Meg! Another student here with a Rainbow Connection story! I came out to from Arizona to go to the show with my best friend who works at the Colorado Renaissance Festival. They worked a full festival day and then we raced to the Red Rocks to make it to the show! At the end of our day at the festival, my bestie told me they had asked one of their friends to play his cover of "Rainbow Connection" because they wanted to dance together. I was able to see him perform it, however they missed him singing because they had to run back to their camp to change.
Imagine our surprise when about an hour later we made it to Red Rocks just in time for Sara Bareilles to start her set and she opened with "Rainbow Connection" and we got to dance together during the first verse 😭 When we were driving back to my hotel afterwards we talked about how Andrea must have been working overtime to create all these goosebump worthy moments that night for everyone there in one way or another 💜
oh my god, Alexis! this song is really reaching the 'poems that don't suck' crew. I love it so much. thank you for sharing. im so glad you were at red rocks.
Hello Meg, I just need to convey to you how deeply your writing speaks to me, resonating in a way not many things do these days. I just cried so hard while reading this post. My partner of 12+ years, Daron, passed suddenly and unexpectedly less than a year before Andrea did, on August 22nd, 2024. He loved all things Jim Henson (and the song Rainbow Connection), and sadly his sister passed suddenly in 2012 and that song was played at her funeral as she loved it as well. I put it on the playlist at his memorial, too. I love that you experience and give legitimacy to the amazing synchronicities those beyond the veil send to us.
Sometimes it feels no one I know really regards these moments with the same awe and gratitude I do. I can tell they humor me when I talk about them, but I rarely have the feeling they're convinced it's coming from Daron. But some of these little winks are SO uncanny -- they HAVE to be real. They HAVE to be communication. I know he and I shared love that can and does transcend death of the physical body. I know he is still around, but sometimes I feel the world is trying to convince me I'm silly for believing so. So to read your posts makes me so happy to find someone else who believes.
I recently turned 50 and was so sad Daron wasn't going to be here to celebrate with me. His birthday was 2 weeks prior to mine, and he would've turned 50 as well. We were supposed to do this 50 thing together! A few weeks before my birthday, one Sunday I was having an especially sad day, really missing him and our little Sunday rituals and coziness. I was internally bemoaning the fact he won't be here for either of our 50th birthdays. I went to a nearby thrift store to look around...I had just asked him to send me a sign, when on the shelf I saw this hand-lettered box that said "Happy 50th Birthday, Lisa!" I mean, come on. That HAD to be from him! I was elated to receive such a clear sign from him, when I really needed it. I struggle with really wishing he was still here in his body, but I was so thankful to him for sending me that message.
Thank you so much for sharing so eloquently and beautifully with us. It really means so much. I believe you and Andrea both are giving so many of us a gift by sharing your beautiful love. Love and hugs to you.
Thank you! Initially I left it there because I have hoarder tendencies (and thought maybe a photo of it would suffice), but some friends convinced me to go back the next day and buy it. It was half price the next day! :) I'm so glad I have it here, sitting on a lovely vintage shelf he gifted me for my last birthday we had together.
Meg, this is so beautiful and I fully believe in the power of songs to be messages from our loved ones on the other side. They're DJ'ing for us. :) None of this beautiful story comes as a surprise to me as a songwriter. Hear me out-- I know this comments section is a safe place to share a wild, mystical and beautiful story like this, and I want to share it in the spirit of Andrea and all the beautiful ways in which they continue to speak to you...
Last April, an old friend of mine named David died suddenly and tragically by suicide. The day after he passed, I drove past the exit for his hometown on the interstate and just started speaking to him and singing to him. A verse of a song came through and I pulled over to the side of I-40 and recorded it in my voice memos and wept. David loved music and he always led song circles when we were younger and it felt like this song was almost coming from him...
I went into the studio to make my new album a few days later, and a mutual friend of ours named Lizzy was coming to sing harmonies and record with me. I shared the song start with her about David and all through the week we couldn't sleep... we were so charged up with creative energy and David kept showing up in our dreams. Lizzy woke up at 3 AM one night with a refrain in her head and recorded it in a sleepy voice memo. The veil felt so thin that week-- we felt David was near and was trying to bring this song into physical form.
On our last night in the studio, we sat on the floor of this beautiful old 1890s church where we were recording and we asked David to help us finish the song. There were lines coming through that we didn't quite understand, but felt so important... a line in the refrain about his sisters singing, a line about a baby on the way. There was a lot we didn't know about his life at the time of his death, but we trusted and wrote what felt right, recorded it the very next day and it became the last song on my new record. It's called "The Fairest View."
