Blind Plea - Listen Now: The High Life with Ricki Lake

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Hosted by Emmy-winning talk show host Ricki Lake, The High Life brings us into Ricki’s blissed-out world of joy and pleasure, featuring conversations with compelling guests who have cracked the code to living a full and vibrant life. Join Ricki as she continues her lifelong journey of self-reinvention by talking to friends and experts in the realm of healing, health and wellness such as Olympian Alexi Pappas, journalist and psychedelics expert Ernesto Londoño, and death doula Alua Arthur. She’ll tackle topics like biohacking, tantric sex, somatic therapy, crystals, astrology, and clairvoyance. The High Life with Ricki Lake is a lighthearted dive into living your best life at any age. You’re about to hear a clip of the first episode of The High Life, where Ricki joins Olympian Alexi Pappas as they talk about losing loved ones to suicide, opting into life, and how Alexi regained her footing after her Olympic win and ensuing battle with her mental health.  To hear more of The High Life with Ricki Lake head to: https://lemonada.lnk.to/TheHighLifewithRickiLakefd See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lemonada Hi listeners. I'm so excited to let you know about Lemonada Media's newest podcast, The High Life with Ricky Lake. Before finding bliss in her 50s, Ricky Lake had been through some serious challenges. From weight gain and hair loss to abuse and suicide, her life has seen its share of public hardships. But despite it all, or maybe because of it all, she's mastered the art of choosing happiness. She wants to share that hope, love, good health, and happiness with all of you. That's why she's launching her new podcast, The High Life with Ricky Lake, which is all about finding your sweet spot.

Are you ready for a joyful ride? You're about to listen to a clip from the first episode of The High Life with Ricky Lake. After you hear this preview, search for The High Life with Ricky Lake on your podcast app to hear the rest of the episode. You can also find a link in the episode description to take you there. This is The High Life with me, Ricky Lake, where we find out how my guests cracked the code to living a full and vibrant life so you can too. I am super excited to bring on the show Alexi Pappas. She is so many things.

She's a filmmaker, an actor, a writer, and you know what? Yeah, yeah, she's also an Olympian. She competed for Greece in the 2016 Olympics where she set a national record. She is also an incredibly resilient human. She's been open and honest about her past family traumas, including her mother's suicide when Alexi was just four years old and her own struggles with depression, which reared

its head right after her time at the Olympics. Her incredible memoir is called Bravey, and I am so grateful to talk to her today. Welcome, Alexi. Thank you for having me. I love your nail her today. Welcome, Alexi. Thank you for having me. I love your nail polish color. Oh, thank you. It's actually, I'm going to change your life right now. I'm going to just say it right now.

Have you heard of a Russian manicure? No. It's also known as a dry manicure. It's a different way of doing a manicure pedicure. It takes twice as long. It costs a little more money, but it lasts longer and it's like pristine. So I'll hook you up later. Well, I'm so excited because my nails have dirt in them and I feel like I could use, I feel like I'm the one who, I will get my nails done very rarely, but it should be at

the highest level. That's how I feel. Well, I don't know. It's like I seem, I'm way more of a girly girl now because I'm more into fat. I just recently like transformed physically. It's like I seem I'm way more of a girly girl now because I'm more into fat. I just recently like transformed physically. I lost all his weight, but I've really I'm in the mood of wanting to be a girl. And so I'm taking care of my so thank you for the compliment. I think it's awesome. I think it's amazing.

I want to ask you about the title of your book, Bravy. What does that mean to you? If you could describe that. Yeah. What does that mean to you, if you could describe that? Yeah, well, the word comes from the word brave, but I think the made up element of it, that it's not a real word, that it's more of a noun, that you can assign yourself is way more me, because I think the words in the world that already exist are things that people might have to assign to you. So like pretty or fast you really have to earn, right? People assigned you or you have to earn them. So I think the word bravery is just a choice and that feels awesome to me, right?

Like you can just decide I am a bravery and it means this to me and I think to give people that well one, people responded to it, right? So I pay attention to like, what are these people that I'm connecting with responding to? But two, I think they responded to it because it's helpful to have some things in life that you can just decide to be like, much like your nail polish color. You're like, I am this nail polish color. It's empowering, right? To have it be something you choose. And I think bravies are curious, but also, like, we fall down, right? And there's like, there's a sense of like, not sheltering yourself from the challenges

in life, but like kind of approaching them like in Alice in Wonderland, where it's like, yeah, life is like kind of wild and labyrinthianian but that's what it that's what we're choosing. Can we talk about glop for a minute? Sure. Because you mentioned it in your book. Is it an actual word or is it something you made up? It's a word right? I don't know if it's a word but one of my mentors and my doctors told me about it which maybe the scientific word is something else. This is the liquid state of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. The chrysalis. The chrysalis, yeah. Whatever they are inside the chrysalis, I call it glop. And that's

just, and I'm curious about your evolution too, is when you're going through change, it doesn't always feel so great during that transformation time, especially initially when your old normal unravels and disintegrates. It's a shock, right? Yeah, it's a loss too. It's having to sort of reinvent and figure out your way out of something. I mean, I've had many, many chrysalis moments in my life, both personally, professionally, physically. Yeah, and you come on the other side and it's a gift. Like it's always for me, like all the trauma that I've gone through and the loss and on the other side of it, it makes sense. Like you can, you know, you're

a better, I mean, I can speak for myself. I'm a better me having gone through all of those hardships and all of those transitions, all the glop. Yeah. Do you like, do you, I'm genuinely curious, like when you're going through a change, are you, like when you're in GLOP, do you find, does it get easier? Cause you've gone through many changes in your life. So is GLOP easier in its later iterations? I mean, it seems easier because the time has passed.

Like I'm trying to think of which thing that I've gone through. It's like, it's worth it. Like on the other side of all the stuff we go through, I think it makes us evolve into better, more, you know, empathic, more, more just conscious people. And I know in my case, I'm super, just I have such gratitude for all of the chapters and all of the stuff I've gone through. I'm a lot, you know, I'm 20 years older than you, but I feel like you have this wisdom that I don't think I had at your age, you know?

Well, I think maybe what changes for us, I mean, you and I both had a kind of Olympics in a way. Yours was just like a repeated Olympics. Are you referring to my show? I'm referring to your show. In terms of that's, I mean, that's what I'm thinking about. Yeah. And I think that what's interesting about that and the Olympics is like, it's a peak that is outward facing, right? Like it's a, it's a outward facing achievement, right? But I think that since then, for me personally,

my goals have become less objective and like singular and shiny objects. So like it's not an Olympics. And I don't know if you agree with that for your own life of like, it's not this one thing that you need or want. And I mean, I would guess by being a podcast host, and all the other things you're doing now, you're just interested in it, you're interested more broadly in like where your life is going instead of more point specific, you know?

That's very true. Well, and so what that means is like, we are moving more toward North stars that are feelings and values versus objective goals, right? And that I find very interesting because it's like, okay, if the North Star is like a feeling or value, then it puts you in a galaxy underneath it all, that is all in service of like the feeling or the value that you're aligned with now. And it doesn't have to be just one thing, it can be a number of pursuits and if one gets taken away from you, you can find another to get that same feeling. And I'm saying this because you said all of your hardships, your challenges have somehow been worth it. And I think it's

because you're in the right galaxy. Like you're in the galaxy toward moving toward the things that are important to you. And so anything that's hard is still moving you toward there because it's an opportunity to like exercise your values that you now have and the feelings. Yeah.