Ashley Asti > Quotes

“My mother is soil and rain,
clay, ash, sand, sun and moonlight.
My mother is a weeping willow—
strong, daring, dripping.
My mother is oceans so salty and wild
she can consume whole cities—
but, mostly, she chooses to be calm turquoise,
washing softly over toes in sand.
She is vast—
some places un-navigated.
She is offering, felt without words, sacred, and restful.
She grows life.

—mother/Mother Earth”
― Ashley Asti, The Moon and Her Sisters

“I
don’t
want
to wait
until I’m 73 to
embrace
my body.
To look back
and think of
my beauty:
How did I
miss it?

Let’s not wait another moment.”
― Ashley Asti, Dear Sisters: Your Nature is to Bloom

“We are nature.
Our bodies carry its swimming waters.
We are made of the soil
and eat the plants that grow from it.
From dust to dust
we come and go.

Each time I bring
my hands to my heart
in prayer,
flowing my body with my breath,
it is devotional,
a dance with the earth
and of the earth.

I dance with every tree,
sway with the wind,
bloom with every flower
in my being.

My breath,
Mother Earth,
is yours.

—the whole planet is in me”
― Ashley Asti, Yoga Heartsongs

“The way I touch
earth and heaven at once,
stretching from soil to sky.
The way the mat holds my feet
and my feet hold me.
The way it seems so simple,
something to be brushed off as
‘too easy,’
and the way it is actually
foundational.
The way I know
that when I am in it,
I am it—
unshakeable no matter what
winds blow or rains pour down.
It is as if I remain,
eternal,
undaunted,

majestic.

—mountain pose”
― Ashley Asti, Yoga Heartsongs

“Your existence is defiance: as those around you perish, you gather those passed souls and rise with them, as if your voice and leadership is made stronger by a long line of ancestors who stand tall, in spirit, with you. And I think that's what I loved most about your description of your physical self: 'I would not change anything about me. I represent my ancestors.”
― Ashley Asti, I Have Waited for You: Letters from Prison

“We have only to look below our feet to see what we have in common: one earth belonging to us all. So if you do not see yourself in me, that's okay. Just look to your feet and remember—what you find beneath your soles is you and it is me.”
― Ashley Asti, I Always Thought I Was Fire: A Memoir Through the Elements

“Beauty cannot possibly be youth alone:
that is like earth stopping at autumn and saying
that is enough.

—I want to see all of you”
― Ashley Asti, The Moon and Her Sisters

“I had tried to stop my ambition, to hide it from myself because I was too afraid I would not get to satisfy it, that I’d be devastated, again. That I was too different to ever succeed. That I would never get to move what’s within me out into the world, a fate of perpetual frustration.

I told myself this so much that I forgot to see: I am hungry.

Maybe hunger is not pretty in a woman. Maybe a ferocious appetite is unbecoming.

But, no, those are only lies we’ve been told. Let it out.

There is a fire in the pit of me and I don’t care who sees it.”
― Ashley Asti, A Yoga Teacher's Guide to Creative Living

“I began yoga
to move my body
but I didn’t know
that was only the hook.
On the mat,
I have used my body not only
to discover new shapes and poses,
but I have found that
in the poses
I have discovered me.
It is my eyes that now see new shapes—
perspective clear and shifted.
And my soul
that has risen up and called to me.
The truth of who I am
is unfolding.
I have stepped through
the back door of my heart,
to the place that meets my soul.
I rest in my
true nature.

—yoga changes everything”
― Ashley Asti

“How is the ocean not enraged,
swelling—
how is it not furious with grief:
we have drowned it in plastic,
its waves are no longer its own.
How does it survive this,
blistered by our carelessness?
We are drops of the ocean:
why can’t we see this?

—when plastic outnumbers fish”
― Ashley Asti, The Moon and Her Sisters

“Sing hallelujah
because your body is
unmatched.
And, because of that,
it is keenly desirable—
a rare, one of kind
created by the Artist herself.”
― Ashley Asti, The Moon and Her Sisters

“I believe you do not deserve words like “anti-wrinkle” and “anti-aging.” Your experience as a woman is much too rich to be rewritten in favor of artificial youthfulness.”
― Ashley Asti, Dear Sisters: Your Nature is to Bloom

“I am not ruined
by my expectations of myself.
I am ruined by what I’ve imagined
are yours.

