first of all, I wasn't used to seeing that emotion from my mom. And I, she told me she had gone to the doctor and that because there was something sticking out of her, and she the doctor was pretty sure it was ovarian cancer. And she had a biopsy schedule, all this stuff. And I was just kind of like, you know, as you know, when traumatic things happen in life, it's it's it's like you're hit by the invisible bus. Yeah, exactly. You know, you want to do something or react, but you don't you just literally feel weak. And so anyway, she eventually found out it was ovarian cancer. We went through that. I was in the process of moving the family down to LA at the same time flying back and forth between San Francisco, LA and New York mom going through surgery. She went through treatment for ovarian. It wasn't a good diagnosis, prognosis. And she eventually went into it. She did an experimental treatment and she had beaten it. And we were amazed and awe and like just like a heavy. And then she had one last preventative chemo treatment. And when I came home two days after that, because we were planning on her trip to come out to LA to actually because she had never gone to the Dodgers games at Dodger Stadium. I'm like in the station I worked for we could get tickets, no problem. It's like we're going to take your Dodgers game. We'll make sure when the Mets are in town. This is so exciting. And I got a call and I get home. I got home late from work. And my ex was on the phone with my cousin who was in the emergency room with my mom. And they they she says, I need to put the doctor on. It's like, what, what, what? He says, you're the you're the next to if can, do you want us to resuscitate? I was like, these I was like, yes, she just beat ovarian cancer. I may have said something more extreme than that. But I said, yes. And then put my back and it put me OK, here's your cousin. And she gave me a quick she said, we don't know what's gone wrong. She just deteriorated today. We thought it was just, you know, the post chemo treatment, everything else. I flew in, you know, found a flight the next morning at like 5am, flew in, got there. We spent the next two and a half days just watching her blood pressure fade, fade, up, fade, fade, fade and go down. She eventually died two days later. And yeah, and flat line three times in the room there and came back and I was like, I was so mad because I was like, this proof, she's not it's not time. But there's nothing we could do with nothing. Again, there's more details in the book about how this all happened and what all happened. But there's there's no secret there other than turns out she had undiagnosed diverticulitis and one of the it's those little sacks in your intestines. One of them she fell at night going to the bathroom and one of them burst. So her body poisoned itself. And she had no defense for it because she had just gone through her last chemo treatment. So go through all of that. And you I'm there for a couple of weeks. And then I come back, I'm going to come back in three months to empty the apartment because it's on the other side of the country. When I go back to empty the apartment, I'm emptying all the apartment stuff and whatnot. And that's when I came through when I get to the final thing, her nightstand, I start going through this little blue packet of all her private stuff, her little address book or living else. And I found and I found so much amazing material. In other words, she was a letter writer. I kind of knew that. But I didn't know she was 70s. You know, she wrote she she did I guess she'd stopped writing and at a certain point, but and had response letters from them. Oh, wow. You know, from Vin Scully, the announcer. Wow. From Walter, Walter O'Malley, the the Dodgers owner, I mean, and you know, and Yogi Berra, and the people Sparky Anderson. And it was just like, I was like, whoa, whoa. And then she had a secret set of letters, pen pal letters that would never nobody knew. And when I talked to my family, nobody knew about this. She was a pen pal with someone, a soldier who was overseas, and they were talking like they were going to get married or something. And then he wrote a Dear Jane letter because he married someone else. And I was like, and then I opened the book and I'm looking through and going and I knew everybody in the book, I knew everybody in the book. And I see a name of person that I knew. And it has, I'm born in November. And it has Valentine's Day in a hotel room number next to it, and a heart next to it. And that's nine months out of the year, the year I was born. And I was like, it was that was the arrow in the forehead. It's like, Oh, my God, this is my father. Hmm. So I knew, at that point, who my father was, I didn't, then the question was, what do I do with that? Because the man I knew, I knew who the man was. And I didn't do anything with it. I decided to just, I defaulted, I was like, nope, nope, I don't have enough stress right now. I don't need this. I don't need this. And I tried to ignore it. And as I detail in the book, I tried to ignore this for over a decade. And life kept coming at me, kept coming at me, coming