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7 Secrets of reinventing your Life: Big and Small Ways to Embrace New Possibilities

FOLLOWING YOUR PASSION

Sometimes a hobby is merely a hobby, and sometimes it can redirect your life. In this chapter, you’ll hear about women who jettisoned their original careers and chose a different future, channeling their enthusiasms—for anything from animals to food to connecting with nature—into work that is not only financially viable, but emotionally fulfilling.

CALL OF THE WILD – JULIETTE WATT

By Susan Crandell

On a dazzling September afternoon in southern Utah’s dramatically gorgeous canyon country, while gazing at ancient cliffs shad- owed in hues of vermilion and vanilla against a cobalt sky, Juliette Watt had an epiphany.

Watt and her husband, Jason, were one week into a volunteer vacation at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, a 3,800-acre compound that’s a last-chance haven for 1,700 dogs, cats, horses, pigs, and birds. Watt was working in Dogtown, Best Friends’ canine quarters. “I was cleaning out their kennels, scooping dog poop,” she recalls. “I could see a hundred miles in the clear air. That’s when I had what I call my Eckhart Tolle moment, a powerful knowing that we had to move here.” Ready for change and burned out on East Coast big-city life, Watt felt nourished by the desert sur- roundings. She looked forward to sharing her revelation with Jason, who was toiling elsewhere in Dogtown.

Watt was already well into her fourth act when the urge to upend her life struck that day in 2002. Born and raised in London, she grew up with dogs (“We got the rejects breeders didn’t want”) and was such a good horsewoman that MGM studios hired her as a stunt rider for films such as The Charge of the Light Brigade. Before coming to the United States in 1976 and landing a gig as a chanteuse in Playboy clubs throughout the country, Watt had dealt cards in a casino and sung in cabarets in Turkey, Leba- non, and Belgium. In her forties, she settled in New York and thrived as an ABC-TV scriptwriter, turning out more than seven hundred soap opera episodes and earning a six- figure salary.

Watt met Jason, a voice-over actor fifteen years her junior, through a friend after her first marriage ended. They married in 1994 and bought a house in New Jersey. Not long after that, Watt fulfilled a long-held ambi- tion to become a pilot and teach fly- ing. As a flight instructor, she pulled in about $40,000 a year, sometimes tak- ing her students, mostly doctors and businesspeople, up in her own four- seat Mooney. After the 9/11 attacks, however, business waned, and her old restlessness returned. Then came the trip to Best Friends.

After a few days of volunteering, Watt felt a strong connection to the mission of the sanctuary (no animal is ever euthanized there, except in cases of painful terminal illness) and to the staff, many of whom had left behind successful first careers; there was a rocket scientist, a corporate purchasing agent, and a medical writer. Watt also loved the glorious high desert landscape just outside the town of Kanab. When Watt decided to move there,
she had no idea what she’d do for a living, but that didn’t faze her. “I’m a jack-of-all-trades,” she says. “To work among the animals at Best Friends would be great, but I could also be a waitress or a flight instructor. I just knew this was the place I had to be. That evening I told Jason, ‘We’re moving.’”

Her husband balked. Jason loved animals and adored the beauty of southern Utah but didn’t relish change and couldn’t imagine that a voice-over actor would find much work in the area. “I was scared of leaving my comfort zone,” he says. “But Juliette taught me to move outside it.” Trusting his wife’s instincts, he agreed to relocate.

After their vacation, they returned home to put their house on the market. Meanwhile, Watt continued to give flying instruc- tion twenty-five hours a week, tracked Kanab real estate listings, and regularly checked bestfriends.org, hoping to find a suitable job opening for Jason. Her soap opera earnings had enabled them to buy their first house, so they decided that he would be the main provider now. One day she noticed that Best Friends had an opening for a videographer and that a beautiful cedar house near Kanab, with commanding views of the desert, was for sale. She took these as signs of what their future would look like. Jason, who’d studied filmmaking in college, applied for the position and was invited to Best Friends for a tryout. (The nonprofit requires many prospective employees, even previous volunteers, to work for two weeks at the job before it makes an offer.)

