Nicole Curtis is back for a new season of Rehab Addict, and she’s made significant progress to reach this point.

In an exclusive conversation with PEOPLE, the celebrity said that a terrible event in her personal life served as a turning point for her, leading her back to her HGTV roots and two crazy new ventures.

“I experienced a significant setback in my life that profoundly affected me, and it was a moment when I contemplated how to overcome this challenge,” Curtis says. She’s keeping the specifics of the incident hidden for the time being, but claims it prompted her to make a significant choice regarding her priorities. “I prayed about it, and it was really awful for me. I had to make a decision right then, like, “Okay, we’re going to let this impact us for a long time, or we’re going to pick it up and leave.”

Curtis, 48, spontaneously made the decision one evening in July 2022 to travel from her Detroit home to the Greek island of Corfu that same night.

She quickly traveled to Paris, where she intended to spend a one-day stopover shopping, but as she boarded the plane, she had a heart-stopping discovery.

“I didn’t realize until I was up in the air, paying for my WiFi, that I left my wallet behind,” she jokes. “I did not have a credit card with me. My purse contained $72 in change in the form of dollar notes. So, I arrived in Paris without a wallet. I thought, well, you know what? This is it. This is my test: “I am going to figure it out.”

Fortunately, a friend was able to send her money via Western Union.

“It was so crazy that I was like, ‘This was a sign,’ and I made it through,” she recounts of reframing a near-disaster travel day. She took advantage of her stopover in the meantime. “I put on my running shoes, ran around the Eiffel Tower, and then biked around the Champs-Élysées. I accomplished all I set out to do.

However, the spontaneous bucket list choices did not end there. “I said, ‘Okay, what am I doing?’ I went out that night and bought a house online because I was determined to check off all of my wish lists tonight. “We are doing it.” The house, located in Wyoming, was an unsuccessful 1890s flip that required extensive repairs. As a seasoned HGTV star, the project was completely up her alley, but the time—and her circumstances—were unexpected.

Unfortunately, the hectic voyage continued from there. She overslept and missed her connecting flight from Paris to Corfu the next morning. She recalls being given two alternatives.

“I was either going to get stuck in Paris for the next week “or turn around and travel back to the States to work on her new project, she adds. “All of the flights were sold out, and this helpful woman on the Delta help line said, ‘I can get you from JFK to Salt Lake City, and then you can drive to Wyoming.'” I said, “That’s what I’m going to do.” So that’s what I did.”

When Curtis arrived in Salt Lake City, her kind friend FedExed her wallet to her, and she proceeded directly to the house she had just purchased.

“This house needed me, and I needed this house,” she explains.

Curtis repairs both the Wyoming house and a troublesome Detroit property that had been seized by squatters in the show’s ninth season, which begins on June 24.

She describes the new episodes as “an evolved version” of the show, taking it in a new direction from where the original and its spinoffs, Rehab Addict Rescue and Rehab Addict: Lake House Rescue, left off.

“I’m no longer this little poor mommy in Minneapolis driving around with this pickup truck with two dogs and a kid,” she tells me. “But I’m still me; I’m still Nicole Curtis from Detroit, and I want you to save that building, and we’re going to do it.”

“I think everyone will be so excited, because you see a lot of familiar faces,” she says of the show’s return. “All of the folks on my team are returning, and [viewers] have grown to love them over the years.” We’ve all remained friends, and they’re here.

However, she asserts that “old school fans” would undoubtedly feel completely comfortable.

“I believe that this season has the vibe of seasons one and two.” The houses are smaller,” she says. “We’ve done some huge projects throughout the years, including my lake house, which was like a bougie series. I’m creating a million-dollar lake mansion. I was still rescuing an old house, but it wasn’t ‘Nicole Curtis on the verge of bankruptcy’ if this one didn’t sell, unlike the old school ones.”

Another distinction will be the absence of her relatives from the series. Curtis has two sons: Ethan, born in 1997 with her ex, Steven Cimini, and Harper, born in 2015 and shared with her ex, Shane Maguire.

Ethan went on the program when he was younger, but this time he’s staying out of the spotlight, she claims.

“I learned my lesson,” she explains. “I believe we can give our children one gift: privacy. They spend a lot of time in public with me, and I safeguard them. My kid, when we originally launched the TV program years ago, we didn’t have an extensive social media presence. He was in sixth grade, and he and his friends thought it was amazing to be on television. And people still make fun of him because, ‘Oh my god, we can see you as a young guy, you had braces,’ and so on. But I will not do that again. My boys are the most wonderful things in the whole world to me.”

Ryan Sawtelle, Curtis’ ex-boyfriend and carpenter on the Wyoming property, does make an appearance in season 9.

“We were together for a long time, and I was very close to his family,” Curtis explains why she asked him on the show. “So we never truly stayed out of touch. Your lives are so intertwined.

“I didn’t know anyone in Wyoming, but I knew somebody near Wyoming, and so I gave him a call,” she says of Sawtelle. “We simply walked out there together and looked around the home. It was not anything else. There was no reconciliation, nor was there any thought of ‘Maybe this was a mistake, not being together.’ No, no, no… Going our own ways was the very finest decision we’d ever made.”

Curtis hasn’t said if she’s presently seeing someone romantically.

“I keep my private life private because I think there have been some very traumatic moments in my life that weren’t so private,” according to her. “This experience has taught me another valuable lesson.” “I often tell people that if you’re in my circle, you’ll know what’s going on in my life. Aside from that, I am quite quiet about everything.”

Curtis and Maguire battled for custody of Harper for years before becoming strong advocates for nursing moms’ rights. Her decision to continue breastfeeding Harper at the age of three drew criticism from some and became a point of contention in her court battle with Maguire. The former couple struck a custody arrangement in October 2018.

“Our family has experienced many challenges over the years, and I have made a concerted effort to keep my family out of the public eye while focusing on our homes,” says the mother. “That’s always where we wanted that focus to be.”

Curtis’ boys inspired her favorite aspect of filming the current season.

“I got to ride in a monster truck,” she explains. “That might seem foolish, but I have sons, right?” I’m a boy mom; therefore, I’ve always been a fan of monster trucks. I believe they’re fantastic. And I was always like, ‘Man, I want to ride in a monster truck and jump them. Unexpectedly, a monster truck rally took place in this small Wyoming hamlet.

At least one of the star’s bucket list items went as planned. Fans will have to wait until the new season to see how her high-risk rescues turn out.