Moxie Moves Mountains Book
SALISBURY, Md. – Ashton Donoway, a local mother has made waves in her community by teaching mindfulness to youth. Now she’s preparing to show the world her new book, ‘Mindful Moxie Moves Mountains.’ Donoway tells us it’s a book meant for children and adults.
We sat down with Donoway and learned about her passion to show how mindfulness can be a powerful and life-changing tool. The book was inspired by her daughter named Moxie.
Ashton Donoway Interview:
“She made us think about life a little bit differently and one of the things that she made me think about was when unexpected things do happen, how you chose to approach that unexpected thing. It may seem like a mountain to climb so sometimes you have to approach it differently so it doesn’t seem so big. The idea of writing a novel is still something on my bucket list but it just seems a little harder to conquer, a bigger mountain for me to climb right now.
“Moxie, if you look it up in the dictionary it means a force of character and I feel like that matched her because she came into our lives kind of without any planning. Especially with her kind of inspiring me, I thought a children’s book was definitely the way to go. So I decided to call this a children’s book for grown-ups because although it’s written about children, I feel like a lot of the time we need to remind ourselves of those lessons that we read in our children’s books.”
“Some of the languages in the book were very strategically chosen so that it’s a little bit harder to read hoping that grown up in the room will pay a little bit of attention to the lesson. Once you start noticing one thing, you start noticing so many more things so when you can see that in a child and know that they’re developing that power now and they’re going to have it as an adult, it’s really exciting.”
“A lot of people don’t understand that mindfulness isn’t complicated, it’s really just paying attention. But the problem is we have a tough time paying attention. Part of the inspiration for book two is my non-profit, ‘Mindfully Anchored’ teaching mindfulness. So this book is just a little reminder that if you don’t take the time to step back and see your mountain or whatever it is ahead of you, sometimes you can get overwhelmed so practice just taking a step back, getting a full picture.”
“In the book, it talks about taking the frame and moving your frame around, and sometimes it’s a little easier to move mountains than what we think. That’s kind of the way I tried to write this book is that although it’s a children’s story, there are so many hidden pieces of metaphor there that you can apply to the adult life that I want you to still talk about it after it’s over.”
“So no matter what happens from here, I’m so excited that this book is completed, but I would love for Moxie to conquer more than just a mountain.”
Donoway also tells us, that she hopes to write a novel one day but she’s happy just to start here.
Mindful Moxie Moves Mountains comes out Friday, June 10th and Donoway tells us you can pre-order now through Amazon or by visiting her non-profit’s website mindfullyanchored.org.
