After
World War II, Mikels studied with and worked for
Unitarian minister and social worker Conard Rheiner. She did relief work with the
American Friends Service Committee in Germany and Finland, but was sent back to the United States because she had a record of hospitalizations for depression and homosexuality. In 1956, she was program director at a California camp for blind adults. Mikels opened Conard House in San Francisco in 1960, the city's first psychiatric halfway house, primarily serving young former patients of
Napa State Hospital. and gave interviews on her work: "No one at Conard House is treated as a patient," she told
The San Francisco Examiner in 1964, noting that the residents kept pets, prepared their own meals, gardened, drank alcohol if they pleased, and had other ordinary freedoms and responsibilities of young adults. In 1966, she left her administrative duties at Conard House for full-time activism. in New Mexico in 1972, as a lesbian retreat. She lived in a feminist community in
Wolf Creek, Oregon, and co-founded the Older Women's Network there. as well as the needs of older women without traditional family supports. She wrote an autobiography,
Just Lucky I Guess: From Closet Lesbian to Radical Dyke (1993). "This book—and its author—simply refuse to be put down," said the book's reviewer in
Off our backs, adding "It breathes life and accessibility into periods of lesbian herstory that most younger lesbians have only vague, watered-down ideas of." == Personal life ==