Mom-of-Five + Author Jodie Patterson Talks Radical Parenting, Identity, and Beauty
Show Snapshot:
When Jodie Patterson’s three-year-old Penelope said, “Mama, I’m not a girl. I’m a boy,” that declaration set her family on a path of discovery and seismic shifts, one that she chronicles in her books (The Bold World and Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope.)
In today’s show, Patterson talks mothering, gender, and navigating change with an open heart and mind. After multiple careers (in fashion, nightlife, and beauty), raising five children, a TED Talk, and two books, Patterson knows a thing or two about traversing uncharted waters and architecting a life with grace and style. Plus, she shares her under the radar beauty finds.
In This Episode We Cover:
Jodie and Penelope’s journey
“Mothering” as a leadership quality
Rethinking “mothering” and “parenting” as a heteronormative, cisgender, white, middle class concept. “Mothering” is for all genders, races, and socioeconomic groups.
Jodie’s “Lab Method” for navigating family strife, differences, and dynamics
Aiming for “decorum” over “agreement” as a family goal
Raising activists
The duality of beauty and aging
Beauty picks that fuel Jodie’s morning and evening skincare regimens
Quotable:
For the first time, I asked the question, "Why are you so angry? What's really wrong?" And it was like, I'd asked the million-dollar question. Penelope opened up, tears started flowing. And Penelope said, "Well, Mama, because everyone thinks I'm a girl and I'm not, I am a boy.
My mothering takes the shape of architectural building. I'm trying to build the family, build the child. For me, it's a form of leadership. I think that our boardrooms could use a little mothering. Politics can use some mothering. Communities can use mothering. Like, how do we dwell together as diverse people?
Snackable Smarts:
Asking the question, "What's wrong?" What's really wrong?” can be the million-dollar question.
When something is new, confounding, do the research. Ask the questions, read the research, devour the books, attend the conferences, look to others who have walked before you. Put in Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000” hours.
Mothering is a form of leadership. Practice it with your family, and bring it to the boardroom, politics, your community.
Mothering is for all genders, all races, all socioeconomic backgrounds. Mothering is not just for heteronormative, cisgender, white, middle class families. Not just for biological families. Mothering is also for families of choice.
Use the "Lab Method" to navigate disagreement. The rules are simple. Everyone is on equal footing. Whoever has the proverbial “microphone” can speak as long as they wish. You cannot interrupt and it's not a debate. The goal is to discuss with decorum. Not to agree.
Raising kids to be activists means that they're not always pretty, not perfect, and sometimes not even polite. Raising activists requires letting kids experience life and letting them develop really strong opinions. And having your kids voice those opinions with decorum. That's a job well done.
As we get older, we get smarter and cooler. And more flexible.
I know my body and I have a pretty good relationship with her. I use the mirror for mirror work and very little for the vanity stuff. If we can use the mirror in a different way, it actually will know make us stronger, make us better, make us happier with ourselves.
Word of Mouth. Jodie’s Product Picks:
Night ritual for body
Morning ritual for face
More Resources:
Follow Jodie’s work with the Human Rights Campaign.
Jodie’s TED Talk. Gender is Obsolete.
Episode Links:
Jodie’s Books.
1. The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation
2. Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope
Jodie gets inspiration from Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers: The Story of Success
Katie gets inspiration from Humans of New York.
Follow Jodie:
Instagram: @JodiePatterson
Transcript
Katie Fogarty (00:04):
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women on life after 50, who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host, Katie Fogarty.
For many women, the most seismic shift in identity as we move along the human continuum is not from baby, to girl, to woman, but rather from one into two, as you first become a mother. Overnight, your atoms rearrange, and your priorities and world shift. Of course not every woman becomes a mother. And not every mother experiences the transformation the same way.
My guest today is author, activist, and mother of five, Jodie Patterson. When Jodie's three-year-old son, Penelope said, "Mama, I'm not a girl. I'm a boy." His declaration set her family on a path of discovery and transformation. One that she chronicled with uncommon beauty in her book, The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation. And Jodie went through her own transformation, moving from beauty entrepreneur to becoming a globally recognized activist, and Chair of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, our nation's largest LGBTQ organization. And she's a sought-after speaker on topics of radical parenting, identity and, gender. Welcome, Jodie.
