Your New Life Blend

Marina Khidekel had anxiety, and a fidget-spinner wasn't going to cut it. She liked the feeling of a weighted blanket, but having it all over her body was way too much. So she came up with an ingenious solution: a weighted stuffed animal. In June 2022, she launched Hugimals World and its anchor product, the Hugimal, a 4.5-lb weighted stuffed animal in 4 varieties that feel like they are huggi...

Welcome to a very special episode of "Your New Life Blend" to send us all into Thanksgiving weekend with some advice and inspiration from some of our favorite women - because we all deserve to run our lives with intention, even on a holiday weekend. (Actually, especially on a holiday weekend!) Have a fantastic time however you are spending it and remember - be gentle with yourself.  Feat...

What does it mean to have a brand? What does your brand tell the world about you? What happens to that brand when the world changes? Aliza Licht knows - especially after the past five weeks. As an award-winning marketer, bestselling author & podcaster, personal branding expert, and career development coach, Aliza was a go-to on Instagram for confident, spot-on analysis of brand management and...

How does one become a Puberty Mogul? Accidentally, according to Vanessa Bennett - but also on purpose, by raising four kids and caring deeply about how to support their growth, development, self-knowledge and self-esteem. Vanessa is the co-author of This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained and co-host of "The Puberty Podcast," both with pediatrician Cara Natterson, and is the Preside...

What happens when we achieve our goals? What if we realize that what we thought we wanted isn’t really what we want anymore? What if the thing we thought we were supposed to do, isn’t actually what gives us purpose? And who decides what we are “supposed” to do, anyway? These are the questions that author & technology journalist Jessi Hempel considers weekly in her acclaimed podcast “Hello Mond...

How extremely online are you? When you create and consume, who or what is influencing you? Whose voices are being heard, and amplified, and platformed? Who are you giving your attention to, and who's taking it? And, who's making money off that? These are just a few questions that tech reporter, columnist and creator Taylor Lorenz wants to get you thinking about in her new book, "Ext...

Jo Piazza "can't stop making things" - podcasts, novels, non-fiction books, newsletters, books by characters on popular TV shows, and most recently, companion podcasts to soon-to-be-released novels, in this case, a true crime podcast about the based-on-a-true-crime novel that is also based on her great-great-grandmother. This, like most sentences about Jo Piazza, is not an exhaustiv...

When should we listen to our fear? What is it trying to tell us? Author and podcast host Farnoosh Torabi grapples with that question in her new book, “A Healthy State of Panic,” in which she tells her own story navigating her fear in her own life, and using it as crucial intel for decision-making, boundary-setting and goal-chasing. As the founder and host of the award-winning podcast “So Money” po...

Work, sleep, family, friends, fitness. Can you excel at all of these? And if you can't, which ones do you choose? Randi Zuckerberg lives her life by the philosophy of "pick three" - you can excel at three of those five, but if you try to do more, you won't make a dent in any of them. It's kind of an ironic maxim for someone with so many identifiers - founder, investor, per...

What if you could get a do-over and try out the Dream Job that got away? Not a side hustle, not a lateral move - just straight up starting from scratch to catch a glimpse of what might have been. That's what CEO and happily-married mom Alisha Fernandez Miranda did when she took a leave from her company and crossed the ocean to take a year of unpaid internships in the dream jobs of her childho...

Who gets to have an opinion about technology? Whose perspectives are invited into these conversations - and who is ignored, downplayed or written out completely? Bridget Todd was fed up with the gatekeeping around technology - how it was discussed, who were the default leaders confidently making pronouncements and predictions, whose stories weren't being told - so she started a podcast, &quot...

Why wait to be happy? Lyz Lenz was waiting, and waiting. She was married, she had two children, she was building a career as a writer that she loved. But she was in a marriage that was not working. Or, she was in a marriage that was not working for her . Once she realized this - and realized that it was not going to change - she ended her marriage. This started her life. We are not taking libertie...

