The Point of Pain

It has been an intense couple of weeks. With the crisis in India it has been devastating to see the lack of care and support from the government in India and from the wellness industry. It has been devastating and for those of you who are interested and able, there are so many ways you can offer support. If you’re able to donate, The Desai Foundation has been doing a lot to get resources to rural areas that need it the most and even if you’re not able to offer support financially, sharing about this issue and holding people accountable really helps. In this very dark time, the truth is that the main thing that is keeping me afloat and bringing me joy is the Chronicon Community. That’s why today’s Community Spotlight episode is so special to me. For this episode, I am so honored to sit down with one of our community members, Jessi Lane. Jessi and I talk about her story, the ups and downs with her health, how she found the Chronicon Community, how the community has been supportive for her, what it means to be ready to show up for the life you want, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Today’s conversation is with the beautiful, powerful Aycee Brown. I’ve been following Aycee for a while and I really wanted to have this conversation with her on the podcast to hopefully help each of you open a door to spirituality, what that can mean for you and your life and how it could support you. Aycee Brown is a psychic channel, spiritual confidante and teacher, entrepreneur, and your favorite human design bae. She serves entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, and people who are ready to dig deeper into their own self-discovery and speaks about spiritual self-development, human design, radical commitment, and brand innovation. In this episode, Aycee shares her earliest experiences with her psychic abilities, how she went from scared to embracing her connection with spirit, what you can do to start leading a spirit-led life, how to incorporate your gifts in your work and life processes, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

One week ago I had my 40th birthday and coming up to that big milestone brought up so many feelings and reflections for me. Whatever age you might be, we all go through things in our lives that make it hard for us to feel like we can fully accept ourselves. As I looked back at the past four decades, I realized that I’ve learned a lot about what acceptance looks like for me. Wherever you are on your acceptance journey, I really hope that this episode will be supportive for you and help you to see that you’re not alone in your journey. In this episode, I share the biggest lessons I’ve learned on the road to 40, how my childhood experiences affected my lack of self-acceptance, how my perspective on relationships has changed alongside my acceptance of myself, what you can do to make your way towards self-acceptance, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Today I'm sitting down with my dear friend and one of our Chronicon community members, Tiffany Yu. Tiffany and I connected last year through her company, Diversability, and the incredible work that she's been doing for the disabled community for over 12 years. More recently, we’ve been getting to know each other better through Clubhouse and I wanted to have Tiffany on the show, spotlighting her as one of our beautiful community members. Tiffany Yu is the CEO & Founder of Diversability, an award-winning social enterprise to amplify disabled voices; the Founder of the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter, a monthly micro-grant that has awarded $47.5k to 48 disability projects in 8 countries; and the host of TIFFANY & YU, The Podcast. She serves on the San Francisco Mayor’s Disability Council and was a 2020 Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit. At the age of 9, Tiffany became disabled as a result of a car accident that also took the life of her father. She started her career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and has also worked at Bloomberg and Sean Diddy Combs' REVOLT Media & TV. She is a 2x TEDx speaker and spoke on 5 sessions at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos. She has been featured in Marie Claire, the Guardian, and Forbes. In this episode, Tiffany shares her experience with disability and trauma, the problem with toxic positivity, how good intentions can still be damaging, why it’s important to her to create open and inclusive spaces, her experience in the Chronicon community, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Suleika Jaouad has been my friend for many years and it was such a pleasure to be able to talk with her on today's episode. When we met, Suleika was in the middle of her treatment and I was so taken aback by what she was going through and how she was dealing with it. In this conversation, we go deep into her personal journey and details she hasn’t even shared in her memoir. Suleika Jaouad is the author of the instant New York Times bestselling memoir, Between Two Kingdoms. She wrote the Emmy Award-winning New York Times column “Life, Interrupted,” and her reporting and essays have been featured in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Vogue, and NPR, among others. A highly sought-after speaker, her mainstage TED Talk was one of the ten most popular of 2019 and has nearly four million views. She is also the creator of The Isolation Journals, a community creativity project founded during the Covid-19 pandemic to help others convert isolation into artistic solitude; over 100,000 people from around the world have joined. In this episode, Suleika shares how her leukemia diagnosis sent her down a path of self-discovery which led her to embrace her fragility, release the old goals that were no longer serving her, find her own style of advocacy, re-evaluate her relationships and boundaries, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

As I bring you this very special episode, I feel so many emotions. I haven’t done an episode with you since May 2020 and it’s the understatement of the year to say a lot has happened since then. In this first episode of season 4, I want to have a conversation about the cycles that we have all been in this past year and how they’re tied to the cycles of life that we are constantly going through. To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

