Wonderbringers Newsletter with Monica Parker
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Hello Wonderseekers!
This past week, we lost a needed and hopeful voice, poet Andrea Gibson. Gibson was Colorado’s poet laureate, and I came to their work, like so many, via social media. (A reminder that there are still positive glimmers to be found in the dumpster fire that is social media.) They (Gibson went by they/them pronouns) died this week from cancer, surrounded by their friends and family.
Gibson is known for their spoken word poetry on LGBTQ topics, but to be honest, I didn't necessarily hear those themes so much as I just heard themes of life and love. Of wonder. And death. I think about death quite a bit now. Not in a morbid way, but in an embracing, gratitude-filled way. None of us is getting out of here alive. And her reflections on her own mortality resonated deeply with me.
Gibson wrote a stunning piece about death entitled Love Letter From The Afterlife, written ostensibly to support others who have lost a loved one, but actually written from their perspective, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was intended as a gift for their partner, Megan Falley, to help with Falley’s grief.
The poem is too long to share here, but I’d love for you to read it, sit with it for a few minutes and have a discussion with yourself about what death means to you. And, I guess, what life means to you, too.
Allow me to share this little wonderbringer of a snippet:
“It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive?”
Some wonderbringers for me this week:
Psychedelic drugs may give a glimpse Into near-death experiences: A survey revealed similarities between these two altered states of consciousness.
“I refuse to have a terrible death”: The rise of the death wellness movement.
Listen: The power of poetry: Why it matters and how it's evolving.
Next week, I’ll be sharing details of a special collaboration with my friend Kyle Campbell at Sudden Journeys! Can’t wait!
With wonder,
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