Interview in “Next Act for Women”

After several failed marriages, Patricia went back to school in midlife and became a psychotherapist. It would take a lengthy correspondence with her aunt, a Franciscan nun living in Central America, to coax Patricia into writing her memoir, Motherlines.

Tell us a little about your background…

I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and entered the University of Wisconsin (UW) in 1958 as an 18-year-old woman with no plans for a future career. The joke going around at the time was that girls went to school to get their MRS Degree. But I had no plans for that either. I majored in English literature because the only thing I liked to do was read books. What I wanted or could imagine for myself was far beyond the horizon. I had inherited heroic ambitions from my father, but they were hardly available to me as a female coming of age in the ‘50s.  All I saw were women making the post-war baby boom a reality.  It was not unusual in our neighborhood for women to have six or seven children. Read more…