Review: A Beautiful Morning by Ashley Ellington Brown

A Beautiful Morning: How a Morning Ritual Can Feed Your Soul and Transform Your Life is an inspiring and practical guidebook about the most important moment of the day – the morning – which can establish a person’s mood and sense of well-being for the rest of the day.

Author Ashley Ellington Brown was inspired to create this guidebook through an insight that spontaneously occurred to her as she was in the midst of her newly instituted morning ritual – “basking in sunshine and birdsong.” She decided to contact women whose work she admires – life coaches, authors, teachers, and healers -and interview them regarding their own morning rituals, resulting in this eloquent and attractive work of self-help.

A Beautiful Morning combines the ideas and philosophies of 20 self-aware women, in separate segments. Each starts her day with a routine, or combination of routines, to set a positive tone for the coming day. Carla Robertson, for example, is a Life Coach who rises early, often meditates, and, when possible, connects with nature by sitting in the grass. She suggests that others try to be quiet and still, though it’s contrary to the current culture that is “action oriented and focus on achievement.” She advises, “Don’t be mean to yourself.”

Sonia Sommer, a Master Healer, writes that her routine can be as short as five minutes or as long as an hour, beginning with recalling her dreams, while resisting the bad feelings that can arise from them. Award-winning writer Patricia Charpentier reads her list of “intentions” for the day over breakfast, and tries to learn something new through a blog or podcast.

Brown, as organizer of these engaging contributions, has designed an enjoyable book with attractive fonts and small decorative motifs interspersed throughout the text. But she has also constructed a thought-provoking workbook – after each contributor’s description of a morning routine and suggestions for readers, Brown poses questions: Did this segment appeal, or not, and did it “spark any ideas?” These are followed by a blank page where the reader can record her own answers and ideas.

At the end of the book, Brown presents a compilation of morning routine ideas, her distillation of the counsel of her 20 contributors to “create your own beautiful morning.” Each suggestion will appeal to different readers, but there is certainly something here to take to heart for any reader, as Brown stresses that above all, “Your way is the right way for you.” In a series of useful appendices, she gives a “permission slip” to the reader to develop and her personal beautiful morning, as well as a morning routine tracker, lists of ideas, questions, affirmations, and further topical resources.

In all, Brown has compiled a fascinating compendium of advice in A Beautiful Morning aimed at creative, mindful women like Brown herself, and her entries are well-chosen and instructive. She often focuses on spiritual concepts, so it is best-suited for those who are open to concepts of “mindfulness” and meditation, but her observations are also sharp and practical, and can inspire a new appreciation for just how important and overlooked the morning can be, which is a message that can appeal to most any reader.