Transcript

Watch OUR 1ST FILM – Come See Me in the Good Light – 11/14: Meg Falley (& Andrea Gibson)

From We Can Do Hard Things · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 23 min · 11,063 words · 129 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Watch OUR 1ST FILM – Come See Me in the Good Light – 11/14: Meg Falley (& Andrea Gibson)", an episode of We Can Do Hard Things published November 13, 2025 (1 h 23 min, about 11,063 words). It mentions 7 people, works and ideas, including Meg Valley, You Better Be Lightning, Mave, IM8, O Positive.

What this episode is about

The content explores a deeply personal conversation between Glennon Doyle and poet Meg Falley, focusing on the profound experiences surrounding Meg's journey with her partner, Andrea Gibson, during her battle with cancer. Meg reflects on themes of life, death, and awakening, questioning the conventional narratives surrounding these concepts, while also celebrating the release of their upcoming film, "Come See Me in the Good Light," which aims to foster gentleness and beauty in the world.

Key takeaways

  • Love isn't just a feeling—it's a continuous rebirth, especially in life’s last act.
  • Awakening can bloom from the deepest shadows; facing death may lead to living more fully.
  • Language may limit truth, but it's our only bridge to communicate the uncommunicable.
  • In defining life and death, perhaps the real magic is in how we continue to love.
  • What if death isn’t the end but a portal to deeper understanding and connection?

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Meg Valley, Come See Me in the Good Light
  2. – 20:00: Mave
  3. – 30:00: Mave, O Positive
  4. – 40:00: You Better Be Lightning
  5. – 50:00: IM8, Come See Me in the Good Light, Dose
  6. – 1:20:00: You Better Be Lightning
  7. – 1:23:07: You Better Be Lightning

Notable quotes from "Watch OUR 1ST FILM – Come See Me in the Good Light – 11/14: Meg Falley (& Andrea Gibson)"

  • Nope, she doesn't. it's hard to explain. Meg talks about what it was like to walk Andrea through cancer. Meg talks about the awakening that Andrea had after the diagnosis and how a complete alignment.
    about Meg Valley · at
  • And I am so delighted for people to start seeing it on their screens in their homes. I think it's going to make the world more gentle and more beautiful. And we're here to celebrate that today. Come see me in the good light.
    about Come See Me in the Good Light · at
  • That's why I love giving him Mave. It's the only fresh ready to serve dog food made from real human grade ingredients.
    about Mave · at
  • Company that's here for us through every chapter. First period to way, way past the last one. They make supplements that actually do something. Sciencebacked, doctorshaped, and made to tackle real symptoms we don't talk about enough.
    about O Positive · at
  • Dose for your liver is a clinically backed liquid supplement that supports your liver so it can do its job.
    about Dose · at
  • We feel a little off, a little low on energy, a little foggy, like our brains buffering. So, I started trying IM8's daily ultimate essentials. It's this all-in-one wellness…
    about IM8 · at
  • Andrea Gibson's gift was crystal clear vision is most of us see ourselves, our people, our world through a glass darkly, but.
    about You Better Be Lightning · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Meg Valley — Person · Main guest · 3 mentions · first at
    Shares firsthand account of loving and caregiving for Andrea Gibson through cancer, the final days, grief, and perceived ongoing connection; also discussed as featured in an upcoming Apple film.

Books & papers

  • You Better Be Lightning — Book · Referenced work · 5 mentions · first at
    A poetry book by Andrea Gibson, mentioned in the context of their life and work.

Products & tech

  • Mave — Product · Sponsored product · 2 mentions · first at
    A dog food brand mentioned in the podcast, promoted for its health benefits.
  • IM8 — Product · Sponsored product · 2 mentions · first at
    A wellness drink mentioned in the podcast, promoted for its health benefits.
  • O Positive — Product · Sponsored product · 1 mention · first at
    A women's health supplement mentioned in the podcast, promoted for its benefits.
  • Dose — Product · Sponsored product · 1 mention · first at
    A liver supplement mentioned in the podcast, promoted for its health benefits.

Sponsors

  • Come See Me in the Good Light — Product · Promoted documentary · 3 mentions · first at
    Documentary about Andrea Gibson's life and love story with Meg Valley, mentioned as a significant project.

Full transcript with timestamps

Okay, here's the deal. Pod Squad, right now. Meg, that's Aby's hand and I are trying to figure out how to use language to describe what you're about to see and hear. And we don't know how to do that because we just had an extremely mystical experience. So, what we're going to try to use our limited language to say is my name is Glennon Doyle. This is Meg. You already know who this is. Meg Valley is a poet, a writer. Meg is here in my house to talk today about the life and death of the life and alleged death of Meg's love, Andrea Gibson.

And um in this episode today, Meg talks about Do you want to tell us what you think the episode was about? Nope, she doesn't. Um,

it's hard to to explain. Meg talks about what it was like to um walk Andrea through cancer. Meg talks about the awakening that Andrea had after the diagnosis and how a complete alignment of everything that Andrea wanted to become um happened and that maybe that is what awakening is. Um, Meg talks about what the last three days were like with Andrea and the last moments. And Meg also talks about how she's very suspicious that the language we use around death is even real, that death is even real. Just I'm just I feel like you're very lucky to witness this conversation that was just had and Meg is also the breakout star of the new film about to come out on Apple that the whole world is talking about which we can't believe because it started as this little tiny thing, right? Come see me in the good light.

