From Fear to Freedom: Writing With Courage in a Fear-Driven World
What a cancer scare, a beloved poet’s wisdom, and the art of feeling it all taught me about living—and writing—with radical openness.
Greetings! If you’re new to the Writing Your Resilience podcast, welcome! I’m Lisa Cooper Ellison, a trauma-informed writing coach and author of this Substack. If you’ve been here for a while, welcome back. It’s wonderful to be with friends. If you’d like to spend more time with me, applications are open for Free Your Voice, Fuel Your Motivation.
In 2020, I experienced an awakening.
It began with a cancer scare. Months of gallbladder attacks led to a series of tests that revealed a mass—something that could either be an easily removed benign tumor or a deadly cancer.
By the time I sat in the surgeon’s office, I’d already spent five weeks in the liminal space between fear and hope. His verdict? The only way to know for sure was surgery, which was scheduled for five weeks later.
To wait is to live in the gap where nothing is certain.
In that gap, I had two choices:
Be fully present.
Feed myself fear-and-despair sandwiches every day until the surgery arrived.
I chose presence, and with it came crystal clarity about how precious my life truly was. I wrote a “just in case” letter the night before my surgery, declaring I’d lived a beautiful life, then let go.
When I first stumbled upon Andrea Gibson’s Instagram posts, I recognized that same full-throated openness. In the wake of a terminal cancer diagnosis, they shed the heavy cloak of “not enoughness” that so many of us wear and replaced it with a cape of open-hearted bravery.
I didn’t know Andrea personally, but I felt their holiness every time this award-winning poet and activist spoke, and listened intently, knowing their message was one I needed to hear. When they died, I mourned as if I’d lost a close friend.
I want to tell you they should still be here—that we need them more than ever—but as Andrea shared in their final poem “Love Letter from the Afterlife:”
Dying is the opposite of leaving…feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms into the soft walls of your living.
They left us so many poems, including The Story, where they explore the narratives we create from our conditioning, stories that “we are too much or not enough… that [our] sadness could never be the soup where [we] would feed our hungry joy.”
During their final years, Andrea escaped that conditioning and lived with a completely open heart. They stripped away shame, regret, and self-loathing to become their most vital self. In that naked, vulnerable state, they harnessed a voice that was calm, assured, fierce—and utterly unforgettable.
We feel that voice in our bones.
Most of us live with hearts shimmering under a thin film of fear—fear of saying the wrong thing, of exposing too much, of getting it wrong. That fear cuts us off from our creativity, quite literally strangling the voice we’re here to use.
So how do we release that fear without having to stand on the edge of death?
One: Be Present to the Awe Around You
Pause throughout your day, step outside, and observe the incredible things happening around you: the blooming flower, the sunset that promises tomorrow’s rise, the stars twinkling with the same light that’s inside you.
Dance in the rain. Splash in a puddle. Be spontaneous. A few weeks ago, my husband and I twirled barefoot in a downpour, drenched and giddy.
Two: Fully Love and Accept Yourself
Some days, the only part you might be able to love is your left thumb or the curve of your cheekbone. Start there, and let it radiate outward. If you’d like a practice alongside me as I heal my MCL, say your own version of this mantra:
I love you, knee. I love your strength and stability. You bend so I can move through this world.
Three: Love the World Without Abandon
Find one thing you can love unconditionally. For me, it’s my cat, Miss Foxy. While I love many people, including all of you, Miss Foxy has been with me for two lifetimes—first as my cat, Miss George, and now as my fluffy calico companion. To be loved so much that a being appears twice makes my heart and inner child soar. What is that being for you?
Four: Feel It All
Embrace all your emotions. They’re necessary, not just for living, but for your art. As I write this, Miss Foxy is at the vet. Again. She’s aging and struggling with arthritis and bowel issues. Last night, I held her and wept into her fur, vowing to love her enough to let her go when the time comes, which hopefully won’t be for a long while. While experiencing the depths of grief hurts, I know that like all emotions, if I feel it fully, it only lasts a little while.
Andrea did this in their final years, and we are all better for it.
I was lucky—my diagnosis was benign, and because it was, fear shedding is a continual practice.
Do I do it perfectly? No. But that’s what it means to be human.
What are you doing to live and speak with an open heart?
If you’re not sure what that is, apply for Free Your Voice, Fuel Your Motivation, and let us love you and your work into that same kind of fearlessness. I’ll begin accepting students on 8/20 and will continue until all spots are full.
Please know this: I love you, and I am rooting for you not just to succeed, but to be fully, fiercely, unapologetically you.
Warmly,
Lisa
Your Turn: What’s one way you’ve experienced awe this week? If it’s been a tough one, what’s one thing you can fully feel your emotions and bring yourself closer to the awe around you? Share your thoughts in the comments. You never know what conversations this might inspire.
Also, to read the post announcing Andrea’s death, where the photo for this post first appeared, please click here.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post; your support means so much to me. If this post resonated with you, here are four simple ways to support this Substack:
Subscribe to this Substack if you’re not already a follower
Like this post by clicking the heart
Restack this post (bonus points if you include a note)
Forward this email to a friend or share the link on social media
Applications Are Now Open!
Apply for this 12-week transformational writing course where you’ll receive weekly feedback on what’s working in your projects. Arrive ready to write, tap into a powerful creative flow, and leave feeling inspired, motivated.
Join Me Next Sunday, August 17th!
Join me, Eileen Vorbach Collins, and Melanie Brooks for this ninety-minute workshop where we’ll discuss how giving words to hard stories transforms all of us. The workshop includes a short, guided writing exercise, time for participants to share, and a Q&A session.
The Latest Episode of Writing Your Resilience:
The podcast is on hiatus over the summer. New episodes will air on September 11, 2025, when I’ll share my interview with Ingrid Clayton about her new book on the fawning trauma response.
While I’m away, I’m doing an encore series of popular episodes that are worth a second listen. This week’s encore episode includes a treasured conversation I had with local poet, activist, and novelist, Samman Akbarzada—a young woman who not only writes with beauty and depth, but who fearlessly speaks for those who’ve been silenced.
Red-Hot Writers
This section of the newsletter is currently on hiatus. Please save your late June, July, and August announcements, so I can share them with everyone in my end-of-September newsletter. You can begin submitting them on 9/1/2025. The deadline for submissions is 9/25/2025
Milestone Makers
This section of the newsletter is currently on hiatus. Please save your late June, July, and August announcements, so I can share them with everyone in my end-of-September newsletter. You can begin submitting them on 9/1/2025. The deadline for submissions is 9/25/2025
If you’ve read this far, thank you. You can support this newsletter and yourself with my occasional subscriber support sessions and quarterly Ask Me Anything sessions by becoming a paid subscriber. The next Ask Me Anything session is scheduled for September 10, 2025.
Thank you for this reminder, Lisa. I’m glad you’re still here in physical form, though I also understand Andrea’s words. In my old city, awe was a given; I didn’t have to search for it. Here, I miss my connection to raw nature. There’s a juniper bush outside the building next to mine, and every time I walk by, I pause to inhale the fragrance. That reminds me of the nature of which we’re all a part. Not awe, exactly, but close enough to *remind* me of awe.
I experienced awe in completing my revision plan for my book this weekend at a writing retreat. I didn't fully expect being able to get it done, so it was a surprise to do so. Doing it in a community of other writers was a bonus.