at me, coming at me to get me to the point I put little pieces together as I was going just because I needed to. And then ultimately, life came at me where I was my half sister reached out to me out of the blue, like 12 years after my mom died. And just said, Hey, I hope this is you. And, and, and, and literally went back and forth via email until I said, if you're talking about the relationship between your father and my mother, I know. And then the, I'm sitting here crying, I can't believe it. I've known for so long, but it was a moment. It was a pivotal moment because I already knew my identity had changed I'm because I knew now, now I know who my father is. Now I'm not, I'm not necessarily thrilled with that of what happened, but you kind of want to know more pieces to it. But I was just like, let's just put it over here. I know that I have this, but I don't have a connection with a sister or anything else like that to actually put that connection together. It went from like, I know that I have to make a right turn up here on this road, but I'm not there yet. So I'm just going to slow down, right? I'm just going to slow down that it was like, okay, now I have to make the right turn and made the turn and connected with her and her family. And, and it changed everything changed. Um, yeah, you know, and enabled me to finally let go of a lot of pre-constructed narratives, some based on truth, some not some based on guesses that, you know, really left, uh, I always say the, I always, the, the metaphor I use is rocks in the backpack. It left unnecessary rocks in my backpack and enabled me to find a place where I could understand better and then ultimately work towards forgiving. Um, and then like I said, be even be sad for, um, the man who was my father and, and my mother and whatnot. So, you know, again, the grief from, you know, so well, the grief from losing a loved one, uh, who's really close to you never goes away. The, the, the pain never goes, really goes away. You, you, it just doesn't become your primary focus anymore. And you learn how to handle it and try to think of, think, find ways to think that will help you smile when you think of that person. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you were saying when you were, when you were growing up as a kid, you kind of wished you had a father like other people did. What did your mother tell you about your father? It was, I called it her prisoner of war line. She had, you know, like our name rank and serial number thing. She had, it was a man, uh, it was a man, uh, a businessman from Milwaukee named Alan Scott, who I, uh, we had a relationship cause he used to visit all the time. And when he found out I was pregnant, he told me he had a family and he could never see me again. And that was the end. That was it. You know, now there's no internet back then, right? No internet we can use anyway. And so it's literally like, so do you just try to find, go to the library and find Milwaukee phone books? You know, I mean, I may have even done that a few times, but I wasn't passionate enough to go, I'm going to make this thing happen. Um, so yeah. And when I started in college, I was a double major in psychology and communications. And my, um, my mentor who was there was like, we would talk weekly and he's like, you have to have this conversation with her. You deserve the right to know. I mean, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had the big conversation and it was, you know, you know, eventually after probably, it felt like three hours, it might've been 10 minutes. Um, but she was crying and say, say, name ranks, your name, name, name, name ranks. I was just, I, I got, I can't, okay, I'm done. I'm done. So it's just not meant to be known now. Now, knowing that I knew now know who it was and knew who it was in retrospect, again, when I look back and go, Hmm, I wonder what I would have done with that information. And I'm not, I'm can no way say I'm certain I would have been discreet or smart with that information. Um, so it doesn't mean hiding it was a good thing to do. I don't know. I don't know the answer. Again, part of the, you know, part of the judgment. I was always, I was so mad. You never told me in America to tell me who my real father was, all the rest of the stuff. And I was like, no, I get it. I understand, you know, like the phrase, if you walk a mile in someone else's shoes, you have a different perspective. You may still disagree with them vehemently or dislike them or whatever, but you have a totally different perspective. Yeah. But it sounds like he had, he had another family. So I mean, there's I guess a privacy issue there. Yeah. Yeah. He had another family. So it just, you know, and, but that was what with connecting with my sister, finding out the details of that was really, really interesting. And all I will say is that, I mean, it wasn't a complete horror show, but it just wasn't, it wasn't comfortable like the life I had. Right. And, and, you know, I, I joke, and I joke with, she jokes with me. She said, you know, next time we're born the same year. Um, with six months apart. Oh, wow. So that was a busy, that