Andrea Gibson

Open up to them all.

That is where, in my experience, if I would get depressed, I could...

I could, and I know this, and I don't want to negate the fact of clinical depression and meds, all of that, I'm pro meds, but I would get more depressed if there was something I wasn't allowing myself to feel.

And I thought, I am allowing myself to have all my feelings.

Why aren't I fucking happy?

And I realized that the feeling I was pushing down was joy, that I was afraid of that feeling.

And there were a certain number of things that led to that.

And some of it was how I was relating to our culture, how I was relating to activism, growing up in activist communities.

thinking that if you weren't devastated, if you weren't despairing, if you weren't enraged, then there was something about you that was heartless.

And some people respond to the world in really vibrant ways because they're furious or because they're grieving.

For me, I am much better and I have far more to offer the world when I am joyful.

And so I learned that I was pushing down my joy

But I also had to learn how to open that up.

And for me, the opening up of that included a few things.

One, I heard this thing that said, and I don't know who said it, life is difficult, but it stops being difficult if you expect it to be difficult.

If you expect it to be difficult, it stops being as difficult.

As soon as I realized that all these things that were coming my way

Were life coming my way?

Were God coming my way?

Even if I wanted to call it the devil, everything coming my way was God.