Meet 5 Women Who Totally Reinvented Themselves

Then, Hurricane Andrew blew off part of the roof of their house in Miami. “I wasn't thinking about making a big change,” Strum says, but the hurricane prompted them to leave Miami. They hiked the Appalachian trail, moved to Vermont and eventually settled in Manhattan. Strum worked for an insurance company, Bill published a novel; they practiced yoga, cooked and travelled. Then after 35 years together, Bill, who is almost 10 years older than Strum, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

“It had gotten unbearable," Strum says. “The whole thing brought back a lot of what I went through when Steve (her husband) died. It brought back the feeling of being abandoned, and being sad.” Bill, who had been married twice before, had wanted to marry Strum. “But I didn't want to go through (losing someone) again,” Strum said. “Little did I know that you go through that, married or not.”

Bill is now in a nursing home and Strum, who retired nine years ago, practices yoga, reads extensively, studies Spanish (her younger son and his family live in Spain), walks everywhere and travels with friends and family. She just returned from visiting her older son in Tennessee, and in June, is going on a cruise with her older granddaughter. “I’ve never lived alone before,” Strums says. “I had my kids and then I had Bill. I’m still adjusting.”

Mariko Hirakawa, 54, a vinyasa yoga instructor and Ayurvedic practitioner, was born in Japan, grew up in California, spent years as a professional ballerina and was pre-med before moving to India to study Ayurvedic medicine. She has lived with her partner, the acclaimed musician and sitar teacher Krishna Bhatt, for decades in New York City and they are seasoned travelers.

But nothing prepared her for 2024, when she and Bhatt were traveling in India for one of his concerts and got into into a terrible accident in a taxi on the highway from Delhi to Jaipur. Hirakawa suspects the driver had fallen asleep because all of the sudden she heard “Gagunk!” and saw the driver frantically trying to grab hold of the wheel. The car went off the highway and the doors flew open. Hirakawa and Bhatt were flung out of the car, along with their bags.

Hirakawa had several broken ribs and Bhatt had multiple injuries. They were taken to a hospital, where Bhatt developed a high fever that antibiotics couldn’t bring down. Hirakawa had no family in India: Her parents were in Japan and Bhatt's sons were in Europe. “Everything was very difficult from every direction,” Hirakawa said. In the hospital, Bhatt lost weight and was deteriorating. The medical bills were piling up so Hirakawa started a WhatsApp group and did a Go Fund Me to raise funds. She also began reading Neville Goddard’s book, "The Power of Awareness."

“(Goddard) said that you can use imagination to shape reality,” Hirakawa said. “Nothing had gone the way I had hoped it would and so I started using my imagination to imagine Krishna well. I imagined a standing ovation scene after his concert, a scene where he was standing up by himself, all his colleagues and respected musicians of Indian music applauding him. I played this tape in my mind over and over again.”

Meanwhile, Bhatt was losing his ability to sit upright. “The hospital wasn’t helping him at all,” Hirakawa said. Finally, after seven months in India, Bhatt was cleared to fly back to New York, and collapsed on the way to the plane. Upon landing in New York, he was rushed to the hospital. It turned out that part of his spine was severed and a massively infected piece of his thoracic spine was stuck in his esophagus. He spent three more months in the hospital and three months in rehab while Hirakawa returned to teaching.

“Even though my ribs were still healing, I wanted to get back to work,” she says. “At times, it was emotionally devastating but I conditioned myself to pull myself together. It's a good thing to hold your work sacred and know you can still be useful even in a compromised state.”

Bhatt made a full recovery and this fall, flew alone to India where he performed in Calcutta and Pune. “I think about that period and say thank you,” Hirakawa says. “I realized life wasn't trying to destroy me. It showed me I could be resourceful in a time of challenge.”