was a hell of a busy year frame. Um, and I said, you know, she said next time I'm pushing you off the cloud first. So, you know, again, I learned to appreciate, appreciate her and I appreciate, you know, then I learned what her life was like growing up and all the rest of the stuff. And it was just, I was like, I had it good. I really, you know, despite everything that I would go like, well, it's not, you know, we only eat meatloaf cause we can't afford it. We had food. Yeah. Thanks to family. We had the little apartment that we, I was raised in and she lived in, it was a two family house that my aunt and uncle owned. So, you know, they made whatever rent she had to pay affordable and they fixed whatever needed to be fixed and everything else. And, you know, I had additional family in there to help grow my aunt took care of me before she went back to work when I was a kid. So, I mean, I had this little cocoon of safety that was, you know, like I said, I always appreciated it, but I didn't appreciate it to the level. It's proper, to the proper level until after learning, going through all this, this 10, 12 year metamorphosis and going, Oh, okay. Yeah. And on top of that, becoming a parent myself and seeing, you know, what it's like taking care of kids, raising kids, you know, trying to, trying to give them, trying to help make sure they find some sort of passion that they can, you know, follow, but also guide them to know what the real world tends to be like, so that they can navigate and also make it so when they come home to wherever you are, that was the biggest important thing for me for being a parent was making the home that they were staying. And even when they were staying in two homes for a period when, after I had been divorced, where they came to me, they could just go, exhale, I'm safe, I'm good, whatever. I mean, yeah, great. You're a teenager now, we're going to, there's going to be moods. It's all good. It's all fine. I just want you to feel like you can be you. You can just exhale and be yourself here. Yeah. So, so how did finding out who your father was, your mother giving you, as you said, name, rank and serial number four, but finding out, okay, this is a real person, you know, how did that change your identity? How did the change what you felt about yourself? You know, you have that you paint this picture when you're a kid of who you are. And it's a lot of is based on circumstance and what you observe and all the rest of the stuff. And you go through, well, now I am this person. And obviously there's this, there's almost a, you create a magic to it. You know what I mean? Of like, okay, well, I'm here, but this magic mystery person, all the rest of the stuff. Now I'm instantly connected to the person I know. And whatever trauma that you've heard about this, all everything else like that. And at first, yeah, it makes you holder, but it adds a whole bunch of when your perspective is, is where mine was. It adds a whole bunch of heavy sand. You know, it just like, Oh, no. Oh, no, the thing I've heard this. Oh, no. Oh, he's, oh, this, that. Oh, no. Oh, no. I mean, you start looking for what are the positives that can I take out of this? What are the positives? But this all happened. And it was a traumatic home life for him and his family. Yeah, again, not every day, but there was enough trauma in there. I was like, Oh, wow. And that was why I was like, I don't want it. I don't want a connection here. I don't want a part of this. And I think that initially, I thought initially was like, I'm, oh, I'm so glad I know, but now I'm so mad. I know. Because it wasn't the answer I was hoping for. I didn't have a specific look, I want it to be this, but that was definitely not the answer I wanted. So it took, I'll say, and it took a couple of years, probably three years later, when I got the actual confirmation, because I went and talked to everybody in my family. And they were like, we don't know. She never told us. We don't know. We suspected, we suspected, but we don't know. So I finally, had, there was, my doctor had asked family history at one point, going on, I had like pre pneumonia. So and asking all about other stuff. And I was like, I can give my mother's, I can't give you father's. I was like, No, I don't know. And there's a long story and all the rest. I was like, I really need to know that. I need to know that not just for me, but you know, I have kids now. So I need to know, I need to know the medical history, what's there. So my mom's best friend, growing up, who I called aunt, aunt Rose, Rose, she would be the only one that knew. And I asked my, my relatives like, yeah, Rose would know Rose might know. So I wrote a letter to her. And she wrote back a little note card, sent back, so good to hear from you glad the family's doing well and all the rest. He said, I cannot betray a trust your mother put in me. But I, but I would tell you that you'd make a very fine detective. That was that was that was her way of not breaking the trust. But she's like, you know, I imagine she was, she was from the same, you know, generation, my mom kind of like flipping like, Oh, no, he knows. Oh, what