Bridget Firtle

Photo: Alessandra Petlin

Sure, there are a million reasons to say no to the job, the passion, the big bold move that calls to you. You can't just start over now! You're too old, too broke, too far down the path you're already on! Besides, where would you even begin? But as these five women will tell you, there's one excellent reason to make the leap anyway: Nothing feels as good as becoming who you were meant to be.

From Hedge Fund Analyst to Rum Distiller
Bridget Firtle
30, Brooklyn

Take a girl with a knack for math and barrelfuls of gumption. Raise her in a house with a Prohibition-era speakeasy in the basement. Stir in a granddad who owned a Brooklyn bar. Add a twist of business school, a finger of finance-world chops and several dashes of can-do spirit. Bridget Firtle, a self-taught distiller of artisanal rum, might call the result her signature cocktail: It's the story of her life. After earning her MBA at Binghamton University in upstate New York, Firtle landed a position as a research and investment analyst covering the consumer staples sector—food, beverages, household goods—at a New York hedge fund. "I developed a niche in the global alcohol market," she says—a duty that brought the burgeoning trend of domestic small-batch distillery to her attention. Yet few boutique distillers were making rum, Firtle's favorite liquor. ("Rum, fresh lime and sugar—that's the holy trinity," she says.) She decided somebody ought to. And so after trading stocks by day, Firtle began price-comparing copper stills at night. She moved in with her parents to save start-up capital and hunted for an industrial space in Brooklyn. She found one after looking at about 30 properties, then appointed herself head distiller of the Noble Experiment NYC. She taught herself the finer points of fermentation and distillation science (eukaryotic microorganisms and anaerobic respiration, formation of aldehydes...). And bottling. And also marketing. And distribution. Firtle's hard work shows in her white rum, Owney's NYC, which is made with only molasses, yeast and filtered New York City tap water, a nod to her hometown. In fact, little about her operation isn't rooted in her spirited background. Says Firtle: "How could I have done anything but this?"

—Jenna Scatena
Lucy Billings

Photo: Alessandra Petlin

From Attorney to Singer-Songwriter
Lucy Billings
61, Nashville

How many roads must a woman walk down before she can call herself a folk singer? Well, before Lucy Billings moved to Nashville in 2014 with her acoustic guitars and a 22-year-old Siamese cat named Thunder, determined to write songs for a living, she'd been a cowgirl, scientist and attorney. (So, three roads, it seems.) Billings taught herself to play at age 10—her parents had caught her strumming a tennis racquet the year before and gave her a real live six-string. Her fledgling songs were melodic accompaniment for the poetry she composed. "I wrote to process the world around me," she says, meaning the desert outside Tucson, where she grew up, and the mountains of Wyoming, where as a young adult she made pocket money wrangling horses. Music remained the heart of Billings's life through 4 years of college, 2 years of grad school, 3 years of law school and 20 years in corporate law. "I spent my spare time on my music—late nights, early mornings, weekends," she says. Of course, every folk song needs a little strife: In 2011, Billings's company let her go, and she found herself at a crossroads. She could keep fiddling with legalese, or she could answer a call she'd been hearing for 50 years. Just before her 60th birthday, Billings packed her car and drove to Nashville. The trip took four days—and also a lifetime. Less than a month later, she released her album Carry the Water. "Shaking up your world can make you feel so vulnerable," she says. "But I told myself, Just write about it. Turn it into a song."

—J.S.
Lauren Helm

Photo: Alessandra Petlin

From Model to Psychiatrist
Lauren Helm, MD
50, New York City

In 1982, as she stared down the idle summer months between high school and college, Lauren Helm decided to find a job—preferably one that didn't involve desk work or early mornings. Helm's mother, a former model and actress, suggested she visit the thrumming Ford modeling agency. By September, Helm had been photographed by Richard Avedon for the January 1983 cover of Vogue.

Elle and Vogue Italia covers followed. "I decided to postpone college for six months," Helm says, "which turned into 12 years." She lent her angular face and full lips to campaigns for Versace and Valentino, whiled away interminable hours in airports from Milan to Tokyo, and, over time, even became comfortable in front of the camera. "I was pale, with a big forehead," she says. "I thought I looked like a squid. But that's not what others saw. The first thing modeling teaches you is that you have no idea what you look like."

