Welcome And Stella’s Unconventional Bio

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

Have you ever felt that your most exciting years are behind you? Well, get ready to change that thought. I'm Beverly 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. So meet Stella Foss. Stella is a biologist who traded FDA submissions to write erotic fiction later in life. Stella is a master in reinvention. While building her professional career and raising four children, including a son, requiring 24-hour care, Stella's reflection on evolution also goes from moving past a traditional marriage and a divorce to a long-term domestic partnership with a woman and then finding a husband who is her exceptional life partner at the age of 62. So get ready to step into a chapter where midlife is not invisible, and true love that meets you exactly where you are. Welcome, Stella.

Stella Fosse 1:42

Well, thank you. What a lovely introduction. I have to say, I well, except one thing. So he's not actually my husband. Well, which may pretty close.

San Diego Roots To New York Shock

Beverley Glazer 1:59

Yes, pretty close. Pretty close, pretty close. And it's 10 years, so it's not going anywhere. So tell me, you grew up in San Diego, and you said back then it was like a one-horse town, which I can't think of San Diego like that. But what was it like back then when you were growing up?

Stella Fosse 2:20

There were about 100,000 people in San Diego when I was growing up. And by the time I was in high school, 100,000 people a year were moving to San Diego. It really changed a lot. When I was a little kid, there was no Highway 5. There was uh no SeaWorld. If you drove, there was a Disneyland starting when I was about five. And if you drove from San Diego to Anaheim to get to Disneyland, you were driving on a little road that went through Orange Groves. So that's that's what it was like. It was really, really different.

Beverley Glazer 2:58

And and it must have been very different also when you went from there to New York City to study. That's true. What was it like for that that kid, basically? You're just a young student.

Stella Fosse 3:13

It was quite startling. I remember the first time the temperature really dipped when I was living in New York City. I couldn't believe it. I felt like I'd walked into a freezer by mistake. Because in San Diego, if it's cold, at least back then, if it was cold, it was 62. And if it was hot, it was 72. Of course, temperature ranges have shifted since then. But New York City, what a complete change. I couldn't believe how busy it was all night long, how dirty it was. It was it was dirty back then. Um, it was quite different than it is now. When I go back to visit, I'm amazed at what it looks like these days.

Beverley Glazer 3:59

Yes, it's a wonderful cultural city today. It's just thriving. But still, the transition was huge. And you went to some pretty top schools there.

Stella Fosse 4:10

I went to got an MBA at Columbia. That was before I went into biology. I was in finance. And uh and yeah, yeah, Colombia was quite the change.

Beverley Glazer 4:25

And not only that, you got married and you had twins. I did, yes.

Stella Fosse 4:34

And how did that change your life? Well, it changed my life completely. My twins were undiagnosed. They were the second twin wasn't identified till after the first was born. And my physician had induced labor thinking that I my my due dates that I'd picked were wrong. He induced labor two months early. And so my boys were uh my boys needed a lot of special care. And one of my sons, uh, as a result of that, has a lifelong disability. So um, so going from being childless to having twins where one required a lot of special care was an enormous change.

Announcer 5:22

Yeah.

Beverley Glazer 5:23

Uh a huge change for any family, any young couple. Yeah. And you had this son now that needed 24-hour care. Were you the sole caregiver?

Stella Fosse 5:36

Pretty much. My then husband was in a high-powered legal uh firm and really devoted to his work. Um, and so I really was it. We had no family out there, and my friends were all working women who had their own lives. So uh, so yeah, I was I was it. And that must have been very hard for you. It was such a change. I I was not the kind of young woman who had babysat as a kid. I had no real experience with children at all, much less a special needs child. So I I had a lot to learn and I I learned it in a hurry, but it was uh it was a steep learning curve. Oh, for sure.

Beverley Glazer 6:29

And you and your husband decided to move though, because New York City was not the place to raise a special needs child.

