Stephanie: Hi Patty. Welcome to the show.

Patty: Hi Stephanie. Thank you so much for welcoming me. I'm so delighted to be here with you.

Stephanie: It is my honor to have you as well. We have, a very interesting story to jump into today. Some harrowing, a aspects, some heroic aspects. I'm really excited. So let's jump right in. Start, if you will, by telling me a little bit about who you were when our story begins. What were the forces that shaped you as a younger person until you were in your mid thirties?

Patty: So I would say, I'm gonna start with you where I think it started for me, which was about my weight. Starting in my teens. I started struggling with my weight where I would gain or lose 50 to 75 pounds every two years. And I did this repeatedly until I was in my late thirties, at which point I recognized. It was one of those days where I just had this epiphany and I thought, if I don't figure out why, I will be condemned to doing this for the rest of my life. And it's exhausting, and I was a fantastic dieter, but I could never figure out how to maintain it. And so that's really where it begins for me because again, from my perspective, it was about my weight.

And so I had started meeting with a series of therapists to find one that I fit with, which for anybody who's not gone through therapy, fit is so important. And you have to find the person that you think you can work with. So it took me a little while to get there and I looked on a website, she specialized in eating disorders. I met with her and she kind of mined my history to figure out like, what were my issues, like what kind of brought me here, just as you're asking me.

And as I went through and we landed on my childhood sexual abuse, which I was always aware of, but never dealt with. In my mind, it was, many years before, outta sight outta mind. And she had said to me at that time, she's like, it's not about your weight. Your weight is a symptom. It's a symptom of that.

And until you resolve that, you'll always struggle with your weight. And honestly, I could have been locked in a room by myself for a hundred years and never would've made that connection.

Stephanie: Well, and that wasn't the only symptom either. You also, and tell me if this was because of your weight or just sort of a, a, a sideline to it, you also didn't have much luck romantically.

Patty: Oh no. You are absolutely right. But I didn't think I had much luck romantically because of the way I looked. In my mind it was because I was unacceptable and that's why men weren't interested in me, which of course is nonsense, right? Like mentally healthy people don't think that. But I was not, your poster child for mental health. And really that was the catalyst was I I wanted to open myself up to love. And to do that I thought I needed to have a perfect body, right? Like I needed to get my weight under control so I could find my prince. So for me, the two went hand in hand. And they really didn't.

Stephanie: Did you have better luck in the years you were thin and you were down the 50 or 75 and worse luck when you were higher? Or was it just consistently not great luck?

Patty: No. Well, you know what's interesting about that is for anybody who toggles at different weights who just can't stay somewhere, for me it was because I wasn't happy at any weight. It didn't matter. There was no perfect number for me because I was always unhappy, so I couldn't find a place to land.

But I will say when I was thinner, I received a lot more male attention, which honestly was threatening to me. So I think that's what always begat the cycle of me gaining weight again.

Stephanie: Oh, interesting.

Patty: Then I hated that. 'cause then I was invisible. Right? And to be fair, I don't know that it's that men found me unacceptable, but I found myself unacceptable. So as long as I found myself unacceptable, I was never gonna be able to see anybody who was interested in me because it just, it, it didn't even occur to me. I was completely closed to the notion of it. So I think at that point, then I would lose weight again. Right. And then it was just the cycle over and over.

Stephanie: So, yeah, I'm seeing like, I don't know why this just jumped in my head. Do you remember Spirographs? I'm seeing like a couple of interconnected cycles kind of happening here. And that went on for about, you said mid-teens to thirties.

20 years. 20 years. Wow. Okay, so let's go back to, you started with a therapist.

You finally found the therapist you liked and trusted. She told you that this had nothing to do with your weight. So pick up the story there and tell me a little bit about what happened next.