It's just the thing I know in my gut that the entire world needs right now. And I am so delighted for people to start seeing it on their screens in their homes. I think it's going to make the world more gentle and more beautiful. And we're here to celebrate that today. Come see me in the good light.

November 14th on Apple TV Plus. Enjoy. Hi. Hi. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. I am sitting in my home with Meg Valley. We have had a double sleepover with our with our children and our dogs.

Mine. Yeah. Yeah. And we went on a long walk yesterday to decide what to talk about today. And we decided that we wanted to talk about you and Andrea. Andrea Gibson, obviously. and Andrea's life and Andrea's death. Does that sound right to you?

It does. We should be able to handle that in 45 minutes, you think? Okay. So Meg Fing, one of my favorite things you do, and I've mentioned this a lot, is sometimes when I ask you a question, you're such a well, you're a poet and a writer and such a deep thinker that you often go language. Language meaning you're very aware that language is so limited that it can never express exactly what you feel or mean, but it's all we have is language. So, we're going to try today using all we have, which is language. Introduce yourself to us.

Language. Um, I am Megan Ph, but everyone who loves me calls me Meg, so that's why you call me Meg. Um, I am a writer and I recently lost my partner Andrea Gibson to cancer. Um, Andrew is also a writer, an incredible poet,

and I I think what you were saying about language is also it's so important to me to get it right. It's so important for me to use that tool to communicate an impeccable truth.

And that's why I I say it. It might slow myself down sometimes because I I maybe it's particular to being a writer, but it's very important to me to not just half-hazardly say something and have it be false. I want to to live from that place of

I I said the most true thing. Okay. Tell us starting anywhere anywhere that you feel like starting today. Tell us about your and Andrea's story. Um, Andrea and I were friends for a long time, both being poets in the community. Uh, we fell in love on a dance floor and we were together for 11 years. I I mean, in some ways, I still feel we're together.

Um, that doesn't feel over. I still feel less in love. In the last four years, Andrea was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, an aggressive form of it, and about two and a half years into that, it was considered incurable. Um, and the when Andrea was diagnosed, our relationship, which could sometimes be either rocky or volatile or um one that would take each other for granted, uh, completely shifted. And I was saying this to you yesterday, but I felt like the feelings that you get in the beginning of a relationship where you're you feel like you're on a drug and there's your oxytocin is going wild and you're just sort of in a love trance. We were actually able to feel again 6 years into our relationship with the with the diagnosis. Uh, I think largely a lot of that was Andrea had an awakening of sorts and became new and saw me new, but I was very able to follow follow suit because they were new.

Um, they were a new person. They did become the person that they'd always wanted to become. And

yeah, and so the last four years we danced through their diagnosis. We sang through their diagnosis. Um, and we loved hard through their diagnosis. And they died nine weeks ago. And I'm trying to well I don't know that I'm trying. I am still dancing and loving through the hard thing. Can you talk to us about the last few days, that time where I I remember, well, I want to be all in your words. I just remember getting a text from you saying, "It feels like it's time." And then there was, it seemed to me from the outside that there was this sacred few days Do you have the capacity to talk about that time?

Do you want to? I think so. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, we'll see, won't we? Um, so about maybe 3 weeks before that, we'd gone into the emergency room. Uh, Andrew was having some scary symptoms and they did a scan and we saw that their body was just completely riddled with cancer in a way that it hadn't been before. um there was more like a tumor in their lungs than there was lungs to the point where I did not I couldn't actually fathom how they were living in the way that that they were and I our oncologist a couple days later recommended that Andrea go into hospice.

I remember being on I was in a Zoom therapy session that day and I was about 10 minutes into it and I was like I cannot be here. I don't want to I I need to be with Andrea and I don't feel I left their side much since that moment. Um and I am a very hopeful person

and a very what's in front of me person is what I'm reacting to. And the day after we had that conversation with the oncologist recommending hospice, Andrea had this almost honeymoon day where their energy was just reborn and and full and and everyone around us was like, "Oh, what this is don't people don't know." Like it we just were like, "Look at this miracle person." Which is honestly always how I looked at them. And I think there was so much about Andrea that was extraordinary, miraculous that I I didn't believe that they could die

in many ways. I knew it there. But there was a cognitive dissonance of a a world without Andrea feeling incomprehensible, but also of course that this person would be the one to experience the miracle. I think now that the miracle was the last four years, it was double what was expected of their lifespan. But the love that they were able to feel, the openheartedness, the presence, all of these things that they strive for and valued beyond anything beforehand,

they got. And so that's the miracle of that. Mhm. But the last 3 days um the last Andrea had one, you know, their family was in town, their baby sister was in town, and they were on oxygen, but they were also moving around and making jokes and being brilliant and being who they were. just a smaller, slower, less energetic version. And then there was just one night where it seemed to turn. And the following day, uh, Andrea wanted to go to the ER. And I there was a lot of hard conversations, some of the hardest I've ever had. even though they were only a couple sentences, but where Indra's like, "You got to take me to the emergency room."

And I was saying, "I worry that if we go to the emergency room, we won't come back and then there'd be like a look of recognition and they'd see it." Um, but the last thing, well, one of the last full things that Andrea said when I think they began to realize what was happening was, and what you have to understand about our house at the time was, I was there, but so were like four of Andrea's ex-girlfriends from 30 years ago to, I guess, the mo most recent like 12 years ago or something. Um there were Andrea's therapist was there all their friends like all it was this revolving door of humans who loved them their parents I think their Andrea's parents are from Maine and I think any parent as completely tragic and awful it is and we I there's a Jack McCarthy poet quote who says something like just as the night follows the mourn may we may We die in the order in which we are born. M

but I think that if you're a parent and you have to walk into your child's deathbed, there can't be a measure of a life more beautifully lived than to be so surrounded by people who love you in the middle of the day, who are just there to love you and drop everything. Um, and one of the last things that Andrea said was, "I [ __ ] loved my life."