Ashley Louise wants women to have it all. She wants women to have all the money, all the freedom, all the promotions, all the confidence, all the joy, and all the options. With her partner (and wife) Claire Wasserman, Ashley has built Ladies Get Paid into a juggernaut of resources to help women advance professionally and financially, and recognize - and be recognized for! - our value and our worth...

How do we pivot with intention when our pivot was not intentional? For Stacy London - who made her mark as the confident, encouraging face of reinvention on TLC's What Not To Wear - the onset of perimenopause symptoms in her late 40s coincided with a shift in professional direction that left her feeling disoriented in her body and in her life. For Stacy, transformation was supposed to be abou...

Deepti Sharma has had a busy few years. An entrepreneur who spent her career founding businesses that advocate for female, immigrant and minority communities, Deepti found her NYC catering platform suddenly upended in March 2020 by the pandemic. Pivoting on a dime, she partnered with World Central Kitchen to feed more than half a million New Yorkers, and then ran for New York City Council to addre...

Morra Aarons-Mele is embracing anxiety - hers, which she is open about her struggles with, and yours, which she wants you not only to feel no shame about, but to embrace as your superpower. In her book “The Anxious Achiever” and her podcast of the same name, she explores what our anxiety might be trying to tell us and how, rather than limiting our lives, understanding and working with it can help...

Hitha Palepu is a multi-hyphenate's multi-hyphenate - author, pharmaceutical CEO, media entrepreneur, lifestyle influencer, investor, speaker, curator of smart reads and cool products - plus stalwart family woman as a wife, mom and co-worker in the family business. (And if you know her, you know that's just scratching the surface!) With so many priorities - and identities - in play, how...

Amber Briggle describes herself as mostly just an unconditionally loving mom. She also happens to be one of America's most visible moms of a transgender child in the fight for trans inclusivity, equality and justice. She's also doing it in Texas, where she fights every day to keep her family safe in her home state (which she is not planning to leave). Amber and her family were investigat...

Can you thrive in spaces that were not designed for you? Can you still achieve your highest purpose when you feel like you're under water? What keeps us grounded and focused on what's waiting for us just beyond the hard part? Bea Arthur is an entrepreneur and therapist who has seen patients and colleagues struggle with these questions in her practice and in building her companies - and h...

Welcome to Season 2 of "Your New Life Blend," a podcast about building our lives with intention in a world that continues to shift around us all. Join executive coach and licensed clinical therapist Shoshanna Hecht for another round of illuminating conversations with exceptional women like Stacy London, Morra Aarons-Mele, Bea Arthur, Hitha Palepu, Lyz Lenz, Amber Briggle, Deepti Sharma a...

Does beauty matter? Who gets to define it, and how, and why? And what are we willing to do for it? Journalist and author Elise Hu found herself asking those questions when she moved overseas in 2015 to serve as NPR's first-ever Seoul Bureau Chief, covering important global stories like North Korea's missile launches but living as an Asian woman in South Korea in a culture that venerated...

What do you do when the rug is pulled out from under you? This was the collective reality in the United States in March 2020, universally felt (though unevenly experienced) and one that left individual families adrift as they tried to hammer out a semblance of a new normal. For lawyer & executive Candice Cook, it was all about learning to ride the wave - and keeping her family steady and afloa...

Susan McPherson is an author, founder, speaker and consultant, but ask anyone who knows her and they'll all come up with the same title: "connector." It was more than a little ironic, then, that her book, "The Lost Art of Connecting," was published smack in the middle of the pandemic, at the height of social distancing, masks and faces in tiny zoom boxes. (The book came ou...

Dorie Clark came to reinvention the old-fashioned way: by being laid off. As it happened, she was laid off on Monday, September 10th, 2001 - a terrible time, and a terrible job market. It was around that time that she realized that whether we like it or not, reinvention was going to be a necessary element our lives and how we live in the world. Fast forward to now, and Dorie Clark is a globally-re...

Who are my teachers when they're not assigned to me? What is the curriculum I choose to follow when it's not in the book? These were the questions that Abby Falik challenged high school graduates to answer when she founded Global Citizen Year, a non-profit that supported students in taking a "gap year" after high school. Abby was a decade into Global Citizen Year when the pande...