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Still Waters Newsletter
May 2012
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 | | by Ashley Davis Bush, LCSW |
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Join us on Facebook
where I share practical ideas for developing threads of inner peace through our days
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Join us on Facebook
where we discover that
death doesn't end the relationship, it simply forges a new type of relationship - one based not on physical presence but on memory, spirit, and love...
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Upcoming Events
May 2012
"How to Make Inner Peace a Habit"
Free Lecture, Guided Meditation and Discussion
with Ashley Davis Bush
Saturday, May 19th
11:30am
Refreshments will be served
Awakening Grace Yoga
133 Maine st., Epping, NH
Free to the public
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Ashley Davis Bush, LCSW is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice in Epping, NH.
Ashley has published 3 books:
Transcending Loss (1997)
Claim Your Inner Grown-Up (2001)
Shortcuts to Inner Peace (2011)
Ashley contributes regularly to the Huffington Post
Ashley also facilitates 3 support groups on Facebook:
For Grievers
For those coping with stress and interested in Inner Peace
For Couples looking to increase their emotional intimacy
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Greetings!
 | | Ashley Davis Bush |
Gratitude is a simple but profound way to experience more peace in our lives. In this issue of "Still Waters" I share some thoughts on the benefits of developing a gratitude practice. The Shortcut this month, "At Your Service" is about cultivating gratitude even while engaged in the sometimes stressful activity of paying your bills. I will be leading a free event in Epping, NH this Saturday, 5/19/12. Please join me at Awakening Grace Yoga at 11:30am for a guided meditation and a discussion of specific ways to decrease your stress and weave a thread of inner peace through your days. Wishing you gratitude and abundant peace, Ashley |
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The Practice of Gratitude
(Even When Life is Getting You Down)
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Living with Loss
"Time to Bloom"
Just a few years ago, mother's day for me meant breakfast in bed, big sloppy kisses, and hand-made cards proclaiming "I love you mommy." Now, with a house full of teenagers, I might get a meal with them and maybe, if I'm lucky, a mumbled "happy mother's day."
What a tangle of emotional yarn lurks below the surface of 'mother's day'. There is the garden variety feeling of loss that I experience with my own children as they enter their teen years. But I am also keenly aware of the heartbreaking pain of other women: women who've given up children for adoption; women who've tragically outlived a child; women desperate to become mothers and women who are desperately tired of mothering.
Meanwhile, I am also aware of the men and women who have buried their mothers, of those who never quite got what they needed from their mothers, and those who have spent a lifetime resenting their mothers. Where are the greeting cards that reflect this vast complexity of emotional possibility?
And where does that leave us? With one universal truth - that we all came from the body of a woman. She was mother, our gateway to earth. No matter who we are, Mother's Day invites us to explore our deepest spiritual potential: forgiveness for human frailties and gratitude for the gift of life.
*originally published on www.ashleydavisbush.com
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This Month's Shortcut
"At Your Service"
Prompt: When paying bills
While you pay your bills, whether you're writing a check or paying online, give thanks for each service you receive. Try saying, for example: "I thank you, electric company, for the electricity that I depend on"; "I thank you, phone company, for my cell phone, which makes my life so much easier"; or "As I pay my rent/mortgage, I give thanks for this place that I call home." Really experience feelings of gratitude and let them sink in. Every bill that you pay provides you with some goods or service that you have cause to rejoice in.
When we notice the simple, taken-for-granted luxuries in our lives, we cultivate gratitude for our modern bounty. A regular gratitude practice calms our stress response and increases our feelings of inner peace.
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Ashley's Recommended Books for Grievers
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"If the only prayer that you said in your whole life was, "Thank you," that would suffice"
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