And I think about, "If Andrew's life was a poem, and it was, what a perfect last line to have."

Yeah. When you say the miracle was that Andrea, can you say that again and talk about what you mean? Because I've never thought of it that way before. I want to know what was the difference between Andrea pre-diagnosis and post-dagnosis because I only knew Andrea postdnagnosis. So I always thought they were just this awakened being who seemed to just know everything. So can you talk to us about pre and post in the miracle? I think everything that Andrea became was everything that they valued, everything that they went to therapy for to try to get to. Everything they read at Carti and Pemma and all the meditations and everything that they just revered in life. There was one time where I Andrea, it was shortly after their diagnosis and they were saying how they thought they were going to die soon and I was saying you you must not really feel that because otherwise you'd be like jumping out of an airplane or you would be in we

would be in an island in Greece right now or I just these things that I presumed would be on somebody's bucket list if they thought their life was short and they stopped me and they said, "I am doing everything that I've ever wanted to do with my life right now.

I am just sitting here and being at peace looking at the squirrels in our yard and feeling joy and not anxiety and not being elsewhere in my head and loving the people of my life." well and always feeling like an addition that was what was on their bucket list. And so they got to have that and that really that really blew my mind open and it was true. Uh prior to cancer, Andrea, well, they were a supreme hypochondric. um and just a very anxious person. And I think sometimes fear, it's such a weird emotion. It can come out in other ways. It can come out in guardedness. It can come out as blame.

It can come out as criticism. It just And whenever Andrea and of course they were always all of it, right? But whenever they lived outside of their values in any way, it was so painful

for them, you know, like if that didn't happen. Yeah. Um, and I think just as they were experienced this I don't know if you call it awakening or enlightenment or I don't know I don't know the right word but that gap whether it was sometimes a centimeter or sometimes a canyon between who They were in their unwounded, untraumatized core essence self lessened

um and became that gap became invisible not that was a miracle. Yeah, that is a miracle. That's like alignment. alignment.

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What did you with the limited language we have? What were you feeling and experiencing in that moment when you're surrounded by everyone who loves you and Andrea and Andrea is saying I [ __ ] loved my life and you are because you are a bit of awakened being in the fact that you only deal with what's right in front of you. You don't make stories up in your mind and live there. That's confusing to me. So what it I assume it's not something that you ran through a million times beforehand. You waited till it was in front of you and then you experienced it. What were you experiencing?

I felt in some ways like the curator of Andrea's death experience. We were so imshed and so codependent honestly. Not not in a not in a dramatic way but in a way that we were both writers who worked from home who were uh also together before during the pandemic and we just we honestly never left each other's side. um and nor and Andrea honestly especially didn't want to. We we spent um 6 weeks we had this is just sort of a funny story but we had mold mitigation in our home throughout cancer and we had to move into this uh smaller house in in the meantime and it was in a town about 15 minutes away and even after we moved back Andrew's favorite thing was to like take a drive with some coffee and pass that house and then come back and I was like what like there wasn't anything particularly really special about that place or that time and Andrea just said, "I love that it was smaller and we were

closer in proximity and so and then as Andrea's caregiver and Andrea was sick before cancer as well with lime with I mean chronic uh panic attacks and I was their caregiver in many ways before that but in the last four years especially so and I became so attuned to every I knew them so well that I could predict or know what they would want and so in that room and it's our bedroom but everyone's you know crowding in and um I felt like I was conducting it like I'd be like you come closer you turn the volume down you like energy out this person needs to be here now. This music here, this lighting dimmer like I I felt so one with them especially then and I felt an honor to make it the most beautiful that I could, the most what they would want that I could. And a lot of people said, you know, you could have gatekept this. You could have closed the door. You could have said, "This is private. This is me saying goodbye to my

love, and I don't want everyone here sharing it." And and when somebody said that, I thought, "Oh my god, I didn't even consider that I would do that. That's not because Andrea loves so many people. So many people loved them and they loved women before me and it was true and I I that wouldn't have been what they wanted as close as we were and as so much closer that they still wanted to be. Um, yeah. And so in that moment, I felt grief, but it didn't feel numb. I felt like my tears were present, my laughter was present, my joy was present, my awe was present. Um, and I felt so close to Andrea. I I felt like I'm the one to walk you through this.

They One thing that was hard was the hospice had told us they were going to medicate Andrea to the point of sedation and I guess I language. I didn't know what that meant. I thought that meant they'd be like loopy. Um, but they were they lost language and that was devastating to me because I thought we'd have a more intentional goodbye. And that's one thing that still hurts. But within hours of me realizing we weren't going to have that goodbye, I got a text message from our friend Chris Para, the musician, who said, "I, Andrea, wrote the lyrics to this song some years ago.

