The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: DNA Doesn’t Lie

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

In this hour, stories of the digital space and its affect on the family connection IRL. From digital carts to hive minds and data collection - closing geographical and temporal distance between past and present. This hour is hosted by The Moth's Senior Director, Meg Bowles. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: Meg Ferrill struggles with her fears of becoming a parent while shopping for sperm. Anaïs Bordier makes a surprising connection via social media. Trina Robinson, while researching online, discovers a shocking family history.

From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bulls and in this hour we'll hear three stories of family bonds and our connections in the digital world. In 1991, the Worldwide Web was unleashed, connecting the world in a whole new way. And these days, we take for granted that we're all walking around, linked to each other by our devices. I recently lost my phone while traveling, and the absence of it was really startling. I felt oddly unsafe not being able to call home or call friends. I haven't memorized anyone's phone number in years, and not having access to Google or my GPS,

I felt completely disconnected because I was. In this hour, we'll hear stories of how technology ties us together, and specifically with our families. Our first story comes from Meg Farrell. She told this at of main stage we produced in partnership with Live Nation at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver, Canada. The theme of the night was between worlds. Here's Meg Farrell live at the Moth. It was Friday afternoon and I was at work when I got an email from my wife. And it was empty except the subject line,

which just said, these bitches are stealing our sperm by it all now. I'm just not an impulsive person. It took me five years to ask my wife to marry me. It took me five years because I'm the kind of person that thinks that they can create a perfect moment. Whereas my wife, she's just kind of person rides any moment out like it's a wave. So I knew when she sent this email that it was a call to action.

It was a modern day, Paul Revere warning, and the British were these bitches, and they were coming for our sperm. And I needed to buy it. But the thing is, I'd never really wanted kids. When I was little, my mom said to me once, and I'm quoting, she said, I'm going to love you even if you're a serial killer on death row for having killed someone.

Not only is that redundant, but that is some really hardcore unconditional love. And I remember thinking I'm never going to love anyone that much. So you see, we hadn't gone into this with the purpose of making a baby. You sure we had casually talked about kids, like how we had casually talked about going to Greece, or like we casually talked about taking the dog to the groomer. Neither of what we've done, y'all. Neither. In fact, prior to this, my only baby making experience was when me and my sister went to go get our cabbage patch dolls. And she got a brown hair, a brown-eyed girl, very much like her.

And I chose a half human half cat. Like I'm just not made out for this. I'm not even a nurturer, like I don't even like to be touch. Like when I see people approaching for a hug, I can feel my bones brace for impact. But most of all, I just really didn't want to be like my dad, content with a title, but not dig for real relationship. Someone that could go five or ten years without talking to their kid. Because that ability he has to distance himself from anyone and everything, Well, I have that too. But then, y'all, my wife said she found a deal. There is nothing I love more than a deal.

50 bucks for three months of unlimited access to all the sperm-baked owner profiles. We're talking medical records, written responses, audio interviews, baby pictures. Like ironically, I was about to know more about these donors than I know about my wife. And at first, it was just like fun. It was just fun.

All the donors have these surreal names to protect their identity. So statistically, there could be a Tristan in the audience. But is he sitting next to a Bishop Calhoun Othello and Paisley? It's like some hipster mom on bass salts got loose on the website. And so it just creates this like fantastical environment. So at first it really just was fun. I remember listening to an audio interview

and the donor was asked what his best trait was and he said, my best trait is that I'm a genius. That is not what geniuses sound like. But I was hooked. I couldn't stop looking. It was like watching people pick their nose and public. Like no matter how much you want to turn away, you can't stop looking. Now anybody that's ever made a baby with love and science knows that it is an excruciatingly

long timeline. And that your process starts by making decisions that nature usually works out for you. Like, for instance, my wife really wanted a blonde hair, a blue eye donor, like me. And I know you don't know my wife. And I know you're probably all thinking that I'm exceptionally attractive.