At the time of David's death, we didn't have a direct relationship with his family, so we didn't send the song to his loved ones. I was worried it would seem presumptuous to cold email them and say "hey-- so, I wrote this song with... David?" And I didn't know what their grief journey looked like and whether that would be too hard to hear. I had a peaceful feeling that the song would find them when the time was right.
Right after my record came out in January, I got email from David's sister who had randomly heard it on Spotify and instantly knew it was about David. It turned out that his beautiful and courageous sisters were his only surviving family. Both of his parents and his brother had passed, so our line about "your sisters are singing" was correct-- we just had no way of consciously knowing that. Then his cousin reached out to me and told me that she was 8 months pregnant when David had died, and that the mixture of grief and new life in the spring that David had died was so much for her. They gave the baby a middle name of David... So that mysterious "the baby's almost here" line was for her... This spring was full of tender, incredibly special messages back and forth with David's family.
When I went on tour in Aprilg back in North Carolina, I had the honor of getting to sing this song in person for several of David's sisters, cousins, for his widow and for the baby named after him... it was the privilege of my life to somehow be the bridge between David and his family in this way. I'm crying just thinking about it. The mystery, the beauty, the brokenness, the awe of it all. The way we always find a way to speak to each other across the bridge of time and life and death.
There will never be anything more important that I do than this. On our best days, we writers get to be the conduit for something so much bigger than us: love that is bigger than our bodies and stronger than death.
I think of you often and your writing makes the world so much better and brighter. Last summer after Andrea passed, my partner and I brought their poetry on a camping trip with us and read Andrea's words around the campfire to each other and laughed and cried and celebrated them. I remain ever grateful for you and for Andrea. XOXOXO.
This comment section is the Goosebump Capital of the Internet, no?! This story is SO incredible. I love the idea of all our artists continuing to make art through us. How lucky.
Wow, thanks for sharing that story! I have also received messages from a departed former classmate and have been in touch with his mom, I send her a card whenever I dream about him. We hadn’t known each other except in passing before his death.
Shell 🐚Yes! We are a “conduit for something so much bigger than us” Aren’t we blessed to feel, to know, how much this matters!
Thank you for inspiring me to get into a recording studio this year (a dream that can so easily slide to the side). And to invite my friends on the other side.
Meg, I live in the western suburbs of Chicago and there was a big storm in our area today. I was sheltering in the basement with my one year old boy named Chance. I get super anxious during severe weather and felt even more so with a little one to protect.
After the tornado warning was lifted, I came upstairs and put on Kacey Musgraves album Golden Hour to help relax my nervous system. Suddenly, her song “Rainbow” came on.
Rainbow is the song my son was born to❤️ & it just felt like reassurance that we were going to be ok.
Moments later, I opened my email to find your beautiful substack waiting for me.
Love always finds a way - even through Muppets classics! Meg, I just read this at my desk in corporate America. Afterwards, I opened up a desk drawer (attempting to find an umbrella) that I hadn’t opened in about a year. I did not find an umbrella, but did find a drawing of a rainbow from my daughter. Thanks for passing on Andrea’s love to all of us who read your writing and miss them. I got a sliver of it today.
this is so wild!!! because immediately after posting this, I went to start the colossal task of cleaning out my garage with my friend Emily, and she handed me a box of things to go through. rifling through some random papers, I found a picture of a rainbow that I don't have any recollection of. obviously it went in the "keep" pile.
This is so beautiful. I cried listening to Sara Bareilles sing Rainbow Connection the same way I cried listening to Andrea read Love Letter from the Afterlife...with a heartful of hope. Oh how I wish my beloved would hit me over the head with a frog. You are special, dear Megan. Thank you for continuing to share yourselves with us.
My mom passed a few days before Andrea and the way you talk about grief and your connection to Andrea fills me with hope. My mom loved Rainbow Connection. It was a nice reminder to read about it here. Thank you. 🌈🐸
Thank you for this. I love your writing. I loved Andrea’s. When you write about the God-winks, I have to read the pieces twice. That’s how much they touch me. I believe. 🌈🐸❤️
This has long been one of my favorite songs. I even have the last few lyrics tattooed on my arm: "the lovers, the dreamers, and me." Because of that, I just wanted to share a little tidbit of Andrea's message you might have missed that jumped out to me immediately.