By July 2003, the pair were on the road to Utah with luggage piled on top of the car and their three dogs curled up in the back- seat. The first week in Kanab, they took another big risk, putting down a chunk of their savings on the cedar house. With uncertain job prospects and two mortgage payments due (their New Jersey house still hadn’t found a buyer), the situation looked perilous. Watt says she felt a stab of panic (“What if we’re poor and home- less, and it’s all my fault?”), but having already made several career changes, she had faith in her internal compass. “Most people don’t listen to their inner voice, but if you do, everything works out,” she says.

The couple had planned to live on Jason’s new salary, but the amount hadn’t been posted in the ad. When they discovered that if hired he would make only $37,000 (about a third of his voice- over earnings), Watt quickly applied for a volunteer-coordinator job at Dogtown, which paid $18,000. Her tryout went so well that after three days, Best Friends broke with protocol and signed her on. And at the end of his audition, Jason became the sanctu- ary’s first official videographer.

With two mortgages draining their savings, however, their salaries weren’t enough to live on. Eight months after the move and down to $300 in their checking account, the couple had a huge fight. “I believed we’d ride out the situation,” says Watt, “but he saw my confidence as nonchalance, and that set him off.” Jason moved into the guest room.

The turnaround came soon after the blowup, when the New Jersey house finally sold and Jason fell in love—with a feral Chihuahua. “Chaco came from a terrible animal-hoarding situa- tion, a person who had more than 250 dogs,” says Watt. “When we adopted him, he became Jason’s best buddy.”

With the couple’s debt reduced and marital harmony restored, Watt reveled in her new job. During the next few years, her position expanded, and she’s now the coordinator of volunteer groups and interns for the entire sanctuary—Piggy Paradise, Horse Haven, Cat World, and the bird and rabbit areas. Dozens of people help at Best Friends every day, most of them out-of-towners on volun- teer vacations, and Watt matches their interests with work that has to be done, such as taking 140-pound potbellied pigs for their morning walks and cleaning the rabbit hutches.

In 2005, she was part of Best Friends’ Hurricane Katrina response team, which rescued six thousand animals, mostly pets (including one emu) trapped in flooded homes and backyards. While Jason worked on logistics from the Kanab headquarters, Watt was deployed along with about twenty others to a rescue facility in Mississippi. “I spent seven months living in a trailer, being eaten alive by bugs,” she says, “but when you save animals, there is no feeling like it in the world. Every night around mid- night, a big truck would arrive from New Orleans full of dogs. We’d unload them, get them set up for the night, and, in the morning, process them through a makeshift clinic for vaccinations and medical care.”

Back in Utah, workdays are less dramatic. On a typical morn- ing at Best Friends, Watt is a blur of motion, ponytail bouncing as she oversees workers stacking wooden supply-transport pallets, rustles up shovels for heaving gravel into storage cans, and briefs volunteers on how to tidy an area outside Piggy Paradise head- quarters. Patting shoulders as she bustles by, she calls everyone “darling” and swiftly molds a gaggle of California kids on spring break into a hardworking team. The students are here for a week, rotating through the various Best Friends neighborhoods. In Piggy Paradise, they fall in love with a potbelly named Sprocket and beg to take him on a sleepover to the house in Kanab where they’re staying. Best Friends lets volunteers take animals home overnight, and Sprocket, housebroken and unflappable, is on the approved list. Watt calls the owner of the house for permission, arranges for a van to transport the pig, and asks her husband to send a photographer so they can post a story (“Sprocket Goes to Town”) on Best Friends’ website.

The constant motion of Watt’s job serves her restless spirit, but Best Friends’ rescued horses thrill her the most. “They’re always monitoring what’s going on around them,” she says. “They reflect back the emotions you send out.”

Living in Kanab has also enriched Watt’s relationships with humans. “The silence of this place magnifies your inner self,” she says. “There are no distractions, so you concentrate on friend- ships. I’ve made the best friends of my life here.”