do I what do I do? Yeah. And from that point, I just kind of I just tabled it. I was like, Okay, now I got this information, I tabled it. And I had written a letter to my sister who I ultimately connected with. And it got sent back because she had moved from wherever she was, because it took me a couple of years. And she had sent me a letter after my mom died, because she had been at the funeral. And she had sent me a letter. And it was like, if you ever want to talk and she knew at the time, I didn't know she knew I didn't know at the time. And then when I got her like, Oh my god, she might know should I write a letter? Should I do connect? I was like, I can't connect to this family right now. I just, I can't, I can't. But I kept it, you know, on my desk at home, wherever you keep all your stuff. And wherever you're going to sit down, whether it was paying bills or doing whatever. I kept it with me. And it traveled with me from place to place to place and sat there never responded to from there. I mean, I wrote back a generic letter that said, you know, thanks very much. Great, great, great. And until she out of the blue, you know, and thanks to thanks to the internet, thanks to Google, or whatever, found me and wrote reaching out seeing if I was a if I was the right person, be if I was, you know, still working in radio. And if I would talk to her, her young teen son who was in a communications class and had to interview somebody who was in radio. Okay, well, and I was like, Yeah, yeah, I'll help you. So yeah, the change for me was a broadening. It was a broadening, emotional broadening, you know, and it, it enabled me and what I had to do was I had to explore the dark side of it first, the anger, the frustration, the disappointment, and all the rest. And I, you know, I, I dabbled in that for a couple of years, which is another reason why I didn't. And then, you know, but to a degree where I was like, you know, all right, that's enough, I got to put this away, put this back on the shelf, because I got to I got a life to live. There was the beauty of the of life keep coming at kept coming at me with that. And then my sister and I connecting was I was able to dabble in some of the joy of it. And then imagine that there had to be because we all know about that, that connection you make with humans. That is so close. And it doesn't even have to be a romantic partner. You have certain humans that you have that connection with, you just feel good when you're with that person. You know, everybody, you know, they'll be in a row, but 90% of the time is like, that's the person that's one of my go tos. Everybody has a couple of go tos, maybe maybe more than a couple, but everybody has a couple of go tos. You know, and I feel like, Oh my god, that they were go tos. They were go tos together for all those years. And I'm glad they had that I bought both my sister and I both wonder is like, if they were if it was 30 years later, 20 years later, 30 years later, not even that long later, how would life have been different? You know, would we have known each other as children? Would they have eventually gotten together? You know, and all the rest of the stuff. So there's always the, you know, I wish that I could have 30 minutes with the two of them, you know, just, and just, Oh, they reappeared for 30 minutes. I'm only here for 30 minutes. Well, okay, let me just spend 10 minutes crying hysterically. And we're going to spend the last 20 minutes just talking about 10 minutes me crying hysterical 10 minutes of us just what was it like? And then 10 minutes of what's it like for you now? Yeah, that's that's that's it. That's it. You know, so anyway, I hope I answered your question. I do tend to talk. Yeah, absolutely. You definitely answered my question. So it's asking your sister. I'm really curious. How did your sister find you? It sounds like this was a very well kept secret. Only a couple people knew. Okay, so my sick, all in the book, it's all in the book, the details are all in the book. But my sister was at an event with that my mother and her father slash my father were at. And I was also at this event. But I showed up at the event. And she has, she described it to me, I was talking to one of the other people at the event, one of the other people's wives at the event. And she was only there to bring my father and her mother there to the event. But because the peripherally new people, so it wasn't like so I was talking to one of his, the people that was with him, you know, we're at the event for him. And he she said, I'm what my father is there at the bar. She goes the she goes the broken down version, broken down older version of my father is there at the bar and I see him over her shoulder. And then I see the the version of my father that I knew at age five, walk up to him, pat him on the back and shake his hand. And my jaw just dropped. Because that was you. She said, and the person I'm talking to stops, she realizes that my I'm completely distracted turns around and looks and goes, Oh, honey, you're gonna need a few strong drinks tonight. So obviously, again, I don't know what was said or not said. But that person