Jodie Patterson (01:11):
Hi, thank you for having me.
Katie (01:13):
Jodie, for listeners who have not yet read your book or heard your story, can you share a snapshot of your family journey?
Jodie (01:20):
Oh yeah. So, I'm not even sure if it's a snapshot that I can share. Just to give you some perspective, I have five children and so the journey is so deep. But essentially, I was concerned with my third child. Being a mom of multiples, I know that children differ in many ways; how they learn and how they develop, and their personality types. But my third child, whom we named Penelope, was always within the first two years, crying and screaming with bed-wetting and reoccurring nightmares, and nail-biting. Penelope had even sort of a bully at home, pushing siblings and then pushing friends at the park. And most of Penelope's language within the first and second year was protest. It was always, "No, no mama." No, no to everything. Just basic things like getting dressed, brushing hair, brushing teeth.
And as a parent, I really tried to come up with a solution to fix the problem. I did everything. I thought, "Maybe we need more love for this middle child? Maybe we forgot to read enough stories." I carved out time just to be alone with Penelope. There was a period where I thought, "Okay, tough love." So, maybe let me try spanking, which is not what I like to do. But nothing really worked. Penelope insisted on cutting his hair. "I'm wearing blue jeans, wearing boots instead of Mary-Janes.” And those little switches, you know, softened Penelope’s face a bit, but they weren't really getting at the root of the problem.
One day, I remember it was when he was almost three, Penelope stormed through the house, tearing things down, pushing his big brother over, pushing blocks. And I just picked Penelope up and took him out of the bedroom and sat on the floor. And I, for the first time asked the question, "What's wrong?" And I just said, "Why are you so angry? What's really wrong?" And it was like, I'd asked the million-dollar question. Penelope opened up, tears started flowing. And Penelope said, "Well, Mama, because everyone thinks I'm a girl and I'm not, I am a boy."
Katie (03:55):
What was your first reaction to that? How did that land?
Jodie (04:00):
You know, I thought it was my fault. I thought, "Wow, here's a young girl who doesn't want to be a girl." So, it landed horribly on me. I thought I had forgotten to raise a strong feminist. And that sounds funny to people because she was my child. He was only three at the time. Penelope was only three at the time, but that's when my mom started teaching me about women. Strong women who've changed the world. Shirley Chisholm. Billie Jean King, Nina Simone. Audre Lord, Dr. Maya Angelou. These were women that I grew up knowing about. And I really in that split second I was angry with myself for not raising a proud feminist.
Now, of course, years later, I understand Penelope to be something entirely different. And that took a lot of time. In that moment, we stayed in that room for a few hours and Penelope just opened up and told me everything that I had not understood before.
Jodie (05:03):
He said, "Mama, I love you, but I don't want to be you. I want to be Papa. I don't want tomorrow to come because tomorrow my body will look like yours." And he even said, "I want a doctor to make me a peanut." And those are, I mean, I'd never heard anything like that before. So, you ask how it landed. It hit all the wrong notes, I think for me. And it took years to get to a point where I am now, but I do recall leaving that room with Penelope and not wanting to use the word "she" again.
Katie (05:38):
You heard what he was saying. A minute ago you said, it took a number of years to get to where I am now. How did you evolve your understanding of gender? How did you evolve your understanding of your third child and what your family unit was going to look like when you learned this information?
Jodie (06:01):
Well, I'm a reader. I geek out on Malcolm Gladwell and he says, "10,000 hours" and I've read many of his books. So, I just went and did what 10,000 hours can do. Malcolm Gladwell says 10,000 hours, and you can become an expert. And so, I went on the internet and I googled the word transgender. I looked up and studied stories of other families who were raising trans kids. Jazz Jennings is a very well-known trans teen, a trans kid at the time. And now she's a young adult, young woman. And I just really tried to see the stories of people who identify as trans. So I did that.
I also looked up doctors and listened to what the doctors were saying, and the hospitals and the therapists and the psychologists. I looked. I invited myself to conferences. National conferences happen almost every month around the topic of gender and gender diversity. So, I sat in the back row of many conferences, feeling very awkward. But I was really trying to understand something that I had never even given any thought to, because I felt if I didn't, I would not be in the same place where my son was. And I want to be in that same world where my son was. And so, although I didn't necessarily, I would not have chosen this or even predicted this, I was in this moment. And so I thought, okay, let me just learn as much as possible. Because it was really about undoing all of these negative stereotypes that I had subconsciously built up around folks that don't fall into a very neat category of girl and boy.
