PATTY BEAR
Flying and words. For Patty Bear, both were a path to liberation.
As a young girl, Patty experienced the power of words to oppress and imprison as the sermons preaching female silence and subservience rained down on her and her sisters’ heads. When national news media exposed her family in such an unflattering and distorted light that the public’s condemning letters piled up in the mailbox, she rejected her culture’s “turn the other cheek” teachings. Her reply to one of those letters, and the response she received to it, would show her the power of one voice and the ability to open minds. That potent promise of words to unshackle was seeded, yet would not come to fruition for decades.
As a teenager, Patty pursued flying lessons. This endeavor unexpectedly lifted her up and away from the Old Order Mennonite culture she was born into, launching her toward a radically different life than her mother and female ancestors had lived. After graduating from high school, she left a world that prohibited television and movies, voting, serving in the military, pressing charges, and any job considered “worldly” to graduate from the US Air Force Academy in the seventh class that included women, become an Air Force pilot and aircraft commander in the first Gulf War, and later an airline pilot and Boeing 777 captain.
Throughout this journey, as a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field, writing helped her privately explore her experiences and became a means of gradually unshackling and dissolving the surly bonds of indoctrination. Following in the footsteps of the intrepid little girl who had responded to strangers’ letters, Patty dipped her toes in public writing with a letter that caught the attention of union leadership. Writing a persuasive and pivotal letter to advocate for a commitment to negotiating maternity leave for female airline pilots helped to pave the way for others, and to once again demonstrate the power of words. That letter was followed by writing well-received snippets that organized understanding around cultural issues for family and friends. In 2016, fascinated by the sheer virtuosity of a particular teacher’s skill with children, she published her first book, House of the Sun: A Visionary Guide for Parenting in a Complex World.
In 2021, Patty finally broke the silence her family had maintained for decades around the events that made national and international news by writing a memoir titled From Plain to Plane: My Mennonite Childhood, a National Scandal, and an Unconventional Soar to Freedom. Her story details the pervasive nature of being born into fundamentalist cultures, how trauma can be a liberating force, and how questioning is crucial to finding freedom. In the epilogue, she shares her philosophy on the power of words: “Stories are spells. Each story is woven with words by a storyteller adept at either black magic or white magic, designed to take you captive or set you free.”
A voracious reader and hobby writer, Patty prepared for this particular writing journey by reading loads of memoirs as well as technical books on memoir writing. She also studied the plot points detailed in the Hero’s Journey structure. Besides that, she wrote—a lot. After years of silence training, she filled hundreds of pages with writing, only a fraction of which made it into the final draft. That process, however, was vital in uncovering what she truly wanted to say and to recognize how these themes could be structured.
As someone whose story was perennially narrated by others, it was immensely important to Patty to have full creative control when it came to producing and publishing her memoir. For this reason, she chose the route of Indie publishing, subcontracting a professional partner for editorial and full book production, as well as a publicist.
In addition to being an author, Patty speaks, coaches, and writes on how the four forces of flight can be a compass for living, and how the stages of the journey of metamorphosis shape our lives and lead each of us to our butterfly destiny. Her mission is to liberate, inspire, and delight. She can be reached at [email protected], or you can connect with her on FB at https://www.facebook.com/authorPattyBear
Buy: FROM PLAIN TO PLANE
Watch: AUTHOR INTERVIEW.