Of course, there’s a sad side to working at an animal sanctuary. “A dog was turned in a few years ago because he didn’t match the color scheme of the new house,” she recalls. Many of Best Friends’ inhabitants come from hoarders who amass hundreds of animals they cannot care for. Then there are the cruelty cases. “We did a rescue in Gabbs, Nevada, of dogs abandoned in pens in the mid- dle of the desert.” The sanctuary’s success stories make the sad- ness more bearable. That so many animals, even gravely injured ones, can be rescued, healed, and placed for adoption inspires her to keep going.

Lately, Watt’s work at Best Friends has led to an interest in natural horse training, a style pioneered by Pat Parelli, who runs a worldwide organization that teaches people how to become the animal’s partner instead of its master. Now she wants to study the method, continue working at Best Friends, and eventually run a side business as a Parelli horsemanship instructor. “I can use my airplane to visit clients who want me to train their horses,” she says. “It’s a way to make the world a better place for humans and horses, working with different rescue groups and shelters, working with horses that are ‘difficult’—I would like to make a difference in that area.”

Will this be her last career change? Unlikely. When a visitor to Best Friends describes her as a serial reinventor, Watt cracks a big smile. “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me.”

The Most Important Thing I Did Right

“Trusting my instincts.”

The Most Important Thing I Learned

“When your gut, your instinct, your whole body are telling you to do something, even though it may seem like the craziest, most insane thing, do it. I used to ignore that; when my instincts told me to do something, I would always question it and talk myself out of it. Now it’s sort of like the filter has gone.”

Becoming a Pilot in Midlife: Juliette’s Story

NEXT Act For WOMEN

Juliette’s life has been full of adventure and brush with fame—Cat Stevens, Hugh Hefner, Bruce Springsteen—not the least of which is getting her pilot’s license and using that skill to help rescue animals after Hurricane Katrina. What an odyssey!

Tell us a little about your background.

I was born Juliette Bora in London, England, in 1951. An only child, I lived in Turkey with my parents for the first four years of my life. My father was Turkish, and died when I was 10. My mother was French and a very unbalanced woman. I think we know today she was bi-polar and suffered from extreme depression, but in those days no one really talked about that kind of mental illness, especially in England—you kind of lived with it. There were no therapists or help of any kind. You very much kept your troubles to yourself.

When I was five, we went back to live in England, where I grew up and went to school. My childhood/youth was pretty harsh. Because my dad died so early, life changed dramatically for us; mother was in a panic and we pretty much financially went downhill. When I was 13, my mother bought me a horse because she thought it might ease the loss of my dad but we really couldn’t pay for a horse, so to earn the necessary money to keep him, I worked as a stunt rider for MGM Pictures, which happened to be two miles from where I boarded my horse. I spent two years riding, falling, getting knocked off by bandits and jousting in full medieval armor—just about anything you can do on a horse—to make whatever money I could. I got hurt quite a bit, so when I turned 15, Mother sold my horse (without telling me) and that was that for my equine career.

I left school at 15 and went to work. I got a job after a year at the London Playboy Club as a casino dealer and tried as best I could to help my mom pay the bills. It finally all caught up with us and one night in the winter of 1969, the Bailiffs arrived at the front door to take my mother to debtors’ prison—yes, that was a thing back then! It took some fine double-talking on my part to convince them to give us a few days to come up with a certain amount of money. They didn’t know we owned a crumbly car, so the next day we packed the car and drove to Istanbul, Turkey.

Working as a casino dealer at the Playboy Club

The car broke down in Bulgaria. This was 1970 and you didn’t want to be two women stranded at 2:00 am on the main (cobbled) highway in the middle of a very communist country. We did survive this (very long and hair-raising story involved) and finally arrived in Istanbul, Turkey, in the back of a cattle truck.

At 19, I became a cabaret singer at the Hilton Hotel in Istanbul. Then, a year later, in 1971, I moved to Beirut, Lebanon, where I lived for four years singing in clubs and hotels. I basically got on a plane one day, while Mother was visiting Grandma in England, and left. When she returned to Istanbul, she was furious, but I had to get away; I was choking. The war started in 1973 and I got out in the beginning of 1975 on a super scary drive, with bullets flying around, huddled on the floor of taxi cab to the airport on the last day it was open.

