Announcer: 0:05

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host, psychotherapist, coach, and empowerment expert, Beverley Glazer.

Beverley Glazer: 0:23

Can you really leave your former life behind you? I'm Beverley Glazer, a reinvention strategist and empowerment coach for women over 50 to turn a lifetime of wisdom into their most impactful chapter yet. And you can find me on reinventimpossible.com. Patricia Gordon Stevens is the founder of Maxwell House Counseling, where she specializes in bereavement and trauma. She's a certified death doula and the author of Madness in Memphis, a fictional memoir that exposes the realities of domestic abuse and the challenges it takes to overcome it. This story proves that it's never too late to reclaim your value, your education, and your purpose, and to live your best life in later years. Welcome, Patricia. Welcome.

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 1:18

Oh, Beverley, thank you. Thank you so much for having me and just listening to you say that reinforces it, just reinforces that it is never too late. Age is simply a number.

Beverley Glazer: 1:30

Sure is. So, Patricia, what was it like when you were a child growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, back in the day when you were just growing up, a little girl? What was it like back then?

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 1:44

Well, it was fairly simple. It was a beautiful life. Memphis, Tennessee at that time was, I think, one of America's cleanest or most beautiful cities, one or the other. I get them confused, but I know we used to win lots of awards. And um, my mother adored Memphis, Tennessee so much. She could feel it. It was like she absolutely thought she was a family member of a city. She she felt like it was her community. She adored it. And so that love for Memphis transferred to me. Um, my sister was five years older. She was extremely smart, overwhelmingly talented. And I always felt like I lived in her shadows. But the best thing about Constance, Constance is now deceased, was the fact that she loved horses from a very, very young age. So we were fortunate. Horses are not inexpensive, but we were able to board up the road and we had um a Green Acre stable, I believe it was called, and we had two horses. I had one with a great big Roman nose, um a strawberry, strawberry roan horse named Freckles, his real name was Scotch and Soda. He was like a great big lap dog, best thing on the planet. Um, and Constance had beautiful horses. And she eventually um was asked to buy horses for others. I thought of her as a horse with spur, and she also eventually made chaps for rodeo people. I mean, she was just this very unique woman whom I looked up to. We weren't close because we were five years apart. It took a long time for that to happen, but life was about horses. I ended up being interested in boys. I regret that. Constance had a love for horses and she stayed with horses forever.

Beverley Glazer: 3:22

That's safer. Much safer. And yep, but it sounds like it was really idyllic until you got pregnant in high school. And how did that change your life? Oh, Beverly.

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 3:39

That was high school and my friends were everything to me. I did not, I wasn't one of those kids who didn't want to go to school. Maybe I wanted to go to school for the wrong reasons. I was smart, never as smart as my sister, never ever. I made good grades. I took Latin. I, you know, I took a chance. I took Latin. I loved the majority of my teachers. These women, Beverly, some of these teachers are my friends today. At age 70, I still communicate with one of my dearest, dearest teachers. So I hope that tells you everything. Three months prior to graduation in my senior year, I was pregnant. That never happened to my mother, that never happened to my sister, it happened to me. And this was not a time in American schools where you could go in and be pregnant. There are, there were no nurseries in schools. It was not okay. If I tell you that I had a red X, a letter on my forehead, that is exactly how I felt. I remember this little teeny weeny itty-bitty counselor, guidance counselor with red hair and red lipstick telling me, this doesn't happen in our school. You cannot be a part of the school. You need to call your mother, you need to be picked up, and you're not allowed here, you're not allowed back here. And that was it. So all of those years, I had known most of my friends, of course, since I was in junior high school, many since I was younger, but I walked out of that school with my mother and I felt all the eyes that could staring upon me. And it was brutal, it was terrible.

Beverley Glazer: 5:21

Yeah. But as a teenage mom, you decided to support this child. How did you do this? Did you did you have, you know, your mom's support? Like what did you do? You were a child yourself.