Patty: Okay. So while I looked for somebody who dealt with eating disorders, it just so happened her background was in EMDR, which is a kind of therapy and it's Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. And it's really ideal for anybody with trauma, which is like all of us. Everybody's got some form of trauma in their life. And basically what it does is, it's a specialized kind of therapy, not to get too far off on this, but if you experience trauma, it's almost like your thoughts and feelings are a train that runs on a track. And when you have trauma, it's an explosion that blows up the track. So everything's floating out there. So nothing is connected anymore. Nothing makes sense. EMDR is supposed to bring it all back to the track so you can resolve it.

So when I started working with her and she said, Hey, guess what? It's not about your weight. And I was like, oh my God, really? I'm so surprised. So my weight actually became the easiest thing to manage. Which is not to say that I was not still tortured by the way I looked and my weight, and I think that's partially being female, being in our society 'cause honestly, I still complain about the way I look, right?

Like it's, but there's no perfect. But I will say in the first three years that I worked with her, I lost a hundred pounds and I have maintained it and it's been close to 20 years.

Stephanie: Wow.

Patty: I never gained it back. Thank God. So that was great. But it's interesting, people find all kinds of ways to self-soothe and to distract, right?

So whether it's food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, like you pick it.They serve a dual purpose, like it's self-soothing and distraction. But it's pleasure and pain, which makes it really complicated. Like food was very complicated for me. And I was very tortured by what I ate, what I looked like. But it was still nothing compared to how awful it was to deal with the bigger root issue.

Stephanie: Right, right. So it's interesting that once you opened that door and started working on the root causes,the symptom kind ofjust became easier to manage. So talk a little bit about what that was like. I mean, you said that you had,you again went by it about 20 miles an hour, you said there was some childhood sexual abuse. And you had shut the door and just sort of, like many people do, said, well, that happened and it's over, so I'll put it away.

Patty: Exactly. And I'm very common in a lot of respects. So there's a few things I wanna say here.

Childhood sexual abuse is so prevalent and so common, it's heartbreaking. One in three girls, one in five boys under the age of 18. We do not talk about it. It is like still the great taboo as far as I'm concerned. And I definitely felt that way. I felt ruined by what happened to me. I never told anybody. My mother knew, my sister knew, never told anybody. So it was that shameful to me and. My attitude was is you know, we moved, my mother divorced him when I was 11, which was great. We moved across country. Outta sight, outta mind. Never thought about it, never dealt with it. But that's not how trauma works. Just because I didn't deal with it doesn't mean it wasn't. Yeah.

Stephanie: That was the dealing with it,

the shutting the door.

Patty: Yes, exactly.

Stephanie: That was the dealing,

Patty: Yeah, but unfortunately that didn't resolve it for me. And my therapist used to say to me,she always asked me what I wanted. And what I wanted was for it to be undone. I felt ruined. And I didn't think there was any way on God's green Earth that would change.

So I wanted it undone, which was impossible. I worked with her for 12 years and she had said to me, she was like, it's not about disavowing, it's about integrating. And until you can integrate, you will never be able to move past it because you can't make it go away. That's just not how life works. So,I worked with her for 12 years, but over the course of our progress, I did great. I lost all the weight, right?

I still didn't have a man, I still didn't have love. So it just became this exercise of trying to find something else to kind of get me unstuck, like to get to the root cause because I still wasn't there. And it's like the layers of an onion. You keep peeling them back. there's more.

Stephanie: Right,

Patty: There's more. And so with her, and to her great credit, she recognized that I was stuck and she couldn't get me unstuck. And she identified different alternative therapies that I could try, and I continued to work with her while I did.

And over that course of that 12 years, I worked with a chiropractor to release trapped fight or flight responses. I went to a sex therapist. I went to group therapy for sexual abuse. I mean, I left no stone unturned.

Stephanie: Yeah, You started with her when you were 38. So this is all through your late thirties, your early forties actually through your entire forties. That you

Patty: I turned 50 when I was working with her. I did. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie: So in leaving no stone unturned, were there incremental gains along the way?

Patty: Absolutely. And it's not a zero sum game. Every day I got a little bit happier. I was able to like shed a little bit more of kind of the person I was. So again,I made lots and lots of progress. I just had one elusive goal that I couldn't seem to achieve, so that kept me going, but I made so much progress.

