Linda Drosdowech

You've got big plans for 2021. You're ready to make it happen. You've got a glorious vision and the world is gonna be a better place because you took risks, took chances, and took bold steps forward.... BUT you're feeling blah, sluggish and can barely get your butt off the coach. It's friggin' February. I feel ya. 28 Days to a More Joyful & Magical Life Ebook is for you! I designed each day with simple prompts to help you eat better, move your body with love, practice self care with delight, and write transformative & energizing journal prompts. 28 days represent the cycle of the moon and the female body, and like all powerful cycles, they're meant to be repeated over and over. These daily habits will bring joy & magic in the good times, and comfort & strength in the hard times. You want in? You're going to feel energized, strong, and ready to dive into all your amazing plans and goals! To start feeling more joyful & magical now go to https://gumroad.com/l/28dayguide 15% of the proceeds goes to the Canadian Cancer Society.

HEALING FOOD: Salt & vinegar chips. I will be on a Zoom call with my sisters today to talk about our intentions for the new year, and to munch on my favourite snack: salt & vinegar chips. I just love them. That's all. HEALING MOVEMENT: It started with dance. It ends with dance. I started this 31 Day Heal & Grow Strong Challenge with 5 minutes of dance, and I'm going to end it with the same challenge. Put on your favourite song and dance around the house. Music is the ultimat...e magical healing tool. In a beat, it transports us to different times, places, people, and even the people we used to be. I'm forever grateful to my best girlfriends for sharing so many moments of music and dance with me. Music is life. Time to dance. HEALING PRACTICE: Energy Clearing. My coach Jenn reminded me that right now it's especially important to do an energy clearing in your home to release 2020's stank. Open your doors and windows (even for a moment, I know it's cold) and sage or smudge or use a candle or even clapping to all the corners of the rooms of your home. Set an intention while you do this or just express gratitude. Release the anxiety, fear, worry, and doubt of 2020, and create space for 2021. You did it! HEALING THOUGHT: Return to me. This is my mantra for the year. Return to me. When I face confusion about what to do next: Return to me. When I'm struggling with a challenge: Return to me. When I'm trying so hard and nothing seems to be working: Return to me. Return to my wisdom, humour, stories, experience, and knowledge. Knowing that all that I've worked on, invested in and built in 2020 will return great dividends and value to me and to the world. Return to me. Healed and strong. Ready for 2021!

The first time I saw a therapist was after my first divorce when I was a mere child of 27. I remember leaving Dr. Rose's office in tears and him calling out after me: "Feel the pain, Linda. Feel the pain." I have a vague memory of those sessions helping me through a strange time of loss of innocence and despair. He listened compassionately to my confused sadness and let me see a new side of myself that was strong and separate from my family and friends. ... I also saw therapists during my second marriage, my second divorce, and after my dad died who helped me make sense of the grief, conflict and trauma. I would usually sit down and start crying as I made little time for feeling those damn feelings Dr. Rose kept going on about me feeling. It helped. Although I don't have a therapist currently, I do have a wonderful coach @jennbaron helping me create strong mindsets, practices and habits, focus on the future, and achieve my goals - with lots of time to manage all the currents trials and tribulations of being a feeling human on planet Earth. I know it's a position of privilege to be able to pay for this kind of service, but if we normalize counselling, then we can advocate for mental health services to be covered like going to the doctor. Let's make seeing a therapist or counsellor or psychologist or psychiatrist for our mental health as normal as going to the doctor or dentist. And let's go one step further: let's make hiring a coach to help guide our future as normal as seeing a therapist to help unpack our past. Our mental health is worth it. We're worth it. Our future is worth it.