You and Andrea are "The Lovers" in the last line of the song.
How beautiful a gift to still be romanced from whatever lies beyond <3
This is one of the most beautiful things I've read today. My heart just melted, and tears just flowed. Your words are exquisite because they come from somewhere beyond the rainbow. 🌈
This song means SO very much to me for a whole spectrum of reasons... and you've just added another. I was touched to hear it at Red Rocks on that magical night. (I had dinner with Heather Henson once, a couple decades ago!) 🌈
By the time you got to the part about sitting next to Jim Henson’s daughter I have full on goosebumps! I always want to live in a world where noticing signs is an important part of my life❤️🌈
This hit me so profoundly. I felt my own world open - the horizons blurry from tears of joy. When we can diffuse the tangible boundaries, we become sentient again, released. I am happy to hold my mother's hand again - the shape so like my own. I am almost the age when she passed. To see my grandfather dancing with me at 5, on his shoe tops. To know Pavarotti is the best voice for Ava Maria, says grandma. I am laughing with my best friend who fainted twice and her world crashed into oblivion. I am free to roam with the rest of memory and reality, as big as the sky. Let me go find that song........
I truly appreciate you taking the time to share the "rainbow connections" you've experienced since Andrea's alleged departure. I truly appreciate you documenting them and sharing with us all of the coincidences/miracles.
I am currently collecting magical connections sent to me by my beloved furry wise one, Miller, who crossed what many pet owners call The Rainbow Bridge. I can say with all honesty that these multi-dimensional messages are frequent, funny, and at times LOUD. I just need to stay open to hearing them. Writing them down as a running list of proofs helps too.
Meg! Another student here with a Rainbow Connection story! I came out to from Arizona to go to the show with my best friend who works at the Colorado Renaissance Festival. They worked a full festival day and then we raced to the Red Rocks to make it to the show! At the end of our day at the festival, my bestie told me they had asked one of their friends to play his cover of "Rainbow Connection" because they wanted to dance together. I was able to see him perform it, however they missed him singing because they had to run back to their camp to change.
Imagine our surprise when about an hour later we made it to Red Rocks just in time for Sara Bareilles to start her set and she opened with "Rainbow Connection" and we got to dance together during the first verse 😭 When we were driving back to my hotel afterwards we talked about how Andrea must have been working overtime to create all these goosebump worthy moments that night for everyone there in one way or another 💜
oh my god, Alexis! this song is really reaching the 'poems that don't suck' crew. I love it so much. thank you for sharing. im so glad you were at red rocks.
Hello Meg, I just need to convey to you how deeply your writing speaks to me, resonating in a way not many things do these days. I just cried so hard while reading this post. My partner of 12+ years, Daron, passed suddenly and unexpectedly less than a year before Andrea did, on August 22nd, 2024. He loved all things Jim Henson (and the song Rainbow Connection), and sadly his sister passed suddenly in 2012 and that song was played at her funeral as she loved it as well. I put it on the playlist at his memorial, too. I love that you experience and give legitimacy to the amazing synchronicities those beyond the veil send to us.
Sometimes it feels no one I know really regards these moments with the same awe and gratitude I do. I can tell they humor me when I talk about them, but I rarely have the feeling they're convinced it's coming from Daron. But some of these little winks are SO uncanny -- they HAVE to be real. They HAVE to be communication. I know he and I shared love that can and does transcend death of the physical body. I know he is still around, but sometimes I feel the world is trying to convince me I'm silly for believing so. So to read your posts makes me so happy to find someone else who believes.
I recently turned 50 and was so sad Daron wasn't going to be here to celebrate with me. His birthday was 2 weeks prior to mine, and he would've turned 50 as well. We were supposed to do this 50 thing together! A few weeks before my birthday, one Sunday I was having an especially sad day, really missing him and our little Sunday rituals and coziness. I was internally bemoaning the fact he won't be here for either of our 50th birthdays. I went to a nearby thrift store to look around...I had just asked him to send me a sign, when on the shelf I saw this hand-lettered box that said "Happy 50th Birthday, Lisa!" I mean, come on. That HAD to be from him! I was elated to receive such a clear sign from him, when I really needed it. I struggle with really wishing he was still here in his body, but I was so thankful to him for sending me that message.
Thank you so much for sharing so eloquently and beautifully with us. It really means so much. I believe you and Andrea both are giving so many of us a gift by sharing your beautiful love. Love and hugs to you.