I used to be so controlling, so very closed that truly none of my friends knew, no matter how close they were to me. And I didn't share my story with anybody until I had been in therapy for three years.

Stephanie: Wow.

Patty: It was that shameful to me. And my therapist had said to me, she kept trying to implore me to tell them, and she said, put yourself in their shoes. Wouldn't you wanna know? Would you judge them? And I was like, of course not. And she's like, why do you think they'd treat you any less than you would them? And of course they didn't, but it was like such a leap of faith for me to trust, to be vulnerable. And that was kind of the heart and soul of it for me was being vulnerable.

And I'm sure you've seen the movie Grease when she sings, There are Worse Things I Can Do, and she says to cry in front of you, that's the worst thing I could do. 'cause she'd be so vulnerable. And that was me. There was nothing worse than that.

Stephanie: Yeah. Wow. Some of these, incremental gains, so you're saying there was, trust issues and vulnerability issues. I can, without any sort of degrees, understand that those link back to those early experiences. How was it that you found your way to build that trust or to, practice that vulnerability? Because those are really hard things to do if you're not accustomed to them.

Patty: Absolutely. So one of my biggest challenges, and again, I'm not at all unique, is that when awful things happen to people, we tend to bury it, not examine it, not resolve it. Right. And I think unfortunately for a lot of us too, we don't like those feelings. So we try to avoid them at all costs.

So I felt nothing. Truly, I walked through life feeling nothing. The only emotion I was comfortable with was anger because I was raised in a house full of anger. So anger doesn't scare me, but it scares a lot of people.

When I started working with this chiropractor, andwhen my therapist had surfaced this idea with me, I was like, I've never heard of it. And she's like, I hadn't really either, somebody recommended it to me. But basically you, you meet with this doctor, and he released his trapped fight or flight responses in your body and, honestly, it sounded like smoke and mirrors. I don't know how it works, but it did work. And as he and I started working together, I started feeling things, which I did not like. It was very scary for me. And feeling emotions is a great step. But the next one is learning to identify them. Like that's another really big step.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Patty: And like it was through my work with him that I kind of started on that process and it was terrifying for me because I was very vulnerable, which I hated.

Stephanie: As closed as I was, I had really liked this doctor, but the closer he got to me, the more I started to lash out at him.

Patty: And I felt so guilty all the time that I finally resolved that I had to tell him how I felt and apologize. And so he and I had this whole conversation and I didn't cry, but my eyes were full of tears. And he had said to me, he was like, the fact that you could tell me this, and he is like, then that you're emotional, he's like, look at how far you've come. And he had said to me, he is like, I know the process is so frightening. It's like an eggshell cracking. And he's like, the whole thing is scary for you. And he is like, but you keep coming back. You're doing it and you're doing so well. And he is like, never let, never let that impede your growth. Don't worry about how you are to me, you are fine.

So it was very reassuring, but I had to have a conversation with him that I would've sooner shot myself than have. But I was able to.

Stephanie: Yeah. Well, and it's interesting too, thinking about the emotional piece, like you said, there's only one emotion you really knew or were comfortable with, and that was anger. I think of it almost like, Oh wow. That's just, that just came to my brain. It almost like colors, right? And I think you and I will remember back in the, I don't know, maybe late eighties, there was a movie called Mask. Do you remember that movie with Eric Stoltz?

Patty: Oh, oh, with Cher? Yeah,

Stephanie: Anyway, he made a friend who I think, if I remember correct, she was blind. And he was trying to teach her about colors.

Patty: The rocks.

Stephanie: Right. And so for red, he put a hot rock in her hand.

Patty: Yes.

Stephanie: For blue, he put like, if I remember, it was cotton balls or something. And he was trying to teach her how to interpret colors. So I'm thinking about almost a similar exercise with learning emotions, right? You had one color in your rainbow and now you, strangely were seeing some different colors. And okay, but now you had to name them, and kind of figure out what they were and how they worked. I can see why it would be scary.

Tell me about some of the emotions that you were learning. Tell me about some of the early ones that you remember kind of learning.

