“Girl, you’re gonna make it after all.”  Can’t you just picture Mary Tyler Moore, beaming and tossing her beret in the air as the whole world sang along to her theme song every Saturday night?  Thirty-five years ago, when The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended its seven-year run, Moore was a “girl” of forty.  And yet she was every girl.  Every 15 or 25 or 40 year old girl who has ever panicked and thought: who am I without him? Who am I by myself? Can I really make it after all? Yes, you can, Mary told us. I did, and you can too. When The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted, she was 33. I was 13. The wacky, cozy world of her first big TV hit, The Dick Van Dyke Show, was so over, for both of us. My parents had just divorced. Moore’s character, Mary Richards, was divorced. Women like my mom and Mary were suddenly popping up everywhere, trying to make it on their own. Meanwhile, girls like me were letting go of our babyish fantasies involving princes, castles, Barbie and Ken. But we were uneasy about where to take our daydreams next.  I wasn’t old enough, yet, to embrace what Gloria Steinem had to say. But Mary Tyler Moore? She was so—real. So still wistful and a little shaky about the dream she’d given up, the one involving a NEVER-discussed ex-husband.  So clearly competent yet still lacking the self-confidence to go with it.  So easily rattled by the men who held power [...]