knew, you know, by looking at it. And so then ultimately, I was with their my mom was there. And I accompanied my mom there. And we were going from table to table talking to folks because they knew everybody it was a company event. And, and I walked up to that table and said, Oh, hi, hi. So I met my sister for the first time, and her husband, and I met the man that I knew. And I met his wife for the first time. She said, after you guys walked away from that table, it was stone silence at the table. She said, which for both my mother and father is ridiculous, they're never silent. said stone silence. And they drove said we drove home together, not a word. She said, so I was like, I got to find out. So she said a week later, she went back. And she when I got there, because I was lucky, because when I got there, there was they were on opposite sides of the house, and which would happen after they had a huge argument. She goes, I know it very well. They huge argument and they go their separate ways slamming doors. And she said, so I had him alone. And I went and I just started, I asked him, I asked him outright, is that your son? Is he your son is rich, your son is rich, and said he denied he denied he denied he denied he denied he denied. And then he started then he got angry started yelling at her and everything else. And he said, she said finally he got up, and he hobbled out of the room. And just before he slammed the door, and he said, kiddo, sometimes you know too much for your own damn good. And he slowed he slammed the door. She goes, so when we she goes when we spoke at your mom's wake, I knew you were my brother. But I didn't know what you knew or if you knew I was like, I didn't know. I had no clue. So she knew the whole time. And then I didn't know until three months after my mom died. And like I said, then there was the How do we navigate this? What do we do? And I wish, you know, there's a part of me that wishes I had reacted earlier and quicker. But obviously, it's what I needed to do. It was it was what I needed to do to you know, and just kind of just kind of put it away, put it away. And like I said, life keeps coming at you with the stuff that you need to do. It doesn't mean you're always and you're going to do it doesn't mean you'll ever get it done. But life will keep coming at you with opportunities to do the stuff that you probably should do. Yeah. Yeah. So your your book is a novel, right? It's fiction. No, it's fact. It's a few of the names have changed. Okay, a few of the names have changed. But the book is my life. That is what happened. As I say, it's my life as I remember it. And as I know it, and as I've spoke to, you know, people about with about things in there. So none of it is, you know, the only things that would be changes a couple of names have changed. And that was just to soften the edges and whatnot. So, you know, you had this this life of not telling not hearing people not telling stories. Why was it important for you to tell a story? The there are two reasons why this story I felt like this story needed to be told. The first is actually, there's probably three, but I'll get to the third one last. The first is I wanted my kids to know the story. I have three kids. Only the oldest that my eldest was alive. And my mom died when they were three. So I wanted my kids to kind of know the story of what a what I grew up with and around, because there's a lot of background in there to explain to kind of paint the picture, and be who their grandfather was, who their grandmother was, because she was gone, and then who their grandfather was. And you know, because once I connected with my sister, they know that part of the family. Now, they're back across the country in New York. So there's a connection. It's not like, oh, we're best friends connection, but they know each other. They all know each other. We've been to events. We've all been to events for each other stuff and whatnot. So to have that thrust upon them, when they were 10 and 14, it's kind of like you need some background other than me telling you a story, because if dad's telling you a story, you'll get bored, and you'll stop listening. But you need to know the full story of what's going on here. So that was the most important thing to just create a record for them, I said, because now they have it, they can share it with if they have families, they can share whatever, just create a record for it. The second was, I wanted more people in the world. Again, I didn't have any, I didn't do this with the delusions that I was going to be, you know, the top book and Oprah's book club and all the rest of stuff. Yeah, would that be wonderful? Yeah, it would. But that's not the purpose was not money making and fame making here. I wanted more people to know my mom, who my mom was, and the person she was, and the frustrations she faced and the limitations she allowed herself to be limited by. But it was a different time. Again, a different time. So a lot of people are like, why didn't why couldn't she just I was like, yeah, I mean, when she was growing up, she's growing up in the 50s, and whatnot, it's like, it just, it