This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Family Secrets is a production of IHeart Radio.

I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is Family Secrets,

the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from

others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

My guest today is Jackie Blankenship, podcast host, Marathon Runner, Beauty Pageant Queen, Mrs. America, and Intersex LGBTQ Plus Advocate.

Jackie's is a story of the deepest kind of secret kept from her, a secret inside her own body, her own being.

For a long time, she knows only the little that she's told.

And so the secret grows alongside her, until at long last, she's able to know herself deeply

and to find the kind of profound freedom that can only be ours when we embody our truth.

I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Yeah, it really exists, the Kalamazoo.

I was born in 85, and it's funny that I'm now at an age where I can look back and say it was a different time.

But it really was.

You know, without the computer at our fingertips, without the constant entertainment that we now see, there's always something to watch, something to scroll, something to do.

But when I was growing up, I really grew up in that iconic moment of just enough freedom to be outside.

I lived outside with my little sister.

We played and rode bikes from a really young age around our neighborhood.

And I was a girl's girl that liked to get dirty.

I would wear dresses and aprons over my clothes because I wanted to make sure I was always in a dress.

So my mom would sew aprons.

...