In my early writing days, I wrote more than 500 blog posts on a women’s empowerment site. I only know the number because the charismatic leader congratulated me on my contribution. My participation came to a screeching halt after I attended an in-person event in Los Angeles. Five minutes into the Friday night cocktail mixer, I realized it was a cult.
“Life changing” programs were pushed hard, Ones where they tear you down and then build you back up, Ones costing thousands of dollars, Ones marketed with questionable tactics,
To people who I questioned could afford them.
My spirit was crushed. How did I miss this? After a quick call home to tell my husband the shocking news, I returned to the mixer. Now I needed a glass of wine. As I began meeting and talking to other women there, I soon realized, I was in the company of big dreamers.
Beautiful, earnest, vulnerable people hoping, needing a break. One particular group I friended had a fascination with Iraqi currency. Believing the Dinar would be revalued soon and anyone holding it would get rich. There were plans drawn on cocktail napkins about chartering private jets to fly them to collect their enormous gains and Cayman Island banks.
They believed it so much, I wanted to believe it, too. Not the private jet part that was crazy.
The part where this could happen for them. That they could finally step away from the financial cliff that was making the draw to the flame so irresistible.
I may or may not have some Iraqi Dinar tucked away in a drawer that didn’t live up to its promise…yet. My pay to play was a small wager that luckily I could afford. My reward, standing in the company of believers the likes of which I had never met before.
Priceless!
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