Tag: acceptance

Andrea Gibson: After Life

“I am happiest on the road, when I’m not here or there, but in between, the yellow line running down the center of it all like a sunbeam.”
–Andrea Gibson

I was not familiar with the work of dynamic spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson until after they (preferred nonbinary pronoun) transitioned in July 2025 from ovarian cancer. In November, I happened to see the trailer for a documentary film about Andrea called Come See Me in the Good Light. Next, I stumbled upon a clip of their friend Tig Notaro reading part of Andrea’s poem “Tincture.” Moved to tears, I found the entire poem online and read it through twice, continuing to weep. The kind of tears I had never experienced in quite the same way before: sorrow simultaneous with celebration of life. Andrea’s poetry encompasses both of these in extraordinary ways.

Thus began my hours-long journey across the web, watching every video I could find: Andrea’s poetry performances; Andrea and partner/wife Megan Falley (also a poet) being interviewed; Megan revealing her own feelings after Andrea’s passing; the trailer from the film and the song “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet,” sung by Sarah Bareilles and Brandi Carlile (with Andrea’s words) at the film’s end. Andrea’s website (andreagibson.org) showcases their vividly diverse poetry (lyrical, incisive, humorous, loving). The first poem I heard/saw was “Love Letter from the Afterlife,” written to Megan. I was audibly sobbing by the fourth or fifth line. I’ve listened to it many times since, and it still feels like the most beautifully wise poem ever written. I have been reading poetry all my life but have never run across any quite like hers.

Andrea’s words bridge life, death, and eternity seamlessly, using details recognizable from my own life, from everyone’s life. It all flowed together perfectly as I listened, crying at the heart-wrenching pathos and absolute splendor of life on Earth. Sadness and joy as one inseparable experience. At the end of the afternoon, I felt as if everyone I had ever known had died and come back to life. All at the same time. Everything inside me and outside me as One. That may not make logical sense, but that’s the best way I can describe the experience. Even my tears held the precious poignancy of all life in them.

And then there’s the film. After hearing/seeing all these pieces of Andrea’s life and work, I watched Come See Me in the Good Light, where it all comes together in an extraordinarily honest, funny, and beautiful telling of their (and Meg’s) journey with cancer. Once again, loss of life and love of life are presented as one experience in a way that is both heart-breaking and heart-opening. They share what they went through (for several years) with such vulnerability, humor, and loving sweetness. I laughed, I cried, I felt what they felt right along with them.

 Andrea’s description of coming to inner acceptance and neutrality about so much that had previously “mattered” struck a chord in my own life (I lived through breast cancer a few years ago). They felt parts of their “identity” fall away as they settled into soul awareness. Nothing was as important as the present moment, fully lived and appreciated. I still hear Andrea’s deeply expressive, musical voice at their last poetry performance in Denver in 2024 (shown in the film), the entire theater as one, cheering, laughing, crying, immersed in love.

I believe Andrea Gibson came to Earth to erase the dividing line between life and death. Between all dichotomies, actually. A perfectly nonbinary life and afterlife. Woven into the tapestry of the universe with precisely orchestrated timing for humanity’s deeper awakening. Thank you, Andrea, for your love letter to us all.

“Love Letter from the Afterlife”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmZHLvq-gDg

“Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XK-hb_bjqU 

Trailer from Come See Me in the Good Light: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0B8sjxR7Mo

Rose of Sharon art above by Anne Katzeff

Walk Through the Doorway

When I’ve experienced any kind of physical pain or emotional unease in my life, something in me often clinched and shut down as I tried to control it, make it disappear. But what if acceptance and letting go of control is the only way to the other side? Maybe all we’ve been taught about physicality and the human form is upside-down. What if hanging on tightly to how we think it’s supposed to be is opposed to allowing life to unfold? And what if acceptance is the doorway to surrender, and surrender the doorway to feeling less pain as I become aware of my soul’s design?

