Janet Attwood: The $100 and the Sandwiches on Santa Monica Beach
A few months into working for her, my life took a turn I never planned. I met a man, and we eloped. He came with two kids, which I knew going in: a toddler of about one and a half, and a three-year-old. The timing was almost comic. I was finally ready to step into the life I'd been dreaming about, traveling the world, speaking, leading transformational work. Then his ex-wife called. She told us she couldn't manage raising the children anymore and that we would have to take them. Just like that, I became a mother overnight.
My husband was a painter back then, and the money was thin. Looking at those two little ones, I understood they needed a mom more than the world needed another speaker right at that minute. So I walked away from the dream job, the one that would have sent me across the globe doing the thing I loved most, and I stayed home.
Things got hard fast. The car got repossessed. At one point we were down to a single $100 bill. I remember standing there thinking, is this actually happening? I was practically out the door toward the life I wanted, and instead I was newly married, suddenly responsible for a one and a half year old and a three year old, with almost nothing in the bank.
The kids themselves were wonderful. I adored them, still do. But being broke while setting aside what I'd worked toward was its own kind of test.
What I did next sounds funny now, though it wasn't funny then. I took that last $100 to the supermarket because buying groceries was the only move I could think of. I spent all of it on bread, mayonnaise, mustard, cheese, and lettuce, and I made a pile of sandwiches. I put on my bathing suit, grabbed a little basket, and walked out onto the sand in Santa Monica shouting, 'Sandwiches!' That afternoon, strange as it was, became the start of my life as an entrepreneur.
I never once lost the pull to teach, to run seminars, to stand in front of people and hand over what I knew. That stayed. But the thing I came to understand is that each of us arrives with certain lessons to learn, and the universe seems determined that we don't skip any of them. Not a single moment slips past. For whatever reason, going through that stretch was part of what I was meant to carry.
When I look back, I count it as a good experience, because even in the middle of it I kept choosing my passion. In that season, those kids simply became a bigger passion than being a transformational leader. The one thing I'd want anyone to hold onto is this: if your love for something runs deep enough, you won't lose it by stepping away for a while. You keep learning on the detour, so that when you finally return to the work, you do it better and with more depth.
That's one of the hardest chapters of my story, Eric. I've never told it on a call before, so don't ask me why it surfaced today.