An old friend, who asked to remain anonymous so we will call her Angela, decided to get a divorce. "I was the energy behind it," Angela says. Still, it was traumatizing. “My then-husband was having real bouts of depression. I was nervous about sending him back into one by executing what I wanted.” That was a a valid concern, since they had had a conversation about separating a year earlier. “I had planted the seeds and he took a nosedive,” Angela says.

She had also started a new job. “I was really stressed out,” she says. “I was crying and had started therapy and I couldn’t break the logjam.” She wanted to broach the idea of divorce again in a "loving place so the conversation wouldn’t backfire.” She went to a spa for five days, where she hiked, meditated and signed up for a class that was supposed to “shepherd you through a time of change."

The woman running the class suggested a Hawaiian ritual, Hoʻoponopono, a traditional practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. (Ponopono is defined as "to put to rights; to put in order or shape, correct, revise, adjust, amend, regulate, arrange, rectify, tidy up, make orderly or neat".)

The instructor told Angela to picture the person she wanted to talk with.

“We're going to say four phrases and you're going to repeat them back to me with this person in mind and you are going to repeat each phrase until you tell me it’s time to do the next phrase,” the woman told Angela.” One phrase is, 'I'm sorry.’ The next one is, ‘Please forgive me.’ The next one is ‘Thank you.’ The next one is ‘I love you.’ (You may have seen Dr. Robby recite a variation of this on Episode 4, Season 1 of "The Pitt," as he tries to console two adult children who are struggling to say goodbye to their dying father. In the TV version, Dr. Robby shares: "I love you. Thank you. I forgive you. Please forgive me.") After reciting these phrases, Angela says, “It got me to a place where I knew I could have this conversation and not throw him into a tailspin.” When she returned home, she said, “We had the conversation. I did it from a place of love and it worked.”

Lolly Raphael, 93, had what she described as a “difficult childhood.” Her parents were divorced and she and her mother lived with her grandmother before she went to college. There, she met her first husband. “He was very persistent and very sweet," Raphael says. But after they had two sons, Raphael says he became critical and emotionally abusive. “The kitchen was a mess, I didn't know how to balance a checkbook, I couldn't fix anything. My self-esteem was in the toilet. I was a 29-year-old mother with two kids.”

Then, she says, “he became physically abusive. He pushed me. This was the 1960s and you didn't know about spousal abuse.” But she knew enough to think, “I can't take this." Her first husband moved out and, in a twist, her in-laws moved in. “They had two grandchildren they were very concerned about," Raphael says. “And they were concerned about me."

Meanwhile, her sister-in-law had become pregnant and was seeing the same gynecologist who had delivered Raphael's sons. Her sister-in-law suggested Raphael ask the gynecologist out. “He's single and he's never been married and he's a good catch!” Raphael's sister-in-law said. After some resistance (“Women did not call men back in those days!” Raphael says), she called. Her gynecologist rebuffed her, but a few weeks later, called to ask her to dinner. Six months later they married and eventually had two sons together. Raphael now had four young boys to raise.

“My mother came for a visit and she did not go home,” she says, laughing. "She lived with us and it was wonderful because we had a built-in babysitter.”

After 40-plus years of marriage, Raphael’s second husband died in 2005. I knew Raphael well because one of her sons had been my husband’s roommate in college; we saw each other often. I thought of Raphael as a “catch” and introduced her to a widower I had met on a plane. The widower, Walter, was a retired pediatric radiologist. Coincidentally, he lived near Raphael.

They spent eight years traveling and spending time with each other's families. “We had a wonderful time, we travelled all over the world...Chile, Antarctica, Patagonia, Glacier National Park, Jackson Hole,” Raphael says. Then Walter became ill and passed away. “I took care of my husband and took care of Walter,” says Raphael, who has no more interest in dating. “No more men, just friends.”

These days, she plays bridge three times a week, walks a mile a day, volunteers at a food pantry, and spends time with her sons and their families, who live nearby. “I'm blessed that the boys moved close to me. I was here as they were bringing up those kids and was a big part of their lives and still am.”

Have any of you ever had to reinvent yourself? Let us know in the comments below.