DARON WAS WORKING OVERTIME FOR THAT ONE! Oh my goodness. This is my favorite story. Please keep telling it.
Aw, thank you so much!
😭😭😭 oh my goodness. This is beautiful. They never really leave. Happy belated birthday. 🥳 Did you buy that sign?
Thank you! Initially I left it there because I have hoarder tendencies (and thought maybe a photo of it would suffice), but some friends convinced me to go back the next day and buy it. It was half price the next day! :) I'm so glad I have it here, sitting on a lovely vintage shelf he gifted me for my last birthday we had together.
Meg, this is so beautiful and I fully believe in the power of songs to be messages from our loved ones on the other side. They're DJ'ing for us. :) None of this beautiful story comes as a surprise to me as a songwriter. Hear me out-- I know this comments section is a safe place to share a wild, mystical and beautiful story like this, and I want to share it in the spirit of Andrea and all the beautiful ways in which they continue to speak to you...
Last April, an old friend of mine named David died suddenly and tragically by suicide. The day after he passed, I drove past the exit for his hometown on the interstate and just started speaking to him and singing to him. A verse of a song came through and I pulled over to the side of I-40 and recorded it in my voice memos and wept. David loved music and he always led song circles when we were younger and it felt like this song was almost coming from him...
I went into the studio to make my new album a few days later, and a mutual friend of ours named Lizzy was coming to sing harmonies and record with me. I shared the song start with her about David and all through the week we couldn't sleep... we were so charged up with creative energy and David kept showing up in our dreams. Lizzy woke up at 3 AM one night with a refrain in her head and recorded it in a sleepy voice memo. The veil felt so thin that week-- we felt David was near and was trying to bring this song into physical form.
On our last night in the studio, we sat on the floor of this beautiful old 1890s church where we were recording and we asked David to help us finish the song. There were lines coming through that we didn't quite understand, but felt so important... a line in the refrain about his sisters singing, a line about a baby on the way. There was a lot we didn't know about his life at the time of his death, but we trusted and wrote what felt right, recorded it the very next day and it became the last song on my new record. It's called "The Fairest View."
At the time of David's death, we didn't have a direct relationship with his family, so we didn't send the song to his loved ones. I was worried it would seem presumptuous to cold email them and say "hey-- so, I wrote this song with... David?" And I didn't know what their grief journey looked like and whether that would be too hard to hear. I had a peaceful feeling that the song would find them when the time was right.
Right after my record came out in January, I got email from David's sister who had randomly heard it on Spotify and instantly knew it was about David. It turned out that his beautiful and courageous sisters were his only surviving family. Both of his parents and his brother had passed, so our line about "your sisters are singing" was correct-- we just had no way of consciously knowing that. Then his cousin reached out to me and told me that she was 8 months pregnant when David had died, and that the mixture of grief and new life in the spring that David had died was so much for her. They gave the baby a middle name of David... So that mysterious "the baby's almost here" line was for her... This spring was full of tender, incredibly special messages back and forth with David's family.
When I went on tour in Aprilg back in North Carolina, I had the honor of getting to sing this song in person for several of David's sisters, cousins, for his widow and for the baby named after him... it was the privilege of my life to somehow be the bridge between David and his family in this way. I'm crying just thinking about it. The mystery, the beauty, the brokenness, the awe of it all. The way we always find a way to speak to each other across the bridge of time and life and death.
There will never be anything more important that I do than this. On our best days, we writers get to be the conduit for something so much bigger than us: love that is bigger than our bodies and stronger than death.
I think of you often and your writing makes the world so much better and brighter. Last summer after Andrea passed, my partner and I brought their poetry on a camping trip with us and read Andrea's words around the campfire to each other and laughed and cried and celebrated them. I remain ever grateful for you and for Andrea. XOXOXO.
This comment section is the Goosebump Capital of the Internet, no?! This story is SO incredible. I love the idea of all our artists continuing to make art through us. How lucky.
Wow, thanks for sharing that story! I have also received messages from a departed former classmate and have been in touch with his mom, I send her a card whenever I dream about him. We hadn’t known each other except in passing before his death.
That is so beautiful! I bet his mom really appreciates those messages from him and you!
yes
o yes
many blessings emily
for this sublime missive from the world beyond
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cCJviULjuQ
Love love love this story, Emily, so I had to go find your song and listen. Thank you for sharing it with us!! It's beautifulllll!
Absolutely beautiful!!! Your voice is magic and the lyrics heaven sent. ❤️
Shell 🐚Yes! We are a “conduit for something so much bigger than us” Aren’t we blessed to feel, to know, how much this matters!