It's a song about their death and it's a love song for you." and I recorded it and Andrea never got to hear it but I wanted to send it to you and so I played it for you know the hospice people tell us that Andrea can still listen and so I play it and it felt like they were in on the curation of my experience too

like that I had all this grief and regret and anger about not saying like how will you come back to me? What how will I know it's you? And then the song the lyrics of the song are the answers to that and and there was lightning overhead and the storm and I'm just like laughing and I'm thinking like this is you. You're doing this. like I I felt them in the weather and it and honestly even as they so they were so small and the nurses are giving them so much morphine and medication to keep them comfortable and they're all boggled out of their mind because Andrea somehow keeps waking up. They keep sitting up in bed, swinging their legs over the side of the bed, trying to like go where I don't know. Um, and I keep, you know, they say not to like try to push the person down, just to kind of let them tire themselves out in that struggle and fall back. and I kept sit up and I would sort of catch them or

they'd fall and we'd be in all these contorted positions when they'd finally get comfortable again. But like when I see it from outside of my house, it looked like a strange ballet.

It was just our bodies like moving and pushing and pulling and falling and catching and settling. So to answer your question, what was I feeling? Everything. Talk to us about the lightning. Like what was going on with the weather and why that was significant and baffling.

Sandra wrote um a poetry book called You Better Be Lightning. And it comes from a love poem where they're talking about being on stage and their exes, not their ex at the time, her parents are in the audience and they've been previously homophobic and is like psyching themsel up about, you know, you got to like win these people over. Um, and say like, you better be lightning. You better find something within you honest enough to strike them. And as you we so Andrea died over the course of 3 days really. Um our bed it's a small room and there are twin skylights above it. And I don't know if this was day one or day two or exactly when it was but Andrea is not responsive. And there is a wild like hail storm like it's this percussion of sound and it's dramatic and crescendoing and big and then there's the sky is just doing some sort of light show the whole time and Colorado I mean lightning can happen but

it's a pretty dry rainless place and the weather to me felt uncharacteristic and I later After Andrea died, the first line of poetry that I wrote was come back to me as lightning.

It was the ways that I wanted to come back. And it ended up being a longer list of every way I wanted Andrea to return, which was everything. Um, and I was like, come back in all the ways,

which they have. Um, but come back to me as lightning was the first line. And whenever I see lightning now, I feel like that cosmic wink of sorts. I mean, I got I saw these little lightning bolt earrings at the farmers market and I was like, I've got to have that. Or

um yeah, I gosh, I could talk about this for a long time, it seems. What was it like after? What were the days like for you after? Uh there was a lot of disbelief. My home was very full of people still. Um my mom was in town. Uh my best friend Steph was in town. She she slept in in bed with me so I wasn't sleeping alone. Although I did move to Andrea's side of the bed.

Tell us about why I I felt like if I looked over and saw Andrea missing, it would be too much. But I could like be in their perspective and Yeah. And that's where I sleep now. Um

So you would wake up and see yourself missing, not Andrew missing. Yeah. Yes. Um and then I I wrote I wrote that down and then I but I realized I'm not missing like I don't feel numb. I don't feel distant. Um I have tremendous waves of sadness. I cry every day. I but it is not zombie-like. It feels very awake

and it feels good to cry when I love that moment. I feel very connected to them to cry. It feels like a measure of the magnitude of our love to to cry and to feel all of that. You asked me another question though and I I tangented. It doesn't matter. Oh, the days after.

Oh, and like what what were some ways and are some ways you you ask Andrea to come back to you and Andrea does because it's been weird. It's been weird. It's been freaking weird.

And it's hard to talk about just because when you feel like you've been visited or you've gotten some sort of sign in your body, it is the most magical thing and it maybe it's like a really intense dream or something and then when you hear yourself start to say it out loud, you're like, "Oh, is it the huggeeness of that experience? Is it translating?" And sometimes you can see on someone's face that it has not. Um,

is that so upsetting? Is that like like it's been lost? No. Okay. Because I had it.

Mhm. Mhm. And but because language is important, I try to write it down or I try to evoke even like h half or a quarter of what I felt in whoever I'm sharing it with. But um so I've heard that spirits most easily now can communicate through technology because it's a kind of or lights or whatever. It's like a similar energy. And we have these televisions in our um house that are made to look like artwork. They're like flat on the screen. They're framed. And you can cycle through the pictures that are you could have Van Go on your TV. So doesn't look like we have TVs in our house. Not really. Um and I one day came upstairs and there was a painting on the TV that I would have never in a million years picked out. It was like dark and gloomy and masculine and old timey and just not my vibe in any way. And uh it's it takes several buttons to get an an image on this TV.

It's not something like you sit on the remote and it's like, "Hey, there's Bosot." Um it's, "Oh, look at that Warhol." It's not that. Um you have to click through several things to get there. And so I came into our bedroom one day and there was this like weird I don't know, men. It was like men fishing. It wasn't my thing. Um, and I, my mom was still in town. I like to say she was helping me like micro dose the aloneeness.

Um, but I was like, "Mom, did you do this?" But she was like, "I wouldn't know how to do that. What are you kidding?" Um, and then I was like, "Oh, maybe it's a sign." Uh, and then I'm like looking up the painter and trying to figure out like maybe they were born in Maine. Maybe their last name is Gibson. I'm like, "What's the thing?" And it was no, it was there was no connection. And then so I'm like a little bit small bit sunk in by that

and thinking, oh, it's just a random thing. And then as I'm walking out the bedroom door to go back to the living room and continue the day where I didn't get a message where I thought that I might have, I notice in the corner of the painting is the faintest bolt of lightning sketched into the canvas. And I what's good is my mom was there too. So she had the experience with me and we were laughing. We were crying. We were saying, "Oh my god." We were It was And then I felt proud of Andrea for having figured out this way to communicate with me and how to use the remote.