My inner spirit, or soul, knows my life’s design better than my “I” identity, constructed over the years for survival. Ultimately life is not about surviving; it’s about letting go into something greater than your physical form and individual life. Before you are born and after you die, you know this. In between, your soul guides you to deeper and deeper awareness about the nature of life and your journey within your lifetime, and beyond. Everything that happens is part of your soul design. Nothing is wrong and needs to be erased or eradicated. When I fully accept this, surrendering to it without attachment to any particular outcome, I consciously become part of a flow. Life carries me instead of my trying to force it in a certain direction.

Gradually, in letting go, I relax and allow myself to be one with my soul, accepting what seems hard as part of life, part of oneness. This shift occurs when I see difficulty as a doorway and not prison bars. As long as I try to control (and stop) it, it tightens and hangs on. When I surrender to it as my soul’s path in this lifetime, a subtle shift occurs at the heart level. My experience of it is lighter, easier, and I can sometimes feel the presence of a loving beingness beyond and also encompassing my body. 

A few years ago, I lived through a diagnosis of and treatment for breast cancer. Emotional and physical pain arose, but when I allowed myself to cry and feel the fear, it began to release. I came to realize that this was part of my soul’s journey and I was being given a gift of profound connection to Spirit. That perspective helped me through the whole process, not without occasional discomfort, but with trust, inner peace, and tremendous gratitude for a growing awareness of myself as eternal spirit in a temporary human form. Acceptance had been the doorway to experiencing this.

My soul’s journey continues, and each day I am learning more and more to welcome whatever arises as part of my life’s design. I remind myself that everything is Spirit, and infinite wisdom may be hidden in the smallest details. My heart’s doorway opens wider all the time…until accepting becomes so deep that eventually every door falls away and there is only unbroken peaceful Presence. 

Reflections on a Board Game

Anne and I have played Scrabble regularly for years. We like the mind exercise involved in forming words to fit on the board in often difficult places. Recently we bought a new board game called Wingspan, which I had read about online. It was a bit complicated to learn, but now we love it. Players create small bird sanctuaries on their individual boards, using bird cards, bonus cards, food and egg representations, and colorful markers and dice. In the course of four rounds of play, each player fills their habitats, and points accumulated from various plays and cards determine the winner. Overall, we are fairly evenly matched, with Anne usually winning more frequently at Scrabble and me winning more often at Wingspan. Occasionally we tie!

So, board games are fun, right? Relaxing as well as stimulating to the mind. But could they also be seen as a reflection of life, something we could learn from? This way of looking at them occurred to me recently when I was repeatedly losing every Scrabble game. It seemed that I was always drawing letters that did not make words—all vowels or all consonants. Meanwhile, Anne was sailing along forming five- to seven-letter words, often with triple scores. After the sixth or seventh game like this, I began to feel frustrated and angry, as if it was more than just bad luck. When I then lost a Wingspan game in similar fashion, it seemed like the last straw: God was literally “stacking the cards against me”!

As soon as that thought passed through my mind, something clicked, and I realized that each game was a reflection of life, and together they were demonstrating to me a spiritual teaching that I thought I already knew by heart: Accept what is. If you resist whatever is occurring, you will be angry and upset. In a board game and in life. And so it is. Spirit has such imaginative and humorous ways of showing us life’s truths and exactly how they work. As long as I continued to be annoyed at the way a game was unfolding, I would be unhappy—and furious that I couldn’t control the outcome. So it is with life. Accept whatever comes up, and you will feel peaceful. Resist, and you will grumble and complain throughout your days on Earth.

When I came to see that Spirit and my soul were playfully reminding me of this deep truth and that it applied everywhere all the time, I smiled—and then laughed out loud. Life flows if you allow it to be exactly as it is. Board games do too. The secret is seeing them that way. Who knew that Scrabble was hiding spiritual wisdom in all those letters?!

P.S. The evening after I had this insight, I won the Scrabble game (not that it matters… ha!)

Do You Plan?

Many of us have been, or are, planners to one extent or another—myself included. From an early age (at least in Western cultures), we are conditioned to believe we can somehow shape our future by making lists and detailed plans. When these plans do not work out, we may feel we have failed somehow, but it doesn’t stop us from making a new plan. “Practice makes perfect.” We think that if we keep reshaping our plans, they will eventually work out exactly as we wanted. Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no.

