Episode 51: How a Poet Helped Me Face What I Feared
Episode 51
Host: Jill Mastroianni
How a Poet Helped Me Face What I Feared
Jill shares how a documentary about poet Andrea Gibson collided with her own avoided medical uncertainty — and why the smallest acts of agency often matter more than the big, dramatic gestures we imagine. Through Andrea’s “biggest tiniest dreams,” parental nervous love, three sweater-wearing rescue dogs, and a long-overdue doctor’s appointment, this episode explores what it means to stay awake to your own life, even when it feels overwhelming. It’s about fear, tenderness, and the luminous beauty tucked inside ordinary days.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
What Andrea Gibson’s “biggest tiniest dreams” teach us about presence, attention, and finding meaning in ordinary moments.
How a poet can name experiences we didn't realize we were carrying, from nervous parental love to loving complicated rescue animals.
Why agency rarely looks dramatic and how a simple phone call can be an act of courage.
What it means to create a life with “stretch marks on your heart,” and how that frames the work of death readiness.
Why noticing small joys matters, whether it’s a dog in a tiny t-shirt or kindness you weren’t expecting.
How estate planning and poetry unexpectedly intersect, both reminding us that life is finite and luminous at the same time.
Resources & Links
Come See Me in the Good Light — Documentary about poet Andrea Gibson (Apple TV).
Things That Don’t Suck — Andrea Gibson’s Substack newsletter.
Connect with Jill:
· Website: DeathReadiness.com
· Email: jill@deathreadiness.com
· Learn more about Jill’s solutions
· Subscribe to the Death Readiness Dispatch!
· Submit a question for Tuesday Triage
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Jill Mastroianni (00:00): This week, I’m sharing the story of a documentary I couldn’t bring myself to finish at first, and what happened when I finally came back to it. The film was Come See Me in the Good Light, a final portrait of the poet Andrea Gibson, before their death from ovarian cancer. Andrea’s words and their “biggest tiniest dreams” arrived at a moment when I was avoiding my own medical uncertainty. Their writing helped me see that agency isn’t always dramatic; sometimes it’s just taking the next small step you’ve been putting off. In this episode, I talk about fear, tenderness, rescue dogs in tiny shirts, and what it means to notice the ordinary moments that make life luminous. Andrea stretched my heart in ways I didn’t expect, and I hope they stretch yours, too.
(00:53) Welcome to the Death Readiness Podcast. This is not your dad’s estate planning podcast. I’m Jill Mastroianni, former estate attorney, current realist, and your guide to wills, trusts, probate and the conversations no one wants to have. If your Google search history includes, “Do I need a trust?” “What exactly is probate?” and “Am I supposed to do something with mom’s Will?” you’re in the right place.
I release a new Friday episode every other week, and these Friday episodes are a little different. They’re less about estate planning and more about what it means to stay awake to your own life, even when things feel hard, or uncertain, or bigger than you can hold.
This week’s episode began with something small and unexpected.
(01:42) About a year ago, my sister-in-law handed down to my daughter an old sweatshirt she’d gotten at a show in Boulder, Colorado, by the poet Andrea Gibson. At the time, it barely registered. I didn’t know who Andrea was, and truthfully, poetry has never really been “my thing.”
Then, this summer, I saw the news that Andrea had died. And last month, a documentary about Andrea and their partner, the poet Megan Falley, was released on Apple TV. My husband and I subscribed for a month just to watch it.
We sat down a couple of weeks ago to start it but we didn’t get far before we hit pause.Not because it was too sad, but because it felt too close to home.
In 2020, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Surgery cured it, and I’m very grateful for that. But, even after you’re cured, you have to keep monitoring it.
(02:37) In 2023, when we were still living in Nashville, some lymph nodes looked concerning. My doctor attempted a biopsy but I got so nauseated during the procedure that she couldn’t complete it. Then we moved to Michigan, and it took time to get established with a new endocrinologist. By the time I finally did, an ultrasound showed two very large, very concerning nodules.
I got that result in my inbox before my appointment. When the nurse came into the exam room, she hadn’t reviewed the report yet. I watched her read it for the first time, watched her face shift from neutral to alarm. Then the doctor came in and reacted the same way.
I tried to schedule a biopsy, but the earliest appointment was months away. My doctor managed to get me in earlier — December 27th, my mother-in-law’s birthday. She happened to be visiting, which is why I remember it so clearly. I laid my body on the table, terrified. The last biopsy I’d had was one of the most painful experiences of my life — a needle in the neck, pain radiating all the way into my teeth.
The doctor used the ultrasound to find the nodules. But she couldn’t. She brought in someone else. Still nothing. They asked if I wanted to proceed. Proceed with what? There was nothing to biopsy.
After that, I followed up with my endocrinologist. She didn’t seem particularly interested in figuring out what had happened — why one ultrasound showed two large nodules and another showed nothing. I already had concerns about her care, and that was the last straw. I never went back.
(04:23) I was supposed to get imaging every three months after that. I didn’t. That was December 2024.
So when we started watching Andrea’s documentary, everything I had pushed away — fear, procrastination, overwhelm — came flooding back. It was too much. I couldn’t sit there and watch someone face their diagnosis while I was avoiding my own uncertainty.
