For many people, the phrase “finding yourself” is reserved for your early twenties—a time for experimentation before the supposed stability of career, family, and routine. Tracee Ellis Ross challenges that narrative. At 51, the Brown alumna, Golden Globe–winning actress, entrepreneur, and outspoken advocate for joy is still carving new pathways for self-discovery. From her on-screen roles in Girlfriends and Black-ish, to launching her natural haircare brand Pattern Beauty, to embarking on deeply personal journeys in solo travel, Ross’s life and work remind us that getting to know oneself is not a phase but a lifelong practice.
Ross has described how her years at Brown, where she graduated in 1994 with a degree in theater arts, gave her the foundation to tell stories with honesty and vibrancy. Her career has since been defined by characters and projects that bring underrepresented narratives to the forefront, but her boldest storytelling may be happening in her own life. In interviews with The New York Times, Refinery29, and SELF, Ross has shared how solo travel became a powerful vehicle for self-exploration. In her new show on Roku “Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross”. Ross explains how travel forces women to empower and invest in themselves, mindsets we need to carry into our everyday life. For Ross, being her own best travel partner is less about escape and more about deepening her relationship with herself.
Tracee Ellis Ross, the advocate of “not waiting for partnership to find joy and happiness, for curating and cultivating one’s own sense of self.”
That ethos runs through her entrepreneurial work as well. When Ross launched Pattern Beauty in 2019, it was the culmination of a decade-long dream to create products for curly and coiler textures that were never given the proper space to exist in her youth. Just as solo travel reflects a refusal to wait for others to validate her choices, Pattern reflects her refusal to wait for the beauty industry to recognize and celebrate textured hair. Both ventures spring from the same impulse: to honor identity, meet needs authentically, and embrace the fullness of who she is.
Ross’s status as a single, childless woman is not just a fact, it’s a cultural provocation. In a world where women are still defined by their relationships to others, she insists on being defined by her relationship to herself. Instead of treating singleness or childlessness as a deficit, Ross reframes them as freedoms: the freedom to travel alone without compromise, to pour vision into her business, to cultivate rituals of care and joy that are wholly her own. Her openness unsettles a long-standing narrative that women must find fulfillment only through marriage or motherhood. By living vibrantly outside those expectations, Ross forces us to ask why society clings so tightly to them in the first place and what new possibilities of happiness might open up when we let them go. But she distances herself from more extreme and detrimental feminist narratives by reminding us that just because she isn’t married now doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to be or never will be. Love is a meaningful pursuit, whether it be for yourself or a partner. Women should not be shamed for love, no matter what shape that judgment takes.
The story of this vibrant Brown alumna pushes back against the idea that self-knowledge has an expiration date. Instead, she embodies the truth that self-understanding evolves with time, and that joy and fulfillment come from continually asking, Who am I now, and how do I want to live? Ross models a life of intentionality. She reminds us that joy is not something you stumble into in your twenties and then leave behind; it is something you create, nurture, and redefine again and again.
That’s why we love Tracee Ellis Ross. She is proof that self-discovery does not end when you leave college or when society tells you to settle down. It is ongoing, expansive, and worth pursuing at every stage of life.