Morgan Riddle Is Having Fun Healing

Morgan Riddle is a pro at speaking her life into existence. As a teenager living in St. Paul, Minnesota, she had a specific plan: Move to New York, adopt a tiny dog, and spend the mornings going to Pilates and nights out in the city with friends. “I always had such a clear vision,” she tells me, sipping orange wine outside Sartiano’s restaurant at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo, Manhattan, with her newly adopted chihuahua, Bagel, curled up on her lap. Now 29, Riddle is the embodiment of everything her younger self wanted. “Now I'm so confident that I am going to stick to that path, and I'm convinced that I can have this vision of the life I imagined for myself when I was 13 years old. I won't compromise on it.”

I’m having a very New York afternoon with Riddle — pedicures at The Shade NYC (complete with leg massages and a face mask), a walk with Bagel through the neighborhood, and a glass of wine at a chic outdoor spot where we narrowly dodge a summer storm. The sports and fashion creator has been living here since March, when she packed up her life after a breakup with her athlete boyfriend, moved across the country from Los Angeles, and started fresh. “It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, to be honest,” she says of her whirlwind spring. “I had mentally prepared myself for the worst. I think the top three most stressful things in life are moving, starting a new job, and going through a breakup. And I did all three in one week. So I was just like, ‘Bring it on.’”

Since the move, Riddle has leaned into self-care and rebuilt her life on her own terms. Known to her 500,000 Instagram followers for her colorful courtside outfits she wore supporting her then-boyfriend on tennis tours, she’s treated her single-life rebrand as a clean slate. She’s kept a foot in sports, attending the ESPYs, talking spectator style on the Today show, and building The 400 Club, her community for female sports fans. But she’s also stretched into lifestyle and cultural commentary, sharing book recommendations and life advice with her followers.

When you're actually going through sh*t, you have got to be around people. That is healing for the soul.

She’s gotten through the tough parts of this year by leaning on friends, both the ones she had before New York, and the ones she’s made since. “The healthiest thing that I've been doing for myself is just being around people,” she says. “Before I moved to New York, I was very isolated, traveling all the time. I didn't get to spend that much time with friends or girlfriends or family. And being able to do that a lot more has been amazing.” She’s been hitting Knicks watch parties, eating her way around the city, going dancing, and getting outside — a combo that’s been its own form of therapy. “There's this wellness side of the internet that's like, ‘I'm in bed reading with my red light mask on at 8:00 p.m.,’ Riddle says. “And that's a version of healing that is trendy and popular right now. But when you're actually going through sh*t, you have got to be around people. That is healing for the soul, and I will stand by that.”

That’s not to say she’s abandoned more traditional wellness practices. Riddle meditates daily, journals regularly (especially on big astrological days, like the recent Lion’s Gate Portal), and uses her Equinox membership to go to workout classes, along with hot Pilates and Barry’s Bootcamp. But you won’t catch her on the sunrise grind. “If you're walking around downtown at 6:00 a.m., the only people on the street are the street cleaners and then the boss girls going to Pilates. I'm like, respect, these girls have so much discipline.”

Instead, her mornings start with the New York Times and The New Yorker. The former English lit major keeps a serious reading list, including Jessica Valenti’s Substack Abortion, Every Day and stacks of books on feminism and gender. Over the course of our meal, we touch on everything from the novel Yesteryear to the Lindsey Clancy trail to Greek mythology, and Riddle has a nuanced take on all of it, the kind I keep encouraging her to post.

For her, content that reflects her real thinking just feels natural. “It's been nice to do content that I'm genuinely interested in and things that I genuinely like to talk about and have discourse about,” Riddle says. “I think before, because I was so niched into a certain category online, I didn’t really feel confident enough to talk about it. And now I'm like, I can just kind of flail my arms and post whatever I want.” That includes a deep dive on things like “hetero-optimism” (Riddle’s not a fan) and advice for women about documenting unsafe dating experiences to leave a paper trail.

“I've always been political online, but mostly in a way of amplifying other people's voices and reposting,” she says. “I haven't really gotten into it in the way that I have since I moved to New York. But I enjoy it. I think it's important to do, and I wish more influencers did it.” She has plenty of thoughts on influencer culture, having just listened to an episode of Diabolical Lies on the topic. “Eventually I’ll talk my sh*t,” she assures me.

I've never seen a girl's life get worse after a breakup ever. I don't care who the man is. It will never get worse.

The cultural analysis has been a connection point with her audience. “I love the conversations that come from it and the DMs that I get,” she says. “It's nice to get a message from a girl that's nuanced and offers a different point of view, and I can actually have a conversation with a girl across the world about something interesting rather than like, ‘What's the link for this shirt?’ It's a very different side of the internet that is much more fulfilling to me, and I think I'm less likely to be burnt out by it.”

This whole era has been a reminder of what matters. Riddle has kept the details of her split private because she’s more focused on inspiring people that breakups can, in fact, be fun. “Something that I wanted to come out of it was to encourage other women to leave the situations if they weren't happy, and that not being happy is enough of a reason to leave,” she says, before cheekily adding, “I've never seen a girl's life get worse after a breakup ever. I don't care who the man is. It will never get worse.”

She’s learned to savor the small stuff, too, like interactions with strangers about Bagel (“everyone wants to come up and ask about her”) and the friends she made since moving to the city. “How lucky am I to open myself to a completely new life experience?” she says. These days, there’s nothing left on the manifestation list. “It's been easy for me in the past because there were so many things that I wanted to change, but I feel like I'm really happy with where everything is at. What do I want my life to look like a year from now? Do I want it to look exactly like it is right now?”