Life on your own terms

Women who refused to follow the script

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Perspective Media
August 24, 2025

THIS WEEK’S LIFE FEATURE
Lesbian speed dating in London
BY STEPHANIE THEOBALD

Writer Stephanie Theobald emerges from six years in the California desert – three of them in a cave community – to navigate London's lesbian dating scene at 60. From a Hackney speed dating night to a South London "FLINTA+" market, she discovers how queer culture has evolved while grappling with her own transformation from someone who once craved excitement to someone who finds rapture in morning oracle cards.

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This is my terrible secret. I’m not sure I do want sex in a bush

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Free spirit

Ruth Ivo traces her journey from teenage freedom-chaser hitchhiking to Stonehenge and living on buses in the Australian outback to becoming a solo mother at 37. Through squats, raves and a decade as a cabaret artist, she explores what true freedom means for women, and discovers it might not be the absence of commitment but a life wide open to possibility.

www.perspectivemedia.com/free-spirit

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I stopped thinking about what I should want and decided just to live

Hungry Ghosts

While clearing her late, estranged father's flat, Patricia Campbell discovers a tattered family recipe book spanning nearly a century. In the pages of handwritten recipes – from wartime plum pudding to his jazz-musician father's exotic curries – she uncovers the complex legacy of a brilliant but damaged man, and finds an unexpected path to forgiveness.

www.perspectivemedia.com/hungry-ghosts

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My father wasn’t the monster I believed he was for decades

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