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Success September 2001
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THE F WORD

Shirt with Red 'F' Failure: those moments when life gives you lemons—and there's no lemonade squeezer handy.

In the following quotes, these accomplished women describe the lessons they learned by failing. Each of them recognized the paradox that success requires a willingness to risk failure.

Lisa Rau is a lawyer living in Philadelphia. She was recently elected as a city judge, but dealt with a very public loss on her first try, two years earlier.

"One of the things that's great about failure is, it's never as bad as you think it's going to be. You think it's going to be the end of the world, and it's really not. The people who loved you still love you. You find out who your real friends are: the people who call the next day or who treat you just the same way. And you realize that your best relationships are not about whether you win. They're about you—all of you, even the part that loses."

Carol Venezia is a well-known photographer married to her second husband, painter Michael Venezia.

"The hard part was giving up on my first marriage, acknowledging its failure. I was trying to hang on to the positive things. Certainly the message I got from my mother was, 'You don't give up.' But it was the failure of my first marriage that led to my resolve to be with someone as different and unknown as Michael—and to say, 'I'm going to make this leap. Even though it scares me, it's for good reasons.' I finally said, 'Wait a minute, I'm not going to holdback my life for a dream that hasn't worked out.'"

Terry Gross is the host and an executive producer of Fresh Air, the award-winning interview show on National Public Radio.

"I think we're shaped by failure at least as much as we're shaped by our successes. When I have guests on a show, I like to talk to them about their failures—not to show them up, but because that's part of what defines us. Sometimes it's not the cheery, upbeat lessons that really explain how a person got to be where they are. It's the things they failed at, the things they tried to do and couldn't do. The things they're still struggling to do. And even the artistic style, if you're an artist, is often based on struggling to sound like your influences and failing, and through that effort finding your own voice."

Lily Yeh is an artist who was ready to give up on making it in the art world. Then a small park project she started turned into a nonprofit organization that builds community through art around the world.

"If I had been very successful—lots of sales and tons of money—the success might have been so glamorous and the profit so great that it would have made me not listen to my inner voice. I would maybe have been seduced by success in the world. Failure was a protection for me."



Find out what Oprah knows for sure about failure.
Women who found the courage to ask, "What's next?"

Read more stories of failure leading to success in the September 2001 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. Subscribe now!