In truth, we are trying to control something beyond our control. The design for your life was put in place at the soul level before you were born. Your soul and Spirit came up with a flexible vision for your life that self-adjusts on its own without any directed effort from you as an incarnated human. There is a natural flow to all our lives, to our collective life, on this planet, and only when we accept and surrender to that do we begin to flow too. Letting go of over-planning is part of that.

The only “plan” that really works is a simple one that just aligns you with your soul’s guidance. “Let go and let God,” as the saying goes. Life has its own wisdom, which often is a mystery to us—until we allow everything to unfold as is without trying to force it. Then the mysteries and magic begin to reveal themselves. Synchronicity arises; miracles occur. Small pieces of the cosmic grand puzzle become visible. And the more you let go, the more you see.

Of course, you will never see it all because that is the nature of infinity. However, when you realize you are part of that infinite flow yourself, no matter what you do or don’t do, then trust begins to guide you. We don’t need to plan every detail (or harbor regrets). Life is just happening on its own, and with a greater openness, complexity, and wonder than we could create alone. Perhaps this is the most powerful lesson we will learn in our lifetimes: Trust that all is well, whatever it may look like. Over time, this truth is revealed, again and again.

Something greater is at play in your life and mine, in all of life. No matter how you or I think things should occur, they will follow their own course—the course of the soul’s design and God’s. You may only see the absolute perfection of that at the end of this lifetime, but if you release your hold on mental to-do lists and the need for certainty, then you begin to experience every single moment as perfect just the way it is. Those other plans will fall away, and you will be left with the wondrous life you were always meant to live.

Forgiveness

We all do or say things at times that we regret afterward. Perhaps from thoughtlessness, impatience, or our own tightly held opinions. In one moment of anger or upset, we can hurt another with our words or actions. When we apologize later, we long for forgiveness. To sweep clean all pain, conflict, or guilt and begin again with compassion and kindness. Perhaps this is a universal wish, humanity’s greatest prayer, on so many levels.

Many years ago, when I was still in college, my dad and I had an argument over something, and in my anger, I said things that I immediately felt terrible about. Later, I went to him in tears and said how sorry I was, asking him not to hate me for my insensitive outburst. His answer was such a beautiful example of a parent’s unconditional love: “I could never hate you. It doesn’t matter what you say to me—I will always love you.” All my life, I have held his words in my heart as one of the most generous, tender gifts he ever gave me. Truly a guiding star of wisdom and kindness.

As we live our lives, we may repeatedly stumble over our own inability to see circumstances or individuals from a wider lens. So often, our minds convince us we are “right” and others “wrong.” We lash out in anger at another’s opinion or we stand in judgment of their behavior. Yet, if we knew their life story from the inside, we might suddenly see everything differently. A friend’s irritability may stem from a family member’s illness, that we know nothing of. A stranger’s rudeness may be a domino effect from someone else being rude to them. Others’ opinions and attitudes often arise from their life circumstances. If we pause for a moment, we can give them the benefit of the doubt and respond from empathy instead of antipathy.

No one is always upbeat and friendly, kind and generous. We forget our best intentions and say or do something that we wish we hadn’t. That moment is the perfect opportunity to remember the power of forgiveness. To be vulnerable enough to admit our mistakes and ask to be forgiven. And then to forgive others (and ourselves) as well. To let go of grievances and grudges and choose peace instead. If we could do that, so many of the walls between us would begin to crumble.

Much of the world is currently divided by conflict and adherence to single-minded views based in fear: defense against the threat of the “other.”  As individuals, we may not be able to solve all the world’s problems, but we can each live our lives in ways that may ultimately affect the whole. If we drop habitual defenses and live from acceptance and love instead of suspicion or hatred, then so much could begin to be healed on this planet. See another soul, not an adversary. No matter what someone says or does, hold them in your heart. Forgiveness is pure love; it is pure giving, and it touches the entire web of life.