What Experience Actually Gives You When You Choose to Start Again

If my younger self could see where I am today, she would not believe it. My path has never been linear. It has been a series of detours, quiet pivots, and unexpected leaps that shaped who I am and how I work today.

It has moved like a hummingbird. Hovering. Darting. Pollinating across worlds that, on paper, do not seem connected.

Many moons ago, I was an independent film and music event producer. At one point, I was a wealth management banker. At another, I co-founded a burlesque troupe and produced BDSM events alongside conscious eroticism workshops and fire & flow beach festivals. Later, I was a digital nomad living first in Boracay then El Nido then Buenos Aires. I was once fiercely child free. I was once deeply committed to polyamory.

Today, I am a happy wife. A proud stepmom. An aspiring blue collar small business buyer. A consultant.  And still becoming.

For a long time, I wondered if that meant I lacked focus.

Then I heard Elizabeth Gilbert describe the difference between woodpeckers and hummingbirds. Woodpeckers drill into one tree for life. Hummingbirds move from bloom to bloom, cross pollinating entire ecosystems.

It felt like recognition.

I am a hummingbird.

But here is what no one tells you about being a hummingbird.

To move to a new bloom, something in you must die.

To Start Again Is to Die Unto Yourself

Every time I have started again, I have had to let a former version of myself die.

Not violently. Not dramatically.

But deliberately.

There is a grief that comes with evolution.

To honor our past selves, we must take a long walk along the tombstones of all the women we used to be. The ones we abandoned. The ones we left behind. The ones we outgrew. The ones we thought we had to kill off in order to survive.

We lay flowers for them. We listen for what they still have to say.

Starting again is not self-erasure. It is integration through mourning.

When I left the identity of the ever-expanding events and entertainment entrepreneur, I had to grieve her. 

When I shifted from polyamory into marriage, I had to mourn the woman who once defined freedom very differently.

When I moved from Manila to island life to Latin America to San Diego ranch life to New York City, I had to let landscapes within me close.

When I moved from identifying as passionately child-free to becoming a stepmom, something in me died. And something else was born.

To die and be reborn, we must let go of who we think we are, who we think we should be, and instead honor all the women we have been, who we are, and who we will become.

This is not metaphorical for me. It is lived.

The Experience That Made Me Choose to Start Again

There was never just one moment.

There were seasons of misalignment. Quiet inner whispers. A sense that the woman I was becoming no longer fit the scripts I had inherited, or even the ones I had written for myself.

What made those pivots possible was trust.

Through one of my mentors, Dona Tumacder Esteban of Inner Moon Wellbeing, I was introduced to womb centered wisdom and to Bahala Na as a conscious living tradition.

She describes Bahala Na as sweet surrender to the divine present moment.

That understanding changed everything.

It was not passive fate. It was not resignation.

It was participation.

It was sacred agency in the now.

It was planting seeds for my future self while honoring the bones of my past selves.

To honor our future selves, we must tend to the saplings of our visions. Fragile, full of potential, requiring patience and faith.

Every new chapter requires nurturing.

The Lessons Experience Actually Taught Me

Starting again taught me that identity can evolve without collapsing.

The producer in me still lives in how I organize ideas. The banker still shapes how I assess risk. The digital nomad still informs my comfort with uncertainty.

None of them disappeared. They integrated.

I learned that reinvention is not instability. It is responsiveness.

I learned that growth requires both death and devotion.

I learned that you cannot skip the grieving stage. If you refuse to mourn who you were, you will unconsciously cling to her.

Only by acknowledging and integrating our past and future selves can we be fully present in our journey of continuous growth and renewal.

And perhaps the deepest lesson: my womb has never led me astray. The decisions that made the least sense externally often felt the clearest internally.

The Myths I Had to Let Go Of

• I had to let go of the belief that serious women choose one lane and stay in it.

• I had to release the idea that starting again in my 40s meant I failed at my earlier chapters.

• I had to dismantle the misconception that Bahala Na is fatalism. It is not giving up responsibility. It is surrender as spiritual audacity.

• And I had to let go of the fantasy that I could evolve without loss.

You cannot be reborn without something ending.

What Experience Actually Gives You

Experience gives you discernment.

You learn the difference between escapism and expansion. Between running away and answering a call.

Experience gives you self trust.

When you have already died unto yourself and survived, you stop fearing transformation.

And experience gives you reverence.

You begin to see your life not as a resume, but as a Life–Death–Life cycle. Each incarnation carrying its own wisdom and power.

The banker. The producer. The performer. The nomad. The wife. The stepmom. The aspiring business buyer.

They are not contradictions. They are a lineage.

The zigzag is not a detour. It is the path.

For Anyone Going Through a Transition

If you are starting again, do not rush past the mourning.

Visit the tombstones.

Lay the flowers.

Thank the woman you were.

Plant seeds for the woman you are becoming.

You are not behind.

You are in cycle.

And sometimes, choosing to begin again is the most faithful act of self devotion you can offer.

If you are a hummingbird, trust the hum.

Even when it requires a small death.

Especially then.