Katie (07:49):
And just opening your mind and learning all that you didn't know. I'm inspired by the fact that you turned to books and that you put yourself into these spaces. When we spoke earlier, you talked about how you bring the lens of mothering into every space that you go to. Can you talk a little bit about what that means and what mothering means to you?
Jodie (08:12):
So, I'm a mom of five. And it's just my personality type to be very much a part of my home. I've always had a job. I've been an entrepreneur for years. I've traveled the world. I have been in the fashion industry, the music industry, the beauty industry, the nightlife industry, and throughout all of that, I've been mothering. You know, making babies, birthing babies, nursing, babies, raising babies. So, I found when I looked back over time, most of my decisions, if not all, have been in relationship to my children. So, the jobs I choose oftentimes connect with where I am with my family at that moment. How I vote, how I marry, how I divorce, where we live. These are all decisions that I do based on my kids. And, I see mothering as building.
So ironically, as deep as I am into motherhood, I'm not a snuggly, soft mother after a certain point in their lives. Like around eight years old, I'm like, okay, kids, you gotta be either on the path or off the path. You've got to really fully invest in this family. And so my mothering takes the shape of more like architectural building.
I'm trying to build the family, build the child. And so, I look at it the same way. For me, it's a form of leadership and I try to bring that, not only to my kids, because I practice it every day with five children, but the lessons that I've learned and the skills that I've honed in on with my family, I bring that to my jobs as well. So, I bring it to the boardroom of the Human Rights Campaign. I think that our boardrooms could use a little mothering. Politics can use some mothering. Communities can use mothering. Like how do we dwell together as diverse people, right?
Katie (10:08):
And give each other space and build each other up rather than tearing each other down. I feel like we have a bit of a tear-down culture that happens. And mothering is the antithesis of that. It's supporting, nurturing, building, empowering. How do men fit into the equation? Is mothering something that can be done..is it gender-neutral? Or is it just a feminine quality?
Jodie (10:36):
Absolutely, gender-neutral. So, I use the word “mother” because it's something I know. Well, and I like the sound of it. But it is when most people speak of parenting and mothering, there's an assumption that we're talking about heteronormative adults. Two big adults, heteronormative adults, raising some small people. Thinking usually it falls within white culture; it falls within upper middle-class culture. We have literally, subconsciously, and consciously thought of parenting and mothering as heteronormative, cisgender, almost even white, middle-class culture.
But when I talk about it, I'm not talking about that at all. So, for me, mothering is a type of leadership quality that can be used by all genders, all races, anyone from any socioeconomic background. And I'm not speaking to biological families. So, it could be families of choice. I've seen some of the best mothering, done by queer folks, trans men, trans women, bi, young people, mothering other young people, right. With zero dollars, no budget. So, this is just, again, I want to take it off of heteronormative and cis culture. And I want to say that mothering can be done by people who want to be leaders and build up communities.
Katie (12:04):
And for our listeners who want to bring the spirit of mothering and build a spirit of architecture to their families and their communities, you have in your book Chapter 19. In it, you talk about your "Lab method," which is a tool that you can use to put mothering into practice. Can you walk our listeners through what that tool is that method is and how you use it for your own family?
Jodie (12:32):
Yes. So the "Lab" is something that came up, it's almost subversive parenting, right? Sometimes, we have to come up...
Katie (12:39):
...That's the best kind!
Jodie (12:44):
So, in my house, we argue about so many things. I mean, it's like, who gets the front seat in the car? It's...
Katie (12:50):
I'm happy, I'm not alone. I'm so happy, I'm not alone with this....
Jodie (12:54):
Yeah. It's intense, right? And then the fights become so dramatic and so mean-spirited because things, these things matter, especially when you start adding more people in a space. And I see that in my house, but you can imagine what that means for a dense city like New York. When there are a lot of people space is important. Thought is important. You know?