Berkeley Move And Disability Rights Hub

Stella Fosse 6:38

Yes. We realized that my son was going to be a wheelchair rider, and New York City at that time, it may have changed a lot in terms of accessibility, but it was not a very accessible environment. And we moved to the East Bay um and really didn't realize we were moving to the Mecca of the disability rights movement when we arrived in Berkeley. Um, so that was very lucky. And in fact, my son, my son still lives in Berkeley. He's really at the heart of the disability rights movement now. Yeah, so he's thriving because of it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So that was lucky. That was a that was a lucky break. He is uh I believe his house is about a block from the Ed Roberts Center. Ed Roberts was one of the one of the key figures in the early years of the disability rights movement. So my son has access to all kinds of programs there. Um that center didn't exist when we arrived, but they built it while he was a young man. Yeah, terrific.

Beverley Glazer 7:45

And then, though, you decided to have another daughter. Did that not concern you?

Surprise Daughter And Ehlers Danlos Discovery

Stella Fosse 7:53

It wasn't exactly a decision, it was more of a surprise. It was one of the best surprises I've ever had. Um, yes, I I wondered how that was gonna go. Um, and it turned out that my daughter was actually born with she had it turns out we didn't know this back then, but my family has a um a genetic difference. It's called Eller Danlow syndrome. I had never heard of that at this point. Um, but it turns out that that probably affected um how my how I gave birth. It probably had impacts um uh certainly for my daughter. My daughter at some point in her gestation put her one of her feet behind her head and left it there, and she was born with one of her knees bent completely backwards. And she was in uh serial casting and then in a brace and uh that kept bending her knee in the right direction as she grew. And uh she's she's fine, but it was it was an interesting process. I got I got really involved with helping to design the particular brace, braces and slings that were used for her care in her early months. Um and that was quite successful. So yeah, she's she's a flexible person, I'm a flexible person, my boys are flexible, and my mother was flexible. It probably goes way back up the line.

Beverley Glazer 9:39

Well, you were really flexible again because you moved again and you moved into a domestic partnership with a woman, and you still had children and you still had your own home. And and what was it like? Was there a complete transition there now? What was it like for you?

Stella Fosse 9:57

Um, that was I had never really I had thought that I was a straight person. So to get involved with a woman was it was a massive change. And again, living in the East Bay made it relatively easy. There are a lot of lesbians and bisexual women in the East Bay. Um Oakland, California, for many years was was kind of the the the lesbian equivalent of the gay men scene over in San Francisco. Um Oakland in those days was a really inexpensive place to live, not like it is now. Um so yeah, that was that was a massive change, really changed my perspective. Um it was an adjustment for my kids too. So yeah, that was yeah, that was quite the phase of life and went on for uh as you said, 20 years we were together.

Beverley Glazer 11:03

Yes, and so it was it was different. It was um also it was a big family, and you decided to adopt between the two of you as well. So there was you brought another child in. Tell us about that.