It's hard to believe, but we’ve officially reached the end of our third season. Obviously, so much has happened and changed since this season started and it seems like the perfect time for me to connect with you one-on-one. Some of the things I want to share with you in this special episode are the hobbies and other things I’ve been leaning on during this pandemic, what I’m feeling about the future of Chronicon and how I’ve been navigating work in this time of uncertainty, and how I’ve been taking a hard look at relationships recently. To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Alok V. Menon is as much of a light in this world as they are willing to hold and be with the darkness and I am so honored that they took the time to speak with me. Alok has been very open and generous with making sure that the conversation around pain and chronic illness is shared with as many people as possible and that we open that conversation to the world, whether it’s ready or not. Alok is a gender non-conforming writer and performance artist. Their distinctive style and poetic challenge to the gender binary have been internationally renowned. As a mixed-media artist, Alok uses poetry, comedy, performance, lecture, sound-art, fashion design, and self-portraiture to explore themes of gender, race, trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femme in Public (2017) and Beyond the Gender Binary (2020). In 2019 they were selected as one of NBC’s Pride 50 and Out Magazine’s OUT 100. In this episode, Alok shares their struggle with self-acceptance and how they reclaimed their authenticity despite being surrounded by intolerance, how pain brings us together, recognizing that life is pain, why we need to realize that everyone is suffering, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Ruthie Lindsey is someone I’ve been following for a long time. I wanted to share Ruthie with all of you because she has been through a profound story that has a lot of devastation and heartbreak and she shares it in such a heart-warming way that I think it will lift your spirits even though the darkness. Ruthie Lindsey is a speaker, podcast host, social media figure and author of There I Am: The Journey from Hopelessness to Healing. She travels the globe sharing her story, empowering others to find purpose in their pain and to look for beauty in the midst of their brokenness. In this episode, Ruthie talks about the horrifying accident that left her the hospital for a month, the moment years later when she developed chronic pain that doctors couldn’t diagnose, how she went from not being able to get out of bed to finding joy and beauty in her life, why self-love is such an important source of comfort, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Minna Lee is a wellness entrepreneur who I’ve been fangirling over online and she produces meaningful content that spreads education on well-being for all. Our conversation took some twists and turns that I wasn’t expecting and that were beautiful and insightful. Minna Lee is a digital creator, a certified trainer, and a nutrition coach. By sharing her own colorful health history with her autoimmune disease and her mental health on her platforms, she empowers people to dig deeper into their personal growth and to take their health into their own hands with a 360 perspective. In this episode, Minna talks about her journey from disordered eating, to being diagnosed to Hashimoto’s and adenomyosis, how she’s changed her approach to managing her health over the years, what you can do to restore your relationship with your food, and how you can learn to listen to your intuition, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Sarah Ramey is the incredible author of The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness. Her book opened up a part of the world of health and chronic illness for me that I haven’t had a lot of exposure to and her story is so impactful and eye-opening. Sarah is also a writer and musician living in Washington, DC. She graduated from Bowdoin College in 2003, received an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Columbia in 2007, and worked on President Obama’s 2008 campaign. She is also the recipient of a 2018 Whiting grant. In this episode, Sarah shares her experience with having her life turned upside down because of her mysterious illness, why it’s so important to have a community that understands you, how she’s been able to turn difficult family relationships into positive sources of support, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Komal Minhas is a changemaker, a cancer survivor, a chronic illness advocate, and a very dear friend of mine. Komal was also included on Oprah’s SuperSoul 100 list and she is the host of the Lessons Learned podcast. She also works in partnership with Startup Canada, Scotiabank, and the Business Development Bank of Canada to host the Thrive Podcast for Women Entrepreneurs. In this episode, we talk a lot about Komal’s professional and health journeys and the flow of business. I really hope this episode inspires you to look at your business trajectory a little differently. To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Ingrid Nilsen a New York City creative and an online video personality with over 8 million followers across her social media channels who's spent ten years pioneering an industry that has changed the way media and advertising is consumed. Ingrid uses her platform to challenge the beauty and wellness industry through informative content and interviews with some of the world's most influential people, including President Barack Obama and Bill Gates. Her CoverGirl ambassadorship was the first brand partnership of its kind between a traditional beauty brand and an online personality and she's gone on to do many partnerships with global brands like Amazon, Unilever and now Fresh. Ingrid was awarded the Digital Innovator Award by The Trevor Project, a Streamy Beauty Channel Award, was selected for Oprah's Super Soul One Hundred, and also named a UN Change Ambassador for gender equality. In her spare time, Ingrid hangs out in Brooklyn with her dog Tayto, watches French TV shows, and eats a lot of chocolate chip cookies. In this episode, we really get into Ingrid’s story and talk a lot about grief, which is a huge part of her story. She really lets us know that a lot of the beauty that has come into her life has been through dealing with tremendous loss and a lot of challenges that she has been so vulnerable about throughout the years. To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Hello, my loves. I'm excited to share this episode with you because it's one where we really just allow ourselves to examine what it's like to be a solopreneur, how our health can impact us as we're going on the solopreneur journey, and how to align our joy and nourish ourselves while we're chasing and running after our dreams. This week’s guest is the amazing Amina AlTai and, not only am I inspired by her, but I’m also fortunate enough to call her a friend. Amina is a holistic leadership and mindset coach. Over a decade in marketing where she helped launch over 30 startups and grappling with two autoimmune diseases led Amina to burn out. In hopes of healing her own life, she sought training and nutrition, fitness and mindfulness. She now teaches entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs how to balance a thriving career, body, and mind. Amina has worked with Deloitte, Outdoor Voices, and NYU, is an Entrepreneur Magazine Expert-in-Residence, and has been featured in Goop, Thrive Global, mindbodygreen, The Observer, Yahoo!, and more. Amina and I talk about everything from body hair to joy to making friends. We also talk a bit about building a business, going after your goals, your money mindset, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

