Paula Cocozza

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Paula Cocozza

After Anastacia had a double mastectomy in 2013, she began to joke about it. “It was wild to look at myself. I said: ‘My boobs look like this!’” She peers at me with her eyes screwed shut. We are sharing a sofa in a photographic studio in London. I’m not sure what she means, but she belts out, “No eyeballs!” (Typically, nipples come towards the end of reconstructive surgery.) Even in hospital, “I would make jokes and be funny,” she says.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Paula Cocozza

As part of her training to be a counsellor, Jill Le Jeune gave a presentation about sex. Her group had worked with people who had experienced trauma, low mood, suicidal ideation. “And everyone was very comfortable around these difficult subjects,” she says. But talking about sex made them squirm. “I thought: actually, I’d rather talk about sex than suicide.” She decided to specialise in the subject and, at the age of 60, started to practise as a sex therapist. But why?

2 months ago | msn.com | Paula Cocozza

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2 months ago | theguardian.com | Paula Cocozza

Elizabeth Barbour didn’t start studying law until she was 54 and had a school-age daughter. “But once I decide to do something, I’m hard to stop,” she says. Law is an atypical later-life career choice. It certainly bore no connection to Barbour’s first and second vocations, as a hand model and then a real-estate developer. “Law school was hard. It was disheartening,” she says. “I was literally everybody’s mother’s age. I didn’t have a cohort of friends. I was like a foreigner. I felt really isolated.

2 months ago | msn.com | Paula Cocozza

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.