just, you had to be really bold, yeah, to do stuff to go against and do and everything else like that. And there were playing people who did thank God, and we have changes because of that, but they were few and far between. Right. You know, so the second part was that the third part is because I wanted to, I like to tell stories. So I wanted to share stories with people. And I really enjoy connecting with folks who have whether they've read it or listened and whatnot. I feel like I had the chance to sit down and tell them a story. And that's because that's how I created in the audio booth, which is right here behind me. This audio booth here, it was like, I had tried to write this book for 10 years. And I couldn't get it done. I didn't know what the story I don't know how to end it. I don't know why everything in my life has been created around, you know, I mean, not sure I wrote papers in school and all the rest of stuff, but it's been created around audio and some video and everything else. So it's all 20, you know, it's anywhere from 30 seconds to 22 minutes. Yeah, you know, and I was like, I can't, I can't figure it out. I can't figure it out. And I had I even hired a ghostwriter for a while. And I was like, No, they're just writing a story about me. This is not what I want. I, you know, I don't need all that detail. And I put it away. I was just God, I forget it. I had a friend who I had helped him create his podcast. He's an ex NBA player who has a it's called the process in the process. Yeah, the process in Denver. And his name is Paul Shirley. He's really brilliant. And I helped him put together his audio book for stories I tell on dates. A lot of the he would talk about he was like the 13th man off the bench. He played for a couple of different NBA teams, but a lot in Europe. So he had all these stories on dates, he was on, he would always start to tell a story about his childhood or growing up or anything else, because it meant something reminded him and meant something. And he sent me this book, and I was like, this is an audio book, man. I said, but we can create it more than just you reading. I said, I can bring this to life. He's like, Okay, so we brought it to life. And we published it as a an audio book with it's just he's the only male voice, but there are female voices for the female voices. There are sound effects, there are music, it's not hyper produced, but it's produced enough to go, Oh, okay. And this was at the beginning. This is like 2015. So there weren't a whole lot of these narrative podcasts that were deep and dark and everything else. And he did what it did. Well, he didn't make a ton of money off it, but it did well. So I stayed connected with him. And I was having dinner with him at the nearest place in Denver two years ago. And I said, Dude, I just I gotta get the story finished. I've been doing it so long. He goes, Why don't you just go in the booth and say it? He goes, That's what you do. I watch you. I watched I watched you for the years we're working together. I said, When you're talking about stuff like this, and you you just get behind a mic, or you sit here in the in the restaurant with me and you just you can tell the story. I was like, duh, duh. So I he said, take your take your couple of first chapters, go in there. He says, because I know you don't like to stick to the script. I was like, Yeah, you're right. I always got in trouble for that. He said, Go in there and just bring it together and see what happens. So that's what happened. I went in the booth and I put them together. And then I was like, Okay, let me I don't need to say that. I just did it the way I knew how to do it. And I would stay up, you know, 130 in the morning, editing, putting it together with here's some music, here's some sound, does this need sound effects? And here we go and put it together. And then I shared it with a couple of friends who I worked with in the podcast industry. And they were like, Oh, wow, I can't wait to hear the next chapter. It's like, Oh, well, that's pressure now. Yeah. So, yeah, it took about nine months with the whole thing together, because I was doing it so late at night and everything else. But I eventually put the whole thing together. And then I was like, I still didn't know whether I was just going to keep it and share it with the kids. Whether I was going to put an audio slash, and transcribe and do a print book, or I was going to do a podcast with it. But I was like, you know, I think, yeah, I don't know, podcasts are great. And I love them. But I think in this case, I want it to be able to be printed, just so people can keep it that way. So I decided I'm going to go with audio book, and I'll transcribe an ebook and transcribe it into print. Yeah. And just took the slow steps through there again, hit some brick walls along the way. And then life kept, life kept intervening with people who would help and get pushed and get to the next level, show me how to do it. And here we are. We got it. We did it. Yeah. You mentioned a few times about how life intervenes and how life keeps bringing you opportunities. What are your thoughts upon how that happens, why that