After a few more years working as a singer in London and Europe, I moved to the USA in 1976—Los Angeles—where I then started working for Playboy, singing across the country in all their clubs.

During that time, I moved to New York City (1979) and got married to a now very well-known Broadway actor, Terrence Mann. I always wanted to become a writer so I started writing plays and movies—mainly plays—and had a few produced in small, unknown, cold and drafty theaters but nevertheless I was loving it. I also started a workout class that was a kind of ballet/Pilates intense stretch class, which I taught in the city for the next 16 years. It was very successful.

In 1989, Terry found his soulmate. I honestly can’t say I blame him as I wasn’t the best person I could have been. I realize now how much influence and power my mother had on and over me—thus creating in me a second version of her, which was very damaging. But Terry found his soulmate and had to go. It was meant to be.

Of course I was completely unprepared. Terry had been the major breadwinner so everything—credit, nice apartment on the Upper West Side with a $3000 a month mortgage, most of the money in the bank—was in his name. My friends told me to leave the apartment and get a couple of roommates, oh, and burn all his clothes outside “her” apartment where he was living.

I was not about to leave my apartment; it was my home. I was way too old for roommates (I was 38 and didn’t much care for people anyway) and I was not about to break the law and burn anything, but I had to do something fairly drastic because money was running out. I doubled up on the classes I was teaching, established my own credit, and became more focused than ever before. I was running out of time and it was catching up with me, so I called the President of Citibank (not an easy task and I don’t think it would work today) and told him my story and asked for an extra five years on the mortgage to reduce my monthly payments. I think saying my husband had just left me for a ballerina helped! They gave me the five years and I struggled along. When I kind of ran out of food, I realized I was going to have to earn a lot of money to stay in my apartment and live in NYC, so I took a play I had written to ABC Daytime TV and applied to become a Soap Opera Writer for One Life to Live (OLTL). I got the job and stayed as a soap writer for the next four years, earning an Emmy Nomination and two WGA (Writers Guild of America) awards.

Hanging out with the “One Life to Live” gang

When did you start to think about making a change?

Working as a writer in Daytime TV was very stressful. I had to write a 90-page script, edited and delivered in five days, 52 weeks a year, and I could absolutely NOT be late on delivery. I loved the writing but I worked for very intense, ambitious women executives and that was a challenge. It was a lot about “who likes me this week?” I did well on OLTL and we got the Emmy nod which was great, so for a few weeks everyone liked us!

Then I moved to a show called Loving (which spawned Michael Weatherly who is now on the number one show Bull); they were doing a huge turnaround and changed all the staff. There was a new Producer, Haidee Granger, who is one of the finest women I have ever known, not to mention very talented in her own right as a TV producer. Haidee turned Loving around and we were getting serious notice from the networks. As is very typical in daytime TV land – someone high up decided that Haidee was getting too successful; in three days she was gone and replaced by another producer

The two WGA Awards we received for Outstanding Achievement in a Daytime serial were entirely due to Haidee’s work. At the WGA awards ceremony in NYC at the Waldorf Astoria, I caused a big scene by holding up the show, asking Barbara Walters to sit down (as she was coming back to the stage to host), and giving Haidee the accolade she deserved. Everyone in the room applauded except the ABC table—they all turned their backs to me. Two weeks later, I was gone from the show. But I felt amazing. It was worth getting fired for doing what I truly believed was the right thing. That was the first time I felt the power of being truthful, authentic, and giving to someone with not a care about my own safety.

I met Jason in 1992 at a small cabaret hangout in New York City. He was dating a mutual friend and I was already divorced and on OLTL and had absolutely no thoughts of getting married again. I didn’t want children and I was perfectly happy just hanging with my friends. Well… God has a great sense of humor and after a few months I realized I had met my soulmate. We dated for two years then married in 1994. While we honeymooned in Jamaica, I sat on the beach and contemplated my future. I was 43. I knew daytime TV was not for me. I remember thinking, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” and “What would you do for free?”