Domestic Partnership And Family Expansion

Chickens, Science, And The Year Of The Mite

Stella Fosse 11:21

My my then partner had always wanted to have a baby. She was she was she's someone who's very child-oriented, and in fact, is a is now a therapist working with uh with young children. So she was eager to take on the stepmother role with my kids, and also still wanted by by then my kids were um my kids were a little older, they weren't babies anymore, and she really wanted to have a baby, and I thought that was a great idea. And we ended up adopting from an orphanage in Hanoi and a beautiful little girl, and uh so yeah, we ended up raising four kids together and chickens. Tell me about those chickens, oh yeah, the chickens. Well, so uh my then partner and my youngest um decided to join 4H, which is probably probably most folks know that that's that's uh sort of a home agricultural kind of association. Also a lot of farm kids belong to 4-H. So they decided we we had a we had what was for for Oakland was a pretty good sized lot. We had a quarter, this is we we owned a house in Oakland back then, we had a quarter of an acre, and they ended up uh bringing home four chickens from the county fair, and we built a hen house in the backyard, and that was that was fine. And about a year later they decided to get more babies, and because they were concerned, my my not my daughter, but my my uh then partner was concerned about how the older chickens would accommodate them, they ended up uh living in our family room for a while over my objections. Oh, yes, and there's a reason why it's uh in in Oakland, I believe you're supposed to have 500 feet between the chickens in your house. It turns out there's a really good reason for that. Chickens, it turns out, I didn't know this at the time, carry can carry a number of different kinds of ectoparasites, including bed bugs, which these did not have, and including uh there's a a red mite, the derminicus galini, which they can carry. And we uh and and the one of the interesting things biologically, by then, you know, by then I by this point I had a master's degree in biology and I had been working in biotech for a number of years, um, as you said, doing FDA submissions. So so I had a background in biology. So so when it turned out that uh these baby chicks were carrying something that was biting me, but not really biting anybody else in the house. Um from my standpoint as a biologist, this was a really interesting puzzle. From my standpoint as a human being, it was a complete pain in the patootie because they're this these bugs are nocturnal. They when they're so I was basically not sleeping. And when they pick when they're when they're living, say in a hen house, which at this point these weren't, they pick a favorite chicken, and they all these these little bugs all bite the same bird, bring it down so they can feast on it without it running away.

Beverley Glazer 15:23

I I am laughing as I'm listening to this, but it is so not funny.

Stella Fosse 15:29

Okay, if you happen to be that bird. If you happen to be that bird, and you know, in retrospect, the whole thing is a bit amusing, although, you know, I I still remember what it was like, but it is funny. So I was the designated bird, basically. So so the thing is with a um with a chicken, if you have enough of these these mites, they can they can bring the bird down to the point where it's immobilized and eventually, you know, eventually it dies. If you're a farmer and you find a dead chicken in your hen house that's really light, you pretty much know what you've got because it's been bled to death, right? Well, with a person, you know, we're completely different. We we have so much more mass, we have so much more blood, they're never gonna immobilize a person, no matter how many are on you. Completely different, you know, uh surface area to body mass ratio, right? So so we're just gonna wander around feeling miserable. So uh, so yeah, that was a whole sojourn. It took, it took a year to get rid of them. Um and if you're the one person in a house who's being bitten, it's really hard to convince the other people in your house that there's anything wrong. For sure. So that was that. That was the that was the end of the domestic partnership. Um, you know, my my then partner being a psychologist was she was steeped in the um in a whole different way of looking at this. She knew all about um, you know, people who have uh who are withdrawing from a drug addiction, let's say, and they have delusions of having something crawling on their skin. She knew about that. She didn't, she wasn't sitting up all night like I was reading medical journal articles from China where that translated. I don't know China, I couldn't read Chinese, but but in China, this is a much bigger problem because so many people in the uh out in out in the countryside live in very close proximity to livestock. And so there's a much bigger problem there as it happens. So there's a lot been written in China about this. So I was reading about it, figuring out how to get rid of them, developing my own protocols to get rid of them, and she was on a completely different track. So anyway, we ended up splitting up, and that was actually my first book under a pen name. Yes, it was a book called The Year of the Might. And it's a great title. It's a great title. I mean, what else could you call a book about that? It takes a year to get rid of them. And why the pen name? Oh, oh, my my then partner was not happy that I was writing and and asked me to uh disguise uh disguise my identity, disguise, you know, have it be in a different place, the whole thing. I ended up uh combining the three older kids into one character. So I disguised it as best I could. By this point, you know, who cares? It's many years later.

Beverley Glazer 19:08

And when did Dirty Old Woman that reading series, when did that come in? Yeah, yeah.