Patty: Well, I would say it's not that I wasn't familiar with them, but I didn't like them. So anger is a very mobilizing emotion, right? And I'm like your typical ballsy New Yorker. I'm good.

Stephanie: And it's clear! No nuance..

Patty: Exactly, but things like grief and sorrow, those were things that I was afraid I would drown in. I really was, I was afraid I would drown.

And my therapist used to say to me, she's like, you do everything in your power to push them away. And if you just learn to sit with them, they will wash through and over you and they will pass you. She's like, you won't be stuck in them. But I was afraid that I would. And the chiropractor said to me at one point, what I want you to learn is that you can be in control without being controlling, and you can be vulnerable without being powerless.

Because I didn't believe that. And I remember I had said to him, I was like, I don't think that's possible. Like I did not believe you could be vulnerable without being powerless. Because in my experience, who's more vulnerable than a child, right? And I was absolutely powerless. So that was kind of, that became my template for how I viewed the world.

Stephanie: Right, right. Oh my goodness. Those are two pretty, profound statements. Yeah. Wow. Vulnerable without being powerless. And the other one was, what

Patty: Being in control without being controlling.

Stephanie: Controlling Right. And being in control without being controlling, to me sounds like it's about self-trust.

Patty: You know what? I think you're right. I think it is a lot about that and I think that my cardinal sin in my mind, and I was a child when everything started. My mother, it was my neighbor initially, they later married, but he was my mother's neighbor and they started having an affair when I was like a baby.

So he was always in my life. So I honestly don't know at what point the abuse started, but before I was in kindergarten, he worked nights, my mother worked during the day he watched me. So again, he was always in my life in some way, shape, or form.

So I feel like my big sin in my mind was, while there were lots of incidents with him. There was one that was always emblazoned in my memory. And what it was, is I wanted to stay home, which was not unusual for me. I didn't like to go out, I like to be invisible.

I wanted to stay home and I was very young and my mother said yes, and it didn't occur to me like that there was anything more to that. He was there. And I didn't think he was. And that in my mind, became my moment of damnation, that I put myself in harm's way, right. And so forever, that has always been my thing, not seeing the signs. So I don't trust myself to protect myself because I didn't protect myself then, even though I could tell you as a rational adult, that makes no sense. Right? But it's not rational. It's not rational.

Stephanie: You wouldn't trust yourself to make good decisions.

Patty: Exactly.

Stephanie: Because you made that one

Patty: because I did not see the danger.

Stephanie: Yeah. Oh, wow.

So let's come forward again. you're in this process, you're in your forties and you are dealing with all of this very mucky, murky, difficult stuff. Tell me about the path towards love, 'cause I know that was one of the things you were really yearning for.

Patty: That was what I wanted. So I had lost all the weight. I'm making all this progress, so every so often I would join dating sites and I had met a couple of men and I felt, unfortunately I felt powerless. I felt like I was once again in situations I didn't wanna be in. Like I didn't feel entitled to set the boundaries I wanted to set. And that was really the crux of my issue, not that the men weren't nice, but that I wanted to say no and didn't feel entitled to, so it became easier to retreat than to try to fight against that.

Do you know why you weren't feeling? Because I'm guessing this is kind of some of the stuff you're working through in therapy with boundaries, right? These are like all the kinds of things we learn in therapy. Because I didn't have agency over my body as a child. I grew up not thinking I had agency over my body. And I think unfortunately, and I'm not gonna just even restrict it to women, 'cause I think it's men too.Right or wrong, what we grow up with becomes our template for normal, even if it's anything but normal.

So I locked myself away, lived a monastic existence. I was not gonna entrust my body to anyone, because I did not wanna be hurt. I think the flip side of that coin is people that are very promiscuous and they have no agency over their bodies. Everyone's entitled to it. But I think they both come from the same place.