Helm's vision of herself evolved in other ways, too. "No one thinks they can model permanently," she says. "I wanted to do something challenging and useful, and I wanted to take the attention off myself." When an acquaintance said offhandedly that Helm would make a good doctor, "I thought they were right," she says. After graduating from Norwich University, a Vermont college whose adult degree program allowed her to keep traveling for work, Helm left modeling at age 31 and enrolled in Columbia's postbaccalaureate premed program, then its med school. During a rotation in psychiatry, she discovered a deep satisfaction in treating psychological pain. "This felt like home," she says. Helm now works with the psychiatric team at a hospital in New York City and also runs a private practice with an emphasis on eating disorders. "Nothing is ever redundant in this job," she says. "You see extraordinary things, life-affirming, dramatic, poignant things. You get to talk to people, hear the narrative of someone's private universe. It's human. It's life, unfiltered, in all its range. And it doesn't involve sitting around an airport twiddling your thumbs."

—J.S.
Jane Via

Photo: Alessandra Petlin

From Prosecutor to Pastor
Jane Via, PhD
67, San Diego

When Jane Via, PhD, says "Jesus was a feminist," it's clear she doesn't mince words. She first found her voice as a lawyer and eventually worked in the San Diego County District Attorney's Office. But before law school she'd earned a doctorate in theology. "I couldn't go to seminary because I'm a woman," she says, "so I figured a PhD was the next best thing." Via had converted to Catholicism as a young woman, but took issue with the church's stance on abortion. When she signed her name to an ad in The New York Times in protest, the local bishop received orders from the Vatican to bar Via from speaking in any church forum, including the theology classes she taught part time at the University of San Diego, if she didn't recant. (She didn't.) She longed for a parish for Catholics who, like her, loved their church but chafed at its policies. She wrote to the Roman Catholic Womenpriest movement, which ordains women and advocates for the church to recognize female priests, and was ordained a deacon on the Danube River a year later. Then she cofounded the Mary Magdalene Apostle Catholic Community; "I called our approach 'radical inclusivity' and welcomed anybody," Via says. Before long, she was ordained a priest by Womenpriest. Her bishop again demanded she repent. She refused. After a second battle with cancer, Via stepped down to become pastor emerita in 2014. She feels her law career readied her to take on the church: "Someone who can prepare and defend a case—that's the kind of woman this movement needs."

—J.S.
Robin Autorino

Photo: Alessandra Petlin

From Navy Satellite Electronics Technician to Chocolatier
Robin Autorino
57, Longmont, Colorado

Thirty years ago, as a single parent struggling to support her son, Nikolas, Robin Autorino soldered circuit boards for 80-foot satellite dishes for the U.S. Navy in Maine, Spain, Guam and Australia. The work was repetitive, the pay meager. But that didn't keep Autorino—a born hostess and believer in the comfort of good food—from inviting single coworkers for Christmas dinner every year. She sent them home with a cheap but charming treat: pretzels dipped in chocolate. "Nikolas made them," she says. "It was a mess, but he loved it, and I knew how happy they were to get a homemade gift." Years passed. Autorino left the navy, met and married a good man, Chris—and went into IT, dutifully building and updating computer servers. It didn't inspire her, but it was a living. Then, in 2005, Autorino took a cooking class and felt a stirring that harked back to those chocolate pretzels. She asked Chris if she should become a chef. "He said, 'You don't have to be a breadwinner. Go do what you want to do.'" So she enrolled at the Culinary School of the Rockies. She interned at a pâtisserie in Avignon, France; fell in love with desserts; then zeroed in on chocolate. In 2011, Autorino opened Robin Chocolates, where the most popular confection is her chocolate caramel fleur de sel. "I want my ganache to be bold," she says. "I want the Key lime pie truffle to give you some pucker. I want the espresso to bring you the same comfort as your morning cup." Autorino traces her sweet trajectory back to life as a single mom: "All those hours doing things I didn't love, all those years scraping by—it was all worth it. It gave me the life, the passion, I have now."

—Lambeth Hochwald