—let go of what they think”
― Ashley Asti, The Moon and Her Sisters

“Do not apologize for your sacred body. All of you is holy.”
― Ashley Asti, A Yoga Teacher's Guide to Creative Living

“The way
to your spirit
is through your body.”
― Ashley Asti, Dear Sisters: Your Nature is to Bloom

“This may sound naive, but I didn't fully imagine that little girls grow up in this country with stories like yours. And that, I am sure, you are not the only one. That little girls grow up in tents and start smoking cigarettes by age eight. So seamlessly have we (those in power) written over stories and lives like yours that, to someone like me, it is very easy not to hear about lives like yours. Not to know or imagine they exist. Not to know that public policy is failing you. Not to know that the prison system is an impoverished and wholly inadequate response to your experience and that it, too, is failing you. Which means it's failing all of us.”
― Ashley Asti, I Have Waited for You: Letters from Prison

“When you buy a product, you don’t just buy the product: you buy everything that company stands for.

Sisters, are your things rooted in peace?”
― Ashley Asti, Dear Sisters: Your Nature is to Bloom

“Don’t dig
for your purpose—
let it drop
from the heavens
and fall in your lap.

—you can’t hunt your way to it”
― Ashley Asti, The Moon and Her Sisters

“I just wanted to remind us:
every shape and way of being
is tempting,
not because it’s your job to be
desirable,
but because the form you come in
was ordered up by God
and that’s
madly rousing.”
― Ashley Asti, The Moon and Her Sisters

“Know that the pain you have endured does not define you to me. What defines you to me is the way you talk about love, especially loving yourself. 'I have learned to love everything about me,' you wrote. You are powerful.”
― Ashley Asti, I Have Waited for You: Letters from Prison

“a green juice
is not self-care
if it’s meant to
starve not
nourish.

—moderation”
― Ashley Asti, The Moon and Her Sisters

“I think one of the best gifts you could offer me, as a writer, is to engage with my words, to tell me how they felt to you. To let me, for a moment, see my words through your eyes. And it feels like you read my words so carefully, that you were gentle with them, nurturing. I feel loved and seen by the way you responded. Thank you for caring for the words that rise from my soul.”
― Ashley Asti, I Have Waited for You: Letters from Prison

“I think one of the things I’ve learned as a writer...is that speech is a form of power in this world. As a writer, being able to articulate what other people may be feeling but perhaps struggle to put into words themselves, it is valued. But I also believe we—all of us—communicate in silence, in energy, in a love that extends from our hearts. And, to me, this is another form of inner power.”
― Ashley Asti, Up: A Love Letter to the Down Syndrome Community

“When I would later ask her, What makes someone beautiful?, she would tell me: 'I think it’s what’s inside someone. I think it’s kindness in someone’s heart that makes them beautiful.' And she would add, 'And it’s how they treat others.' Compassion is beauty, too.”
― Ashley Asti, Up: A Love Letter to the Down Syndrome Community

“I definitely think mothers of children with disabilities have to have extraordinary courage every day...Because we all know our children have value and worth and potential, but the everyday world sometimes doesn’t.'
—Linda Strobel in Up: A Love Letter to the Down Syndrome Community”
― Ashley Asti, Up: A Love Letter to the Down Syndrome Community

“No matter who you are or how you’re born, your arrival deserves to be celebrated.”
― Ashley Asti, Up: A Love Letter to the Down Syndrome Community

“I do not want to suppress the parts of me that most want to soar for fear of what someone else may think or because it may be too much or not worthy enough or not complete or brilliant or normal enough. Self-care also means honoring the truth within us.

Set yours free.”
― Ashley Asti, Dear Sisters: Your Nature is to Bloom

“She represents a step toward creating a world where you can have Down syndrome and still dream big. Where you can have Down syndrome and still be seen as beautiful and worthy.”
― Ashley Asti, Up: A Love Letter to the Down Syndrome Community

“Don't give the world what anyone else has got. Give what only you, uniquely, have to share.”
― Ashley Asti, A Yoga Teacher's Guide to Creative Living

“I go to yoga
to tend my own
garden.

—self-love”
― Ashley Asti