Stephanie: Okay. Interesting. So you didn't feel, like you were entitled to make decisions about your body and your boundaries, and so that must have been exceptionally frightening as you were getting closer in relationships, right? As relationships kind of grow, you get closer and these things, they just start happening. There's exploration and there's, fun and, all the stuff we want, we wanna do,

Patty: But it's interesting, you consider it fun, but for me, my big thing was I had very negative associations of kissing, which became a huge barrier for me because in my mind that's how dates start and end with kissing. And I remember I had met some nice guy and he wanted to kiss me, and I was like, I did not want him to kiss me.

Right? And it's like, how can you tell somebody you barely know, all these very deep personal things about yourself. So it really became a roadblock for me, that I didn't feel like I could tell anyone. So it's like I had a secret on top of a secret at this point.

Stephanie: Yeah. And that makes sense.And yes, and of course, I paint it it with the brush as fun because as I think of getting to know somebody and deepening intimacy, that, like that's the front door is kissing. That's like one of the first steps. And if that was already so scary and even repulsive to you, like it's hard to deepen intimacy, it's hard to move past that. Yeah.

Patty: Exactly. After I worked with the,chiropractor, I still didn't have a man. So then, I started working with a sex therapist, which honestly was a dead end, but I didn't know and I wanted to try. It was hellish, but I still tried it. And then finally I went to group therapy for sexual abuse, which was interesting. It was the first thing my therapist had ever suggested to me right when I first started working with her that I go to group therapy and I was like, no, no, no, no, no. And this is mean, but I'm gonna say it anyway. So all the years of my weight struggles. I had been to Weight Watchers over and over, love Weight Watchers, but back in the day, you had to go to in-person meetings because that's how they weigh you. And I hated the meetings, not because of the leaders. I hated the meetings because there was always at least one person who was like, I want to eat brownies and have margaritas. Well, I do too, but that's not how we lose weight. Like, don't whine about it.

Stephanie: Right.

Patty: So I hated the whining. I did. I hated the whining, so I was afraid that group therapy was gonna be the exact same thing. And my therapist had said to me all along, she's like, I just want you to find community. But I had changed a lot. So fast forward 10 years, and I still didn't have what I wanted. And I finally said yes to group therapy. And it truly was the first time in my life where it was people just like me.

But you can only do what you're ready to do. Like that's kind of been my takeaway from everything. So for everybody who's like, I wish I was further along, I wish I was, this, you can only do what you're ready to do. And a lot of times that's infuriating, but it is what it is.

Stephanie: Right. And we're really only equipped to take one step at a time, right? We only have the two feet.

Patty: Exactly.

Stephanie: We can only move forward one step at a time. So as much as we think, all of the things we should be doing, I hate that word, right?

Patty: Yeah.

Stephanie: All the things that, we could be doing. It's like, yeah, we don't really have the bandwidth or the the attention span to really focus on that many things at once. So yeah,that doesn't surprise me that, something that you had heard of years before you finally became ready for.

Patty: Exactly. And I'm glad that I was finally ready for it. I did finally meet someone and it was great because as much as I hated talking about myself, as much as I hated sharing, as much as I hated being vulnerable, I had pledged myself that if I was ever fortunate enough to meet someone that I would balls to the wall, if I thought it, I would say it. If I felt it, I would say it. I would never allow myself to look back and say, if only I had done X. If only I had been braver. I did not care about how I looked anymore, not physically, but in terms of the optics of me sharing whatever I needed to share.

I just decided that I was gonna allow myself to be completely vulnerable to achieve what I wanted and it worked, in that I found someone, he was wonderful and he really was able to take it all in. And we had lots and lots of conversations. He practiced kissing with me, like, we worked through all of it, which is what I needed, right? I needed somebody to be able to do that with me.

Stephanie: Right. So obviously the right person. But back up two steps, you didn't think he was the right person, so he was able to sneak up on you a little bit.

Patty: He was. He absolutely was. And I think. Yeah. 'cause I think the universe also gives you only what you can deal with.

