The Neshama Project has developed almost a cult following here in LA, and it was born out of her desire to bring her passion for educating others about a culture she loved and wanting to make the world a healthier, brighter place. Rachelle inspires me because she’s not your typical yoga pro or even your typical entrepreneur. She’s seen a LOT, which we’ll get into in this episode, and she always just rode on the feeling that she was meant to do something important with her life, without even knowing exactly what that meant.
As you’ll hear, and as you probably already know about me, I’m not just interested in the light easy breezy moments or the dark rough spots, I’m most fascinated by the intersection of the two and how they can, as the tagline says, help you move forward fearlessly onto the path you're meant to follow.
Just a heads up, we do discuss some dark topics in this podcast, namely suicide. So if that’s a trigger point for you, you might want to skip through minutes 20-30ish or just skip this one altogether, or just mentally prepare yourself. YOU know yourself best.
In this episode, we talk about the fallacy of the necessity of the 5-year plan, turning ideas into action, being a people person and the necessary boundaries that come with that, cultivating your intuition, moving forward through what seem like the worst of challenges life can throw at you, and finding not only meaning but a lesson in every single moment, even if it’s not clear at first. Oh, and of course, before this episode, I internet-stalked her and read a sentence somewhere about a Hummus challenge she took. So obviously, I HAD to ask about that.
If you’ve ever experienced extreme lows, loss, have a sense of adventure but don’t know how to cultivate that, or are interested in building a community that speaks to who you are and who you want to be, this is the episode for you.
This is the time of year we’re the most contemplative about where we are in our own lives - and it’s for that reason I’m so excited to introduce you to today’s guest. Lynn Chen is an actress, activist, and food blogger who’s been seen in countless TV shows and films, serves as an ambassador for the National Eating Disorders Association, and has not one but TWO blogs. The Actor’s Diet, which Lynn started in 2009 as a sort of journal to help her make peace with her food after years of eating disorders, it’s now one of the most influential food blogs on the web, with some of the most longevity at that. AND, she’s got a podcast, the Actor’s Diet Podcast! Her other blog is called Thick Dumpling Skin, a phenomenal body-image blog that’s centered around the Asian American community.
We ended up talking for close to two hours – Lynn shared so much of herself with me, and with us, that I really, really wanted to be mindful to do each word and thought and story and lesson justice. She’s in a majorly transitional time in her career right now, and that can be really scary – I went through the same thing multiple times – where you’ve pretty much built your identity being one thing, and then you decide to change directions from that. I don’t care what kind of career your in or what your life looks like, it’s something we all experience, but we usually hear people talking about it AFTER it’s happened. I’m honored Lynn opened up about this to me.
We dive deep in this episode, but the one theme that kept popping up was learning how to accept what is, and then moving forward from there. We talk about the way blogging’s shifted over the last six years, Lynn’s choice to move away from acting and why success isn’t always what it seems, the lessons she learned while she was trying to get pregnant, and the unexpected strategy she’s used to cope with everything from the sudden death of her father a few years back to her long history with eating disorders. We also talk about rejection, comparison, and how to make your mark by being exactly who you are.
It gets deep and it gets emotional and we both cry a little, but I promise, just like anything else with WANT, this is really about hope, taking what’s handed to you, and asking yourself, where can I go from here.