Susan Powter was emerging from one of the most painful periods of her life, struggling with Uber Eats tips, when she received a text message saying someone was interested in telling her story.

Powter, 66, a fitness icon of the 90s who earned millions with three bestsellers and was extremely successful Stop the madness! She lost her fortune after placing it in the hands of financial advisors, her manager, and her business partners, and eventually disappeared from public life.

She has lived in Las Vegas for six years, struggling to survive on a meager salary as a food delivery person before receiving a Social Security check that becomes her lifeline.

But last year she received a text message from filmmaker Zeberiah Newman asking if he could film her and tell her story in a documentary. “I never thought this was possible,” Powter tells PEOPLE. She says she felt excluded from society for years because of her age. “I learned that after a certain age, women are invisible and invaluable,” she says. “Usually it’s the f—able age.”

Newman texted his friend Jamie Lee Curtis about connecting with Powter, and the actress was immediately interested — and wanted to help. “She called me two minutes later and the next day she said, 'Go back to Vegas and start filming right away,'” Newman says. Curtis became an executive producer on the project, an upcoming documentary titled Stop the Madness: Finding Susan Powter.

Curtis calls Powter an “incredible woman”: “As one of the world's first true influencers at the dawn of what we would now call the social media era, Susan Powter was bold and courageous and woke us all up,” said the actress says. “Like so many women’s stories, Susan’s power and light have been diminished, denigrated and dismissed.”

A few months ago, Powter met Curtis in person and had a message for her. “I had tears in my eyes,” Powter says. “And I said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. I had lost faith. I had lost complete and absolute hope.'”

Powter, who has just published a new book And then they died… Stop the madness! A memory says Curtis and the documentary's interest in the work has given her new strength. “The reaction that Zeb has gotten in Hollywood and in the industry is that people are like, 'Oh my God, I'm so excited. She still looks good. This is so great.' That meant something to me, a lot to me.

Newman, making his feature-length directing debut with the documentary, says Powter spoke to people in the '90s who felt taken advantage of by the diet industry – and today she speaks to women who feel left behind as they get older.

“Anyone who was frustrated that the system wasn't working for them connected with her and felt seen by her,” he says, adding that he watched Powter begin to reclaim her own voice: ” She thrives as a person and not as a celebrity or a thing in the world, as just a human being. It's truly incredible to see her step back into her power.

Powter, who is planning an RV tour across the country, talking to people and selling her self-published book, says she's eager to reconnect with her fans and hopes they'll be inspired by her story.

“These women will hear my voice and say, 'Damn, she hasn't changed a bit,'” she says. “What I feel now is the possibility of possibilities. There were days and days, months and months and years when I didn't feel it. I lost hope, but now I'm filled with it. I’ve never been so excited.”