Tag: awakening

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

Remember

I have just finished rereading the ending of Ann Patchett’s new novel Tom Lake. I am crying—at the poignancy, at the beauty, at the soul wisdom. Last night I watched a 1988 PBS production of the play Our Town, which figures so prominently in Tom Lake, though always in the background (Tom Lake is a summer theater). I wept at that too. There are such deep life lessons in both of them, ones that few remember in their lifetimes. The characters Lara and Emily open to these lessons over the course of events in the novel and play. As does George in the film It’s a Wonderful Life. As are so many of us now at this time on Earth. We are awakening to how extraordinary human life really is.

Don’t miss a second of your life on this remarkable planet. The sadness and suffering as well as the joy and celebration. It’s all such a tremendous unrepeatable experience, like no other in the universe. Each morning, when you wake up, remember. The poet Rumi said it: “The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep,” This is the greatest wisdom of each of our lifetimes, throughout time, and especially now. Don’t go back to sleep. See the living spark of divine light in your partner’s or child’s eyes. Love your friends and family with all your heart. Appreciate them. Love yourself. You are a miracle.

Look around at the beauty of Mother Earth, the birds and trees and flowers. Everywhere there is beauty, even in the smallest detail of the most insignificant blade of grass. Even in a cemetery. A cemetery is a central figure in both Tom Lake and Our Town (and It’s a Wonderful Life). It stands as a coming together point of all life and eventually all the wisdom that arises from living. Spirit lives there. Spirit, which continues throughout time and space.

There is a cemetery that is a central figure in my life as well: Mt. Auburn. It is also a nature sanctuary, and for more than 40 years, I have walked there in the sweet silence and sounds of the natural world. I greet the birds each spring as they migrate and sing their lilting songs. Anne and I were married at Mt. Auburn, under the trees by Auburn Lake, the most beautiful day of our lives. I heard about the death of a friend there, tears streaming down my face as a bright red cardinal appeared on the path before me. I felt my mother’s spirit there after her passing, a cardinal singing nearby then too. And I have sensed my dad’s energy in the trees and the crows calling overhead. One cold November night many years ago, Anne and I watched meteor showers streaking across the cosmos in the deep darkness of Mt. Auburn at 3 a.m. Some of my most powerful moments of connection to something greater in the universe (Spirit, the Great Mystery, God) occurred there. All of life and death coming together as One in my awareness.

In Tom Lake, a cemetery on a rural wooded hillside brings everyone together in love and continuity. I feel that at Mt. Auburn. That is why I return, year after year. It helps me remember. We are all finding our own ways to remember now, we latter-day poets and saints of the 21st century. We came to Earth at this time to become fully awake and aware, to connect with one another, and to see the miracles in everything. In life/death, in pure being. Don’t go back to sleep. Remember. It is the gift of a lifetime, of all lifetimes.

Appearing Nightly

What we have named God, or Spirit, lives on planet Earth in billions of human, animal, and plant forms. God appears nightly, and daily, everywhere we look, inside and out. There is nothing that is not an expression of Spirit in this world. Yet we often question her/his/its existence, especially in today’s conflict-ridden world, and repeatedly fail to recognize the divine light within ourselves. If we are spiritual or religious, we may think we have to do something to be enlightened or blessed. We see ourselves as falling short of divinity, of worthiness for blessings. And we also judge others for what we have been taught are their failings.

What if there are no failings, no impossible tasks that we have to achieve in order to be blessed by Spirit? What if we were born blessed, full of the light of God/dess, which can never be extinguished? What if everyone and everything we see on this planet is part of an intricate design of becoming, which we can only see a small portion of in our individual lives? And what if we are now living through a time in which our inner awareness opens wider and wider until we can see enough of that design to recognize it everywhere—most of all within our own hearts?

We did not come here to live and die as tarnished, imperfect, self-hating human beings. We came here as God to experience God in ourselves and all things. To realize there is no such thing as imperfection. Each of us is living out the perfect design that we decided on, with Spirit, before birth—so that we may grow and evolve, along with all living beings. We are not separate from one another. We are one another, because within Spirit, all is oneness. It lives as us and every other animate and inanimate form on Earth, each a divine expression of beingness. When we fully realize this on every level, the separations and conflicts now so prevalent on Earth will dissolve.

I’ve always had a “utopian” vision of a future world where people share responsibilities and decisions in a peaceful, circular way with no leaders or followers, no roles or hierarchy, no guns or war. All abundance shared. Creative expression encouraged and supported. Loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-centered interactions as natural as breathing because everyone sees one another as family, not “other.” Over the years, I’ve come to believe that we all have a similar vision deep inside us. We were born enlightened, with the light of God present within us as our soul. Our soul knows the overview of our life journey and is always guiding us toward more understanding and expression of our light in the world.