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 5:37

I was a child myself. And I I did not, I was given the option of having an abortion, and I wouldn't even discuss it. That was just something that was completely dismissed. I don't know where the strong, absolute strong, burning, yearning desire was to have this child, but it was there. I did. He and I married, he was 19, I was 17, we married, we married. We tried to get through it the best way we possibly could. And then, Beverly, I planned my second child at 19. At 19, who does that? Um, I think wanting to prove that we were going to make it against the big wide world. We were going to do it. We were going to make it as a family, and we were doomed from the beginning. We were just doomed. We were too young. I my biggest regret is not being the kind of mother I know I would have been 10 or 15 years down the road. Of course, I loved my children. Of course, I loved my firstborn daughter. They were both born too early. My my daughter was two months early, my son was one month early, my secondborn child. And um, that has impacted the rest of their lives. And we know statistics, teenagers do have premature babies.

Beverley Glazer: 6:57

So but but you were a child yourself, he was also a child, and you found out also that he was bipolar as well. So it was a struggle.

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 7:09

No, no, no, no, no. This the father of my children was not diagnosed with anything. I divorced and I remarried later.

Beverley Glazer: 7:16

No, no, no.

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 7:17

The father of my children um was not diagnosed with anything. He was simply the father of my children. We did not make it in our marriage. I remarried. And um, down the road, quite some time down the road, I remarried. And in my second marriage, this very tall, well-dressed, charismatic male hid his personality for a long, long time, a good year prior to our marriage. And once we were married, he was diagnosed and he had had issues for a lifetime, I found out through him and through his mother. And he was diagnosed with bipolar and severe personality disorder. And this experience was one that has impacted myself and my children forever. It's not an experience one soon forgets.

Beverley Glazer: 8:07

No, for sure, for sure. And you were with this man for how long?

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 8:12

The marriage was brief. The marriage was brief, and it was a four-year period, maybe a little longer with the divorce involved. So that was a very short period of our life, but a very black and dark and bleak period of our life. Constantly, constantly walking on eggshells, constantly being watched. I mean, that's I'm I'm sure if there had been a tracker available those days, he would have tracked me in my car, but but followed many, many different places. And you always knew you could always have that sense. You felt that on your shoulders, that he was right around the corner, and he normally was.

Beverley Glazer: 8:47

And did you try to better yourself then? Were you working? Like what were you doing during this struggle?

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 8:53

Well, remember when I told you how much I loved school, I did have plans to go to university. My sister was the first person in our family to complete a degree in museology at UT at Knoxville. Um, I did want to go, but there was no way those plans went down the tubes when I was a young mother. So we had talked about it in my second marriage. We talked about he liked the fact that I was going to return to university, earn more money, have more earning power because he always reminded me that being married and his having the responsibility of my two children too was a burden, was big. So I went back. I returned. We'd had many conversations, and it just didn't work out. When he was left alone in the evenings after I'd worked all day and I was at the University of Memphis, um, he didn't like that. And so he appeared one night, one evening in my class. It was my second course. I'd aced microeconomics. I was in macroeconomics. I was so excited. And he just walked in with the professor's mouth dropping open and picked up my briefcase, handed it to me, told me to get my books, grabbed me by the elbow. The professor and the professor interrupted, I remember, and said, What are you doing? I'm giving a lecture. What are you doing? And he said, Go ahead. You're one student down. So he escorted me out of the class. And that was it. That was it. My goodness. When we returned home, I mean he was holding my arm really tightly and pushing me towards the car. And when we got home, he announced to the kids, I told you I would get your mother. Now she can fix this dinner. I have no words. I I had no words, but but at that time, you had, I felt as if I had to just go with the flow or things escalated at all times and got worse. So that was it. I knew I went back. I did sneak away from work and I went back to talk to the most beautiful counselor at um, it was then called Memphis State University, and his name was Carl Shando. I don't believe he's still alive, but he said, Oh, Patricia, please, please don't quit. This happens to so many of my female students. You've done too well, you've come too far. Please don't do it. And he pleaded with me. I know we were in that office together for 45 minutes, and I just said, I can't. It's I'm not capable of living under these circumstances and completing at this time. But I completed later. I went back much later.