Finally, another miracle. Another yet again figuring out the TV. Um, and I just like I felt I and I would have that feeling when they were living like they might write a line of poetry and and text it to me and we would both be like, "Oh my god, like you wrote that." We would have that like electric feeling or or maybe they would say something particularly funny and like we would both just have that little like smirk of pride of of just, you know, a casual genius moment.

Yeah. And I felt that. And I I've said out loud like that was good. That was good.

Yeah. So it felt mutual. It felt like a mutual experience or did it feel an individual experience? Did you feel like you were having an experience with Andrea like you would when Andrea sent you a line of poetry?

Yes, I felt and I could also feel their pride in having figured out like that they answered my line of poetry. come back to me as lightning with this painting. Like it felt creative and they were an incredible giftgiver and it just felt like we were still in that dance together. felt like being flirted with like how I moved through the rest of that evening and this has happened since as well was like how you feel when you're just falling in love and you get like this unexpected gift in the mail or this mix CD or this like just it felt like it was romantic.

Mhm. You are always talking about Andrea's being ingenious and and what that did for you. What do you think that your love did for Andrea

or your way of being or your if Andrea were telling us that what would Andrea say? I wonder why that's what makes me cry. Um, I was like a relentlessly hopeful little engine. Um, and I think because of my way of being where I'm not too much into the future and or into the past, when Andrea had that awakening, I was right on board with them. I wasn't holding them to some previous version of themsel. I wasn't saying like but this happened and we still need to work through. I was like here you are and here you are now and here we are together.

I think because my orientation le leans toward the joyful and toward the beautiful that they didn't have a barrier of entry with their awakening of somebody anchoring them back. I just felt like I'm going here with you. Um, you know, they were writing, it's really interesting because they were contracted, essentially decided to write a newsletter called things that don't suck before cancer. Um, and they had announced that they were going to. And when they were got the diagnosis, their initial thought was, "Oh my god, I have to I'm committed to writing things that don't suck." And then within a moment they went from that is the worst possible timing to that is the best possible timing.

And I think in some ways that project too provided this structure of I'm going to go through this whole experience and what it's important for me to write down and pay attention to is what doesn't suck about it. But it was almost prophetic that they had committed to that prior

again uh conducted or curated in some way and now that they've died I am continuing that newsletter and I am also having to look I've lost my the absolute love of my life. I I feel very certain I will never know a person like that or have a love that tremendous. And I now I'm stepping into their shoes of hey what doesn't suck. um and that now I have to do that and like they've given me that heirloom of of their mentality and project and yeah um I think that I feel and of course somebody dies and there are things that you'll regret but I do feel like I was the right person to be beside them for all of and so lucky.

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What is your favorite story about Andrea that you don't get to tell a lot? Or actually, that's too much pressure. What is a story you like about Andrea? because I know how specific you are and I don't want you to feel like this has to be the favorite story.

It's like 15 minutes later and Megan just has her head resting on the microphone thinking because she's got to get it right.

Just anything anything. Um let me see if I can get there by first going here. Um, one of my favorite things, one, so we've made the documentary um Come See Me in the Good Light, which you've been an intimate part of, and one of my favorite things about it is Andrea's public presence is very wise, very sage, very like you're going to go to this person for self-help really. And like, but what the movie captures that previously only their closest people know is how funny they are, what a weirdo goofball they are, how silly they are.

Um, and I think that that is what drew us to each other actually, like this goofiness. We were like two kids putting on a living room show at all times like dancing for each other or singing songs or just this laughing till I mean Andrew is a big pants pier. Um and just like laughing till that degree.

Did you just say pants peer? Because in my head I Okay. I was like what's a pants pier? But peer

peer laughing so hard until one pees in one's pants. Yes. Yes. That is the Oxford dictionary definition. Uh God, a story about them.

Last night on the couch, you told me that when things would get tough or confusing, you would say to each other, "We're just little girls."

Yes. So much. Yeah. And for Andrea to say that too, we're just little girls. Yeah. They'd be like, "You're just a little girl." And I say, "You're just a little girl." and we couldn't I mean it felt so adult. Um I I said to them before I there's a scene in the little rascals where one kid is standing on the shoulders of another kid and they've got a big trench coat on top of them so they look like a adultsiz thing and like a fake beard and I was like I think that's us. Like we go into these doctor's appointments and we're just like two children on each other's shoulders trying wondering if anyone notices that how are you giving this information to us? We're just so

little. And Andrew is almost 50. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I might have to come back to that about a story, but their

their pervasive silliness is a side that I got to have. That was for me the the most beautiful part of our relationship

and and now to know that we'll soon share that with the world feels I feel lucky for. How do you feel lucky for other people?

Yes. Yeah. I feel lucky for other people. Other people are very lucky. Yeah. That this documentary was made

because you had people a crew of humans in your home for these last for how long?

A year. A year. What was that like and the witnessing of all of it? And how did that change the experience of walking through the last year? I think Oh, we we fell in love with them within two days of meeting them.

Tell us what Andrea said when I think when Ryan walked in or when Brandon walked into the house.

Yeah, Andrea. Uh we So, we hadn't previously known who was going to make the documentary. We just they had made the Pamel Anderson documentary. We thought that was fantastic

and we're like, we want to work with those folks. And so when they came to our house, we met them just in the driveway. We'd never spoken to them before. And I hugged them. And then Andrea came out and gave Ryan a hug and said, "I guess you're going to be there when I die. Welcome to my home." And and that's a very Andrea thing to say, like completely disarming and welcoming at the same time. And not going to have any kind of small talk. just go right to the heart. I They were allergic to small talk. Um and Andrea did get to see the documentary. Uh and they were not there with Andrea when they died. Um and the movie did not end up being about their death, but their living.