We’re officially in a new decade and a new season of the podcast! I wanted to start season three of The Point of Pain with Mira Mariah because she is someone I admire so much and she is breaking through ceilings I didn’t even realize were there. Mira is an amazing tattoo artist (in fact, she’s Ariana Grande’s tattoo artist!), a mother, a former speaker at Chronicon, and an amazing woman who has been featured in places like Allure, Nylon, Refinery29, etc. She also happens to have only one leg. In this episode, we discuss why I was blown away by Mira when I first discovered her, the experiences that shaped Mira into the bold person she is today, why we need to break the cycle of isolation that many people with disabilities or chronic illnesses experience, why she focuses on the solutions to a problem and not the cause, what it’s like to be a mother as a disabled woman, the profound recent loss of a beautiful spirit and disability advocate that she was blessed to be able to call her friend, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Being that it's the end of the year and the end of season two, I decided to do something a little different for this episode. For the first time, I'm doing a completely solo episode. By the time we return for season three in February 2020, The Point of Pain will have officially turned one year old. So, what better way to end season 2, the calendar year, and the first year of the podcast than by sharing some lessons learned throughout this year that I'll be taking with me into 2020 and season three. To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Kara Lowentheil is a Master Certified Coach with a B.A from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law. In the past three years, she’s pivoted from her legal career and has grown her life coaching business from zero to seven figures. Kara is also the Host of the iTunes top-rated self-help podcast, UnF*ck Your Brain™, which has been downloaded over 5 million times. She’s been featured in outlets like Marie Claire, Mindbodygreen, MSN.com, The Huffington Post, and more. Kara is the definition of owning who you are and, in this episode, she’s going to help you better understand the way your brain works. To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

Ksenia Avdulova is the Founder of Breakfast Criminals and I’ve personally been a fan and friend of hers for at least five or six years. She’s smart, gentle, kind, and loving and I really feel connected to my own heart when I’m around her because of the beautiful energy she has about her. When she's not attending fitness classes in New York or throwing a superfood smoothie bowl party in Brazil, you can find Ksenia attending transformational retreats, sharing her experiences, poking fun of her own superfood obsession on YouTube, and hosting Woke and Wired; which is the first podcast that brings together conscious entrepreneurship, personal growth, and social media. Ksenia has also been named as one of the “35 Under 35 in Wellness” by Wanderlust and “the fashion world’s most in-demand breakfast chef” by MyRecipes. She impacts over 300,000 followers across multiple platforms as she shares the power of rituals and mindful nourishment. In this episode, we discuss the funny story of how breakfast food brought us together, the huge transition she’s been going through in her life, her many Instagram handles and how she experiments with them, the value in blocking or muting social media accounts that bring up negative emotions for you, how to use social media for positive inspiration, and more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

When I first decided to do this episode, I was really scared because I’ve never publicly talked about this topic before. Over the past year, I’ve been having private conversations about sex and pleasure, but I think it’s finally time to take it public. Gigi Engle is a feminist author, certified sex coach, sexologist, and sex educator. As a sex expert for Womanizer and a Brand Ambassador for LifeStyles condoms, she promotes and teaches about pleasure-based sex education, masturbation, and safer sex practices. She also serves as a Pleasure Professional with The O-School where she teaches a number of classes centered around pleasure, sexual health, and confidence. Gigi’s work regularly appears in many publications such as BRIDES, Marie Claire, Elle Magazine, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Women’s Health and her articles have been shared over 50 million times. She also writes an advice column, Ask Gigi, and is an original member of The Women of Sex Tech. Her first book, All The F*cking Mistakes: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life, is available for pre-order at the time of this episode being released. In this episode, Gigi shares how she found her way into the field of sex education, how masturbation can help you get into your body in a positive way and learn what you find pleasurable, the shocking state of sex education in our schools today, how to communicate with your partner about your sexuality, whether or not it’s okay to masturbate when you’re in a relationship, and more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!

When I first found out about Paloma Kemak I was mesmerized and blown away by her ability to be fully honest with her audience, show how to thrive with a chronic condition, and also be raw and vulnerable in the moment when her condition is challenging. Paloma is dealing with a life-threatening autoimmune condition that millions of people in the United States have and she will be one of the speakers at Chronicon this year. She was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes as an adult and it’s been her mission ever since to change the way people see diabetes. In this episode, Paloma and I discuss her life as a Type I Diabetes patient while simultaneously having a career in the fashion industry and volunteering with diabetic organizations, the cost of care, why she traveled to another country to get her insulin, what it was like being married to someone who wasn’t up for the chronic illness journey, how she found the man that was right for her, our mutual love for positivity and keeping things super real and raw, and so much more! To learn more, visit the show notes. Want to continue the love-fest? Follow me on Instagram!