They Said "Live" and They Did

I first heard Andrea Gibson’s voice through my earbuds — somewhere between the soft, ordinary ache of a Tuesday morning and the sharp awareness that something bigger was happening. It was an episode of We Can Do Hard Things. Glennon, Abby, and Amanda were in conversation with Andrea, and what unfolded was one of the bravest, most unforgettable moments I’ve ever heard.

Andrea had just received a terminal cancer diagnosis. And yet, what they brought into that space wasn’t death — it was life. Fierce, raw, wide-awake life. They talked about letting go of fear, about the choice to stop living from a place of panic. About beauty. Attention. Allowing joy to rise like a rebel inside grief.

I ordered You Better Be Lightning before the episode even ended. That book has lived beside me ever since — its spine soft, its pages folded, its poems holding me gently and sometimes not so gently. That’s the kind of poet Andrea was. One who let you feel everything, without shame.

Andrea Gibson died on Monday, 14th July 2025, at home in Colorado. They were 49. They left this world surrounded by love, having spent their final years doing exactly what they always did: telling the truth beautifully.

For those who didn’t know them, Andrea was one of the most celebrated spoken word poets of our time. A queer, nonbinary artist, activist, and author of seven poetry collections and seven albums, Andrea’s words were not designed to sit quietly on a shelf. They were meant to be spoken, shouted, cried through, memorised in the bones.

They won the first-ever Women of the World Poetry Slam in 2008. They packed theatres. They changed the energy in every room they entered. Their work centred around mental health, gender identity, chronic illness, racism, war, grief, and — always — the radical, redemptive power of love.

When they were diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer in 2023, they shared it publicly, unflinchingly. Not in some glossy, inspirational way — but in a way that stayed true to the vulnerability and fire they’d always carried. Andrea continued writing, performing, and sharing with us. They released Things That Don’t Suck, a joy journal, in 2024, and a 5-year anniversary edition of Lord of the Butterflies, one of their most beloved collections.

They lived with cancer the way they lived with everything else: full-hearted and honest, awake to the beauty and brutality of it all.

Andrea once wrote:“I want to live so big people will point to me and say: ‘She goes there.’”

Andrea went there again and again. Into the sacred. Into the awkward. Into the queer and the glorious and the undone. Their poems permitted people to be soft and angry, to be survivors and lovers, to be absolutely, unapologetically themselves.

So what do we do now?

What do we do with the absence of a voice that once helped us stay?

We pick up the poems. We write the thing we’re scared to say. We hold each other tighter. We remember that loving the world — really loving it — includes letting it break your heart. We stop pretending we’re fine when we’re not. We stop pretending poetry isn’t urgent.

And if Andrea’s words ever helped you feel more alive, more seen, more allowed to exist as you are, then you already know what to do.

Carry their voice in yours.

Not as a burden.

As a flame.

With love and grief and gratitude,

Sarah x

Sarah Hopton Psychotherapy

Freedom. Choice. Poetry.