So anyway, I've created something called the "Lab" and whenever we have a disagreement, we “Lab it out.” And the rules of the "Lab" are very simple. We sit someplace on the floor so we're all level. Whoever has the proverbial microphone can speak as long as they wish. You cannot interrupt and it's not a debate. So it's not tit for tat. You just have to speak your truth when you have the microphone. So, as an example, one kid, who's a scientist, who's my 14-year-old son, from as far back as I can remember, he's been saying, "Look, I respect my brother. I respect you. Penelope. I'll use the right pronouns. And I believe that you can do anything in life that you want, but scientifically speaking, anatomically speaking, you're a girl. And we just have to really be honest with each other and atomically, you're a female and there's no science." He says, there's no science to prove gender diversity or gender fluidity or gender nonconformity. It's just a person's choice to be, you know, to act differently.
Katie (14:17):
And how does Penelope react to this?
Jodie (14:21):
Well, you know, it's hard to hear for all of us because I know the science is incorrect. I know there is science to prove gender diversity, but here's a 14-year-old saying what he wants, where he's speaking his truth. And so when Penelope gets up, when it's Penelope's turn and Penelope has the microphone, Penelope says, "Well, brother, it's not always about science, right? It's not so science-y all the time. And I'm not an opinion. I'm a fact. I'm here. Transgender people exist and I've proven it, period." And besides, he says, "You know, God has made me this way. This is the way God has made me." Cassius, when he gets the microphone back, he says, "Well, God isn't proven either."
Katie (15:06):
Cassius is going to be the captain of the debate team.
Jodie (15:09):
Yeah. And so, the conversation then goes into religion, right? So if there's a lot of talking going on and each kid gets a long time, I have five kids; so that can be three hours. It can be two-hours. It could be four hours. But what's interesting is what happens after we've exhausted the conversation in about an hour, the kids say, "This is so boring. Want to just play basketball instead? Do you want to have some dinner?" And so, they end up living life together, and playing basketball, and eating dinner, even when they don't agree.
So, the goal that I've set now, is to not agree. The goal is not to agree. The goal is to discuss with decorum. Because after that, after you've discussed it and each person has said what they believe, and we've gone around, and around, and around with these ideas, the big idea doesn't seem so big anymore. And the foreign person doesn't seem so foreign anymore. It's just another concept. And so, we've learned that.
Katie (16:13):
I love the fact that you have not made this results-oriented. Like, we need to achieve a particular outcome or there needs to be a resolution, but it's more conversation, and openness, and ability to be in dialogue and just share what your perspective is, without hoping it's going to produce a certain outcome. Because I feel like we live in a very outcome-focused society and we're sometimes too busy trying to get to a certain end result and we're missing these nuanced opportunities to truly understand each other.
Jodie (16:46):
And they want results. I want results, but we have not been able to find them. So, if we...
Katie (16:53):
But it doesn't prevent you from having conversations, which is so beautiful, just to keep on interacting, engaging with one another. And I loved also when you use the word decorum because that is such a fabulous word that is in such short supply in our culture today and in our politics, and the way we interact with people as humans.
Penelope obviously upended how you thought about your family in particular and gender more broadly, but I'm curious, your family has had other changes too. You mentioned having five kids. I know two of them are living independently now, studying abroad. How have you navigated the dynamics of seeing your family change from being a small unit at home, to having it shaped and changed by having kids move on? How do you keep people together?
Jodie (17:49):
It's really tough. My natural, inner energy and instinct is to gather people. I like this concept of going back to architecture and mothering as building. There's something called the mudsill that sits at the bottom of a home that stabilizes everything. And I think of mothering as the mudsill, right? And so my instinct is to stabilize, to gather. I do these 50-person Thanksgiving dinners. We all sleepover. We crash on the floor. I like family sit-down dinners at the end of the night, even if we're arguing. So, I love to gather my kids and their friends, and friends of friends.
But as you know, as life goes on, you realize it's just not a series of cozy little gatherings. And in fact, there are some really devastating blows, where you separate. Some of those blows, some of those separations are great like the kid goes to college. And some of those separations are devastating, like a divorce. I've been divorced twice. But over the years, my family has changed shape. I have one daughter who lives in Switzerland. I have another son who only lives a few miles away, but our lives are so different that we might as well be in Africa, in Europe. And my three little ones are getting older, and they want to spend less time with me. They want more time on their own. They want, as my kid said, "I want complete independence." And he was 10. He was 10 when he said that, "Complete." So, I'm pained every time my kids take a step further away from me, and at the same time, I'm trying to nurture that. I'm really trying to raise...
