Mistress, based on your post, and what I have learned from some Mistresses I have known pretty well, you have successfully be able to keep your interest in the scene alive in your life very successfully. Others, like Belle de Jour of NYC, was active in the scene in her early 70s the last time we met, partnering in a couple of dungeons. And I've seen pics of Belle going to BDSM events in Manhattan in her 90s. Her niece Gloria, who became a Mistress for awhile, and daughter who was a receptionist, were part of her business in the 1980s so her family knew of her career.
My longtime under-the-radar Mistress, who's in her early 60s but looks a decade younger, still dabbles in sessions with me and I think a couple of other longtime regulars. But she no longer advertises for fear of jeopardizing her vanilla career. Similarly a Mistress I met in the '00s and knew for a decade was always private even when she posted on the old wb270.com female bodybuilder site & her own website, disguising or hiding her face in stills or self-produced videos due to her vanilla career. Eventually she retired, we kept in touch for a couple of years and we had dinner a couple of times, but eventually she formally said goodbye to me. She was too busy with her new business, and she became a born-again Christian. Everyone's story is different.
On the submissive's side every once and awhile I think of what happened to some ladies I got to know and enjoyed, but then I realize that mostly, it was long ago and far away. I remember on maxfisch.com a couple of years ago a longtime sub of Mistress Tess of NYC and who always posted about her there. He disappeared from the board and everyone wondered what happened to him. I don't remember the outcome. There has to be plenty of stories of subs who were regulars of Mistresses and disappeared. That had to be upsetting on a personal level to some Mistresses. Even though BDSM has been popularized in the past couple of decades, the many keep their kinks in the shadows and eventually, for their own reasons, disappear.