They came at a time in our lives where things were medically feeling pretty dismal. And they came at a time where Andrea's scans and blood work and results and news about how their cancer was was happening every 3 weeks. And then they were coming at those 3 weeks as well. So it transformed from this time of like these couple of days of anxiety to oh my god our friends are coming and we get to make art with our friends. And as a writer, when language falls short, and it did, people didn't understand, hey, we are dancing through this. We are having these moments of joy. We do feel so in love. People didn't understand that when we said it in a text message or, you know, on the phone or tried to communicate to the people who loved us most. But now with this film, I feel completely like I can give it to them and say, "Here's what it was

and they will see and they will know and they will have no doubt." Did it feel like what was happening between the two of you and between Andrea and life and death and between you and your own heart and your experience of it felt so freaking epic. It felt like an epic biblical Uh uh it did it feel more like that having someone witnessing it? Were you able to then just do you know what I'm trying to say? Did it did it feel like relaxing? Cuz I know that you know knew in your body that you were living an epic love story.

So having it witnessed, did that relax you a little bit? That's such a good question. Did it relax me?

I'm pretty relaxed, Glennon. That's right. My god, you do not need to be relaxed. Okay. Did it feel honoring? Did Were you like, "Yes, there should be for the ages."

I did not know how much I was going to be in the film and neither did Andrea. We did not know what to expect. So when they met us the first day, they said, "Listen, we're going to capture thousands of hours of footage and we'll use about 1% of it. So just relax." Like they instructed us to relax. Um it wasn't until I saw the film that I knew that it was a love story. I didn't It could have been just about Andrea's career and their life and really focused that I didn't know. So what was captured was it was authentic to our how we were living every day. I didn't I didn't know I could have been easily a footnote in in that in my I just had no clue. And so now, yes, that I've seen it, I feel because when you lose your partner, who else gets to say, "But there was an entire movie made about our love."

who gets to watch again like you hugging your person or kissing your person or being comforted by them on the screen or just the mundane daily realities of your life together and get to see that again. And I know that there are thousands of hours of footage that I haven't seen that I hope to one day, you know, get to see and memories that I don't remember coming back to me. And you know, Andre and I would all throughout their diagnosis, we always said our number one adjective we used for ourselves was that we were lucky.

And I still I feel that. I feel lucky. Tell me about the difference between because you and I have sat next to each other and watched this movie many times. Tell me about the difference between watching it before Andrea died and now watching it after Andrea died. If Andrea died is still the language we're using for what happened. Allegedly. Andrea allegedly died. I love the idea of me just every time that I say Andrea died, I just put the word allegedly in there.

I think it's right because even in the beginning of this interview, whatever we're doing right now when you said, "I just didn't think that Andrea would be the one to would die." I I'm still like I I think you were right. Like I don't know how to explain that, but I think that your hunch was correct. Anyway, what is it like watching now that is different from watching before? Wait, I just I have to pause you because you just gave me a total like shift of consciousness, which is maybe the allegedly or me feeling like how could they have died or the miracle of they didn't is actually my perception of what death is or what the dimensions are or the planes are will shift so dramatically that that will feel true.

I think it's true. Yeah. Like I don't think it was like and I obviously have no language for this either, but I don't think it was like God, I really thought that they so weird. I had this feeling that they weren't ever going to die. That was wrong.

Yeah. I don't think that's right. No, that's not it. I think you it's like I thought they weren't going to die and then like over time it's going to be more and more obvious that that was you were right the whole time.

Uhhuh. Right. And I love being right the whole time. So I can't really important to you. So I think we should just double click there.

So seeing the movie without Andrea, I mean seeing it with Andrew was incredible. just I think that they really felt like there was this it was the final project in some way. Um, of course they kept making art and writing furiously and doing so it wasn't the final project, but it was something that they knew that they would leave the world with that would do a tremendous amount of good and help people. And that was always their response to the film each, you know, we saw it multiple times and their their praise of it was I really think that will help people.

That was what they that was the ultimate goal always. Uh watching it without them, I cried the whole way through, which I did not do while they were living. I I watched it for the first time in a at a screening in New York, so around a ton of, you know, other people. Um, I felt like I saw their face on screen and I was almost willfully keeping my hand down from reaching through to pluck them out of the screen and pull them back to me. I I cried for an hour and a half. There's It was like the last half of the Titanic for me. Sorry, I had to squeeze in the reference to the my favorite movie. Um,

okay. You got it in there. I did. Um, and it it and it made me miss them more to see it

because I'm wandering through our home now alone and without them, but then on screen I see them back in our home and just remember the different sounds, their boots, they're calling for me, they're we're missing the keys like these little um Yeah. And I'll tell you, I all I want to do is keep watching the movie again and again.

Um I want to be just immersed in it as possible. And one night, so the following night there was another screening at a different film festival. And I got horrendously sick and I was like throwing up and I this was rare for me and I was so upset because I wasn't going to get to see the movie that I had just seen the night before and had seen five other times before that and I was just in my hotel room and I was like I it was all that I where I wanted to be but I I felt seasick on dry land. I felt like it was awful. But I decided to take a walk with Ryan and Jess, the director and producer, and we mosied on toward the theater. And I'm just trying to get fresh air and see how I feel. And I still feel sick and woozy. And then we actually even go into the theater. I can just hear the point of the movie that it's at. And it's like there's only about a half an hour left. And it's a it's a happy loving point of the movie.

