Name: Angela Saint-Yl
Born: Dover, Delaware
Lives: Miramar, FL
Handle: @theflexitariantravels
The life that was laid out for me was one of being set by the age of 30.
Both my parents are originally from Haiti. They had to go through so much struggle to start over in the United States and didn’t want me to endure the same.
The moment I felt I was unable to meet the standard of “normal” was when I didn’t get accepted into a dietetic internship after graduating from college.
I had gone in as a dietetics major thinking “Okay, I’m going to be able to merge my love of helping people with my love of food.”
What ended up happening was that I felt so weighed down by all these science classes that were more based on the theory than the connective aspects of things.
The actual practical ways of either keeping people from being in the hospital in the first place or having to avoid readmissions in the future. To have it that people can live full and extremely fruitful lives without having to be slaves to everything they hear about diet culture.
So after graduating, I felt utterly disillusioned about what my next steps were going to be.
I began to realize I had to make a change after I took my first big solo trip out of Florida. I went to Cincinnati, OH for a famous tennis tournament. I made all the necessary arrangements for it last minute and it was going to be a series of firsts:
First tennis tournament outside of Florida, first time going to said tournament itself, first time going to Ohio, first time meeting online friends, and the first time I had planned a full trip myself.
I had so much fear inside of me about all these firsts but I found the strength to push through it.
The result: I had the absolute time of my life and I wanted to replicate those amazing feelings over again!
That trip would end up being the catalyst in starting to fulfill a dream I had since high school: Having a career where I could combine my love of food, travel, and while establishing those meaningful/impactful connections.
I started to plan more solo trips for myself. I planned a trip to go to a team tennis tournament in Canada and then spent a good year planning to go to the Wimbledon Championships (an event that is deemed the creme de la creme of tennis).
Today I have a blog and sell digital courses based on the rinse and repeat process I developed for DIY’ing your own travel itineraries.
A lot of my time is spent researching, reading blogs, and trying out different products (beauty, financial, food & drink, travel related, etc.), to further enhance my DIY travel process for both myself & those that I teach!
Every time I have done a podcast interview, an IG live, or connected with people through DMs/comments, I feel those hits of joy. The notion of what I’m putting out there in the universe resonates with people and inspires them. That I’m not totally crazy for being passionate like I am because what I bring to the table really can have a profound impact on someone’s life.
If I had to sum it up, I would say that YOU are limitless.
We all have the power in us to do really amazing things. What it comes down to is first backing yourself to do said things and then taking a full leap into it.
You have the power to author your own reality.