So I run. That actually came out of therapy where I was in therapy and I had said, my therapist had said, if you could do anything, what would you do? And I said, if I could, I would run so fast. Because I always thought if I wasn't smart enough to talk myself out of a situation, I could run away. And so that actually started me running and I got really into running. Fast forward, I'm trying to find someone to meet, and I had decided, you know what? I would love to run with someone, so I'm gonna join a dating website that's about running or fitness and I was gonna cast a much wider net.

It didn't necessarily need to be dating material, it just needed to be someone I could run with. And so this man presented himself to me and he was shorter than me, and I'm very tall. I'm five 10. And he was five eight. So I immediately discounted him as a romantic partner, but I was willing to run with him.

And so we ran a couple times and I knew he liked me and he asked me to have dinner with him, and I thought, all right, I'll have dinner. Like, what am I gonna do? I like running with him. He's fine.

And I had the best time. I did, I had the best time with him and it started this whole thing. And what was so nice is that because I ran with him all the time at that point, we started running together all the time, like it was just such a natural way to kind of get to know someone. Then we started dating at the same time. I mean, I would encourage anybody, like it's just easier to open up about yourself when you're doing something. It just is

Stephanie: Yeah. Right, right. 'cause you're not focusing on it. And they say, not that I have kids, but they say that's a great way to talk to kids too, is like when you're driving, 'cause you're side by side looking the same direction, you're not like staring at each other.

Patty: Exactly, exactly.

Stephanie: So as you guys are running together and chatting, it's it's a little bit less,intimidating.

Patty: It is, and even though it was still months before I told him about my past, there were so many things that he needed to understand about me anyway, like about my aversion to kissing, like all of those things, even if he didn't know why. Just that he knew that it was an issue for me and I wanted to work on it.

So.

Stephanie: Yeah, so that's interesting. It's, it sounds to me like he kind of snuck in the side door. Your defenses were down a little bit because you weren't looking at him as necessarily like, this is a potential romantic partner.

Patty: Exactly. Exactly.

Stephanie: So that, continued where this is, this is the love story?

Patty: No, so it is not the love star. He was great and I truly believe the Universe handpicked him. I used to consider it getting to the other side. You had mentioned getting to the other side and for me, I definitely had this whole goal of getting to the other side. Getting past where I was to the other side meant in a loving relationship, a loving sexual relationship. The sex therapist would've said like, did you want it to be sexual? Yes, I did. So that's what I wanted to have a healthy relationship. And I did. And it lasted about a year and no spoilers, but, circumstances arose that, I forever struggled with what had happened to me as a child was my fault. I just believed it was my fault. And even though intellectually I could tell you it was not, I did not believe that.

And for anybody who doesn't know, there is an Intellectual belief and an emotional belief. And emotional belief trumps intellectual any day of the week. And I think it's interesting, and not to get into politics, but there's a lot of people who are like, for both sides, how can they feel that way? How can they feel that way?

Because it's not based on fact and reason, it's based on emotions. And emotions can't be dissuaded. They can't be argued out of it.It's not about reason. It's about what you feel. It's what you believe. And. It's very difficult to move past them.

And one of my therapists, the one who I went to for sex therapy, she had said, there is no substitute for experience. And something happened with this man where all of a sudden I saw, it was not my fault. There was no way I could have affected it. I was collateral damage. It was never about me because even though the situation with him was very different, it evoked the exact same feeling. It wasn't about me. I couldn't affect the situation. I was just there.

So I will say while it was an unhappy breakup, which is an understatement for me, I would choose it again and again for all of eternity because it brought so much light to my life. It made me really finally let go of something once and for all that I was unable to do in all the years leading up to it.

Stephanie: It sounds like however terrible that experience was, it was a gift.

Patty: Absolutely. Absolutely. It was. He was my gift from the universe. He was.

Stephanie: That's so interesting. One of the things I like to say over and over again is that the universe will send you the same test, the same challenge over and over again until you learn the lesson. And it sounds like for you there was a cycle there that needed to be completed and whatever that was, you were able to complete it and see the truth in both situations at the same time. your childhood situation and your, your adult situation.