happens that it seems like life is like here, rich, here is your opportunity to look at this. Yeah, yeah, I think that we all you know, again, it's it's the energy you put into the world. Right. So if you put enough energy into the world, and as much positive as you can, not it would be insane to think somebody be positive, you know, 365, seven days a week, 365, you can't eat. There's just there's too much. It's too much in the world is too challenging right now, to, to expect that from someone. But if you keep trying to move forward, and keep reaching out to people, and keep talking to humans and, and be yourself, be you, and just be the best version of you, I think life will keep going. Sometimes there are opportunities, we don't even recognize it. That's why it takes four or five times for life to knock on the door and go and you know, I don't want to make it sound like everything's perfect. Everything's there's plenty of junk that happens on a daily and weekly basis and has in my life. And it would be easy to get wrapped up. I know we both know folks who get wrapped up in that life doesn't want me to succeed as I no matter how hard I tried life doesn't want to get me to succeed. It sure does feel that way sometimes for everyone. But if you wear that as your t shirt and that becomes your mantra, you know, then you're stuck there because you're not going to recognize clues or you're not going to act on clues because you think, well, I can't win anyway, I can't win anyway. But it could be like someone saying, well, this is, this is an easy leap for you right here. There's no danger. Everything else it's it's a small leap, but it's easy. It's like, no, I never went, I'm not gonna do it. If you, you know, there's positive and negative, there's, you know, you have to make a choice when you're driving down the road, am I going to drive the speed limit? Am I going to drive a little over because I need to make it fast? How far over am I going to go? Because I don't want to take it and I don't want to be, I want to be safe. I mean, we make choices like that every day about every little thing, you know, do I'm making a sandwich? Did I wash my hands? It's like, do I care? They mean that we make those choices every day about every little thing. But when people get into what they consider to be their life journey, I think they get stuck in a lot of folks get stuck in, but no, this is the book that was written for me. Okay, and what we learn is that the books being written every day, the book until you leave, right? Until you leave, the book can always be rewritten. Books being written every day. It's not that this book was written and they stopped when I was 11. And this is what it is. Okay, a lot of people, there's a comfort in knowing that because the unknown is terrifying. There's a comfort in knowing that the unknown can be can be terrifying. It can be exhilarating. It can be what gets you going, but it can also be what stops you dead in your tracks. But it's, it's like your life, your life narrative doesn't change doesn't finish, at least this version of you until you leave. And you know, and whatever you give me. Again, I don't want to get religious and whatnot here because I'm more spiritual than anything else. But, you know, maybe you get to maybe you do get to write it again, another version of you, whatever, maybe you don't. Yeah, I again, I think positively. And I feel like energy, energy is hard to energy doesn't get destroyed. So and again, that goes to the you had done a podcast, we talked before we got on about the podcast you did with Fe the the medium, and whatnot. There's there's energy. I mean, I have there's stuff that I detailed in the book about a medium who, yeah, I think in the in the credits of the part of discovering this and doing this was, there was an incredible medium who I had seen my father reach out to me, my mother and father, at one point, reach out to me. And they knew nothing, I gave them nothing, I literally was a walk, a cold call walk in. And they started asking questions. And I was like, I'm like, I'm not going to give them I'm not going to see what they do. I was like, and they came out with some statements that just made me go. I was like, so that's encouraging. But it doesn't mean you know, it also doesn't mean that you just live by what you know, you know, you know, live live your life, be the best you can be live your life by the four agreements. And then make a decision on a daily basis. And every once in a while, take a step into the unknown. Yeah. So rich, what would you say to little rich, if you could go back in time to the little rich and said, I wish I had a life like other people, I wish I had a father, you know, those things. What would you say if you could talk to him now? You know, the, the thing I would say to myself is, folk, you should see how you know, I'd ask questions. How happy are you when you're with your mom, when you guys are doing this, when you guys are going to baseball games, when you guys when she takes you bowling, when you do this, how happy are you and your friend group when you guys are playing and everything else like that. So the, the