So that makes sense. But the thing is, my wife is super hot. Like, so hot that if hot's coming from anywhere, it's coming from her. Like, she is so hot that I meant 15 drinks a year just by being the pretty lady's friend. But that's what you end up doing. You end up dissecting these profiles. And pretty soon you start to feel like this mad scientist creating the boldest, most beautiful, definitely not balding Frankenstein there ever was. So after accountless profiles and making a decision and reversing it and making a decision and then reversing it, we finally found him, our donor. And just to put it really simple, he was just someone you would want more of in this world.

But now there was an actual email demanding actual action by them all now. How much is all? I wrote because like, I know that our health insurance doesn't get us in fertile. We just can't make a baby. Another health insurance oxymoron. And now some babies, they'll just run you like five shots of tequila and maybe an STD. But babies of love and science, I mean they can really add up. On top of sperm, there's IUI insemination, which will run you like three, fifty a go. But it only gives you like a 10 to 20% chance of pregnancy. And then there's IVF, and that'll

get you up to a 30 or 40% chance of pregnancy. But you're also out 15 grand a go. Yeah. And then there's doctors visits, fertility drugs, egg transfers, serigates. I mean, this is a really planned pregnancy. Keelas shots don't even come into play until you see the credit card bill. So I asked how much is all? 10 vials, she wrote. 10 vials at $700 a pop. Girl, I could buy you a man for that much money.

So there I sat with my cursor hovering over my virtual cart filled with a modest amount of virtual sperm. And part of me was thinking, my bank's about to freeze my credit card for suspicious activity and I'm going to have to explain that sperm was indeed one of my last three purchases. Gas, burrito, and yes, a couple grand of sperm. But most of me knew that I was just really scared, like I'd been in all the big moments of my life, like when I asked my wife to marry me, because big moments mean big change. But I also knew that the only thing I have ever regretted about those moments was not doing them sooner. Now guys, this is not what pregnancy looks like.

This is what beer looks like. My wife carried, and our son is 16 months old. I'm so old. I'll tell her you said that. She did most of the work. And I have never been so scared of anything as I am to be a parent. But I can tell you the first time I hurt his heart beat. This strong is a goddamn ox because he's my kid beat. This rhythm of his life, this thing that is so common that everyone in here has it,

but in that moment felt so incredibly unique. I heard my wife say, oh God, you're not crying are you? Parenting is really hard. I'm sure a lot of you know that. And if we're being really honest, I thought I would be a better parent. I'm okay, but I'm not great. I talk too loud. my touch is abrasive, and patience is just something I'm really working on. Each night we have the same bedtime routine, and it always ends with me turning off the light

and turning on the noise machine, and slowly shutting the door, and I always watch as my wife holds our son in her arms and she kisses him so freely and she holds him so tightly and she starts into the softest home that you've ever heard. And she like me has absolutely no idea what she's doing, but somehow she is just so much better, or braver, or both. And I thought that I would be a better spouse.

I thought that I would do more. I thought that I would listen more. I thought that this heart that took me to her would take over. I thought that simply because our son, Gus, existed, that I would be something different, something better, something more than who I am. In fact, the only thing I really know to be true

is that we have the number one ingredient you need for a happy kid. A dog. And of course love, so much love. A year ago I quit my job and I'm now stay at home parent. It is by far the hardest job that I have ever had. And I really should have been fired a long time ago. But the thing is, my boss is this tiny boy who, for some reason thinks that I'm made of magic. What does it they say? Fake it till you make it? Abracadabra bitches. Meg Farrell lives in Oakland, California with her wife, Jen, her son Gus, and the newest addition to their family, their second son, Ellis. Some say you're a mom or a dad the second a baby appears in your life, but Meg thinks those titles are earned over time, not just handed out.

She figures about the time she's ready to retire, she should be a half decent parent. Along with being a stay-at-home mom, Meg performs and teaches, she's a five-time, moth story slam winner and holds two Grand Slam titles. To see a picture of Meg and her family, you can visit the Moth.org. Coming up, a text, a YouTube video, and a friend request when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. PRX is supported by CBC Jim. Let's rewrite history's pages for the stories that don't live there. As history doesn't define us, but rather, how we defied history.