Patty: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It was a great gift. And it's interesting too, and I know you know this, so

I wrote a book and the way my book came about was I was with this man. And I was so closed when I started therapy and I told no one that I would go home from every session and write what happened as a way to process it.

And I did it for 12 years and because again, nobody knew. Even when my friends knew, it was still not something that I was sharing that openly like, the day to day, the machinations of what was going on. And after I was with him, I remember I was walking home one day and I thought I should write a book.

Who else but me has traveled this path? Like to try all of these different things that I had never even heard of. And so that kind of started the cycle for me to write a book. And when I wrote it again, I still felt like my past was deeply shameful. I was never gonna share the information. So when all was said and done, it was seven years from the time I thought about it until I actually published it.

And again, I had all the raw content, so it wasn't like it was just sifting through it all. But for two solid years, I really was convinced I would never publish it. And then I kind of thought, well, maybe I'll just share it with my close friends. Like I kept kind of evolving what I was gonna do with it. And so my circle became a little bit wider about the people who knew what happened.

And when I finally decided that I was gonna publish the book, which was something in and of itself, I ended up self-publishing it. And again, because I thought it could help people. I wanted it to give hope to the people who were hopeless. I wanted it to help people like me, to let them know that it's not impossible. It's a failure of imagination. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it can't be true. And I think that's what stymies a lot of us, so I. Went down this path and it was gonna be published and I thought, nobody knows. Like I, I still have told like seven people. And so I made it my quest that I went out to everyone I knew on LinkedIn, and I told all of my friends.

And it was interesting that as I did that, more and more of the shame of my past left me. And then kind of the final frontier, was when I started really telling people about it, I was met with kind of three responses. The first was, that's horrible, I'm so sorry. The second was, that's horrible, I'm so sorry, me too, which was a heartbreaking number of people. And the third response was, deer in the headlight, didn't know what to say. And that was a big number of people.

And I just started to get just so indignant about the fact that for everything that happened, not just to me, but to every child who's sexually abused or physically abused or any kind of abuse that's shameful, that it's bad enough that it happens to us, but it becomes our shame to carry with us till we die.

That was a pivotal moment and another gift from the universe that I finally believed. It is not my blame. It is not my shame, and it is not my secret to keep. And I can now shout it from the rooftops and it's not a reflection on me.

And what happened with that as well is that I finally did what my therapist wanted. I stopped disavowing and I integrated. It is part of who I am, but it informs me no more than the fact that I'm a brunette, right? It is just part of my experience. It's part of who I am. It does not define me.

Stephanie: It sounds to me like, in the sharing of the story, it's almost like, sunlight is the disinfectant.

Patty: It absolutely is. And I will say too, that for anybody who doesn't feel like it's possible for them. I didn't think it was possible for me either. I would've sooner thought I'd be the Queen of England. But people change. If you wanna change, you can change. And I would say too, it's like anything else, anything you practice gets easier with practice.

If you try to play an instrument, you're not gonna be great the first time you pick it up. It might take you years, but you'll get good. You might not ever be the best, but you'll get much better.

Stephanie: Right. One of the things I'm so curious about, so I love my real area of intrigue is this transition that we go through around midlife and for so many people that I've spoken to who have traumatic childhoods, in many different flavors and variations, it seems like when we come to this doorway to midlife, 35, 38, 40, we finally have the courage, the gumption, the motivation, the interest in facing down those childhood demons.

Do you have any idea why it was that you were 38 when you were ready to face this versus 32 or 28, or, any other earlier moment?

Patty: Well, I will say I do wholeheartedly believe that the universe wanted me to do this and I was ready. But I will sayit's an interesting question that you poses and the thing that popped into my head is Iwe have ages in this country where you can run for Congress, when you can run for president, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I remember I had learned that the reason the founding father chose 35 to be president, is because by that time in your life, you have hopefully experienced love, loss, success, failure, that you have perspective on life, so that you can figure out what's important and kind of process it that way.

