Ashley Davis Bush - Light After Loss

Praise for Light After Loss

One of the most compassionate and encouraging books Ive ever read that guides the bereaved in how to find hope and spiritual solace after loss. Filled with dozens of ideas and real-life examples, Ashley Davis Bush provides readers with Light-shift practices they can use to lighten griefs journey and access deeper levels of love, connection, and fulfillment beyond loss.

Courtney Armstrong, author of Transforming Traumatic Grief and Rethinking Trauma Treatment

This is a beautiful book. Ashley Davis Bush shares guidance, stories and practical advice for living and growing through loss. Taking these chapters in your mind and heart will be time well spent. You will want to keep this transformational book in your life for a long time.

Elisha Goldstein, PhD, psychologist and author of Uncovering Happiness

This book is a treasure, an essential guide if youve lost a loved one, whether recently or many years ago. When you are most lost, this booklike a flashlight in the darknesswill help you navigate the grief journey. Ashley Davis Bush offers practical tools along with her trademark down-to-earth, accessible wisdom.

Diane Poole Heller, PhD, psychologist and author of The Power of Attachment

Brilliant! As an avid reader of and long-time fan of Ashley Davis Bushs work, her new book, Light After Loss, is another must-read... Whether a loss was sudden or expected, recent or long ago, readers will discover how to shift into the light of higher healing and engage in life again no matter how much darkness they may be experiencing now.

Chelsea Hanson, author of The Sudden Loss Survival Guide

Light After Loss is a beautiful compilation of spiritual comfort, psychological wisdom, and practical tools for those grieving the loss of a loved one. Ashley Davis Bushs latest work represents over thirty years of experience working with grief and is a must read and great gift to those navigating unimaginable loss.

Erica Komisar, LCSW, psychoanalyst and author of Being There and Chicken Little The Sky Isnt Falling

This practical book is both guide and companion, offering warm accompaniment and the tools necessary to generate light after loss. Of the many books about grief, this one is pure gold.

Rev. Leaf Seligman, author of Opening the Window and From the Midway

LIGHT
AFTER
LOSS

LIGHT
AFTER
LOSS

A SPIRITUAL GUIDE FOR
COMFORT, HOPE, AND HEALING

ASHLEY DAVIS BUSH, LICSW

Other Titles by Ashley Davis Bush, LICSW

Transcending Loss

Understanding the Lifelong Impact of Grief and How to Make It Meaningful

Claim Your Inner Grown-Up

4 Essential Steps to Authentic Adulthood

Shortcuts to Inner Peace

70 Simple Paths to Everyday Serenity

75 Habits for a Happy Marriage

Marriage Advice to Recharge and Reconnect Every Day

Simple Self-Care for Therapists

Restorative Practices to Weave Through Your Workday

Hope and Healing for Transcending Loss

Daily Meditations for Those Who Are Grieving

The Little Book of Inner Peace

Simple Practices for Less Angst, More Calm

The Art and Power of Acceptance

Your Guide to Inner Peace

The Little Book of Spiritual Bliss

With gratitude for the angels among us

Copyright 2022 by Ashley Davis Bush.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States by Viva Editions, an imprint of Start Midnight, LLC, 221 River Street, Ninth Floor, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030.

Printed in the United States

Cover design: Jennifer Do

Cover image: Shutterstock

Text design: Frank Wiedemann

First Edition.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Trade paper ISBN: 978-1-63228-076-3

E-book ISBN: 978-1-63228-133-3

How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give to this world
All its
Beauty?
It felt the encouragement of Light
Against its Being.
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too
Frightened

HAFIZ,
FOURTEENTH-CENTURY SUFI MYSTIC

CONTENTS

PART 1:
THE JOURNEY THROUGH PAIN AND SUFFERING

PART 2:
THE SPIRITUAL HEART OF COMFORT AND HOPE

PART 3:
A HIGHER HEALING

INTRODUCTION:

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

RUMI

What a beautiful bowl, I remarked. It was truly stunning. I had never seen anything like it before. I was sitting in the living room of an acquaintance, and I was mesmerized by the golden veins, the luminous web within what appeared to be a previously shattered ceramic bowl on her coffee table.

Thank you, she replied. Its kintsugi.

I later learned that kintsugi is the Japanese art form of repairing broken ceramics with golden joinery. This method of repair was devised in the thirteenth century after the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimatsu broke a favored tea bowl. When the initial repair proved unsatisfactory, he charged master craftsmen to come up with an artful solution. They reconstructed the bowl by joining the shards with lacquer mixed with powdered gold.

The artistic result reflected the Zen philosophy of honoring imperfections, highlighting the fractures, acknowledging beauty in brokenness. There is no attempt to disguise the damage but rather to work with it, making the fault lines glow.

Life after loss, initially, is like a broken bowlshattered and unrecognizablesharp edges everywhere. But Light after loss is the golden glue... gradually like a kintsugi bowl, bringing together the broken into something new: a different bowl, glowing gold. Turning your attention again and again to the divine Light in the darkness is the golden lacquer in your life. In this way, your life is formed anew, honoring the brokenness while celebrating the Light of love, compassion, faith, connection, and meaning. A spiritual approach to grief, like the art of kintsugi, creates an expanded transformation.

Stella was a sixty-five-year-old woman whose life was shattered when her twenty-one-year-old son, Robert, on a dark night, was held up at gunpoint on a Brooklyn street and then murdered. When Stella first came to see me over twenty years ago, she described a collapsed life. As a single mom, her sonher only childhad been the focus of her life. She told me, My life is shattered now, nothing but fragments. I dont know what to do.

Over the years of her early grief, I gave Stella permission to immerse herself in her pain. With a broken heart, she began a journey of intentionally leaning into her feelings with self-compassion and surrender.

It might have been easy, and even understandable, to stay in a place of bitterness, despair, and anger. But as the years passed, Stella increasingly and purposefully shifted her attention toward the Light in her life, both within and beyond. With golden Light as the joinery, she began putting the shards of her life back together.

One way she did this was by developing new relationships with other bereaved mothers. In fact, she took upon herself a new life mission of reaching out to newly bereaved moms, with cards and simple gifts, through the national organization The Compassionate Friends (who offer support to families after a child dies). It became important to her to make a meaningful difference to grievers, a purpose which never would have happened if Robert hadnt died.