Harmony in Wellness: A Gratitude Exploration with Doro Bush Koch
This week, hosts Tricia and Doro delve into an uplifting conversation with bestselling author Steven Rowley, discussing his latest book, “The Celebrants.” They discuss how to manage the many phases of life, including grieving, celebrating life, and learning how to accept change. Rowley presents a different way to look at death and considers some of the taboo topics around it, like suicide and the afterlife.
Rowley candidly talks about the personal moments and memories that affected his creative process to create dynamic characters and construct how they process the events in the story. He also reflects on topics such as book banning and emphasizes the value of storytelling as a means to foster empathy and understanding. You’ll come out of this conversation energized and with a newfound appreciation for seizing each day as it comes.
Show Notes:
DORO: But what began as a personal passion eventually developed into a business. We started our wellness advisory company back over 20 years ago. We've really grown in so many ways since those early days. For the past two decades, we've been inviting experts to our platform to share everything from nutrition to brain health to relationship health, to addiction, to conscious parenting, to aging, to mental wellness. We cover anything related to health, which touches all things. We began with individuals and businesses and then started organizing conferences. The first one was our Achieving Optimal Health, which we held annually at Georgetown University, our partner, for a dozen years, until pivoting to an online format after 2020. In that same year, we launched a new in-person event called foundations of Well-Being that takes place right here in Boca Grande. We held that just a few months ago in November at the Gasparilla Inn, and we love bringing people together to learn and to share. But still, we couldn't get enough of learning and wanted to keep sharing outside of these events. So we created a podcast where we interview a new expert each week. It's called Health Gig, and over the years we've interviewed hundreds of fascinating authors and healers and scientists and artists and public speakers and thinkers. And we've recorded over 400 episodes.
DORO: We love having these conversations and sharing. Sharing them with our listeners. Our talks cover a vast array of topics, and we have a deep respect for something called bio individuality. Each of us is an individual and we all need different information at different times in our lives. We don't advocate one idea over another or make pronouncements about things everyone should do. In fact, we try to avoid the word should at all. Instead, we offer information for people to take or leave. Because what might work for me may not work for you. What works at age 20th May not work at age 40 or 60 or 80. What we do know is that it's important to be educated. I'm so grateful to have learned so much from the experts who have been part of our community. And just like so many of the people we reach, I too am a learner on my own path. Today, I want to share with you one facet of my learning that has intrigued me deeply. It's something that has made my life demonstrably better, and the more I learned, the more I want to share this with others. It's one thing that we can all truly benefit from at every point in our lives. And what I'm talking about is gratitude. Every day I get more and more convinced of its importance for all of us.
DORO: So many of our speakers at our conferences and guests on Health Gig touch on it in one way or another as having a profound effect on their lives. What do we mean by gratitude? The dictionary defines gratitude as the quality of being thankful. So think about that. When we talk about the qualities a person has, we often talk about things like confidence or sense of humor. Well, being thankful is a quality. It's something we possess and can also strengthen. The dictionary also describes gratitude as readiness to show appreciation for and return kindness. I like that it starts with readiness. Gratitude doesn't just mean being capable. Being ready implies you've done some kind of preparation. You're primed for showing appreciation. I like this part because it hints at gratitude being a practice, not just a one off thing. It's intentional. It requires a foundation that we put effort into, and the payoff is that we can make a positive difference in someone else's life by returning kindness and in our own, by truly receiving kindness in the first place. Kindness might be from a person, or it might just be that we choose to look upon beauty in nature, or art or music with a grateful heart, letting it really nurture us. And I know it sounds simple. We teach our children to say thank you. Our faith traditions encourage a grateful heart.
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