Katie (19:32):
Absolutely, it's such a struggle.
Jodie (19:33):
...Independent thinkers.
Katie (19:34):
The push and the pull between wanting your kids close, wanting to them to remain a certain age. And when they snuggle, my youngest still gives me hugs, he's such a cuddler. But also the dynamic of encouraging them to grow, raising them to move beyond you. I think it's one of the hardest aspects of parenting.
Jodie (20:01):
To put it in perspective for myself. Because I can cry myself to bed, to sleep every night, sad about my kids not wanting to spend time with me. But what I've tried to remind myself as I'm raising my kids to be activists. And this particular time has heightened to that and highlighted that. But I've always felt that way because I was raised by activists. I had a lot of social activists in my family, black civil rights activists in my family. And so I've been raising my kids to be activists. And that means that they're not pretty, they're not perfect and they're not even polite most of the time.
Katie (20:38):
You're very honest.
Jodie Patterson (20:40):
They can be really mouthy kids. But my goal is to raise activists. And when I keep reminding myself that, when I lie in my bed by myself and my kids are doing their own thing, I remind myself, “You're raising powerful activists. So, let them experience all of this life and let them develop really strong opinions and let them be able to voice those opinions with decorum.” And that's that to me is a job well done. So yeah, I'm a little lonely, sometimes. Fifty years old, nobody to snuggle with.
Katie (21:13):
Raising kids to have opinions, to share them, is something that I think most parents aspire to, but I guess not all. And it is something that we've struggled with in my own house as well. When you raise kids who have their own opinions and debate, we’ve had so many negotiations over different things like curfew and family events and different things. And it's, you want them to have their own opinions because that's how you're raising activists, the people that are going to make a difference. You don't want them to be deferential to things that don't matter, but it's really challenging when you're living through it. Especially, I think with a teenage daughter, I mean, mine is wonderful, and we've come out on the other side, but there were a few years where it was really, really hard. And my feelings were constantly hurt. I felt like we were at loggerheads. And it was painful. But it's just part of the natural evolution. And, you know, you just have to remind yourself this too shall pass.
Jodie, I want to switch gears for a minute and talk about beauty. I know that you've run two different beauty companies. I'm curious about your take on beauty and aging. Do you have a "my-wrinkles-are-my-smile-lines approach," or is it more of a "I'm-not-going-down-without-a-fight, bring on the retinol.” Because I'm kind of in-between. Some days I'm like, "I'm so happy I've got crow's feet. I've been smiling." And other days where I'm like, "This could look different." Where do you land on the spectrum?
Jodie (22:43):
Well, I have a dual thought and dual approach. I like the concept of aging. In fact, years before I was 50, I started telling people I was 50 and my kids would correct me. They're like, "You're 48." I'm like, "No, I'm 50 now.”
Katie (23:00):
Are you 50 now?
Jodie (23:01):
Yeah, this month I turn 50 officially.
Katie (23:04):
Welcome to the club.
Jodie (23:06):
Thank you. It feels good. Best club in town. So, just as a concept, I really like it. I embrace it. I think we get older and smarter and cooler. And in my case, I try to be more flexible as I get older. So, that's always a good thing. Then there are these things that the physical body does that, you know, I work to ease that process. So, I run a lot. I like the way my body looks better when I run, I like a toned body, as opposed to an untoned body. My face, I use those little currents, those machines that, that give little electrical shock to the face, to keep my face toned.
Katie (23:52):
I need to know about that.
Jodie (23:54):
They're great. I mean, I have these little contraptions that I use that are probably more for just my need to be active in the process of aging. It's something that we can't stop from happening, but of course, I want to be a part of it.
Katie (24:11):
You want to feel good. I started using retinol a year or two ago. I have no idea if it's making a difference, but it makes me feel like I'm doing something and I do want to take care of myself. So, I totally relate to that idea of doing yoga, trying to eat healthy, making some...You're going to have to share the name of that machine because I feel like I need that. And maybe our listeners do as well. But, also not, not being so worried about it. Because there's a lot of freedom that comes with getting older and worrying less about some of the things that distract you. I think when you're young when you're much more focused on the external and how you look versus how you feel inside.
