Gloria Steinem and 'Ms.' magazine emerged as pivotal forces in second-wave feminism.

Steinem encouraged women to challenge patriarchal norms and roles.

Gloria's efforts led to normalization of women's employment and autonomy.

Goodbye, Gloria, and thank you!

We lost one of my heroes this month. If you are a woman in America, or you have ever loved one, you too have lost a great champion—a pioneer who paved the way for women to be treated as fully adult citizens.

In her column in The Chicago Tribune, Heidi Stevens reminds us that Gloria left us a message. She recorded an interview for the Netflix show “Famous Last Words” to air after her death. As always, she teaches us something, leaving us with a task to tell our own stories and listen to others’.

And so, I shall tell my story of how Gloria Steinem and Ms. magazine transformed my life.

I was born in 1956, only a few years before Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny. I grew up as a Baby Boomer, with my first memory of politics being Johnson’s War on Poverty. With two siblings a decade older than me (but still younger than Gloria), I had a bird’s-eye view of the transformation of American colleges from cloistered campuses where young women brought dozens of outfits in hopes of earning "Mrs. degrees" to places of protest against the war in Vietnam, for racial equality and women’s........

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