WHY I CREATED THE BOHEMIARE COMPASS

I did not create The Compass because I have life figured out.

I created it because I have spent a lot of years living through change, making difficult decisions, starting over when necessary — and listening to thousands of women ask many of the same questions I have asked myself.

Before BOHEMIARE, I spent more than 25 years in financial planning and business. I served nine years in elected public office in Colorado and received statewide recognition for community service. That work taught me a great deal about money, responsibility, risk, planning and the difference between knowing what you could do and deciding what you actually want to do.

Then life taught me some other things.

I was born with a congenital heart condition that I did not learn about until adulthood. I had my first open-heart surgery at 44 and later underwent a second heart surgery in Rome. I have navigated medical care in both the United States and Italy and experienced optical strokes while traveling in Indonesia. I have also kept living.

I am the mother of two daughters. I spent 20 years building a life in Italy, where I raised my younger daughter. I continue to travel, work, create, take risks, change my mind and ask myself what I want the next part of my life to look like.

Those experiences have made questions about time very real to me.

Not How old am I?

But:

What am I doing with the time I have?

And The Compass did not grow out of my life alone. Through Travel From the Inside Out and the community that has grown around my work, I spend a great deal of time with women in their 60s, 70s and 80s. More than 28,000 women are part of that broader community, and women travel with me internationally.

I hear their stories.

Not just the polished versions.

The conversations happen over long lunches, sitting around a table after dinner, during drives through Italy and in those moments when women begin talking to one another about what is really going on.

Friendships have changed. Children have grown up. Relationships are different. They have spent decades saving money and sometimes have trouble giving themselves permission to use it. Their bodies may require different choices than they did twenty years ago. Some want more people in their lives. Some want fewer. Some are lonely. Some are restless. Some have good lives and still know they want something more.

And many of them cannot quite name what that “more” is.

I kept hearing different versions of the same question:

What do I want now?

Living in Italy has made me pay even closer attention.

I regularly see older women still woven into ordinary life — in the piazza, at the market, having coffee, meeting friends, going out to dinner, talking, laughing, dressing beautifully, disagreeing loudly and continuing to occupy space in the world.

Then I come back to the United States and hear women with enormous experience, ability, curiosity and life still ahead of them wondering whether they are supposed to begin making themselves smaller.

I could see the void.

That is why I created The BOHEMIARE Compass.

Not to tell another woman what she should do with her life.

Not because I believe I have all the answers.

And certainly not because every woman needs to reinvent herself.

I created it to give women a structured way to look at the life they actually have, identify what matters now, ask better questions, make deliberate choices and begin doing something with the answers.

My work has been featured by CNN, The Washington Post, AARP/The Ethel, Trips to Discover, American and Italian television, radio and press, and I was named a 2026 JourneyWoman Awards finalist for Woman-Owned Travel Business.

Those things tell you something about my background.

But they are not the most important qualification I bring to this work.

I have spent decades paying attention — to my own life, to the women around me and to how quickly the years move.

I do not believe reaching this stage of life means sitting back and waiting to see what happens next.

We still get to decide.