Writing Late In Life And Dirty Old Women

Building Community And Aphrodite’s Pen

Stella Fosse 19:15

So um, so by the by this point, by the point when uh my my partner and I split up, I was in my late 50s and I was starting to think about what I wanted to do after I retired. And really, it didn't take a lot of thought because I I'd been I'd been writing submissions to FDA for 30 years. I had my longest one was my height stacked up. It was 32 volumes, it was five feet six inches. So I'd been doing that stuff forever, but all that submission work ended up in file drawers at FDA, having been read by maybe two or three people. It was all confidential. I wanted to write something that other folks would read. And a friend of mine, whose pen name is Lynx Cannon, came to me and said she was starting a reading series at a bookstore in Oakland and inviting her friends who were writers to write who are writers who were over 50 to write erotic stories and come and read them before a live audience. And I thought that sounded absolutely terrifying, but I reminded myself that I had promised myself I was going to get involved in uh writing something that people would actually listen to. So I decided to take that challenge. And there were, there's a group of us, probably six or eight of us. Every month we'd go uh to this bookstore, and the bookstore was always packed with people for this evening reading, and we'd read these stories, and it was really pretty scary to do this, but it was also really fun. And it surprised the the audience was men and women, um, people in their 20s to people in their 70s, and there was a cohort of young women in their 30s, and they would come up to us after a reading and say, Thank you for doing this. The message we're getting from the culture is this aspect of life is done when you're 40. Right. And and so so it seemed like we were doing uh in in a funny way a sort of a public service. So that was really fun. And then we then from there we started a writing group called Elder Rica, which which is still going. We still get together. Now we're you know, we're not all in the same geographical area anymore. So we We do this on Zoom, but we get together and write uh all these years later. And I ended up writing a book with help from these folks because people contributed stories, but it's called Aphrodite's Pen, The Power of Writing Erotica After Midlife. It was published by North Atlantic Books in Berkeley. And that book tells, among many other things, tells all about how to start a writing group like that. So I think it's a fun, it's a fun thing to do. It pushes back on our own internal ageism. If we publish these stories, pushes back on society's ageism. It's actually a really fun way to break down some of these stereotypes.

Beverley Glazer 22:54

And to empower yourself and to empower others in the process. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have this collection, Rock On Power, Sex, and Money. Let's talk about that. After 60. After 60.

Essays Into “Rock On: Power, Sex, And Money After 60”

Stella Fosse 23:11

Let's not forget that, right? Yeah, yeah. So uh so in addition to writing novels and short stories, I have I have now a couple of novels out and a collection of short stories and uh two books now on writing, encouraging and empowering uh women of a certain age to write and publish stories, erotica romance. Um I have been blogging now since my early 60s. And uh I'm now also on Substack where I publish uh essays and short articles too. And I realized when I turned 70 that I had been doing this for almost 10 years, and that the essays together really told the story of how to, at least for me, how to how to lead a creative and empowered life in that decade. And then I went to a wonderful workshop by led by a woman named Patrice Gopo, who has published two uh books of essays. And her workshop was all about how to take that material, all that raw material that you've been writing, and put it into a cohesive, coherent collection. And I thought, wow, wouldn't that be great to be able to do that? So I started following her ideas. She had a whole recipe for how to do this. You know, you you collect your essays together, you put them in a spreadsheet, and in the columns you put word count and you put all the different things that the different essays connect to. And I ended up with 10 themes: creativity, purpose, um, spirit, uh, legacy, uh, sexuality, body, beauty. It's you know, a number of different themes that had kept coming up in different ways in these essays over the years. So I ended up putting together an organization of essays under these themes. And of all the books I've written, I think that's uh that's the one that really resonates most with people. So I'm really uh happy about that. That came out last August.

Finding A Life Partner At 62

Beverley Glazer 25:41

Yeah, wonderful. Congratulations. Thank you. Let's talk about your exceptional life partner that you found at 62. You're your partner, your husband. My own husband. Yes, exactly. Um, you're living the happily ever after story, and now you're both publishers, and uh beautiful. Yeah.