Fly an airplane!!

My father had been an aircraft engineer and it had always been in my blood. Also, we were very fortunate at that time as Jason was doing very well in his voiceover career and, for the first time in almost 30 years, I didn’t have to work! We could afford this. When we got home to New Jersey (we had moved there in 1993) I called the local airport and off I went, at age 43, to become an airplane pilot.

What is your next act?

I am an Airline Transport Pilot (ATF) and Master Flight Instructor, qualified to fly 19 different airplanes.

Flying is something quite extraordinary. You take off and climb to thousands of feet above the ground and you are in another world—literally. You are talking to Air Traffic Control (ATC); they are your lifeline, responsible for making sure that over 20,000 aircraft that are airborne at any given time, fly, land, and take off safely. I love the language of pilots and ATC, the unwavering professionalism that is so prevalent in the air amongst us. I always felt surrounded by “my people.” It is peace at its finest.

Back in those days, before 9/11 and all the shit that followed, all was well with the world. And there is nothing better than bringing that plane home to the airport and feeling the wheels gently thunk to the ground. Your airplane is not a machine like the car; it’s a part of the family. I purchased my own airplane and loved it. It carried us all over the country: me, hubby, and two dogs!

How hard was it to become a pilot?

It took three years for me to secure my Private Pilot’s License and my Flight Instructor license. I was very fortunate as my first instructor was a young man named Marcus McCall (now a Jet Blue Captain). He was 22 and just a few weeks graduated out of Embry Riddle Aviation University. I was his very first student. He was so talented and guided me through this very difficult process.

Many times, I really thought I’d have to quit. Sometimes our lesson was cancelled because of wind and weather and I remember in those early days being secretly relieved—I had a day reprieve! See, I had fear. Not the scared of night shadows fear but real, mind-numbing terror. Here I was in a small—no, tiny—little lawnmower with wings; up in the air and feeling every wind bump and strange noise that little airplanes make and thinking, “have I lost my mind completely?” Marcus was so patient!

The academic side to flying is all about math—my worst ever subject—but I found that when I was learning the technical side of flying, the math fell into place. Why hadn’t that nasty math teacher I’d had in school told us that Pythagoras’s Theorem totally applied to airplane navigation?

Landing was the tricky part. Taking off is optional—landing is compulsory. It was my Achilles’ heel. For some reason my spatial awareness was all wonky. You really have to “feel” the landing as there is a time about 10 feet off the ground where you are on a kinesthetic journey of just knowing when the wheels will touch. I thumped that little plane down hundreds of times and poor Marcus was sometimes quite pale, but off we’d go again and again and again, round and round the pattern, landing—or should I say meeting the ground firmly. I was so determined to become a Master that I didn’t stop. I went to the airport every day and practiced. Sometimes I scared myself but I pressed on. Today, I can pretty much land anything, anywhere.

I remember the day I soloed. My instructor Marcus got out of the airplane—not as confident as he would have liked—and I was alone in this little tin cup.

And as I learned and gained knowledge, my confidence increased. I spent over 117 hours as a student before Marcus could sign me off to take my Private Pilot’s license. But because of that arduous, although thrilling journey of learning, I became an excellent instructor as I knew what it was to struggle in the flight training process. I found I could really help people with their fear—everyone has it.

With the help of some of the most extraordinary pilots I have ever known, I honed my craft. Every time—to this day—when I have a challenging flight, I think of all my teachers and what they used to say “Just wear the airplane and fly!”

Jason and I had moved to Red Bank, New Jersey after our wedding, in 1994, and right after we got there and I started flying. I struck up a friendship with Bruce Springsteen at our local gym. One day, I sat down beside him and he said, “What’s the topic of the day?” And off we went for the next few years having extraordinary chats about everything. This was Bruce’s local gym and he’s just that kind of guy—one of the most gracious and kind people I have ever met. We would pretty much see each other every day at the gym and he sort of became my flying mentor in a strange kind of way. He loved that I was learning to fly and used to ask me every day how it was going. He nicknamed me Sky King (from the old series Sky King & Penny).