Thank you for inspiring me to get into a recording studio this year (a dream that can so easily slide to the side). And to invite my friends on the other side.
Meg, I live in the western suburbs of Chicago and there was a big storm in our area today. I was sheltering in the basement with my one year old boy named Chance. I get super anxious during severe weather and felt even more so with a little one to protect.
After the tornado warning was lifted, I came upstairs and put on Kacey Musgraves album Golden Hour to help relax my nervous system. Suddenly, her song “Rainbow” came on.
Rainbow is the song my son was born to❤️ & it just felt like reassurance that we were going to be ok.
Moments later, I opened my email to find your beautiful substack waiting for me.
Rainbows abound 🌈 !
Love always finds a way - even through Muppets classics! Meg, I just read this at my desk in corporate America. Afterwards, I opened up a desk drawer (attempting to find an umbrella) that I hadn’t opened in about a year. I did not find an umbrella, but did find a drawing of a rainbow from my daughter. Thanks for passing on Andrea’s love to all of us who read your writing and miss them. I got a sliver of it today.
this is so wild!!! because immediately after posting this, I went to start the colossal task of cleaning out my garage with my friend Emily, and she handed me a box of things to go through. rifling through some random papers, I found a picture of a rainbow that I don't have any recollection of. obviously it went in the "keep" pile.
This is so beautiful. I cried listening to Sara Bareilles sing Rainbow Connection the same way I cried listening to Andrea read Love Letter from the Afterlife...with a heartful of hope. Oh how I wish my beloved would hit me over the head with a frog. You are special, dear Megan. Thank you for continuing to share yourselves with us.
Keep asking for it, Becky! As out loud. ♡
Thank you ... I will. 💛
May he rain frogs upon you, Becky, and may they be unmistakably yours.
Thank you! I frequently look skyward and hope to get dumped on soon.
My mom passed a few days before Andrea and the way you talk about grief and your connection to Andrea fills me with hope. My mom loved Rainbow Connection. It was a nice reminder to read about it here. Thank you. 🌈🐸
Thank you for this. I love your writing. I loved Andrea’s. When you write about the God-winks, I have to read the pieces twice. That’s how much they touch me. I believe. 🌈🐸❤️
Meg, this brought me to tears.
This has long been one of my favorite songs. I even have the last few lyrics tattooed on my arm: "the lovers, the dreamers, and me." Because of that, I just wanted to share a little tidbit of Andrea's message you might have missed that jumped out to me immediately.
You and Andrea are "The Lovers" in the last line of the song.
How beautiful a gift to still be romanced from whatever lies beyond <3
"Perhaps love never leaves us. Perhaps it only changes shape." I love this. It hit something inside me. Thank you.
Yes! What if Love is THE great energy source? (Energy never leaves, it only changes its form).
"What’s the difference between a coincidence and a miracle?" Faith. Just faith.
This is one of the most beautiful things I've read today. My heart just melted, and tears just flowed. Your words are exquisite because they come from somewhere beyond the rainbow. 🌈
This song means SO very much to me for a whole spectrum of reasons... and you've just added another. I was touched to hear it at Red Rocks on that magical night. (I had dinner with Heather Henson once, a couple decades ago!) 🌈
By the time you got to the part about sitting next to Jim Henson’s daughter I have full on goosebumps! I always want to live in a world where noticing signs is an important part of my life❤️🌈
This hit me so profoundly. I felt my own world open - the horizons blurry from tears of joy. When we can diffuse the tangible boundaries, we become sentient again, released. I am happy to hold my mother's hand again - the shape so like my own. I am almost the age when she passed. To see my grandfather dancing with me at 5, on his shoe tops. To know Pavarotti is the best voice for Ava Maria, says grandma. I am laughing with my best friend who fainted twice and her world crashed into oblivion. I am free to roam with the rest of memory and reality, as big as the sky. Let me go find that song........
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cCJviULjuQ
I truly appreciate you taking the time to share the "rainbow connections" you've experienced since Andrea's alleged departure. I truly appreciate you documenting them and sharing with us all of the coincidences/miracles.
I am currently collecting magical connections sent to me by my beloved furry wise one, Miller, who crossed what many pet owners call The Rainbow Bridge. I can say with all honesty that these multi-dimensional messages are frequent, funny, and at times LOUD. I just need to stay open to hearing them. Writing them down as a running list of proofs helps too.
Thank you!