HEALING FOOD: Vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency can affect your health in so many ways. Living anywhere in the north, you're almost guaranteed to be lacking in this crucial vitamin. Especially in winter, when our collective mood dips low, it's important to take this supplement. It's sunshine in a pill! HEALING MOVEMENT: Create boundaries. I used to think creating boundaries meant I was supposed to try to say what I wanted and get other people to "respect my boundaries". The ol...der I got, the more I saw the absurdity in this expectation. I can set a million different boundaries and people are still going to do, say, and be, according to their own natures, thoughts and feelings. What I actually need to do is set boundaries only for myself: how I will react when..., what I'm going to think when... when I'm going to leave ... how I'm going to feel if...This boundary setting is truly beneficial and possible because it's controlling only ourselves - which is all we're ever able to do. HEALING PRACTICE: Enforce boundaries. The most important part of setting a boundary for ourselves is following through. Learning to trust ourselves; that we're going to do what we committed to do - despite whatever feelings come up: discomfort, shame, embarrassment - is the key to a free mind and heart. HEALING THOUGHT: I have my own back. When the pressure is on, when expectations are high, when people are wanting you to be the way you've always been, knowing "I have my own back" is gold.

Want to write original, authentic, true words from the heart that connect with your audience? Here's a writing exercise as learned from Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. Set a timer for 10 minutes.... Write: "I am thinking about..." for ten minutes. No editing. No stopping. No criticism. Just let the pen move across the paper. If you get stuck, write: "I am thinking about..." and keep going. Set a timer for another 10 minutes. Write: "I am not thinking about..." for ten minutes. This gets to the underbelly of your thoughts. The dark shadowy truths you're afraid to speak. These truths will connect you to you, and you to your people. I am thinking about...how wonderful it was to connect with writers, filmmakers, photographers and mental health advocates on yesterday's episode of @ilikehue. And how I was proud of myself for saying the words out loud that my daughter Lucy got a possible diagnosis of Adhd. And how admitting it takes any shame or fear out of it. And how if I can reach only one other person who is struggling with a challenging family situation, it's worth it to tell my story. I am not thinking about...how thin my friend's neck looked on our FaceTime call. How the words' terminal' and 'morphine' and 'scans' sicken me to write down. If I write them down it makes it real. I can't make it real. And yet it is. Fuck cancer. Fuck cancer. Fuck cancer. "Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody - no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds...Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe." (Neil Gaiman) What stories are yours to tell?

HEALING FOOD: Can of tuna. I used to be such a perfectionist when it came to food. I had the strict idea that food should always be whole and natural. I told myself that I was all about health, and rejecting the fast food consumption of big business. In reality though, it was a punishing way to live with a lot of "not enoughness" present in all my decisions. It wasn't enough to make a healthy salad. The beans should be boiled for hours from dry; not canned. Better yet, I shou...ld grow the beans myself. It was dieting; just in another form. It resulted in never living up to a ridiculous ideal, and I wasted a lot of time that I could have spent believing in and pursuing my goals. That's why today's food is a can of tuna. Or anything else that's convenient and easy to get some energy. A tuna sandwich with a pickle is a fine lunch. Could be better. Could be worse. Good enough. Move forward. HEALING MOVEMENT: Play games. Run around with your dog, play with the cat, get on the floor and build a fort with your kids, get out Scrabble or Clue or Monopoly. Allow yourself to just have some fun! HEALING PRACTICE: Lessons learned from failures. This is an interesting practice that's good for people who have an intense fear of failure - I know all about this! Write out your top ten failures! Then write the lessons you learned from them. This helps to build up a tolerance for failure in yourself. Don't forget, entrepreneurs need to know how to fail. If you have the courage, share your failures with your people. Nothing draws people to you faster than when you show your humanness. HEALING THOUGHT: I have compassion for myself. I have compassion for the woman who thought that her worth was tied up in her appearance. I have compassion for the woman who was so afraid to fail. I have compassion for the woman who strove so hard for a healthy diet that it was all consuming. I have compassion for the woman who sometimes forgets how to have fun. I have compassion for myself.