I remember the day before my first exam—the one that would give me my Private Pilot’s license and make me an official pilot. I was sick-to-my-stomach terrified, hoping for awful weather or that I’d come down with some lengthy illness—anything that would prevent me from going to the airport the next morning to face The Examiner! I was sitting in the gym and I told Bruce my exam was the next day. He was thrilled; I was not. I asked him, “Have you ever been scared to go on stage?” and without missing a beat he nodded and said, “Oh yes. A lot.” I was amazed. He has faced thousands of people and played for hours. Scared? Really? He patted my hand and said I was going to do fine and he’d see me in a couple days to hear the good news. Strangely, knowing that Bruce Springsteen got scared also was exceptionally comforting.

The next day, I aced the test and got my license. The following morning, I was getting out of my car at the gym and turned to walk in across the parking lot. There was Bruce standing with his arms open wide mouthing “Well?” I said I passed and he literally swept me up in a huge bear hug, congratulating me. That was a special day. He never knew it but Bruce Springsteen had an awful lot to do with my success as a pilot for the next 15 years. Whenever it got rough, I would often think of those days at the gym in Red Bank and the lovely friend I had in my corner.

You’ve used your pilot’s license to help with animal rescue. Tell us about that.

As I improved and passed all my pilot’s exams with flying colors, I started to think, “What can I do with this?” “How can I be of service?” So in 2003, Jason and I moved to Kanab, Utah to work at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. They are the largest no-kill animal sanctuary in the world. Set on 3000 acres in Southern Utah, a half hour from the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Park, Best Friends is one of the most amazing places you will ever see. Funded solely by individual donors, they bring in over $55 million a year and most of it goes to the animals. They have been instrumental in a lot of legislation changes around the country with regard to animal shelters and rescue. Just a look at their website tells you everything.

I took my airplane and worked as a Volunteer Coordinator and their animal transport pilot for ten years. They sent me to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to aid with their animal rescue and we rescued 6,000 dogs, cats, and various other species. I stayed down there for nine months. My first stationing was in Tylertown, Mississippi, where Best Friends had set up a temporary shelter/receiving area. We put in a 19-hour days, 7 days a week. At 1:00 am every night, a huge semi-truck would arrive filled with rescued animals from the city (New Orleans). We would take them and vet them. Some were in such a bad state we had to do emergency surgery there on the spot; some were so thin and cold they couldn’t walk; some were ok but so frightened they would bite everyone who came near them. But we didn’t care. They were our kids now and we would fix them.

What we were not prepared for, however, was how few people ever came to claim the dogs, cats, bunnies, snakes, reptiles, and varied assortment of critters we had accumulated. So after a while, we started adopting them out and sending them to other animal rescues across the country, which is where I came in: I flew the animals to various locations for adoption. I once had to fly a “family” of Tarantula spiders to a Tarantula rescue in Alabama. They were in a large roomy dog crate on the back seat of my airplane and I spent three hours steeling my nerves with those large, black, hairy creatures over my shoulder. I think I aged a bit on that flight!

In 2006, Jason and I moved to New Orleans itself, where Best Friends had set up a holding/rescue station in the city called Celebration Station, which Jason ran. This was very different: Every day we had a steady stream of people coming through the doors to adopt. Anderson Cooper even came from CNN and did an interview with me! I was primarily an adoption coordinator and we had to be very careful as most of our dogs were pit bulls. I worked side by side with my dear friend Cathy Scott, who wrote an amazing book about this experience called Pawprints of Katrina: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned. We had to be very careful as you never knew who was running a dog fighting ring and had come just because we had pit bulls.

