Stories from the return.
Essays, profiles, and reflections about courage, visibility, reinvention, identity, and women who are building from everything they have lived.
"Granny H" (June Rose Hood)
"Granny H" (June Rose Hood)
Pay attention to what makes you forget to check the clock. That might deserve a bigger place in your life.
Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama
She did not wait quietly for somebody to decide she mattered. She kept making the work, claiming the space, and showing up for decades before the rest of the world caught up.
Susan Boyle
Susan Boyle
She didn't wait for the room to believe in her before she opened her mouth.
Lyn Slater
Lyn Slater
She decided visibility did not have an expiration date.
Donatella Versace
Donatella Versace
Leaving one role does not mean leaving the room.
Dona Margarida
Dona Margarida
Some dreams don't expire. Sometimes they simply wait until we have room for them again.
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Albright
She never treated curiosity as something you graduate from.
Julia Child
Julia Child
She gave herself permission to be bad long enough to become very, very good.
Louise Hay
Louise Hay
She treated self-talk as something that could be practiced and changed, not as a permanent truth.
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
As a child, she believed her voice was dangerous. She eventually outgrew that belief.
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton
When someone says, 'That's just how it works,' they may be describing how it works for them.
Tina Turner
Tina Turner
Leaving cost her nearly everything she owned. It also gave her back the next forty years of her life.
Frances Mayes
Frances Mayes
She did not wait to feel like a different woman before changing her life. She changed the place.
Diana Athill
Diana Athill
Without the constant work of maintaining a property, she found herself comfortable, supported, and free to write.
Phyllis Diller
Phyllis Diller
She made the housework itself the act. She later reinvented again as a concert pianist.
Kelsey Pfendler
Kelsey Pfendler
She took the one thing she already knew how to do and pointed it at an ocean.
Iris Apfel
Iris Apfel
Iris Apfel spent decades as a textile entrepreneur, known in her industry but invisible to the wider world. Then, in her eighties, she became a phenomenon.
The Women of Advanced Style
The Women of Advanced Style
For over fifteen years, photographer Ari Seth Cohen has captured women over 60 on the streets of New York, London, and beyond.
Ilona Royce Smithkin
Ilona Royce Smithkin
She became iconic in the Advanced Style community for her flaming orange eyelashes and her refusal to dress down.
Vera Wang
Vera Wang
She spent years as a figure skater and then a Vogue editor before designing her first wedding dress.
Tomi Seki (of Japan's bonpon511)
Tomi Seki (of Japan's bonpon511)
In her sixties, Tomi and her husband Tsuyoshi started photographing themselves in beautifully coordinated outfits.
Sisters on the Fly
Sisters on the Fly
Today it is the largest women's outdoor adventure organization in the U.S.
Ernestine Shepherd
Ernestine Shepherd
She asked a former Mr. Universe to train her at 71, competed seven months later, and was named the world's oldest competitive female bodybuilder.
Diana Nyad
Diana Nyad
For decades the swim haunted her — about 110 miles of open ocean, sharks, jellyfish, no cage.
Joan Rivers
Joan Rivers
She refused to let powerful people decide when she was done.
Joyce Jones
Joyce Jones
She plans to keep playing until she's 100.