Blooming After Forty.

"It's never too late to be what you might have been." George Eliot

I love stories of women who, after 40, change their lives. Whether it's because the children are grown, it's a necessity, or it's the realization that this journey is finite - whatever the reason, they find the courage to take the road not taken. They step out of their comfort zones, begin again, and come into their own.

I love these women. I collect their stories. They inspire me. They are my tribe. Here are a few...

Margaret Fogarty Rudkin was a mother of three sons and wife to a Wall Street financier. The Depression devastated her family's livelihood and it was also at this time she discovered debilitating

allergies in her youngest son. So out of necessity, at the age of 40, she began to bake bread and sell it. Less than two years later she sold her millionth loaf. She named the company after her family's farm..Pepperidge Farm.

The fabulously unconventional George Eliot published her first novel at the age of 40.

Harriet Doerr graduated from Stanford at the the age of 67. At the age of 74 her first book, "Stones for Ibarra" was published for which she won the American Book Award for First Fiction.

Did you know Millicent Fenwick never received a high school diploma or college degree yet she was fluent in French, Spanish and Italian. In her 30's and 40's she was an editor at Vogue magazine. It was at age 59 that she first ran and won a seat in the New Jersey State Legislature. At age 64 she was elected a member of Congress. She was called "The conscience of Congress."

Wini Yonker joined the Peace Corps at age 65.

Evelyn Gregory became a flight attendant at age 71.

Linda Bach went to medical school in her 40's and opened her practice at age 50.

And then there is the  Honorable Jane Digby. What an extraordinary life. So many ADVENTURES.. It was at the age of 46 that she met her fourth husband and greatest love the Bedouin Sheik, Abdul Medjuel El Mezrab....who was also 20 years her junior (naturally). For the next 30 years she lived in Damascus, and in the desert, absolutely scandalizing 1800's British society.

I first learned of Jane Digby when on the eve of my first trip to Nepal, my boss at the time, the lovely Countess Constance von Collande gave me the book by Lesley Blanch "The Wilder Shores of Love."

The title is unfortunate because it's a wonderful book about  "...four women fleeing the confines of 19th Century Europe for a life of passion and adventure...all of these women broke with their upbringing to embrace life and live it robustly."

It was a wonderful read as I embarked on my own adventure...but I digress.

The idea that it's too late to do anything is ridiculous. I'll close with this quote from a woman who was celebrating her 100th birthday. "If I had known I would live to be a hundred, I would've taken up the violin at forty. By now I could've been playing for sixty years!"