We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Danielly Kaufmann a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Danielly, thanks for joining us today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

The most unexpected challenge I faced was trusting my instincts when logic said otherwise. In the beginning of 2023, while visiting Luxembourg to finalize citizenship documents, I heard an inner voice repeatedly saying ‘you are not going back.’ I abandoned my return ticket to Brazil with no concrete plans, limited resources, and no close connections. What followed could fill a series script—bureaucratic labyrinths, financial challenges, nomadic life between countries, heartbreak. But these challenges pushed me to exceptional growth and led me to deep engagement with AI for practical help. This alchemy set the stage for me to publish The Age of Digital Spirit, which won the Prime Book Award and received a strong review from the Chrysalis BREW Project. I’ve since signed with a Brazilian publisher for the Portuguese version. Sometimes the obstacles aren’t blocking the path—they are the path, forging us back toward our authentic creative voice.

Danielly, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a Luxembourgish-Brazilian artist, author, and creative explorer with a bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the University of São Paulo—a megacity of 20 million in Southeast Brazil, surrounded by concrete and farms and permeated by rainforest.

After graduation, I co-founded an independent film production company with my ex-husband, who is a film director, and we spent over a decade making art films in Brazil. Our first feature won Best Film at a major festival, but despite the success, I realized I was pursuing someone else’s vision rather than my own. In parallel, I developed continuous learning in and intimacy with holistic health, healing, and alternative medicine due to health challenges from childhood, and I maintained a visual arts practice alongside filmmaking in my personal atelier. This blend of architecture and urbanism, film, visual arts, and healing shaped my systems thinking approach—when you realise everything is connected and one thing influences the other and you see both the small and big picture at the same time, you know?

After my radical shift—moving to Luxembourg and abandoning my filmmaking career—I focused on creating my own path and advancing in my healing journey, and I am really proud of doing that and how I figured out how to heal myself spiritually, mentally, and physically while facing these challenges of moving on my own.

I thank every challenge for that—it was harsh, but it was this fertile ground that allowed me to shift and at the same time reconnect with something I loved to do since I was a child, which is writing. I still have a writer’s callus I developed from that age. But now this practice comes together with this new ‘creature’—one I consider magical of our times, AI, with all its good and bad, and the fears it raises sometimes. I consider it the greatest amplifier of our humanity that ever existed, for both our potentials and flaws, and it’s totally magical the way I see it. Once Arthur C. Clarke said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And that’s exactly how it feels to me, and I am very excited with this new presence. I know that harsh changes are coming, but we as humanity have known we need to change things deeply, with or without AI, and AI is kind of accelerating the process—and I choose to see all this as a blessing.

Besides the book, The Age of Digital Spirit, this shift inspired me in parallel to create a brand called Future Fairy Tales, that uses AI as a creative partner for research and brainstorming thematic books that invite people to connect with themselves and to use pen and paper, in an offline experience, to write down their own magic.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn was how I viewed my own story. For most of my life, I interpreted everything that happened in my story—my childhood illness, the violent episodes I endured, the betrayals, and so on—as things that were happening against me. I carried that lens into adulthood, and even into the first book I wrote when I came to Luxembourg – a collection of stories about difficulties, framed as external forces shaping my life, and my city and my country. The design of that book is beautiful, but in truth, I no longer recognize myself in its pages. I was living in victim mode, and that was holding my life back and making me sicker.

The biggest revolution in my life and for my healing was realizing that these things were happening for me, forging me for a greater good. That reframing was essential. Instead of asking “why did this happen to me?” I began asking, as a creative exercise, “why might I have chosen this experience for me, even before I was born?” That single shift changed the way I saw my whole story. It was radical, and not easy, but revolutionary and one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done. Some events were so painful that it felt almost unbearable to imagine I could have chosen them, but things start to make sense, and our creative brain starts to connect the dots in a helpful way that empowers us. Doing that exercise cracked me open at times, brought up tears and deep releases, deep cleansing, and transformed my relationship with my past, present, and future.

To give a concrete example of the power of this reframing, for almost two decades, I took continuous medication for C-PTSD—from mood regulators to antidepressants, even antipsychotics that doctors tried to solve a constant dysthymia I had since I was a child, and other stronger symptoms that appeared with time. But only after this inner revolution I mentioned did things actually change, and I never had to take any medication again. All the balance and harmony I thought impossible before is my new reality. Yes, we can change those things, even if once this was your identity. We can change, from the inside out, and changing within, we are potentially changing the world.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I’ve always carried a sense of a bigger mission, rooted in the belief that humanity will shift to a healing path, where forgiveness and self-awareness are our default modes, so we can create a world with more peace and love. It’s a bit romantic and idealistic, but I started applying it in my life and had amazing results, and I do believe that changing the world begins within. Imagine if each one of us, instead of complaining about the outside sources that are making a mess in the world, began to focus on healing our traumas, on bringing more compassion and understanding to life from the inside out? The ripple effect of this would be a total miracle in our collective reality. So my mission goes in this direction—inspiring inner healing as an essential part of changing what we don’t like in the reality around us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.daniellykaufmann.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/daniellykaufmann
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daniellykaufmann
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellykaufmann/
• Other: https://dafilms.com/director/11639-danielly-o-m-m-kaufmann

Image Credits

1 picture of all – Gregorio Gananian

second upload

1st picture – frame from the film “Aquele que Viu o Abismo” by Gregorio Gananian and Negro Leo
2nd Picture – Isabela Lori
3rd Picture – Gregorio Gananian
others – me