Today’s episode felt like a gift.
and I finally welcomed the incomparable , whose work on Medium and Substack has long inspired me, and who turned out to be even more extraordinary in conversation than I already suspected.Patricia is 87, still practicing as a psychotherapist, still writing memoir, still podcasting, still fully alive to every creative impulse. And she’s the first to tell you: she never stopped. Creativity wasn’t something she had to “reclaim” later in life — it’s the current that’s always moved through her. Musician, photographer, Ansel Adams workshop assistant, teacher, therapist, writer… she contains multitudes, and somehow they all harmonize.
We talked about her stunning late-life reinvention — going back to school at 50, getting licensed at 56, publishing her first book at 86 — and the viral Substack note that gave thousands of millennials hope that their timelines aren’t “behind.” With Patricia, nothing feels behind. It feels possible.
One of the most powerful threads today was her understanding of creativity as source — something bigger than ego, something that flows through you when you get out of your own way. Listening to her describe driving to Healdsburg while hearing Rachmaninoff and experiencing something like transcendence, you could almost feel the chat collectively exhale. She reminded us that creativity isn’t performance; it’s channeling.
We also talked aging, mortality, identity, and why so many of us reach midlife feeling like time is running short. Patricia offered something rare: neither denial nor doom, but clarity. The future shrinks, she told us — but that’s exactly when the present becomes luminous. As she put it, “It’s all a miracle.” And coming from someone who has lived so much life, lost so much, learned so deeply, it lands differently.
We laughed, too — about Dante, about hypnotherapy, about recovering from the Vatican’s shadow — but mostly we sat in admiration. There’s something grounding about being in the presence of someone who has done so many things, survived so much, and still speaks with curiosity rather than cynicism.
Patricia isn’t just a guest we adored. She’s someone who left the whole room a little more awake.
If you’re not already reading her work on Substack, you need to be. She is proof — living, glowing proof — that reinvention isn’t just possible at any age. It’s generative. It’s expansive. And it’s worth doing.
Thank you
, , , , , and many others for tuning in. We love you, mean it!!