Taking a miniature pony in the plane to the vet

One day, Cathy and I were working through a line of very impatient people wanting to adopt, when a guy who honestly looked like he was “straight out of Compton”—all black leather, gold chains, sunglasses that would have made Elvis squirm, with a posse of Dr. Dre wannabes—leaned over my desk, laid out three $100 bills and said, “I want the black one in cage 12.” His nose was about six inches from mine. My brain did that thing where it goes super slow—you know when you run through the list of options—as I figured out how to say no, as I knew in my heart he wanted this pit bull to fight. I then contemplated the various death scenarios that could possibly transpire as a result of my channeling Braveheart and facing down a gangster, not to mention Jason having to deal with the fact his wife was dead because she was “brave.” Oh but it was such an easy decision. I stood up; looked Mr. Rapper square in one sunglassed eye and said, “No, Sir. That dog is not available to you. None of them are.” I could feel Cathy holding her breath as I basically waited to die. An eternity of seconds went by. Mr Rapper stared at me, pushed his nose an inch closer, turned on his heels, snapped to his boys, and walked out the front door.

I have no idea why he left but I felt like a million bucks. I knew I had just saved a life: the black dog in cage 12.

How supportive were your family and friends?

It’s always ever just been my current husband. Everyone else thinks/thought I was mad, too old; too ambitious (for my age), etc. But when I succeeded in each endeavor – yup, they all said how great I was. How amazing! How I was so fabulous! My favorite was, “You are always so lucky.” Luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Or even semi prep in my case!

What challenges did you encounter?

Sticking with it. Overcoming real fear. Getting into that plane every day. Trusting my instincts were right and this was my mission. Learning to understand that because this was so difficult and I had so much resistance, this was what I was supposed to be doing for a much larger and more important reason. I had no idea what that was as I wasn’t really that interested in only being an airline pilot. I just knew that even though most days were hard, I still had days of pure exuberance and joy like I had not felt since I was a child. I remember my first really good landing, where the plane met the ground and you didn’t even feel the wheels touch. That was beyond words amazing! That’s when I knew this was right. It was one of the first times I solely listened to my gut and ignored the chattering committee in my brain.

Were there times when you thought about giving up?

Yes. I think about quitting and just riding my horses and not thinking about being on a mission or changing the world, but that’s not my destiny. Thankfully I do have my amazing husband who is my consummate cheerleader, but that’s not enough is it? So I always go back to, “I’ve done this before.” When I was learning to fly I couldn’t land the airplane, I mastered it because I made it critical to my life. When I was learning to deal roulette and Blackjack at the Playboy Club and I couldn’t count fast enough and was on the brink of losing my job (and if I had, my mom was going to be put in debtors prison), I had to learn so I could keep the job. I found a way.

So I remember these times (and many others, when all looked hopeless) and remember how I focused and accepted nothing less than success. When it all looks hopeless, I create a critical commitment within myself. I just say it’s time to make magic happen!

What advice do you have for women seeking reinvention in midlife?

Be brave beyond anything you could ever have imagined.

Ask yourself, “What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail”?

And most important of all, scare yourself at least once a day!

Find mentors. I created my own: Maya Angelou for her wisdom in such few words; Eckhart Tolle to keep me in the Now; Bruce Springsteen for his extraordinary eyes on life; Tony Robbins when I need a kick somewhere. And always look for teachers who love teaching. They will be the best at what they do.

What advice do you have for those interested in becoming pilots? What resources do you recommend?

Get in your vehicle, drive to the airport and sign up with a flight school. Find a good instructor and just do it. It’s really a hands on deal. You will get all your study textbooks from your flight school. But there are a few extra things I recommend.

AOPA is the Pilots association for private pilots. Become a member and you will also get the magazine.

King Schools: The training program I used for all the theory exams that you are tested on. Here’s an article about the founders, John and Martha King.

The cost varies depending on which kind of flight school you attend and a lot of other variables. Here’s a good page for that info.

What’s next for you?

I am getting very involved with coaching and public speaking and am signed with the Denver Speakers Bureau. I hope to help people who are struggling with Compassion Fatigue and everyone who wants to change their lives and live a long-lost dream but just don’t know how or where to start and who realize they have lost themselves in who they’ve been for other people.