We have learned how to survive as individual identities in a world that doesn’t currently support soul expression, but there is an awakening occurring now on the planet. We are bridges from the old paradigm into the new as we become increasingly aware of the light within us and express it more fully in the world. We are each opening to this vision in our own way, and no one way is better than others. We will eventually realize that there is nowhere to go and nothing to attain–it’s all within us already. God is always here, day or night, 24/7.

Your Identity and Soul

Your identity and your soul dance with each other throughout your life. You are born as pure soul into a physical form and return to formless soul presence at death. Gradually, with each life experience, that form takes on an identity, made up of memories, thoughts, and feelings. The soul steps to the background as the identity experiences life in this way. It never disappears; it just allows the identity to follow the course of its destiny, the one the soul and God designed for you before birth. You chose to have certain life experiences, both joy and sadness, loss and celebration. Through it all your soul is a quiet voice whispering guidance. Sometimes you hear it, sometimes not. Either way, life continues.

Then at a certain point, your identity may reach a moment of awakening, perhaps through spiritual epiphany, perhaps through crisis. That crack in the seemingly solid form your identity has taken, opens the door for your soul’s more expansive presence. The wisdom of acceptance and surrender to the course of life events arises in your consciousness. You stop trying to control and begin to allow. A deeper love of life, of self, and of others comes to the fore. This is your soul’s greatest gift.

I have experienced much of this over the years, both through spiritual practice and through life’s challenges. A global pandemic and breast cancer were my greatest teachers about the inner peace that comes from acceptance. They occurred one right after the other in my life after many years of spiritual exploration and growth. With them, I felt my identity begin to recede a bit and my soul move to the fore. There was no sense of loss, but rather a profound peace and trust in all of life, as well as death and eternity. I had feared the latter since childhood. Perhaps it took actually coming face to face with the possibility of death for me to let go into trusting in an infinite consciousness that held me and all of the world in loving beingness.

This may sound like a fairy tale or wishful thinking, but I assure you this is what happened for me. It is not an instant transformation but rather a gradual opening to full soul awareness. Today, I feel more deeply aligned with my soul, trusting in the divine flow of the universe. Yet, my identity has not entirely disappeared. It is like a thread that tethers me lightly to this lifetime, present in a passing thought or feeling. I know my identity is not to be disregarded and discarded. It is to be loved along with everything else in my life. My soul gave me my identity so I could experience life fully. If I can remember that whenever I feel apprehensive about something, then soul trust arises and all is well.

Your identity and soul are partners, your life support system, linked in love. Your soul is eternal, your identity temporary, but together they fill your life with meaning and purpose. Acknowledging their interconnected presence allows you to experience life with full conscious awareness of the miracle and gift that is life on Earth.

Fear and Trust

We all live with both fear and trust inside us. Fear is the residue of past painful events and the emotional triggers that can make us relive them and think something similar may happen again. Today the entire world lives with the fear engendered by a global pandemic and the illnesses and deaths that have accompanied it. In addition, political discord divides our planet. Each of us handles such fears in a variety of ways: distraction, denial, depression, nervous apprehension, sadness. Or just allowing the feelings to flow through and accepting them. The acceptance arises from a trust that lives deep within each of us. We were born with it.

Trust is the spirit of life itself. It is a connection to something greater than the specific events of your life. Some call this God or Universal Consciousness, but it is beyond labels and even beyond human understanding. The longer you live, the more opportunities you have to remember this connection and open to trusting it.  Sometimes in the midst of a very frightening or sad experience, you may realize that acceptance is the only thing that brings peace of mind. A peace that sidesteps the mind’s attempts to understand and control the situation. Acceptance opens the door to trust. Trust that comes from the wisdom of the heart and soul.

I have had many opportunities to get in touch with acceptance and trust in recent years. I’ve moved from one part of the country to another and then back again, my sense of “home” in constant flux. A dear lifetime friend died unexpectedly, and I felt my heart break. I have also lived through the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Each of these life events affected me immensely and ultimately taught me to let go at the deepest possible level. Cancer, in particular, was a teacher of the most profound wisdom with regard to acceptance. When I accepted that cancer was indeed part of my soul’s path for this lifetime, I was able to move through the experience with trust instead of fear. It has been a year since my diagnosis and treatment, and the deeper truths I learned inform my life daily.

Simultaneously, COVID too has been a major factor for me in living with acceptance. The specter of COVID and its variants forms the background for our lives now, whether we try to ignore it or think of it continually. Perhaps it has come to teach us on a grand scale that there are things we can’t control and that only acceptance will bring peace of mind. Whether it is a hurricane, a pandemic, or a physical condition, there are always events we just have to surrender to and do the best we can to live through consciously. Life is a drama that includes every extreme. At times it feels overwhelming, and we want to rewrite the script, forgetting that we designed our life path before birth.

Everything is happening for our awakening and expansion. If you can embrace this truth, it puts you in touch with the peace at your core. A peace that gently moves you through fear to trust. Trust in the events of your life, however they may appear, and trust in your self and your soul’s journey. You may think everything is chaos in your life, but your heart and soul know better. It is all a sacred passage into the light of peaceful awareness.