The Sacred Art of Starting Over

By Daphny Lauren Bravo

There’s a moment that lives in your bones long before your mind catches up — a quiet knowing that something no longer fits. For me, that moment came not with a whisper but with a slow burn of what I once called success. 

I was the picture of achievement: a corporate retail handbag buyer in NYC and an NYU business degree hanging proudly on my wall. I made 6 figures & lived in an oceanfront home by 25 years old, I held the executive positions (9 to be exact), sat in star studded meetings (with Kors & Wang) & attended the movie screenings (Sex in the City- yea I was there). I’ve walked the red carpet and done the NY socialite thing (The Met Gala? I’ve been to 5).

I boss babe’d the shit outta life and you know what?

Until I truly got in touch with the little girl who had to prove herself through results- none of that made me feel successful or whole.

I knew how to win, perform, carry the weight of expectations — 

especially as the oldest daughter of Cuban immigrants who sacrificed everything for our chance at the American dream. But what I didn’t know was how to live for me.

It wasn’t one event that made me walk away. It was years of soul-crushing hustle and of becoming fluent in the language of burnout— pretending the sharp ache in my chest & my growing autoimmune condition was normal. I was climbing a coveted ladder but felt more and more hollow the higher I climbed.

Cue Motherhood– and with it a primal awakening — not just in my body, but in my spirit. I began to see how deeply conditioned I was to abandon myself. My children asked for presence, but I didn’t know how to give what I never learned to receive. I was still operating in survival mode, inherited from generations before me. My parents escaped communism, rebuilt from rubble, and taught us to work hard, “stay safe”. But that illusion of safety, I realized, had become my cage.

So I left it all. 

Not without fear but with a fierce devotion to feeling alive again. I stepped away from the corporate world and the version of me who knew how to play the game but had forgotten how to feel. I traded boardrooms for breathwork and spreadsheets for sacred rituals. I accidentally trained 700 hours in yoga and slowly, I began to remember myself.

Starting over wasn’t glamorous. It was messy, raw, and often terrifying with a child in tow. Although I had my family’s support – I didn’t have a roadmap, only my intuition, which had been buried for so long I barely recognized its tiny whisper of a voice. But little by little, I followed it — through the fog of doubt, through financial instability, through the grief of leaving an identity that once gave me pride.

I opened a handmade paper flower business a year later and although insanely successful (ABC features, speaking gigs & endless orders) - I quickly realized I had recreated the same hustle I had just barely escaped- the one that nearly killed me- but this time with a toddler at my side and now an infant strapped to my chest.

So I burnt it down, literally— and luckily this time, The Universe helped.

A reoccurring dream of burning roses inspired me to turn my self taught art into sacred paper rose rituals. I made burning roses for manifestation, dissolving roses for cleansing & planting roses for new beginnings. I was finally building a business that reflected my own souls’ journey. Birth-Death-Rebirth. 

Trial-Error-Triumph.

The more I tapped into my intuition & my feminine softness- the more I inspired women to wake up to their own inner brilliance. As I learned how to live in the cyclical feminine- experimenting, listening, guiding— I was showing other women how to lead themselves from within.

I was called to hold retreats & create programs to help women do what I had done - learn how to live again- but this time, my rituals helped. There is no formula for starting over. No neat “10-step plan.” There is only the truth you carry in your bones, the one that keeps whispering until you let it lead. 

Mine said: Life is not a performance- Time to remember what yours is for. 

And in that remembering, I reclaimed my natural brilliance — not as something to prove, but to fulfill what was always waiting within me.

Walking away is an act of faith. It’s trusting that what you lose by letting go, is nothing compared to what you gain by coming home to yourself. It’s refusing to betray your soul just to belong. Knowing that legacy is not built from titles or paychecks, but from alignment, freedom, and love.

Now, I live differently. I create from overflow, not obligation. I parent with presence, not performance. I lead from embodiment, not ego. And most importantly, I honor the inner voice that once whispered, Remember. Because she knew the way back to me. 

Starting over didn’t save me. I saved me — by walking away from a life that looked good on paper but killed my spirit, and choosing one that feels sacred, even when it’s uncertain. That’s the quiet revolution I now teach others: your success is not in your resume, It’s in your remembering. And it begins the moment you choose yourself.

Connect With Daphny

www.DLaurenB.com

www.instagram.com/daphnylaurenbravo