Daria Burke spent several years digging into the science of how our brains and bodies carry the imprint of early experiences. She wanted to understand the trauma she lived through growing up in 1980s Detroit with a mother who battled addiction. She suffered years of neglect before finding stability through school and rising in the corporate world. In her new memoir, Of My Own Making, she writes about the limits of success, how she was shaped by her past, and the work it took to change course. Plus, our critic at large, John Powers, reviews The Golden Hour. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. From the outside, my guest today, Daria Burke's life. It seems pretty great. A big career in marketing, amazing friends, a resume filled with accolades. For two decades, she perfected the art of image, not just her own, but brands like Estee Lauder and Facebook. But underneath was a story she has spent most of her life trying to outrun.
Burke grew up in Detroit in the 80s and 90s when jobs were disappearing, crime was up, and the crack cocaine epidemic was ravaging communities and families. And her home life mirrored the city. Both of her parents struggled with addiction. She didn't grow up hearing bedtime stories or celebrating birthdays.
She has no snapshots of her childhood, just memories of her and her sister basically raising themselves. Beneath her perfect exterior, Burke says she moved through the world in shame. Until one day, a few years ago, when she discovered a photograph of the car crash that killed her grandmother when she herself was seven. Her grandmother was the one person from her childhood who made her feel safe.
And that image unearthed a well of buried grief and set her on a four-year journey into brain science, trauma research, even epigenetics, which is the study of how our genes are influenced by our environment. At one point, Daria Burke even had a 3D scan of her brain to see how trauma had shaped it. She's written about all of this in her new memoir, Of My Own Making.
Daria Burke, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor. Well, Daria, I want to start our conversation with the day that you discovered the details of your grandmother's car accident and death. This was around 2017. And as you write about it, you say that it was just a regular workday evening. You were having dinner and watching TV.
And then all of a sudden you decided to just Google your grandmother's name. Yes. The article you found said that your grandmother's car had stalled on the freeway and she was rammed from behind from another car and she was on her way to your house. You were around seven years old at that time. She was on her way to come pick you guys up for church.
Yes, she picked us up for church every Sunday. And so it was very routine for us to get dressed and to wait for her. What was interesting about that particular day was that she had actually passed the exit to our house. And so when her car was found, she was already beyond where she would have turned off to come pick us up and then, you know, get back on the freeway to go to church.
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