I’m working on my memoir, told with nothing held back: my life starting as a child in England; my very first, fall-head-over heels-in-love-as-only-you-can at 17 relationship with Cat Stevens; my life as a Playboy Bunny and move into becoming a cabaret singer. Being raped at knife point in Liege, Belgium and taking two months to catch the guy, by myself, charge him, and put him away in prison for 15 years. Being tricked by my best friend into going on a holiday to Lausanne, Switzerland, and finding out it was just a ruse to send me into white slave traffic to an Arab Sheikh, then my subsequent hair-raising escape back to London, England. Telling Mother I was going on holiday to America in 1976 and never going back. Being told by some very nice Italian men from New York that I was going to play the lead in the movie of Judy Garland and finding out I was just their front for robbing casinos in Vegas. Walking the fire-walk with Tony Robbins. And a lot more.

Eager to Adopt a Pet? She Delivers—by Air

People Magazine

Juliette Watt, 56

Kanab, Utah

Animal-rescue volunteer

Juliette Watt will go to extraordinary lengths to help a bunny in distress. Or 1,600 bunnies, as was the case last year when the owner of a rabbit ranch in Nevada decided he could no longer care for his cottontails. Watt fired up her four-seat, single-engine plane and flew the rabbits, 21 at a time, to animal sanctuaries from Southern California to Martha’s Vineyard, making sure her passengers had plenty of lettuce and liquids along the way. “Rabbits need to get out of their cages to eat and stretch every few hours,” says Watt. “And you can’t do that on commercial airlines.”

Comforting bunnies—as well as cats, dogs, horses, snakes and other critters—keeps Watt plenty busy when she isn’t coordinating volunteers at Utah’s Best Friends Animal Society, the country’s largest animal sanctuary. A licensed pilot since 1996 (a longtime dream), she has used her own plane to rescue pets from places like hurricane-ravaged Louisiana. She also delivers about 200 tough-to-place animals annually to new owners in towns across America. (Best Friends pays for the fuel.) “To bring together a homeless pet with the perfect new companions—nothing can match that,” says the British-born Watt, whose husband, Jason, 40, produces promotional videos for the shelter.

Among Juliette’s fans: Patti Lehman of Kissimmee, Fla., who adopted Ms. Laura, a blind, lame but “full of spirit” mixed-breed dog, rescued from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Says Lehman: “I’ll always be grateful to Juliette for bringing her into my life.”

Flying the Best Friendly Skies!

Friendly Skies

Her day job is watching over all the volunteers and visitors who stream in and out of Best Friends Dogtown to help look after the pooches. But Juliette Watt is also a licensed pilot and flight instructor with her own four-seater Mooney plane. So she’s often aloft, bringing rescued animals back to the sanctuary or delivering them to their new homes.

And this week, she’s profiled in People Magazine in their “Heroes Among Us” section.

The article describes how she’s used her plane to rescue pets from hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, as well as to deliver hundreds of tough-to-place animals annually to new homes in towns across the country.

One of Juliette’s projects was helping place rabbits in new homes and refuges during the Great Bunny Rescue last year, when Best Friends rescued 1,600 rabbits from a backyard hoarding situation in Reno, Nevada. “Rabbits need to get out of their cages to eat and stretch every few hours,” she told People Magazine. “And you can’t do that on commercial airlines.”

Not mentioned in the article: Juliette’s longest flight – from Miami, Florida, to Best Friends in Southern Utah, when she brought the giant mastiff Zeus from the county shelter for special care at the sanctuary.

Nor her biggest passenger: Luna the miniature horse (the size of a big dog), whom she took to the veterinary hospital at Oregon State University for specialized surgery. Zeus and Luna each took up both the two back seats of the small plane. (“And we stopped half-way to Oregon,” notes Juliette, “so Luna could take a bathroom break.”)

Juliette ferries people as well as pets. Currently, she’s doing runs back and forth to the Great Cat Rescue in Pahrump, 60 miles from Las Vegas, where Best Friends is caring for hundreds of cats. “It’s a long, hot, time-consuming drive back and forth,” says Juliette. “But I can get whoever and whatever they need from here at the sanctuary to there in less than an hour. And that’s a big help.”

Photo by Andrew Geiger, courtesy of People Magazine

Juliette Watt

Speaker. Author. Coach.