A single working mom from Bridgeport is opening up about her extraordinary journey from the brink of suicide to running a successful business.

Talk to Diana Byfield for just 10 minutes and you really get this powerful sense that she's taken all the painful experiences in her life and turned them into a positive - for the purpose of helping others.

"It's been rocky. I went through sexual abuse when I was a child," Byfield says.

Byfield says she turned the painful experience of being homeless into a positive by using it as a teaching moment for others in a new business she's started to help women who are struggling with the stress of the pandemic.

Through meditation, dance therapy and other methods, she says her goal of "Purpose Powerhouse" and "Sweating With Purpose" is to help women harness their true potential by overcoming fear.

She says she thought of taking her own life at the Stratford Avenue Bridge 10 years ago after hitting rock bottom.

"Looking over that rail, I was in the mindset of low self-esteem, not worthy," Byfield recalls. "It was hard. Life was hard, but I had to push through. I had to push through, and I had to move and keep going."

Byfield later experienced a moment she calls transformative which allowed her to become the successful businesswoman she is today.

Her 17-year-old daughter, Dynaijah, is getting ready to study at the University of Connecticut.