Because I think when we're very young, we can't tell you what's really important. We can tell you what's important today. And for me, one of the things that I think set everything differently for me was loss. And it was not the loss of this man. I had a cat for 19 and a half years. Her name was Olive. And dear God, she is bound to me for this life and every life that follows. I love that cat. And she passed away at 19 and a half. So it's not like time was stolen from us. She had a good long life, but it was interesting. She was the thing I loved most. And when she passed away, coincidentally, I had just signed the contract for the book. I was gonna do it. So it's like she was like, we're done. I used to read the drafts out loud to her. And she was the only one with me for that 12 years where I was in therapy. Like she walked that very dark path with me. There is nothing on earth that I felt closer to. And after she died was when I reached out to my network on LinkedIn, 'cause I thought all of these things that I thought used to seem so hard, they didn't matter at all. Right? What difference does it make? I lost the thing I love most. That matters. And I think that's why people are more ready to approach things at midlife. Like you have that perspective.

Stephanie: Perspective's a great word, in this context. The other thing that, I, I think,and this is part of my thesis, I talk about it all the time, but it is proved out. It is true that, for the younger years of our adulthood, whenever we leave home, or college till we're in our mid thirties, we're so focused on all the things we should be doing to create a life.

And we've got our head down and we're, you know, shoveling and checking away at the boxes. And,we've been told, go to school and get a good job and, get married and have kids and the whole list. The blueprint. And it's at this midlife time that we finally pick our heads up and realize that maybe some of that isn't for me. Maybe I didn't want it. Maybe the career that my dad told me I should have isn't the career that's actually interesting or fulfilling to me. And so we finally realized we have our own expertise and our own opinions that matter more than the people's opinions around us, the olders and wisers. And so I'm wondering if any of that played a role in your journey as well.

Patty: I definitely agree with you. I think that I have always been one of those people that, because I felt like in a lot of respects I raised myself, so the only person's opinion that ever really matters to me, and I'm just gonna be honest, was my own.

I know a lot of people don't trust their instincts. I trust mine above anything else. I alone know what's best for me, which is great in a lot of ways. So I'm not driven in that way, but I do agree with you that I think for a lot of people that is that. But one of the things that for me was really disappointing, but I did accept, was I had really wanted to be married and have children too.

And while I may someday marry, unless they have children, I will never have children. And that's okay. I have a new puppy, she's good. But I think that I had to kind of acknowledge that we're not all meant to have the same life. We're just not. And so I have plenty of friends that are married and happily so, and some of them have children and some of them don't. And some of them had great careers and some of them didn't. We're not all meant to have the same life.

Stephanie: Right. I agree completely. So the bottom line of this story, really, of your journey is when you're struggling with the same issues over and over again. When you just can't seem to get right the thing that you want or you think that you want, it's probably not the issue.

Patty: That was certainly my experience. And I think for a lot of people, I think, again, when you look at how people self-soothe, whether it's drugs, alcohol, these kinds of things, and plenty of people like, they're like,I can't stop drinking. I keep relapsing, or drugs or whatever. It's like you're probably not focusing on what's really the driver of that.

Stephanie: Yeah. And you see that even too in a lesser,level of the, you know, the three glasses of wine a night, that the moms do and that's their, the mommy juice and the wine'd down time. There's a similar soothing, a similar dulling that's going on.

So yeah. Anything that you're using to dull or distract probably means there's something there to be looked at.

Patty: Exactly. Do you ever read David Sedaris?

Stephanie: I have in the past. Yes.

Patty: I don't remember which book it was, but he had talked about, he's like, I've come to the understanding that, or people have advised me that like having however many glasses of wine and like smoking a joint or doing this, that, or the other thing is not called going to sleep. It's called passing out. Like it's not, I mean I bastardize that saying,but it was very funny. But it is about the difference of just like, again, self-medicating.

Stephanie: Right, right. Well, Patty, this has been, a wonderful conversation and I am so grateful for you to, for being so generous with your story. Thank you so much for being here today.

Oh my pleasure. And thank you. It has been such a nice conversation and considering the topic, I felt very upbeat. So thank you so much because I think that's your sunny disposition Thank you. That's very kind. I appreciate it.