HEALING FOOD: Cheese. Sometimes you just have to order pizza. HEALING MOVEMENT: Take a trip down memory lane. I'm all for living in the present moment and looking to the future, but this time of year pulls us back into the past. Go with it. Take a couple of hours and get out the photos, the journals, and the old files folders, and spend time with the people and places of your past. Let the memories come. Let your heart be pulled. Let the tears flow. We're supposed to feel sa...dness, regret and loss. It's okay to feel. We're human. HEALING PRACTICE: Thought work. Thought work was the single most life transforming work I ever found. Learning that circumstances are neutral, and it's my thoughts about the circumstances that trigger my feelings which create the actions I take that determine the results I get, blew my mind. It's a practice sets me free on a daily basis. HEALING THOUGHT: I accept all parts of my story. Looking back on photos of my life is a parade of every painful choice (and so many awkward fashion choices and hairstyles). I accept all parts of my story. I am, in fact, the heroine of my story.

My car broke down yesterday. It was -50 or something ridiculous like that. A very helpful man from CAA came to give my battery a boost. ... Since I'm one of those smug Prius drivers, he was asking me about how the hybrid cars charge their batteries. "I have no freakin' idea." He then asked if I plugged in my car, and I said: "No. It doesn't have a plug." "Yes, you do." He said pointing to the side of the engine. "It's right here. Someone zip tied it down." I've had this car for 10 years. (And a shout out for the @Toyota Prius - it has never broken down from the cold until yesterday)(I expect a new one to appear in my driveway) When I first got it, a woman from the dealership said it didn't have the capacity to be plugged in. For 10 years I assumed that was the case. Until standing outside in -50 degree weather, I had a completely different understanding. I think that's how self realization works. We go along with a concept of ourselves (maybe someone from our past told us something that wasn't true) until we discover a very obvious source of our own power we've been missing until then. "You had the power all along, my dear." This talent or commitment or brilliance was there all along. It just needed someone to point it out (or something to break down) in order for us to see it. Thanks CAA driver. You really gave me a boost!!

HEALING FOOD: Onion. Not a day goes by that I'm not chopping an onion for a meal. The flavour adds richness and depth to almost any dish, and it is so good for you. If I have potato, onion, carrot, and garlic in the house, I can create a smorgasbord (not that we can go to buffets right now) of delicious, healthy food. HEALING MOVEMENT: Set up a workout zone. When I took down the Christmas tree yesterday, I rearranged the basement to have a designated yoga spot. Having a plac...e set up with your weights or yoga mat or mini trampoline means you're much more likely to do a workout at home. Take time to set up a space so you have all your equipment easily at hand. Then do a workout. We need all the energy possible to create our future plans and dreams. HEALING PRACTICE: Prayer. Prayer does not have to be religious. It can simply be asking for what you want. It's not as easy as it sounds. It requires knowing what you want, getting out of your own way, and being open to feeling worthy to receive. HEALING THOUGHT: I am open to receive abundance. I am open to receive. I am open.

Do you trust yourself? I have a book coming out in a few days. 28 Days to a More Joyful & Magical Life. (I think you'll love it) It came about because I trusted myself. ... The book is based on a series of posts I wrote in December - on healing and growing strong with food, movement, practices and thoughts. Each day I'd sit down to write the posts trusting that the words would come. And they did. A few of you suggested I turn them into a book. I told myself I didn't have the time and I should focus on promoting my coaching practice only. But a still, small voice inside me kept whispering at me to write the book. I trusted it (and myself) and started the process. My incredible Virtual Assistant turned Content Repurposing Strategist, Leeann Forbes, put the design together over this past month. I'm thrilled with the results, and hope you'll love it too. I trusted myself - which is not easy to do what with all the self doubting thoughts rattling around in my brain - to start even though I didn't know the end result. I trusted myself to follow through. Now I want to know: Do you have a still, small voice whispering an intriguing idea to you? I bet you do. Do you trust yourself to listen?