Beverley Glazer: 11:20

Yes, you did. But during this whole time where you were being abused and you were going through this divorce and you're struggling to find your way. Did you really get out?

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 11:32

Did I really get out?

Beverley Glazer: 11:34

Yes.

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 11:36

Well, I got out of the marriage. I got divorced. I got divorced, but it was the time when I made a decision to leave the marital home with my two children, that things started escalating. And I felt as though I knew he'd been in my new little flat. I knew he'd been there. Did I call the police? No, but things had been moved, things had been taken, things had been changed. And um, how he got in, I have no idea. I always felt as if I was being watched, but this is this is when this is the most dangerous time for all women. Madness in Memphis is about all women. Once you make that choice, that decision to leave, he's lost control. He is no longer in control. So he's invested a lot of time, he's invested a lot of energy into you, and he's angry.

Beverley Glazer: 12:33

Did he ever harm you physically?

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 12:37

There were times, yes, when my neck was grabbed, when I was pushed, when I was shoved, when I was held underneath a ceiling fan that was turning, and I was twirled round and round and round above his head. He was a very tall person. Um yes, I had I've made police re I made a police report. I had bruising, I was scared to death, I was fearful, yes. Yes.

Beverley Glazer: 13:03

And through this all, as time went by, you found out that your beloved sister who'd moved to Australia had died. How did you find that?

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 13:16

Well, this this was much, much later. Um, this was much later. Yes, I had moved on. My children were grown now, they were very um young adults. I was in a relationship, and this wonderful person, I was living in sin for the first time, Beverly. You know, I'm from the deep south. My mother, you either you were married or you weren't. You were not living in sin. But I was with this wonderful human being who's now deceased too, and he called me precious patty. He had me tattooed in a black and gray tattoo from his elbow up to his shoulder. He was just this magnificent, big, huge man, shaved his head, six foot three, weighed maybe 302 pounds. I don't know. He was a big boy. But we were breaking up too. We've been together maybe 11 years, nine, nine to twelve years. I can't remember exactly. And he said, Precious Patty, precious patty. I was upstairs, he was downstairs, I was getting ready to move out, and he said, Your mommy, your beautiful mommy's on the phone. That's how he used to refer to Judy. I want you to walk down the stairs and I want you to sit before I hand you the phone. The phone. She sounds really upset. And so I sat down on the step. I was very confused, not knowing what was happening. And my mother, Beverly, do you remember the year 2000 when the whole world was supposed to change? The computers were going to come up. Yeah. Oh, yes. Well, I was jealous. I was upset because I was in Atlanta, Georgia, Duluth, Georgia. And I wanted my mother with me to celebrate the millennium. But she had already made up her mind she was going to be in Australia visiting my sister Constance for 60 days. This was halfway through the trip. And the one day, the one morning she decided to stay at home at Constance's house and not run errands with her. My sister was killed in a horrific car accident. And Beverly, she died the exact same way my maternal grandmother died. She was ejected from the car and her esophagus was crushed. And my mother was never, ever, ever the same. That was her firstborn child. Anyway, that was the phone call that my mother was trying to relay to me. And I kept thinking Constance was in the hospital. I kept thinking she'd been hurt really badly. So I made my mother say that Constance had been killed. She had died. And oh, 24 hours later, or maybe a little longer, I was on a plane to help my mother get through it all and to close my sister's estate. It was horrific.

Beverley Glazer: 15:50

Can't imagine. I can't imagine.

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 15:53

And there was this wiry little bronze-skinned, blonde-haired man who was at my sister's house opening the door for me, getting my luggage for me with this gorgeous British accent. And um he's now my husband. His name is Marcus. You know, in Australia we don't say ours, so it's Marcus, but really everyone here says Marcus, as they do in England. So out of something really, really horrible came something extraordinarily beautiful.

