Discovering a Family Secret at 66 and Asking Who Am I Now, feat. Pat Hicks | S8E15

Rebuilding your identity after a family secret is not a one week problem, and Pat Hicks would know. At 66, he took a phone call on an evening walk and learned that the man who raised him was not his biological father. Everyone who could have explained it was already gone. Pat is the author of My Name Is a Lie and Other Truths, a memoir that starts with that revelation and opens into questions almost everyone recognizes. What do we inherit emotionally from the people who raised us? What happens to identity when beliefs formed before age five get pulled out from underneath you? In this conversation we get into the poems his mother left in her papers rather than burning them, the brother who suspected the truth for decades and stayed quiet, and the small strange moments across a lifetime that suddenly made sense. Pat also names something I keep thinking about, which is that the real wound was not the lie. It was erasure, never quite being celebrated the way the other kids were. We finish on permission, and on why giving yourself permission to become someone new usually waits on self love to arrive first. If you have ever felt like the exception in your own family, this one is for you. Meet Pat Hicks Pat is the author of My Name Is a Lie and Other Truths, a memoir that begins with a late life revelation and opens into something far more universal. After discovering in his 60s that the story of his origins was not what he had been told, he had to reconstruct both the truth and himself. His writing sits with what we inherit emotionally, what it means to be seen, and why our imperfections are the making of a human being rather than a flaw. 📖 Order the book, including signed copies - https://pat-hicks-books.myshopify.com/ Check out the full episode page: https://thelituplife.com/post/discove... Ways to go deeper 👉 Join the BuildHER Community - https://thelituplife.com/buildher 📅 FREE Embodied CEO Masterclass - https://thelituplife.com/ceo ❤️ Follow on IG: -   / the_lituplife   🎧 Prefer audio? Find The Lit Up Life Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. In this episode: 00:00 The Moment Everything You Knew About Yourself Changes 01:31 Pat Hicks, Fifth Generation Texan and Reclaimed Wood 02:41 Why He Wrote the Memoir for Grandkids He Does Not Have Yet 04:57 The Name That Was Never Really His 05:39 The Phone Call on an August Full Moon 08:00 Why Beliefs Formed Before Age Five Hold Everything Up 12:22 Calling Family and Finding Out Who Already Knew 21:37 A Different Way to See His Mother's Fifty Years of Silence 28:30 Erasure, and the Wound Underneath the Family Secret 31:12 Giving Yourself Permission to Become Someone New