Hey, joyful humans!

Thank you so much for being here.

Me and movies go together like macaroni and cheese - I adore them.

I have a lengthy list of movies I want to watch (currently 72), and they range widely in genre, decade, and so much more. One that's been around for a while and that I finally watched this weekend is the 1994 classic The Shawshank Redemption.

But Dani, why do you want to talk about a prison movie made 31 years ago? Because, my friend, one of its themes is about hope, and we could all use a bit more of that.

The movie is about a man named Andy (Tim Robbins) who is wrongly accused of murdering his wife and the person she's cheating on him with. Since they can't pin the murders on anyone else, Andy is sentenced to two-lifetime sentences in Shawshank Prison. He befriends Red (Morgan Freeman), who has served 20 years of his lifetime sentence. The movie spans another 20 years, and they talk about hope towards the end of the film.

Now, a prison in the 1940s-1960s is not necessarily where someone would find hope. Morgan Freeman tells him, "Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane."

In a later response, Andy says, "Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

Reread that part - hope is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies.

The current landscape can make us feel like there's no hope for better things in our future. It's too easy nowadays to be sucked into that and adopt a pessimistic mindset.

I know it's a movie, but if Andy can feel hopeful after being in prison for a crime he didn't commit, you can feel hopeful for your future, too.

Take a breath right now to reflect on your mindset. How do you feel about the world right now? Are there areas in your life that could use more hope?

Because here's the thing: Real change happens when hopeful people are at the helm. Creatives are an example of this mindset of "trusting the process."

We need hope like we need air. Despite the chaos we feel, we need to believe that things can improve and that we can be the reason why they do.

Hopeful acts are small. They look like doing something nice for someone or donating a few dollars to a charity you care about if you have the means. When those acts are small and intentional, they will grow like compound interest over time.

While I recommend you watch The Shawshank Redemption because it's an excellent film (it's on Crave in Canada), I strongly suggest you check your hope meter and see if there are opportunities to fill it up—because we could all use more of it.

Let's work together this year!

There's no better time that today to work towards your health goals if that's been sitting on your heart. Check out below for some options where we can create magic together.

Yoga with Dani IRL

• ​Join us every Monday for an hour of in-person yoga, laughs, and good company! All bodies and experience levels are welcome. Buy four passes and save!

Let's bring our best foot forward.

• Want to work on yourself at your own pace? My self-paced mini-course Reset & Restore is perfect for folks who want fast, actionable steps to create a solid foundation for their health and mindset journey. We cover mindset strategies, habit development, creating a joyful movement routine, and how to make life more fun! Plus, it includes ten workout videos and the opportunity to work with me to help keep you accountable.

Let's become fitness besties while we achieve YOUR goals!

• My friends, spring is an excellent time to work on your health and wellness goals. Maybe you want to build your strength or feel less pain in your body, or perhaps you want to try something new and don't know where to start. That's okay - I got you. Reply back to this email to join my waitlist for when I open my 1:1 health coaching and let's work together to support you and your potential.

Song of the Week

This Is How We Do It - Montell Jordan, Wino

Let's have fun with this absolute BANGER of a song!!

This Is How We Do It Montell Jordan, Wino PREVIEW   ​

Find this song and all the others on the ​Joyful Beats playlist​ on Spotify!

Video of the Week

​Pattie Gonia - Why Joy is a Serious Way to Take Action​

Pattie Gonia is one of my favourite drag queens, and she has an incredible way of connecting people from all walks of life to the climate movement. Her recent TED talk echoes a lot of what I talk about here, in how joy is how we create real change. She takes it one step further with her and you can't help but feel inspired. I hope you enjoy and follow her on social!​

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Good News Wednesday

Check out the good news around the world! In our fast-paced world, it’s important to remember “the helpers.”

• There’s a new fund with 15 million pounds backed by the government to help redistribute food in Ireland and the UK.​
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• Event venues in Belfast, Ireland, are eliminating single-use plastic cups!​
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• ​Meet Ryan Donais, a Torontonian helping with the homelessness crisis by creating “tiny, tiny homes” - small trailers to sleep in that can attach to the back of your bike.
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• We love Michael J. Fox - his foundation has helped back a new test that could detect Parkinson’s well before symptoms appear.
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• England, Wales, and Northern Ireland will be getting 250,000 hectares of nature-rich landscape and working on restoring it, thanks to the National Trust conservation charity.
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• Time to grab the popcorn! ‘Sing Sing,’ an A24 Oscar-nominated movie this year, was the first movie to be released in theatres and prisons simultaneously.​
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• British Sign Language has just introduced new vocabulary to discuss climate change better.​
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• Dotted windows are the vibe, y’all - and for saving birds! Thousands of bird deaths have been averted at McCormick Place in Chicago thanks to dotting their skyscraper windows.
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• Japan is rolling out (pun intended) a new recycled toilet paper made from used diapers. It is safe to use and could be a game-changer in making an industry like toilet paper more sustainable.
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• The Ecuadorian court has ruled that their coastal ecosystems have rights of nature, including the right to “integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.”

Book of the Week

​Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness - Da'Shawn L Harrison​

One of the great things about the incredible amount of books and information available is how much we can learn from those with different backgrounds and lives. This one came as a recommendation from one of my favourite creators online, and while it isn't a long book (109 pages), it's packed with a lot of insightful information. Looking at anti-fatness through the lens of anti-blackness has shown me how much of the world is not set up for the majority of folks living in it and also how the two are so interwoven. The author goes through a variety of topics within the themes of the book, including gender, the war on drugs and the war on obesity, policing, and more. Pick this one up and see the world in a whole new way.

Book Synopsis

To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to sociopolitically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma.

Da'Shaun Harrison--a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans writer--offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, foregrounding the state-sanctioned murders of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people in historical analysis. Policing, disenfranchisement, and invisibilizing of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people are pervasive, insidious ways that anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life. Fat people can be legally fired in 49 states for being fat; they're more likely to be houseless. Fat people die at higher rates from misdiagnosis or nontreatment; fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. And at the intersections of fatness, Blackness, disability, and gender, these abuses are exacerbated.

Taking on desirability politics, the limitations of gender, the connection between anti-fatness and carcerality, and the incongruity of "health" and "healthiness" for the Black fat, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness. They offer strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that tells us "fat is bad," and destroying the world as we know it, so the Black fat can inhabit a place not built on their subjugation.

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In gratitude and thanks,