Using Andrea Gibson's Poetry to Process Complex Grief and Loss

Ever since my early teens, poetry has been a place of healing for me. I found kinship in the darkness of the words of poets like Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich. They were writing what I felt deeply in my heart and couldn't say. Throughout my life, I have held the words of poetry tightly. Pages full of poetic feels have held me in my own dark aloneness, rage and fear.

Many points of my lifespan have been void of poetry. Maybe I was going too fast with all the things in my life, like thinking about what to feed the kids or whatever else is on my list of overwhelming to dos.

It was a good friend of mine who shared Andrea Gibson's poetry with me. It was a poem that cracked open my idea of all poetry wrapping me into cloaks of sadness. Andrea's poem  “Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps” shares a heart being cracked open to notice simple beautiful moments. I invite you to take a listen. I was in awe. I am still in awe of this beautiful human who just recently passed away.

It is Andrea's work that moved me to use more poetry with my clients, particularly with the complexities of grief, chronic illness and the shifting and changing of our relationships to others and our own body. Whether it is grieving a traumatic loss like sudden death or overdose or estrangement, loss of identity or the intersection of grief and resilience, Andrea's poems live on in my practice. Their words have resonance holding many feelings all at once with honesty and love.

I invite you to find one of Andrea Gibson's poems that speak directly to your grief, love, loss, or healing. Here are a few that stick with me:

•  “Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps” -honours the softening of the heart to moments of beauty (see above video)
• "The Madness Vase" – holds survival, hope, and choosing life amid darkness.
• "Angel of the Get-Through" – holds those surviving trauma or illness.
• "Photoshopping My Sister’s Mugshot" – faces the bitter honesty of addiction, love, and loss.
• "Letter to My Dog Exploring the Human Condition" – explores grief through the lens of caregiving and companionship.
• "The Moon Is a Kite" – honours beauty and loss intertwined.

Poetry as a Therapeutic Tool

Poetry can bypass our intellectual defenses and reach the heart center, offering a language that speaks directly to the body and the emotional core. Poetic language and metaphor often serve as bridges between the client’s lived experience and their capacity for healing and integration. In my therapeutic practice, I use poems not just as reflective prompts, but as embodied tools—for body scans, sensory awareness, emotional connection, and anchoring techniques.

As a somatic therapist, inspired by the work of Peter Levine, I believe that healing happens through the nervous system’s capacity to feel safely and to move gently through dysregulated states. Poetry allows us to titrate overwhelming emotions into digestible images. It offers rhythm and repetition—qualities that can soothe the autonomic nervous system, much like a steady breath or the pulse of a calming voice. A single line of poetry can become a point of orientation for someone lost in the fog of grief. A stanza can serve as a pendulation tool, helping clients shift attention between emotional intensity and internal resources.

I often invite clients to notice where a particular poem “lands” in the body: Does that line bring warmth, tension or space to a certain area of the body? I encourage the client to pause, track, and honour those sensations—knowing that these embodied responses identify obstacles and pathways to recovery. Poetry can be a somatic map, guiding us back to the parts of ourselves that feel like the heartbeats of whatever home is to us.

It is a strong grief that I carry for the loss of Andrea. I have only ever met them through the page and videos and yet their words have been candles for me.

If you experience grief, loss, disconnection or overwhelm, please reach out to a counsellor or someone who can honour your story. It might not be that you are into poems. Find someone that meets you where you are at. Listen to your heart in this.

I am a counsellor who primarily works with the complexities of grief, diagnosis, chronic illness, coping with pain and family relationships. I am a mama of four, educator, counsellor, and cold plunger. I was born with tetralogy of Fallot and knows that this experience gifted me a unique attunement and sensitivity to myself and others. I am in private practice working with families and individuals all over BC, both virtually and in person in North Vancouver at Hands to Heart Therapy.