Beverley Glazer: 16:23

What was even more horrible, not just one horrible thing. As you went back and you were trying to work, your son also had committed suicide.

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 16:34

Yes. And Beverly, I'm going to make a small correction here. After my five years of study, we have been taught at the university that we say now died by suicide. We do our very best not to ever say commit suicide because commit is a crime, and that's how suicide was treated. Remember long ago when people died by suicide, they weren't even given a marking on a grave. You know, it was just it's true. It's it's just unbelievable and unbearable. And so you're absolutely right. Two months and one day after Constance was killed, Corey, the first male born in four generations of my beautiful teeny tiny family, opted out on life. He decided to end his life. And I couldn't think strike. I was working for a CEO of a really big company. They put together all the um, if you watched any of the Olympics at any point in time in the world, our our company, the company I worked for, wired all of the installation for the IBC International Broadcasting Centers. And I worked for the top guy of the company. And um, I couldn't think straight. I just it was to, it was a lot of grief. So I'm not a stranger to grief, as many others are in the same boat too. We all have lived through some horrific circumstances. This just felt like it was back to back. And the thing that I take away from losing Constance on the 21st of January and Corey dying on the 22nd of March in the year 2000 was the way in which people responded to the death. It was quite different. I was in the Deep South. Yes, I know that um many, many people think it's against God to take your life. Everybody has the right to their own thoughts. But when you lose someone, when someone in your circle dies that is extremely close to you, that is a hole, that is a black hole, that is a loss, that is a grief that is just insurmountable. And people didn't respond the same way. It was okay, it was acceptable for Constance to die in the car accident. It was not okay for Corey to take his own life. Well, it wasn't okay for me either, you know. But I'll never forget it. And I did have a chat with my CEO then at that time, and I said, I can't stand it. People turn around and walk away from me in the hallways at work. People have their files, they look down, they go, and he said, Patty, they just don't know what to say. It's just too much. They don't know that they have the words to respond to you. So I get it. And all I say to all people, validation, acknowledgement of a loss is the only thing you have to say. I am so sorry to hear that your son died. I am so sorry to hear that your sister was killed. I am so sorry. Just let you know that their life was worth living. They were acknowledged. Period. It's not a big ask, is it?

Beverley Glazer: 19:41

No, no, and sometimes it's no words, just a hug. It says it all. I'm there for you. I'm there for you. Yes. But let's take a look at the novel that you wrote, Madness in Memphis. Bridge the gap between all your trauma and the fiction.

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 20:04

Bridge the gap between all my trauma and the fiction. Well, I think, Beverly, once I returned to study at the University of South Australia and that did my master's at Edith Cowan, I was learning all about psychology. And this is what I wanted to do. I wanted answers about Corey. I wanted to understand behaviors and why the brain responded to things the way it did. There was so much I wanted to know after living through a very unsettling, negative, and destructive marriage, and then having my my second-born child, my only male born in four generations of my family, decide that life wasn't worth living. I had a lot of questions. So I think studying again brought back a lot of the experiences. And then I am 70, so I've listened to lots of females throughout my entire life. I call them my Memphis sisters and others. And as a counselor, I've listened to stories that I could not even imagine about the type of abuse women have lived through. And some of these women, Beverley, ended up expecting abuse daily just the same way that they prepare family meals. It was part of the daily routine. And that just wasn't acceptable to me. And I came away with this resounding respect and admiration and love for these women to find their way, to claw their way out of these extreme situations and start again. They charged through the fear. It wasn't that they found themselves to be brave, they just simply knew they had to make a decision for themselves and for their kids. And so I wanted to put together a story that I believe collectively shows what. What women go through and their fears and their experiences and their reflections into a book that made people understand what it was like, not another book filled with statistics that people seem or appear to ignore because the stats aren't going down, they're remaining pretty much the same. And I don't know where you live, but in Australia, we hear a horror story, it seems like every other day, where a woman is taken by someone who has professed to love her. So it's just a culmination of so many things that happened to me. I wanted to put those feelings into a book that resonated with others, and apparently it is.

