It can be hard to become something you’ve never seen or imagined for yourself until someone draws it for you. And most of these women had only known themselves as losers. My favorite portrait, by artist Daniel Gerhartz, is of a smiling, fuchsia-clad Shay Bell Curry. She’s wearing hoop earrings and extending her right hand in a peace sign. Instantly I thought, I need to know this woman. But Curry, who died of complications from liver cancer, didn’t get to write her own story. Instead, her mentor, and founder of the Center, Brenda Lovelady Spahn, wrote it for her.