So, I made an appointment with a new endocrinologist. I don’t know if she’s the right fit. I don’t know if the ultrasound will be accurate this time. But I can control only one thing: the next step. Just one step. My appointment is on December 23rd.
Once I did that, once I took that one small action within my control, I came back to the documentary. And this time, I could see the beauty in it.
Andrea Gibson was a poet and an activist and was appointed Colorado’s poet laureate in 2023. If you had asked me a month ago what I thought of poetry, I probably would’ve said something like: “I’m more likely to read the Internal Revenue Code than a book of poems.”
(05:34) But Andrea’s work wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t meant to sound smart or elitist. It was meant to be so direct and relatable.
In 2021, before their diagnosis, Andrea started a Substack newsletter called Things That Don’t Suck. A few weeks later, they learned they had ovarian cancer. Their first reaction was, “What a terrible time to be committed to writing about what doesn’t suck.” And then, almost immediately, they shifted their perspective and said, “What a perfect time.”
That line, “What a perfect time,” could be the motto of this entire podcast.
I don’t want to pretend I know everything about Andrea or the full weight of the life they lived. But I do want to share the impact that this brief glimpse into their world has had on me. And it started with a bucket list of little things, what Andrea called their “biggest tiniest dreams.”
(06:33) In the documentary, you hear Andrea reading the list aloud while you watch scenes of Andrea actually living those dreams, and it’s powerful in that subtle, disarming way that rearranges you before you even notice it happening.
Here are just a few of the items on Andrea’s bucket list:
To mend a friend’s clothes with my grandmother’s thimbles.
To decoupage my piano with love poems.
To be the safe place my oldest dog buries her best treats beneath.
To hold the hospital’s elevator door open for a stranger minutes after I’ve received hard news.
To be kind to the neighbor who hasn’t yet learned to be kind to me.
To thank the nurse too many times.
This list wasn’t about skydiving or scaling mountains. It was about stepping into your own life, paying attention, noticing the small moments, and letting the ordinary feel meaningful again.
(07:32) In another newsletter, Andrea wrote, “I love scared rescue dogs who can’t live in homes with small children.” That one stopped me. I felt instantly understood by someone I’d never met. I live alongside three of those scared rescue dogs, the kind you don’t bring around small children, the kind who arrive with a history. And I love them fiercely, especially the littlest one, the most anxious one, the one who came to us biting because he didn’t know any other way to communicate. When he finally stopped biting and started growling instead, when he found a safer way to say “I don’t like that,” we celebrated like he’d won a medal. Because he was finally using his words.
Andrea continued in this same newsletter, “I love the kids in junior high talent contests who always forget their lines. I love the nervous love in their parents’ chests.”
If you’ve ever had a child in a middle school talent show, like I have, you know exactly what that phrase means. That nervous love isn’t just in your chest — it’s in your bones. And somehow Andrea reached right into that experience and named it perfectly. How did they know?
(08:48) I don’t know how Andrea saw so deeply into people they never met. But I do know this: something about the way they noticed the world made so many people feel seen in return. Even from the tiny sliver of their life I witnessed, just a 1-hour-and-45-minute documentary, my mind kept drifting back to Andrea’s laugh, their soft humor, and the tender, clear way they seemed to meet the world.
And then there were the dogs. In the documentary, Andrea and Meg’s three rescue dogs appear in almost every scene, woven into the rhythm of their days, wearing little shirts and sweaters like it’s part of the household uniform. And the funny thing is that I’m someone who normally rolls my eyes at dogs in clothing. But these dogs? You’d swear they wake up every morning, pull on a t-shirt, and charge confidently into their pantsless day like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It still makes me smile just thinking about it.
(09:47) There’s a moment in the documentary when Andrea asks:
“Why write a poem that’s over somebody’s head — or worse, over somebody’s heart?”
I’m not a poet, but I feel the same way about this podcast.
If something ever feels over your head here, that’s on me. Tell me, and I’ll teach it differently.
And I don’t want anything I say to be over your heart, either. But if it stretches your heart, if it pulls at something tender and asks it to grow, then I think I’m doing something right.
Andrea also said: “In the end, I want my heart to be covered in stretch marks.”
And honestly? I do, too.
Estate planning teaches us that life is finite.Andrea’s writing teaches us that life, especially ordinary life, is luminous.
Those two truths belong together.
(10:42) There’s so much I don’t know about Andrea Gibson. Today’s episode is as much an introduction for me as it may be for you. But their words moved me. They nudged something awake in me. They reminded me that agency isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s as small as scheduling an appointment you’ve been avoiding for a whole year.
I hope you watch Come See Me in the Good Light.I hope you subscribe to Things That Don’t Suck.I hope you write your own bucket list of “little things.”
And I hope, in some small way, Andrea stretches your heart the way they stretched mine.
Thanks for listening today.
This is Death Readiness, real, messy and yours to own. I’m Jill Mastroianni and I’m here to help you sort through it, especially when you don’t know where to start.
(11:36) Hi, I'm April, Jill's daughter. Thanks for listening to The Death Readiness Podcast. While my mom is an attorney, she’s not your attorney. The Death Readiness Podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not provide legal advice. For legal guidance tailored to your unique situation, consult with a licensed attorney in your state. To learn more about the services my mom offers, visit DeathReadiness.com.