With courage and triumph, we etched our name. Uncover our glories that changed the game. A new eight-part docu-series. Black life. Untold stories. Watch free on CBC GEM. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bulls. One of the things I love most about a live Moth show is the connection you can feel

between the storyteller and the audience. If a storyteller falters on stage or gets overwhelmed by nerves and loses their way, the audience is there to support them and you can physically feel it in the room. You'll hear what I mean with our next storyteller, Anaís Brodie, she shared her story live on stage at the Union Chapel in London. Here's Anaís live at the mall.

Growing up, I always felt that my birthday wasn't the day I was born, but rather the day I arrived in Paris. When I was three months old, my parents came to pick me up at Charles de Gaulle Airport. And this was the day we became a family. I always knew I was adopted and I was new. I was adopted and my mom told me that I was always in her heart, but that it was another woman who gave birth to me. I grew up in the suburbs of Paris as an only child. I was a happy, balanced kid who could sometimes feel really lonely. And this loneliness couldn't be filled by friends.

And in darker moments, I felt abandoned. And I was wondering if my birth parents didn't love me, and if that was the reason why they decided to put me in to adoption. But my parents, whenever I had questions, they would sit me down, take me to the, they would take my adoption files out of the desk drawer, and they would start reading the story to me. And even when I was able to read my adoption records myself, it was always the same. My birth parents were from Pusan.

They met when they were really young and they started dating, but my birth father had to leave Busan for a job. My birth mother had gotten pregnant with me, and because of social stigma the time in Korea and as she wasn't married and she was still studying at university, her and her family decided to put me into adoption. And I never felt the need to reach out to them or never really wanted to meet them because I had my mom and my dad who loved me and there were my real parents so it didn't matter. But one day I had just done 25 and I was standing fashion at Central Simultons in London.

My friend had just sent me a screenshot of a YouTube video featuring me, except I had never made such a video and no one filmed me. So I click on the link and discover a short, humoristic video entitled High School Virgin. It was made by a kid called Kev Jamba in Los Angeles. And it was also starring a girl who looked very much like me, except maybe she had an American accent. And I was startled. I was trying to look for her name or a lot of information about her, but there was nothing.

And so I thought it was just a coincidence, and I just dropped it. Then a few months later, my friend tells me that he saw that look-alike girl again in a traitor for the film 21 and over. I find her credit in the cast list. She was listed as Asian Girl. She was listed as Asian Girl. Her name was Samantha Ferderman. She was an American actress who had been in films such as Memoirs of a Geisha. She was born in South Korea on the 19th of November 1987. And I stopped right there and thought I read it wrong because it said that she was born the same day as me. So we had the same birth date. We looked really similar,

except I knew my adoption records by heart, I knew it was just to go incidents after all. I immediately called my parents and really wanted to talk to them and as my mom got on the phone she said, do you think she could be your twin sister? And all of a sudden I was relieved because I thought I wasn't totally insane because that's what I was thinking. But also, I knew that I was allowed to think something that was supposed to be impossible. And I got my dad on the phone right after. And as I told him the same thing, he was googling her and found another website with a different

birth date. He told me that I must have got it wrong, but it was indeed quite of an coincidence, except that to me, it wasn't just a coincidence. And as I couldn't really focus that day, I was just being a zombie wandering around. I thought I would spend the rest of it just casually sucking her on social media. So I discovered that she was born, she was an American actress living in Los Angeles, that we were indeed born the same day, that she was also adopted from South Korea, and

she recently had discovered that she wasn't born in Seoul, but in Busan. And I was also born in Busan. So I decided that I should try and reach out to her. But how do you... how do I do it? I didn't have her email address. I could tweet her, her, hi, seems we might be related so private message me. Didn't seem quite appropriate. So I decided I would send her a friend request on Facebook as well as a message where I introduced myself quickly. I told her about the video, about the common birthset in birthplace. I made a joke about the parent trap film and asked her not to freak out.

As I was waiting for her answer for three days, I started feeling really down and thought I was crazy. And all of a sudden I received a notification on my phone saying that she accepted my friend request. I, my heart was beating. I was jumping all around waiting for what she might say. And she wasn't typing anything to me. She just sent me a picture of her adoption records.