So, I just peek open the theater door and I look to the screen and I see Andrea on the screen and I start balling and then all of my nausea, all of my sickness goes away. I feel completely healed. I'm like fine for the rest of the night. uh doing the Q&A after doing they have like a afterparty for us in the on the dock and it's beautiful in the moonlight and I I don't know if it was that I needed to cry or that I just needed to see their face

but I felt so okay after and have sense when Andrea would finish watching the movie and say that's really going to help people what is your best attempt at explaining what they meant by that. How is it going to help people?

The way Andrea would say this um is that they didn't want people to feel like there was a prescription for emotion. So, you find out you have a cancer diagnosis or and so you feel sad and you feel mad and you feel resentful and you feel like life's not fair. They didn't want to feel like you are broken up with and so you're crying in bed for a month eating ice cream. They wanted I mean that sounds good. Um but they wanted people to know really that you could feel joy through through anything. And it there is something about the witnessing of it that does more than the words and the the video evidence, the proof that it happened.

I think that the movie which really did become a love story a common reaction that people have after is they want to call their people and tell them they love them.

They want to love better. My own brother saw the film in New York and we're very politically different and we've gotten um just butttheads about things for a lot of a lot and he's you know pretty stoic and different than me and he saw the film. He was hysterical crying. He gave me the biggest hug of my life. He said, "I I feel like a an [ __ ] All the stuff that I talked to you about before, that doesn't matter. Um, I just want to be a better brother to you." And for me, like even if just my brother saw that and had that experience, that's such a a monumental change and shift that Andrea loved and would root for. And even if it was one person, but it's not one person. It's happening to so many people.

And yeah, I think if the movie makes you want to love better. Yeah, that's that's exactly what they would have wanted.

Did Andrea, before they allegedly died, did they ever talk to you about their hopes for you without them? What do you And if not, what do you know that Andrea would want for your the rest of your life?

There are some things that I know that they want. I I it feels important for me not to not sugarcoat the fact that Andrea desperately wanted to live

that they loved this life that they wanted to be aundred years old. Um that they they would have given anything besides their own spirit to do that. I know that there are things that they wanted to see with me like my book come out or my writing or um I know they wanted to see me old

and who I would become. I feel that they will. I think that we both became so much in the last four years and we both wanted to see how that would keep growing. We were on a fast track of emotional growth in in this time. And I think what they would want to see now is just how I will continue that both with and without them. They wrote in the in their poem, Love Letter from the afterlife, which is also such a gift that I have, a poem that they wrote a year or so ago that is also a love poem to me about what them trying to communicate to me from the other side.

And there's a line that says, "Why didn't no one tell us that um to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive?" And I feel Andrea most within me when I'm operating in a way that they would at their highest self. when my heart is most open, when I'm dancing on a hard day, when I am helping somebody else. I Yeah, I think in a way matter is not created or destroyed, right? Energy is not created or destroyed. Where does Andrea go? This giant presence, this I call them Energizer Gibby. This engine of creating and of passion of feeling and emotion and ideas. Where does that energy go?

I was with them closest to them when their heart stopped beating when they took their last breath right touching them as close as I could be. Some of that energy must be in me. And I think it's almost like they've become a religion to me

or a god, which is sounds wild to say, but it's like I want to live in a way that makes you proud. I want to set my moral compass toward what yours would be. um what beliefs you had about like the most beautiful righteous path. I feel like they're everywhere. The idea of God, I feel like they're always watching. Um and I feel dramatically less afraid of death because of a new certainty. And I did not grow up with any religion of a new certainty that they will be there and I will see them again. And I'm like, "Oh, that's how that's religion. That is this how gods were invented? Did very extraordinary people die that we love too much to imagine a life without. So we had to put them everywhere. We had to believe, of course, we'd see them again. I don't know." But that's I Yeah, I'm a I'll have to figure out a name for whatever that religion is,

but it feels like a guiding principle in my life now. Is there anything else you want to say about you, about Andrea, about I assume you'll be saying these things for the rest of your life, so it doesn't have to be right now. But before we wrap this conversation, is there anything else that you want to say? I will say that one of Andre and I's struggles sometimes was that they wanted me to say to like face into the fact that they could die and I felt like well that's yes you could um but I often felt like well that's not here that's not right this moment and so I just want to be with you in this moment you're healthy Now we're climbing this mountain. Now we're whatever it was. And sometimes that was a tension between us. Even though ultimately I do think that they wouldn't have picked me to be another way through that time.

But in the last days of their life, they woke up and they looked at me and they said, "Am I dying?" And there was this role reversal where I said yes. And they said, "Now." And I said, "Soon." And I said, "And you are going to do it so bravely, so beautifully, just like you've done these last four years, and you're going to teach all of us how, just like you've been doing." And I could see a peace in their face upon hearing that.

And that's what they did. You did good. You did really good. And you did better than I've ever seen anyone do life. Thank you. Let's go get your ears pierced. Then it's going to take me to get my ears pierced today cuz because I found these lightning earrings and I want to wear them all the time. But I I also have some other story.

I said we're gonna only control the things we can control. And our earlobes are things we can control. So, let's go do that. Okay. I love you so much.

I love you so much. after Andrea allegedly died. Um, I wrote a tribute to Andrea and I'm going to read it now with Meg here. Okay. On July 14th, the poet and prophet Andrea Gibson died. This will be my first honoring of Andrea Gibson, and then the rest of my life will become an honoring of Andrea Gibson. A few years ago, I found myself living through a dark night of the soul. I was almost 50 years old and back in anorexia treatment. I'd been in recovery since I was 13 and my soul was weary. My question had shifted from how do I recover to why even try?

