Andrea Gibson

speaker

930 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard 3 Mar

Andrea Gibson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.

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We Can Do Hard Things · The Bravest Conversation We’ve Had: Andrea Gibson (Best Of) · 26 Jan 2025 podcast

they cannot. Or I'll see people in line in the grocery store and they just start screaming at the cashier. And I am not someone who's willing to say that's a bad person. I almost always assume there's pain there. I don't think there are many weapons that are more dangerous than our wounds. And I think we live in a really wounded world. And so

For me, I want the people in my life to be people who are committed to health and people who are committed to the health of our world and improving it. But in regards to good and bad people, I think no. But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of horrific shit going on. A lot of people that are just treating people horribly. I don't want to deny that.

But I don't think that I can at the core say I believe people are good or bad.

Yeah, I would love to. My sister, and so she's part of the reason that my whole big pharma issues with some of that. But my sister is wonderful. And my sister is 10 years younger than me. So when she was born, I had this love for her that wasn't like a sibling love. It was... It was like I felt almost like her parent, even though my parents were great parents to her.

But the age difference, I had that sort of parental love, which it was like, you know, if you die, I'll die because, you know, you are you are my baby. And so when she was 14, she got addicted to Oxycontin. And and I think a lot of people know this at this point. But that pharmaceutical company specifically went into communities where people were in pain.

and people were struggling, communities where people typically worked hard, hard working class people, and they specifically put that drug in those areas of the country. I grew up in a poor area of the country with lots of really working hard, working class people. And so the whole town, I mean, it was this cute little town. And then all of a sudden, everybody is addicted.

And so my sister, that happened. She was the happiest kid I had ever known. And then all of a sudden, she's not. And that addiction lasted 13 years. It was very painful for the family. And the whole time, I'm just looking at her and thinking, this... There is so much joy that lives beneath this person. I mean, I thought my parents are serious. I'm serious.

My mom always used to say I'm a deep thinker and that it concerned her. But my sister, when my sister was born, we were all like, yes, bring some joy into this place. Because she was just, she was so lighthearted. And then that all went away. But underneath, I always knew. And then she, I think it's seven years ago now, she got clean. And she has been in recovery for seven years now.

And she got off of it. God, that's a miracle. Yeah. It was amazing to get my sister back. And then it was almost like she was immediately that kid that she was because I remember her calling me and saying, Andrea, do you know mom's eyes are green? And for all those years, she had not been able to see clearly.

And then she also called me, Raymond, even though she was still like sick from getting off all this stuff. She called me another day, so excited because she had split ends on her hair and she could see them. She's like, do you know that your hair splits at And I was like, yes, I do know. But it was just all this clarity of vision coming back to her.

And, you know, I know how that story goes, but I'm going to say I believe her. She's like, I will never go back because the joy was so abundant. She couldn't believe what this world had for her and what it had awaiting. And then she started this whole hat project. She didn't have any money. And so she just, for any time I had like a birthday or something, she just started crocheting me hats.

And so I was like, what can she do with these? Yeah. And I figured out if you cross if you cross the E out of the word hate, it spells hats. And it was around the MAGA hats were all over the place. And I'm like, Laura, OK, this is what we're going to do. You are going to you're going to make a bunch of hats and we're going to put these labels on it and you're going to sell them.

And so she's been doing that for she's been doing that for five years now, I think.

Selling her hats. Yeah. And she's so happy and she she loves her life.

My aunt died of ovarian cancer. My mother's sister died of ovarian cancer 20 years ago or so. And what's fascinating about that is neither she nor I had genetic ovarian cancer. So my aunt died. And after my aunt died of ovarian cancer, my My grandma, who I love so much, died of a broken heart.

And so as soon as I got diagnosed, one of my biggest fears was that the family would play out in that same way, that I would die, then my mom would die of a broken heart. And for that reason, I chose to not tell my family and most of my friends about what the doctors were saying all along, which was this cancer is likely to come right back.

I didn't tell them like, for example, I have a chemo port in my chest. And so I'd be celebrating the end, you know, a clear scan while also having the doctors say, don't take out the chemo port. And so I wasn't sharing that stuff publicly because also there was a chance, like there's always a chance that I wasn't going to get it again.

And so I didn't want other people to carry that burden as well. So my folks are in a little bit of shock right now. And I told them, and then I also realized in God to quote myself, um, I hate quoting myself. And, but sometimes I'll tell you, if ever my friends are having a bad day, I constantly quote myself to them just because they're so embarrassed for me. They, they, it makes them happier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. Absolutely. No, I actually, I usually go dash your favorite poet. Um, But I wrote years ago, I said, even when the truth isn't hopeful, the telling of it is. And I realized that for these last two years, my folks have made decisions based on assuming that this definitely wasn't going to come back. And so, you know, we may have seen each other more and stuff like that.

And so I don't really believe in regrets. I mean, my only regrets in life are the ones where I I've heard other people, but still I'm questioning that at this point because, because all these things that were supposed to make my life worse, that were hurts and challenges, they, they made my life more rich at this point.

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