Jodie (24:57):
When we were young, my mom made us do a lot of mirror work. And so she played this game with us, where we were forced to stand in front of the mirror with just like a tee-shirt and underwear on. So, we could really see our limbs and our arms and our face. And we would have to stand there and hug ourselves in front of the mirror and then say, "I love myself," over and over again. I love myself. I love myself. And it was silly and we would at first feel really awkward and we hated doing it. And then after about five minutes of staring at yourself, you're laughing. And what this does is it really gets you to know your physical body. I mean, I can tell you exactly that my lips look like upside-down bananas and my ears look like little elf ears. I know where my fingertips touch my knees. In terms of the length of my arms, I know my body and I've had this kind of pretty good relationship with her.
Mirror work is really important. Seeing yourself, embracing yourself. I do most of my gym work in front of a mirror. And I've continued that the practice of mirror work. I use the mirror for that mirror work and very little for the vanity stuff. My vanity time in the mirror is probably 20 minutes at the most including the morning, afternoon, and night. But I think, you know, if we can use the mirror in a different way, it actually will know to make us stronger, make us better, make us happier with ourselves.
Katie (26:27):
An interesting idea, because I feel like you often hear that people are afraid to look in the mirror and they don't want to get on the scale. They don't want to see themselves. And the idea of really, of knowing your body well and knowing that it's beautiful. I love the fact that your mother encouraged you to talk to yourself in a positive way because the longest relationship we have is with ourselves. We are in a constant, unending dialogue with ourselves and this internal conversation that's happening. And that at a young age, to start to train yourself, to speak to yourself kindly. Because I know that many, many women... My favorite yoga teacher always says, "Please be kind to yourself and each other," when the class ends. And it's a lot easier to be kind to other people than it is to yourself sometimes. And to really start to train yourself at a young age to be confident, to be your own advocate, to feel good about yourself. Your mother sounds really wise.
I love the way you open your book, The Bold World, and I'm going encourage listeners to read it. One of your first lines of the book says that you were taught by women, and probably by your mother, you were taught that "Women are powerful, tenacious, and important, that we pull from limitless places," which is such a beautiful opening line. And I'm wondering. As you've gotten older, do you still feel limitless? Do you feel that getting older aging puts limits on you in some way?
Jodie (27:52):
Hmm, that’s a good point. Yeah, I struggle with that. I mean, I do find that whenever...Well, I'll say this. People break. Women break. Black women break. There's not an infinite well of energy. At some point, you know, enough is enough. And I've gotten to that point multiple times in life where I just didn't have any more to give. And that's a scary place to be because I'm used to being able to find some reserve to go on as a mom, as a woman, as a wife, as an entrepreneur. I always can muster up something. But a couple of times in my life, I just did not have any more to give. And I had to rely on other people to really pick me up. So, I would say we can't over-exhaust people because, at a certain point, there is a breaking point.
I would say that as much as I know that, I also know that women have an incredible power to regenerate. And so, you know, when mom says, "I need five minutes," those five minutes are regenerative. When I go out for my run, I'm processing out all the shit and I'm building myself back up again. And when we go out with our girlfriends or when we, read the books that we read, our closed doors, those are regenerative processes. And I think that allows even this 50-year-old woman to have a lot more to give. There's a lot more I want to do. And I've learned ways to keep myself up.
So, I heard the trick of life, I heard this, that we are always under attack. The body is under attack from germs and viruses and assaults, but the trick is to heal faster, right? Do more healing and faster healing, than the attack is coming. So, that means we constantly need to heal ourselves. So, that mirror work is healing, that closing the door time is healing that, sometimes some of my healing takes the form of using the word "Fuck." It just feels good. I like to say it. I say it out loud a lot. And that to me just gets rid of all the gook in my head.
Katie (30:14):
Absolutely. My iPhone keeps trying to correct it to "ducking." I'm like, "No one is saying, 'ducking.' Siri, get with it."
Jodie (30:27):
There's a big, you have to drop the "F Word" and I've learned, well, I call it untethering. And it's a really hard concept for women and for mothers because we learn to find value in our families and our morals. But for me, what I learned through a divorce is that that period of detachment, when you have nothing, all the good stuff has gone. Your kids are gone, your spouse is gone, maybe even your home is gone. I found that that it's really a scary place, but if you do it enough if you learn to detach, and you actively detach, then when you come back to the things you love, you have more insight. You're a better leader, you're a better listener. You have more vision. So I've done this. Now, it's a part of my routine. I actively detach.