One numb afternoon, I said to the doctor leading my case, "I'm out of fight, and none of the therapists, books, medicines, none of it is true enough to revive me. I don't know how else to explain it other than nothing on this planet feels true enough." The doctor was quiet and then she said, "I want you to go to the bookstore and find the work of the poet Andrea Gibson." That night, I rolled over and whispered to Abby, "Today, my doctor admitted that the only professional help she has left to offer me is a poet. I am fucked."

The next morning, I took my [ __ ] self to the bookstore and found Andrea's books. Take me with you, Lord of the Butterflies, and You Better Be Lightning. I brought them home, climbed in bed, opened You Better Be Lightning, first. As soon as my eyes landed upon Andrea's first words, my soul got still, and then stood up at attention. Remember how I told you that after 30 tearless years, I recently started crying again? That was the day. That day in bed with You Better Be Lightning was the day the damn inside me crumble.

I actually remember watching a tear fall on the page and feeling like I was the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, like astonished by it. And I had the thought, oh, maybe tears are what happen when something is finally true enough. Andrea Gibson's gift was crystal clear vision is most of us see ourselves, our people, our world through a glass darkly, but not Andrea. Andrea could really see. And to read or hear Andrea's poetry is to slip on their glasses. As I saw how Andrea saw their life, I could suddenly see my own clearly. My body, Abby, my children, my parents, my sister, my ex, my dogs, the trees, the flowers, strangers, my pain even. It was all such a miracle.

science could show me how to heal, but only art, Andrea's poetry in particular, could show me why to heal. That if I was lucky enough to have breath to breathe, someone to love, this world to witness, that I was living a miracle worthy of fighting to keep. So, I began reading Andrea's poetry upon waking each morning. Coffee for reviving my body, Andrea for reviving my soul. One morning, Abby took a picture of me reading, DM'd it to Andrea, and said, "Thank you for bringing my wife back to life." Andrea wrote back. They said that just a few hours before they'd learned that their cancer was incurable.

When they got Aby's message, Andrea was sitting with how to share this news with the community that had grown around their poetry, the community that depended on Andrea for hope. And that is what Andrea was thinking about the day the doctors told them they would not be cured. Other people's hearts, other people's hope. They asked Abby, they asked if Abby and I might help them share the news on our podcast. And a few days later, we met not just the poet, Andrea Gibson, but the person Andrea Gibson. After that life-changing hour, we were lucky enough to be invited into Andrea's life.

If you thought Andrea's art was beautiful, you should have seen their life. The way they loved their friends, the way they danced literally through personal pain and alchemized it all as an offering, the way they told the truth always, always, always. Because in their words, even when the truth isn't hopeful, the telling of it is. The way they loved their wife, the memoirist and poet Megan Valley, and the way they let themselves be loved by Meg. That is the most epic love story I've ever witnessed. It is a tribute for another time. I can't even speak of it yet.

If you are witnessing the outpouring of love to Andrea Gibson and wondering if they could have possibly been as good as people are suggesting, I am telling you they were better. Last night before I fell asleep, I was imagining the deal that God and Andrea must have made before Andrea was sent to be incarnated here. I imagine God saying,"Andrea, I need them to see. I need them to feel. Help them see themselves, each other, and the world clearly so that they can finally feel themselves, beloved, on the earth." Feeling themselves and each other, beloved, is the whole reason they're there. So remind them. But you won't have long with them, Andrea.

So you better be lightning. Andrea came. And Andrea was lightning. Like how sometimes in the middle of a cold, dark, scary storm, lightning strikes. And for a magical moment, all is fully illuminated. And then just as fast, all goes dark again. I think Andrea would remind us that post lightning, all that's gone is the light. The miracle of what is there, what we saw in the light that remains. That remains. So now post lightning we have to close our eyes and remember what we saw when the light was with us. How beautiful it all was, still is. How beautiful it all is.

You were lightning, Andrea Gibson. Well done. In honor of Andrea, may we see our lives the way Andrea saw theirs. May we see our people the way Andrea saw theirs. May we see ourselves the way Andrea saw us. May we feel all of us. Beloved, we can do hard things is an independent production brought to you by Treat Media. We make art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us at we can do hard things on Instagram and we can do hard things show on Tik Tok.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Watch OUR 1ST FILM – Come See Me in the Good Light – 11/14: Meg Falley (& Andrea Gibson)"?

Glennon Doyle (Host), Meg Falley (Guest), Andrea Gibson (Guest).

What is "Watch OUR 1ST FILM – Come See Me in the Good Light – 11/14: Meg Falley (& Andrea Gibson)" about?

The content explores a deeply personal conversation between Glennon Doyle and poet Meg Falley, focusing on the profound experiences surrounding Meg's journey with her partner, Andrea Gibson, during her battle with cancer. Meg reflects on themes of life, death, and awakening, questioning the conventional narratives surrounding these concepts, while also celebrating the release of their upcoming…

What is mentioned in this We Can Do Hard Things episode?

7 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Meg Valley, You Better Be Lightning, Mave, IM8, O Positive, Dose. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Watch OUR 1ST FILM – Come See Me in the Good Light – 11/14: Meg Falley (& Andrea Gibson)"?

The episode runs 1 h 23 min; the transcript is about 11,063 words in 129 timestamped sections.

More from We Can Do Hard Things

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated February 15, 2026.