Beverley Glazer: 22:36

And what would you tell someone who feels stuck in her past? She feels too old, she feels she cannot change. What would you tell a listener right now, listening to you?

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 22:48

Well, I'd want to shake her shoulders a little bit. I'd want to stand her up and dust her off and say, oh, girl or guy, it doesn't matter. You know, if there's something you're yearning to do, what are you waiting on? What is holding you back? Try to answer that and realize if you take the tiniest steps every single day towards something that means so much to you in your heart, you'll get there in the end. It doesn't have to be a major shift. You don't have to do something that's monumental that's going to bring upheaval in your life, but just working. My mother used to say, if you're not actively pursuing what you want to do on a daily basis, it's just a dream. You need to find another dream because you're not serious. If you're actively pursuing every day, just a few minutes a day or whatever block of time you want to carve out, you're serious and you'll get there. Age does not matter. I've have more projects going on now at age 70 than I ever had in my 40s.

Beverley Glazer: 23:50

Okay. So what you say is you're never too old. You just keep on doing it. Terrific.

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 23:56

I believe that. I do believe that. I work out more than I've ever worked out in my life. Um, sometimes I have a little slump in the afternoon. Sometimes I'm tired. I'm trying to get over nanonaps, but I also know that we have to pay attention. Our minds and our bodies are inextricably connected. If your mental health is poor, your physical health is probably going to be poor, and vice versa. You just have to pay attention to the signals. Listen to your heart and remember, remember how many times we've been told to pay attention to that gut feeling, that gut instinct? That's real, Beverly. That is real. Don't push that down. Don't shove that down. Listen to it, revere it, respect it, because our gut instincts. I didn't listen to mine. I saw a lot of red flags when I was going into that really dire second marriage. I didn't listen. I shoved those gut instincts down never again.

Beverley Glazer: 24:57

Okay. Thank you so much, Patricia. Patricia Gordon Stevens is the founder of Maxwell House Counseling, where she specializes in bereavement and trauma. She's a certified death duela and the author of Madness in Memphis, a fictional memoir that exposes the realities of domestic abuse and the determination it takes to escape it. Here are a few takeaways from this episode. Your history is not your destiny. It's never too late. You can always improve yourself. Your grief can be the fuel to help others. And there is no expiry date. Your later years can be your best years ever. If you've been relating to this episode, here are some things that you could do for yourself right now. Start writing, journal on paper. This puts a distance between you and your pain. Stop saying I'm fine. Be honest about your grief or boredom. Doing nothing is what keeps you stuck. And reach out to help others. Volunteering puts your own problems into perspective. For similar episodes on reinventing yourself in later years, check out episodes 154 and 104 of Aging with Purpose and Passion. And if you're over 50 and love to travel, the Ageless Traveler is your number one resource for lifelong travel. Discover exciting places, luxury travel for less, grandparent and solo travel, culture, cultural experiences, and meet people who make that travel easy. That's theagelistraveler.com. And so, Patricia, where can people find you? Please share your links. Where will they find you online?

Patricia Gordon Stevens: 26:45

Well, Patricia Gordon Stevens, www.patricia Gordon Stevens.com, will have a wide array of lots of things that I've done thus far, and it's all about the book. Patricia Gordon Stevens offer on Insta and Facebook, and of course, LinkedIn, the same thing, Patricia Gordon Stevens. Pretty easy to find. Stevens with a V.

Beverley Glazer: 27:05

Okay. And so, my friends, what's next for you? Are you tired of spinning your wheels at three in the morning? Get the stuck to unstoppable roadmap and receive my weekly insights in your inbox every weekend. That resource is in the show notes too. I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions so you can connect with me, Beverley Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook. That's Women Over50 Rock. And thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please subscribe and help us spread the word by dropping a review and send it off to friend. And remember, you only have one life, so live it with purpose and passion.

Announcer: 27:51

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, reinventimpossible.com. And while you're there, join our newsletter. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion. And celebrate life.