A-lister Jane Seymour knows how she plans to follow her bliss in 2018: “Have more global adventures,” the actress, who recently returned from a three-month trip to Australia and New Zealand with boyfriend David Green, tells Closer. “I’ve spent most of my life working, and I’m wanting to see places and do things I’ve never had time to do!”

That doesn’t mean Jane, 66, has stopped working, however. She recently released her new book, The Road Ahead, a collection of inspirational stories “of hard things people have been through and how they turned it around and found a way to help others,” she explained at the Bloomberg 50 event in NYC on Dec. 4.

Using tough times to inspire good works is a mission Jane has long set for herself. While writing the book she drew strength from her mother’s story — she was a Dutch national who survived imprisonment in a Japanese concentration camp during WWII. “She taught me there would always be challenges,” Jane says, “but if you open your heart and reach out to help other people, you have purpose.”

It’s particularly important that people are sharing their difficult stories now, notes Jane, who is one of many women who have spoken up about being sexually harassed. “When you’re no longer alone and you find other people who have gone through the same kind of thing, it heals you,” says the Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman star, who once quit acting for a year after a bad experience with a Hollywood executive.

But since then, Jane has enjoyed a long, successful career and she
says she wrote the book to encourage others. “It’s all about going forward and not being stuck in your past story,” she says. Jane herself is enjoying her current life to the fullest — she’s even working on a new rug line with designs based on her own artwork. “You have to accept your story. Then go out and do some selfless act of kindness for someone else. It’s about finding your joy.”

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