She also said that she didn't have much time to talk to me, but we would chat more of the coming days. I had made first contact. And as I was reading through her file, it confirmed that we were born the same day, the same year. We were both adopted for fast-created, both born in Busan. And apart from this, none of our background stories matched. So I started thinking that maybe my dad was right.

And maybe it was all just a coincidence. And that was right. And maybe it was all just a coincidence. For the next week, I was looking at all her pictures trying to discover what her life might be. And as we got to know each other a little more chatting on Facebook, we decided it was about time to escape. And that was the weirdest experience. When both our faces appeared on the screen, I didn't know where to look at. As I, ah, no, that's So, we looked identical. And where did you start?

I didn't want to ask and I wanted to say some of the things at the same time that it lasted about three hours in the middle of the night. And when it was time to hang up, I didn't really want to. Then, we, she started feeling as we were chatting more, she started feeling that kind of long-lost friend or friend that he haven't seen in a while that you miss, except we hadn't met. We decided it might be time to meet in person, but my dad, who was quite protective, said that we might want to take a DNA test before everyone got to emotionally involved. We found that doctor that specializes in twins. She would

help us with a DNA test results, but she also warned us that there was a great chance we might be just doppelgangers. And it would take a few weeks to get the test results. But, you know, it was so intense that regardless of what the outcome might be, we really wanted to meet. So, we set up to meet in London together, test results together. So Samantha, her two older brothers, her parents flew from America and my parents came from Paris. I remember the day we were about to meet her. I woke up, I got dressed.

I was looking up at the sky, walking towards the air bearing being shorted at where we're supposed to meet. And I was thinking, oh my God, she might be in this plane right now, she's getting really closer. So with me and my parents, we get to in front of the flats,

and as I stand in front of the door, I can hear loud voices behind it. And I knew it was about to happen. So I step into the room, and it felt like two parallel universes had suddenly merged together. She was sitting right in front of me. It felt, it looked like a mirror image of myself, except she was moving as I was moving, and so I had to readjust for a little while. She then started laughing hysterically.

I did too. We felt, we really felt like two magnets that were attracted to each other, but also having this very special fault that would rebel us from each other. And my mom, who was standing behind me the whole time, said, oh my God, I have another daughter. And my dad, who was from the beginning very protective, and he was always trying to warn us that we might be just doppelgangers.

He said, okay, I don't think you need a DNA test. You're right. You're right. We then went for lunch and we were just observing each other. We were just staring at each other, everyone was just chatting, and we were amazed by our resemblance. We had the similar loud laughter, and our mannerisms were the same. After all this emotion, we suddenly, I really needed to rest and so did cheese, so we decided

to take a nap together in the same bed. That might seem quite strange right now, but at the time it felt really natural. It was really natural because we were just chatting, got tired and fell asleep next to each other. And when I woke up, I felt this incredible sense of relief because it felt we were being born again, but in the same world this time. Later that evening, we sat down in front of our laptop and we waited for Dr. Siegel to call us and escape.

And she was quite serious. She looked at us and asked us to turn towards each other and hug and kiss her identical twin sister. She said DNA doesn't lie. She only had given us the final proof that this was all true. We were really twins, separated at birth, both adopted on two different continents, who had found each other through social media at 25 years old. Today, we still don't know what happened to our birth parents, or why we were given a separately, or which of our stories is true.

But I do know that I'm not that young girl anymore who felt abandoned. I suddenly went from being an only child to having a twin sister, to older brothers, and even more parents living in America. Sam and I both have a big extended family and this is so much and enough to be happy about. The fact that we met is a miracle, but the most important thing is that from now on, we have so much to live together. And that's now we know that our lives are intertwined forever. Thank you.

NIE's Brodie lives in Paris and works as the brand manager in her family-sfashioned business, a luxury leather goods company. NIE's and her sister Sam still live worlds apart, Sam and Los Angeles, NIE's and Paris, but they try to spend as much time together as they can. When they're not physically together, they're in constant communication, sometimes just texting silly pictures throughout the day. NIE's recently got married and her mother and father were there, of course, but also her sister Sam, Sam's parents, and her brothers and their wives were all in attendance.