anger you're carrying for being, you know, a single a child of a single mom, the anger, you're carrying that that because you don't feel you don't feel like you're part of the group. Do your friends ever call you out on that? The answer would be no. Who calls you out on that then? The answer would be I do. Okay. So then you, you like to be good friends to your friends. Are you being a good friend to you? And the answer would be, I don't know. No, obviously not. Try it. An experiment. Just an experiment. One week. Try write it all, write these things down, put them on your wall in your room and everything else and try these things and try to start your day by being nice to you and end your day by being nice to you. And then when you think of stuff during the day that you're not being nice to you, just think, oh, wait, I'm not supposed to be saying stuff like that right now. You don't need to, it's going to take a while to try it and see what happens. See how you feel because, you know, I will also tell you that there are other people out there like you, plenty of them. They're all trying to keep the secret and you're not alone. You're definitely not alone. Look at your life here. You're not alone. You've got this family to take care of you. You've got friends. You're good. So not having, you know, I think that would be, first of all, mind boggling for me as a kid, you know, to have that. But even to read that, I think, as a kid would have been amazing because talking about emotions and talking about anger and whatnot, just like, nope, nope, bottle it up. Nope. It's not appropriate. Would have been great. Would have been fantastic to have as a kid. And yeah, I mean, yourself, Brian, what would you say to you as a kid? Don't take things so seriously. You know, for me, it was, I always wanted to know, you talked earlier about like the not knowing. I always wanted to know the answers. That's why I became an engineer because I was like, if I'm an engineer, then there's a right and wrong answer. You know, so I want to figure things out. And the older I get, the more I realize you don't have to figure it all out. You know, it's gonna, it's going to be okay. All these things that you think are tragedies, all these things that you that you wish wouldn't have happened or wouldn't happen. They all form who you're who you're going to be, you know, in the future. Yeah, oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Like I said, I mentioned the four agreements before is like, don't make assumptions, right? Don't make assumptions because you're and also don't take anything personally, because whatever somebody's throwing at you is coming from their experience. It could be that from that moment, you've triggered something in the past, it's coming from their perspective and their experience. And not yours, not yours. So don't adopt that. Don't adopt that and make it your own. Yeah. So but yeah, knowing I always wanted to know all I was questions, questions, questions, questions. And I didn't become an engineer. I just enjoyed I love math, I was always really good at math and everything else. But I was like, that's not what I want to do. I want to do something cool and fun. Yeah. And whatnot. So but yeah, I you mentioned about being an engineer. An engineer from JPL is the person who was my artist that did the art in the book. Oh, wow. He does. That's his side hustle. Because that's his that's his creative outlet. Yeah, exactly. Well, I, well, I came in here for a couple when it was I wanted to make a lot of money. And so I thought that was way make a lot of money. And I and I also had that type of mind. But now I love doing creative stuff. So I love doing stuff like this. And that's that's my favorite thing to do is, is to is to create and to tell story or help people tell their stories. So yeah, I think there's that side of me now that I've, I've only discovered later on. So right, Richard, I really enjoyed the time with you today remind people of the name of your book and where they can get it. It is the not so only child my true story. And it is available on Amazon in print or ebook, Audible, Amazon, Audible, and Kindle, right now. And it'll be widely more widely available after the end of the year. So I'm not sure when this podcast will drop. But it'll be more widely available after the first of the year. Okay, well, we're recording this in late October 2025. So by the time people hear it'll be toward the end of 2025. So by the you know, it'll be in 2026. It'll be out more widely available. So that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. But they can definitely it's easy to find. Easy to find. I can send you a link if you want to put in the show notes. It's fine. Yeah, that sounds awesome. So rich, again, thanks for being here. Thank you. Dude, thank you. I, I found a new cool podcast to keep in my library. Thanks for you know, the connection that we made having me on here. I said when I started listening to yours, I was like, Yeah, I dig your vibe and what you're doing. So thank you. All right, enjoy the rest of your afternoon. You too. All right, take care. Bye. Transcribed by Transcribed by