If you could send a letter back through time to your younger self, what would the letter say?

In this moving collection, forty-one famous women write letters to the women they once were, filled with advice and insights they wish they had had when they were younger.

Today show correspondent Ann Curry writes to herself as a rookie reporter in her first job, telling herself not to change so much to fit in, urging her young self, "It is time to be bold about who you really are." Country music superstar Lee Ann Womack reflects on the stressed-out year spent recording her first album and encourages her younger self to enjoy the moment, not just the end result. "Your hair matters far, far less than you think," is the wry advice that begins the letter bestselling mystery writer Lisa Scottoline pens to her twenty-year old self. And Maya Angelou, leaving home at seventeen with a newborn baby in her arms, assures herself she will succeed on her own, even if she does return home every now and then.

These remarkable women are joined by Madeleine Albright, Queen Noor of Jordan, Cokie Roberts, Naomi Wolf, Eileen Fisher, Jane Kaczmarek, Olympia Dukakis, Macy Gray, and many others. Their letters contain rare glimpses into the personal lives of extraordinary women and powerful wisdom that readers will treasure.

Wisdom from What I Know Now

"Don't let anybody raise you. You've been raised." —Maya Angelou

"Try more things. Cross more lines." —Breena Clarke

"Learn how to celebrate." —Olympia Dukakis

"You don't have to be afraid of living alone." —Eileen Fisher

"Please yourself first ... everything else follows." —Macy Gray

"Don't be so quick to dismiss another human being." —Barbara Boxer

"Work should not be work." —Mary Matalin

"You can leave the work world — and come back on your own terms." —Cokie Roberts

"Laundry will wait very patiently." —Nora Roberts

"Your hair matters far, far less than you think" —Lisa Scottoline

"Speak the truth but ride a fast horse." —Kitty Kelley

Madeleine Albright
Former Secretary of State

"You've got the guts to find your own purpose."

It's odd to think of a former secretary of state as someone who worries about fitting in, but for a long time Madeleine Albright did. In a group, she paid attention rather than interrupt. Sitting in her roomy office at the Albright Group, in Washington, D.C., Madeleine recalled her need to be liked and accepted with no regrets. "In the end I don't think it was a disadvantage. Wanting and needing to be liked is part of what got me to where I am."

Wearing a red suit and brown leather Lucchese cowboy boots when I met her, Madeleine, sixty-nine, seduced me with her forthright, unpretentious manner. She treated me as an equal, even though I've never owned cowboy boots or a cabinet title. Smaller than I expected, she held her body very still during our meeting. Her blue eyes seemed to swallow my words with a gravity that lingered even when she laughed. Don't forget this is a woman who has spent numberless hours with world leaders, including Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and grappled with genocide, war, U.S. embassy bombings, and U.S. cruise missile attacks on suspected terrorist camps in Afghanistan, among other crises.

Born Marie Jana Korbel in Prague, Madeleine and her family emigrated to the United States when she was a child. Apple-cheeked and round in high school, as she describes herself, Madeleine worked hard to seem casual and American. Her efforts were often undone by a serious streak that revealed itself through bossy outbursts, such as when she turned in a fellow student for talking during study hall. After attending Kent, a private girls' school in Denver, Madeleine went to Wellesley College on scholarship and married journalist Joe Albright three days after graduating.

Her letter is addressed to herself in the spring of 1982, at age forty-four, when she was still reeling from the breakdown of her marriage of twenty-three years. Shortly after Joe announced that he wanted a divorce, she accepted an offer to join the faculty at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. At that time in her life she had already earned a master of arts and a Ph.D. from Columbia University, acted as chief legislative assistant to Senator Edmund Muskie, and worked on the National Security Council's staff. In her new position, she was charged with creating a program that would encourage women to enter international relations, and she was expected to serve as a role model for those young women.

Dear Madeleine,

You will get through this fog and uncertainty — and you'll do it in the best possible way. You won't become cynical, stoical, or hard-bitten over the loss you're feeling. Over the next ten years you'll rebuild and reinvent yourself, finding success — and tremendous satisfaction.

The truth is, you've got the guts to find your own purpose and the integrity to fulfill it on your own terms. Your parents taught you to strive to achieve all you can, with the gifts that you have. Now you're about to direct those gifts toward finding your voice and using it to serve your country in ways that will surprise you.

When your students ask you how you have managed to be married and have children and work at the same time, you feel like a phony because you think you haven't succeeded at that. It's hard to feel qualified as a role model. But you are.

It will take years before you realize that you already are a good role model. But ultimately you'll inspire far more women than you'd ever predict. Twenty-three years from now when women say that they're choosing a career in international relations, the thing you'll enjoy most is telling them that there is no formula, that everybody must choose their own path.

With confidence,
Madeleine

Maya Angelou
Poet, Author, Playwright

"Don't let anybody raise you. You've been raised."

Born Marguerite Johnson, Dr. Maya Angelou was raised by her mother, Lady Vivian Baxter, a self-possessed, successful entrepreneur and businesswoman who owned a hotel and wore diamonds in her ears. Unmarried, Marguerite was pregnant when she finished high school in the summer of 1945. Her son was born in September and she decided to leave home two months later.

Leaving the comfort of her mother's big house, which had live-in help, was characteristic of Dr. Angelou's courage and fierce sense of independence. She has gone on to embrace — and excel at — a dizzying array of disciplines. She speaks French, Italian, Spanish, and West African Fanti. She has danced onstage, composed music, written plays, directed and acted in movies. In the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked her to become the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1993, President-elect Bill Clinton requested that she write a poem for his inauguration.

Dr. Angelou has written prodigiously: six autobiographies, including the best-selling I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published by Random House in 1969; three children's books; six plays and two screenplays; numerous books of poetry and other books. Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie, a collection of her poetry, earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1971. In 1981, she was appointed to a lifetime post as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University.

This avalanche of achievement could not have seemed more improbable on the day the seventeen-year-old Marguerite left her mother's house with a two-month-old son in her arms. She had found a job, a room with cooking privileges down the hall, and a landlady who would baby-sit. Here is what Dr. Angelou, seventy-eight, would say to her younger self.

Dear Marguerite,

You're itching to be on your own. You don't want anybody telling you what time you have to be in at night or how to raise your baby. You're going to leave your mother's big comfortable house and she won't stop you, because she knows you too well.

But listen to what she says:

When you walk out of my door, don't let anybody raise you — you've been raised.
You know right from wrong.

In every relationship you make, you'll have to show readiness to adjust and make adaptations.

Remember, you can always come home.

You will go home again when the world knocks you down — or when you fall down in full view of the world. But only for two or three weeks at a time. Your mother will pamper you and feed you your favorite meal of red beans and rice. You'll make a practice of going home so she can liberate you again — one of the greatest gifts, along with nurturing your courage, that she will give you.

Be courageous, but not foolhardy.

Walk proud as you are,
Maya

Copyright © 2006 by Ellyn Spragins. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Tags: Women's Studies, Biographies & Memoirs, Success

About the Author

Ellyn Spragins is an editor at large for Fortune Small Business. She wrote the "Love and Money" column in the New York Times business section for three years. She first edited five of these letters for an issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. She lives in Pennington, New Jersey, with her family.