And she says she feels safer in the world knowing that now she has this large extended family. Coming up, a woman falls down the ancestry.com rabbit hole when the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bulls and our last story comes from Trina Robinson. Trina and I first met when she called the Moth's pitch line and left a two-minute pitch. She shared her story live at the Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut. The theme of the night was the ties that found. Here's Trina Robinson, live at the mosque. One day I get a call from my mom, and she tells me about this old photo album

that all of a sudden turned up in the attic at the house next door to the home that she grew up in. Apparently, about 50 or 60 years ago, there was a flood in her family's basement and a bunch of things were moved next door and this is one of the things that was left behind. It was really old and starting to fall apart. There were about a hundred or so photographs and they were those old-fashioned kind with those decorative decal cut edges. It was wonderful. My favorite was a photo of my great grandmother.

In it, she had a jar of something she had just canned in one hand. Her other hand was firmly planted on her hip, and she looked really tough and proud, and it was awesome, because I never knew her, and I got to see her personality there. In the album, there were also a bunch of old newspaper articles, and there were largely from the 1930s. In it, I just talked about the kind of jobs they had and such, and I talked about my

family's migration to Chicago in 1866, and it said we had come from Kentucky. Now that was the weird part because my family, this part was actually from Boston, so I just attributed it to reporting error, but it was just so cool to have all these things. I didn't think it was possible to go back this far in my family. So I just got addicted.

I went down the genealogy rabbit hole. I've got an account on ancestry.com. I'm like doing all those census record searches. I see my great-great grandfather, David, the streets he lived on in 1880 and 1900. My or his stepmother, actually Martha, I saw the street that she lived on in 1870 in Chicago. It was incredible.

But the one thing when I was doing this research that kept coming up was Kentucky. And the town of Mount Sterling is what actually kept coming up. Mount Sterling is about 40 minutes from Lexington. So I was like, OK, there's obviously some about this that I need to actually look into. So I went back to ancestry.com.

I took all the names associated with Mount Sterling. I found the message board associated with that community. And I posted them all, find out what was, see what was going to happen. A couple days later, I actually got a ping. It was from the AirLanger Historical Society in Kentucky. And they were trying to find out actually what had happened to these slaves. Now, I know my descendants, I'm the descendent of slaves. I mean, that's obvious.

It's just when you see that word next to your family members' names, I mean, that was really intense. Included in the attachment, or in the message message was an attachment of an estate inventory for a Kentucky congressman who had died in 1854 and it listed everything he owned. There was a piano, silver, China, a white bowl, cows. The last category was titled Negroes. David, $300, Martha, $1,000. In addition to my great grandfather, David,

and his stepmother, Martha, were the names of 14 other men, women, and children, my family. I couldn't believe that I actually was able to find this. I mean, like I said, it didn't make sense initially, because we were from Kentucky. But no, I mean, we were from Boston. That's what I always thought. But this was saying no, you are from Kentucky.

And I needed to know who these people were. I wanted to see where they had lived. So I decided to go. My boyfriend and I went down there. And when lived. So I decided to go. My boyfriend and I went down there, and when we were on our way to Monster lane, you know, I noticed we were getting all these really hard looks. And you know, first we were trying to figure it out, and then became clear, it's because my boyfriend was white.

And I guess in these rural communities, this isn't something they're used to. We had lived in New York at the time, and so that was not an issue. So we realized, okay, this is something we need to think about, take note, as we're going about our business. So, around this trip, and as we're, I remember planning this trip beforehand,

we were told by the Historical Society of the Town in Monster Lane, there were telling us that we shouldn't come alone because this is very rural and we should actually probably have a guide. We met our guides, Joanna and Scott Davidson, on the outskirts of Mount Sterling. They had just finished their Sunday morning church service and we were at a mini mall. We were there having brunch and we're chatting them up and they were really sweet, elderly couple and you know, they said okay, just get in your car and follow our truck and we'll get into town. Great.

