92. Facing Mortality and Feeding Creativity with Spoken Word Poet Andrea Gibson
All The Wiser
Kimi Culp
4.9 • 652 Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2023
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are you pushing away joy? Getting stuck in a cycle of anxiety and grief? World renowned spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson (they/them) can relate. In this powerful and personal episode, Andrea shares their battles with stage fright, extreme anxiety, chronic Lyme disease, and stage 4 ovarian cancer. They also explore the transformative experiences brought about by Andrea’s cancer diagnosis, taking ownership of their health, and their commitment to healing modalities that have given them a feeling of radiant health amidst the trials of chemotherapy. Andrea shares profound insights on love, authenticity, fear, gratitude, and the art of cherishing others and self in the harshest of life's storms - not just as a cancer patient, but as an undeniably resilient and wise human.
In this episode:
- Coming to terms with their queer identity.
- Living with extreme anxiety and panic attacks.
- Overcoming stage fright and finding their voice in spoken-word poetry.
- How suffering can transform into a path for liberation and healing.
- Andrea's struggles with an incurable cancer diagnosis.
- Healing modalities they pursued.
- How self love has led to a new acceptance of their body and identity.
Links & Resources:
Newsletter: Things That Don’t Suck
Website: www.andreagibson.org
Instagram: @andreagibson
TikTok: @andreagibsonpoetry
Facebook: Andrea Gibson Poetry
Twitter: @andreagibson
YouTube: Andrea Gibson Poetry
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Transcript
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| 0:58.5 | One of the things that I realized after cancer was that there was one feeling that I was consistently |
| 1:06.0 | pushing away, or more than one. And I said joy. Initially, joy was the one that I realized that I had been pushing away. |
| 1:14.4 | But I was also pushing away awe. |
| 1:17.0 | I was pushing away astonishment. |
| 1:19.9 | And I think that many of us, if we have trauma in our history, we don't feel safe with those |
| 1:25.7 | emotions. |
| 1:26.1 | But also, I think that there are some things |
| 1:28.4 | in our culture and maybe even specifically in our culture for those of us on the left, whatever that |
| 1:34.4 | means, of where there can be an expectation for unhappiness. The idea that, you know, if we're not |
| 1:42.1 | in a constant state of grief or grieving what's happening |
| 1:45.1 | in the world, then we're not empathetic people, we're not showing up to the world. |
| 1:48.5 | I think there were lots of things intersecting with my lack of understanding that I wasn't |
| 1:54.2 | actually welcoming joy. But after cancer, I saw that. I saw it so clearly. |
... |
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