– A Positive Pivot During COVID Lock-Down –
Amidst travel restrictions and lock-downs, Canadian expat author, Lynda Faye Schmidt, completed her novel, The Healing, that will launch on April 23, 2021.
Embracing the forced solitude of the pandemic, Schmidt isolated, along with the rest of the world, and committed to completing her novel, a women’s fiction/family drama based on her own life, in an effort to heal her own emotional wounds and put an abusive past behind her.
Based on true events, The Healing is the story of Cate Henderson who, after twenty-six years in an abusive relationship, sets out on a quest to find healing. Cate packs up everything she owns and leaves Calgary on an odyssey westward, to Vancouver Island, where her ever-present journal and the abundance of nature become the foundation of her self-recovery. She yearns for something deeper and then, when she isn’t looking, she finds love with the solid and virtuous Ethan. Cate thinks his stead-fast love is what she is searching for, but soon realizes she needs to do her own work, that love for herself is the key.
With echoes of Eat, Pray Love, The Healing is a raw and vulnerable exploration of human resilience. At times both painful and uplifting, it’s a story about love, examining motherhood, partnership, grief, expectation, and optimism, and the journey inward to self-love.
One early reviewer, Anne Pybus, registered psychologist with the Canada College of Psychologists, says The Healing is “One woman’s powerful journey of transformation. A lesson to us all to set anchor, to rise again and again, and not to be swallowed into the belly of profound trauma.”
Born in a small town in Saskatchewan, Lynda lived in Calgary, Alberta for almost 30 years. After three-and-a-half years on Vancouver Island, she moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and was there when the pandemic hit.
Schmidt says the writing helped her stay centred while in isolation in Riyadh amid heavy lockdowns and curfews. At times it felt heavy, especially when planned holidays came and went, leaving her unable to see her family. “There were days when it knocked me off my feet, but it turned out to be a really poignant therapy for me, uncovering things that were still buried.”
Schmidt admits that despite the challenges, “COVID is by far not the worst year that I’ve had.” Schmidt, an eternal optimist, hopes her message, “to trust the process of life and live with mindfulness,” resonates in others.
For more information visit https://www.ocpublishing.ca/lynda-faye-schmidt.html or the author’s newly launched website, www.lyndafayeschmidt.com.