We get in our car and we pull it behind their pickup and all I see is a flash of red. There's blue. The stars and bars of Confederate flag on their truck. The only thing I associate with that flag is violence. My family has left this community because of the violence associated with that flag. And here I am following that flag into this community they left and just blocked out of our family narrative. Not smart. So we're actually sitting there freaking out. Like what are we gonna do? You know, but then I was just like, okay, pull yourselves together, okay?

Like they're elderly. I mean, what do they actually do? So my boyfriend, he like, studied himself and like, OK, he hit the gas and we're off. We're following them down the interstate. And we pull off into this really quiet road and the entire landscape changed. It was as if we completely went back in time. Everything was really still in quiet. The homes were largely these brick structures

with these little decorative edges. And they were largely perched up on hilltops. And one of them actually had, what is it, antique hitching post with carriage steps in the front. I mean, my face was just glued to the window just taking this all in. We finally get to the home side where my family were slaves. And we get out of the car and everything is largely

overgrown with wild flowers and tall grass. And Scott, he starts pointing everything out to me. Like where the main house used to be, the native grass and plants and trees and just so I can get an idea of what my family would have seen. And there were these beautiful ancient oak trees and cherry trees and golden rod. I mean it fall, so things were starting to fade, but when they were hit by the sun, they were just so beautiful.

I hated it. Because how could beauty live here? We finally get to the main destination. It was this private family cemetery. It was about 20 or 30 graves, large, marble graves. Some of them had these loving sentiments carved into them, and a lot of them were actually broken, just because of neglect. And Scott, though, he's trying to get my attention to this pile of rocks. And he said, no, these are not a pile of rocks. If you look, they're actually embedded in the dirt. These are fieldstones used as grave markers

for the slave graves. My family. I look hard, and I take a look to the side at these big, beautiful pieces of white marble. One of them was actually eight feet tall, and it was four. The man whose name was on that estate inventory, Richard French. And it's completely shadowing the slave part of the cemetery, that pile of rocks. They were basically invisible. We noticed it was starting to get dark and we did not want to be there at dark.

So we were just at our goodbyes and thank you. We got back in our car. And as we're driving down the main road, I just couldn't help think about my great, great, great grandfather Martin when he went down this road for the last time. You see, he was freed in a will in 1856. The will actually said that he was to go out free. When he was freed, he actually didn't go too far.

He worked for several years really hard and saved enough money to go back. And he bought his wife Martha and several of his children. And they ended up migrating to Chicago in 1866. So all of this new information, I just couldn't, I was wondering what else could be out there. I was going to court houses, University Archives, I was doing tons of internet searches,

and one of my internet searches turned up a personal check written by that man, Richard French, whose name was on the estate inventory, and it was from the 1840s. It was on this online auction site, and I called them. I said, I wanted this check, because I just wanted something connected to my family. It was no longer available, but he gave me the name of the guy who was actually putting it up, because it never sold. I contacted him, and not only did he have that personal check, he had about 40 other documents related to that family,

including three slave documents. Two tax records and one was a bill of sale for a woman named Anna sold from one brother to another. And I freaked when I saw that just because Anna's name, that kept popping up when I was doing my research. Like, her name was always beside my known relatives. So I knew she must have begun on or a cousin or something like she was related.

So I said, I will take those. Thank you, those three documents. So no, actually, you actually have to buy the whole lot. I didn't want to buy these documents. They were part of a larger lot, and I had to buy these, and I want to make my money back. So that'll be $4,000.

I did not have $4,000. I said, that, and I said, I will just take the three, and no, didn't budge. So then we just started haggling, going back and forth. He finally came down, reduced the price of the slave documents, and sold me everything for $3,600, and he arranged a payment arrangement so I could pay an installments. But I didn't care because I knew I would never get this opportunity again to get an original slave document as next to impossible, but documents related to your actual family, that's

unheard of. So I said, yes. So I'm home, I am planning, like where I'm going to put this, I picked the perfect wall, I was going to get a professionally framed using museum quality glass. They finally arrive. I take the bill of sale for Anna out of its plastic packaging and I hold it in my hands. And I'm looking at the handwriting and starting to fade. And I start getting nauseous. I'm holding the souls of my ancestors in my hands,