Starting Baobo Books And Creative Freedom

Stella Fosse 26:10

Yeah, yeah. So so I I uh met Graham when I was 62 and he was 64, and now I'm 72 and he's 74. So we um yeah, we met online. People have terrible things to say about meeting people online, and it is true there are a lot of frogs out there, and you have to kiss a few to find a prince. There are princes out there. Um, Graham is uh retired uh from a career as a uh VP of marketing for a software company and still has his own company that he uh with a with a business partner runs down in the Bay Area. And because he is both an IT guy and a marketing guy, he came with me when I when I had my meetings, we were we were already together by the time Aphrodite's pen published. He came with me to the meetings with the marketing folks, and when we left, he said, you know, we could we could do this, we could start our own imprint, and instead of getting this much in royalties, you'd get this much in revenue for for your books. And he did that. He started, we have an imprint called Baobo Books. Baobo, by the way, was uh a character in Greek mythology. She was a body older woman in Greek mythology. Um, so so that's our imprint, and and he's been publishing our books, my books ever since. Fabulous. Uh in between trips to Europe, he he's uh he's a an ardent traveler. We do a lot of last year we were in Europe three times.

Beverley Glazer 28:04

So so yeah. Sounds wonderful. Yeah, your best life. Yeah, yeah, really. What's one message that you want to leave with all of us?

Core Message: Follow Your Bliss

Resources, Links, And Closing Reflections

Stella Fosse 28:21

Um just enjoy yourself, live your life. Don't, you know, don't don't let the bastards what is what is that? Nolocarborundum, what is it? I no nolate carbourum. Don't let the bastards drag you down. Find find your bliss. The wonderful thing about this part of life is that we get to set aside all those messages that we were raised with. I'm thinking about growing up in the 1950s and what that was like in terms of what we as young women were told we could and could not do. Um and you know, you don't have to believe that stuff. You just don't. And you get to figure out how you want to spend these marvelous years of our lives. There may be a creative passion you set aside uh when you grew up and got a grown-up job. Maybe you loved playing with dinosaurs, maybe you maybe you loved gardening, maybe you loved uh, I hope you didn't love chickens, but maybe you did. I mean, you know, there's so many things. And and of course, if you have a passion for writing, we have so much more access now that there is in depublishing. There's so much we can be doing. Yeah, and yeah. Yeah, thank you.

Beverley Glazer 30:01

What you're saying, what you're saying is follow your bliss. Follow your bliss. Yes, and do what you want and let nothing hold you back. Thank you. Thank you, Stella. Stella Stella Foss is an author, a biologist, and an advocate for empowerment in older women. In her 60s, she left a successful career in biotech to become an author full-time. Her sixth book, Rock on Power, Sex, and Money After 60, draws on her background in healthcare, finance, authorship to chart a tantalizing path for older women. You can find Stella's essays on her website and a guest essay by a woman over 50 every month. Here are a few takeaways from this episode. Reinvention has no deadline. You can always find your true calling. Sexual desire does not expire. Relationships aren't only for the young. And your best chapter in life can always be ahead of you. If you've been relating to this episode, here are a few things that you could do for yourself right now. Follow your joy, buy a gourmet coffee for yourself or take a walk in nature. Do what makes you feel alive today and unfollow any social media account that makes you feel irrelevant. These sites don't deserve your time. For similar episodes on discovering your best life in later years, check out episodes 156 and 169 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 a lifelong travel. Just discover exciting places and luxury travel for less and grandparents and solo travel, culture and culinary experiences, and meet the people who make travel easy. That's theagelistraveler.com. And so, Stella, where can people find you online? And please share your links with all of us.

Stella Fosse 32:16

Of course. So my website is www.stellafoss.com. I'm also on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And also I write a column on Substack that's called Creative Crones with Stella Foss. Terrific.

Beverley Glazer 32:38

And if you didn't catch those links, they will be on reinventimpossible.com. That's my website. And they're also in the show notes. 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 your suggestions. So please connect with me, Beverly Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women over 50 on Facebook. And I want to thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please subscribe and help us spread the word by dropping a review, sending it off to a friend. And remember, you only have one life, so live it with purpose and passion.

Announcer 33:34

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.