And that means send the kids to dad’s for, now, a month at a time. They go to him for a month and then me for a month. So, I have a month of detachment where I don't have to cook a meal. I don't have to be nice to anyone in the house. Because it's just me. I can skip out. Before COVID, I would skip out to a movie and not tell anyone where I was going. I would have, with my boyfriend, we'd have sex in the middle of the kitchen table in the middle of the afternoon. These are, these are things that moms don't do. Right. I wouldn't even...
Katie (31:49):
Every mom, right now is like, "How can I do that? I want to have sex on the kitchen table and see a movie in the afternoon."
Jodie (31:58):
It's so rebellious. I see myself as a person who accomplishes things. So my act of detaching was to not accomplish things. I would only read a portion of a book and never finish it. And that to me was detachment from the things that define me. So, that's really important for women to do, to detach from the things that define you. If it's for five minutes fine, or five days. Great. But to intentionally detach.
Katie (32:28):
I love the idea of detaching and sort of upending your routines a little bit and allowing yourself just the freedom to be different than the lane that you would put yourself in. For me, I detach by actually reading memoirs of other people, which is one of the reasons why I loved your book. And I try to read people that are very different from me and having different experiences because it's so inspiring. This is why I love following Humans of New York on Instagram. I love hearing other people's stories, getting windows into them. And it allows me to be inspired by humanity. Because sometimes humanity feels really dreadful and upsetting. But it also allows me to sort of look at my own life and my own world in a different way. So, I'm really intrigued by your detaching. And I would encourage any of our listeners if they want to practice their own untethering to pick up Jodie's book and, put themselves into a different experience and read it. Jodie, I'm excited to have you on the show today.
I am a big admirer of your work. You're such a beautiful writer. Your Instagram is so inspiring as well. There are beautiful little nuggets on it every week. So, I want you to tell our listeners where they can find more of you more of your work, learn about your activism.
Jodie (33:52):
Well, I'm thankful that you brought me on. And I love hearing what you said because I do think that the book and my life, although you might not have the same life and the same makeup of kids, you might not even have a kid who identifies as trans. I wrote the story so that we, as parents can be better. How do we shift? How can we be more flexible for the ones we love? So, thank you for seeing how universal this is.
My book is called The Bold World, and you can get it really anywhere. All the major outlets, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, also on my website, which is jodiepatterson.com. And on Instagram, where I spend so much of my time, I'm @JodiePatterson as well. And it's funny because my kids and I, argue over it all the time. And I said, but this brings business.
Katie (34:40):
Absolutely. You have an exciting new project coming, tell our listeners what it is.
Jodie (34:47):
So my next book out is a children's book that I wrote in conjunction with my kids. And it's called Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope. And that's his perspective, his voice on what it was like being different and how he was able to successfully change the community, his community, and how they thought of him and how they saw him and how they support him. So Born Ready: A True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, is my next book. And it's a children's book out by Random House.
Katie (35:18):
I've pre-ordered it. I'm really excited to get it. Jodie, thank you so much for being with me today. It was great to spend this time with you.
Jodie (35:25):
Thank you so much. I love the conversation.
Katie (35:28):
Take care Jodie. Now we're going to hear from a listener who shares her own career reinvention after 50. And if you'd like to share your story, please visit us at acertainagepod.com
Mindy Germain (35:40):
My name is Mindy Germain. I just turned 50 and launched my own consultancy, focused on sustainability and resilience. I help clients trying to build a stronger and healthier tomorrow, develop science-based public outreach, education, and advocacy programs. After doing this work for over 14 years, as both the executive director of an environmental nonprofit, and serving as a Long Island Water Commissioner, I decided it was time to take a bold leap and become my own boss.
Katie (36:13):
We love bold leaps. Congratulations, Mindy.
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women over 50, who are aging without apology. Thanks for listening. And if you enjoyed the show, please spread the word. You can help us grow by heading to iTunes, to subscribe, rate, and leave a review and visit us at acertainagepod.com for show notes and bonus content special. Thanks to Michael Mancini Productions who composed and produced our theme music.
See you next time. And until then: age boldly, beauties.