and it burned. The violence of slavery is not just in those gestures like a whip against bare skin. It is putting a dollar sign next to somebody's name. It is passing somebody's soul from one brother to another. I took the document, I put it back in its plastic sleeve, I went to the closet, I pulled out this large metal lock box, put the documents inside, put them back in the closet, and I've rarely taken them on since. I just can't look at them every day, not now. But the thing is, is that they're home,

they're with me, and I'm gonna take care of them, and they're gonna be remembered. I am actually currently working with that historical society that took me to that cemetery and we are working to put together a plaque listing all the names of the slaves in that cemetery and one of them actually recently said to me, you know, why are we doing this? Because no one's going to know about this except for us. And I said, oh no, we are doing this. I want their names recorded.

Cast in bronze and said out loud. David, Martha, Martin, and Anna. These mothers, daughters, sons, and fathers are loved. Thank you. That was Trina Robinson. Trina lives in San Francisco. She's an artist and writer and is currently working on a collection of essays about the research into her family and the stories she's uncovered. I recently talked to Trina about her story and about a remarkable coincidence, but I started by asking why she called the moth pitchline. I had been

working on this story for a while. People kept saying, you know, this doesn't happen to black people to be able to go this far. And I wanted to share it with people to help not just help me process, but to help other people see that it's possible, people of African descent, that it's, it might be possible for them to do it too. And also just to give a voice to my ancestors and give their names. As we were working on the story together, I became kind of inspired to go dig around in my own ancestry. And as I was doing that, I had, I came across Mount Sterling in my family

tree. And I remember calling you and... When you told me about Mount Sterling, I was like, yeah, this is a completely small world. This is bizarre that this is even, that we have these kind of connections. And then not, not that much longer after you put up a picture on Facebook and it was a picture of one of those documents. Yeah, so that was the tax record, the one that listed my ancestors just had like the number of slaves that you know that were owned by the French at that point and beside the horses and the number of acres they had had. When you posted it on Facebook, I saw the name O'Rear and O'Rear is my family name or one of my family names. And they were like a notary on that tax document.

I do remember you telling me that you had recognized a family member's name. You were telling me that information. I'm like, that's bizarre. I'm like, are you sure me that you had recognized a family member's name. You were telling me that information. I'm like, that's bizarre. I'm like, are you sure that that's correct? I know you said you're from Kentucky, but is that really? I even was a little hesitant to tell you at first

because it was so not only uncomfortable to face that reality, but just to, I knew how uncomfortable it could be for you. I think it actually propelled me to tell the story even more, you know, because it made me more present. And it was kind of like a reality check. Like, okay, no, this is why I'm here. I am supposed to be talking about this and the violence of what has happened to my family and the reality of slavery. And here we are, like, the two ancestors of all these people connected to this one document. Here we are in the present day coming together.

And I just felt like, you know, the past was there with us. It was just, it was a lot to process. You know, it was just, you know, yeah. It was just a lot. I think how we have been able to look at the truth, like dead in the eye and like really face it. And like, it's important to have

those uncomfortable conversations. And that's I think why we are as a country where we are is because we don't look at things in the eye. We don't talk to each other. It's still very segregated in many ways. And I think like once people start coming together, especially in like these rural towns and the south, you know, where areas are still very segregated. Like, no, let's sit and talk. And like, how do we move forward?

If you'd like to find out more about Trina or any of the storytellers you heard in the Sour, you can connect with us on the World Wide Web at the moth.org That's it for this hour. We hope you'll join us again next Web at theMoth.org. That's it for this hour. We hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour. Your host this hour was Meg Boles. Meg also directed the stories in the show. The rest of the most directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jinesse, and Jennifer Hickson, production support from Emily Couch.

Most stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the drift. Other music in this hour from Blue Dot Sessions, Crun Bin, Palo Frazu, Richard Goliano, Anion Lungrind, and Alabama Shakes. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, J. Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour is produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange PRX.org. For more about our podcast, for information on

pitching us your own story, as many of our storytellers do and everything else. Go to our website, TheMoth.org.