In the Middle of Everything: Living the Daily Bardo

I met Sewon, the husband of my beastie Eunbi, in one of the cafes at Kalm Village in Chiang Mai on a humid afternoon where time seemed to slow down and dissolve like incense smoke. We sat in quiet conversation, not always looking for answers, but simply opening space for the in-between. Sewon mentioned about Bardo — the liminal spaces of Tibetan Buddhism — Bardo wasn't just about death. It was everywhere, stitched into the fabric of my life: in the breath between diagnosis and healing, in the soft pauses between love and heartbreak, in the waiting rooms, the rituals, the silences I learned to revere.

As a queer Buddhist and a cancer survivor, I have lived in the Bardo. Not once, but many times. There was the shock of hearing "you have cancer"—a sentence that split my life into before and after. The grief wasn’t immediate; it came later, slowly and strangely, like the feeling of being a ghost in your own home. At first, I hovered. I watched life move forward without me. I clung to routines, to identities, to people who no longer fit into the frame of my unfolding life. It was denial, not in the dramatic way we often imagine, but in the quiet refusal to let go of what I thought I still needed.

But Bardo is not purgatory. It’s not a punishment. It’s an invitation. In the months of treatment and recovery, I learned to inhabit the space between what was and what could be. I began to understand that this in-between isn't something to rush through. It’s where the Dharma lives. Where wisdom isn’t handed down like doctrine but revealed in the simplest acts — folding laundry, watching warm yellow light shine on the wall, feeling my breath return like an old friend.

As a queer Buddhist, what I write is deeply intertwined with the people I meet and the stories I carry. The injustices I’ve faced, the rawness of surviving cancer, and now living with a PEG tube — these experiences are not separate from my creative process. They are the breath within it. Life and death are no longer distant concepts. They’re stitched into my daily routine, in the complications, in the pain, in the intimate awareness of my body as both fragile and fiercely alive.

In the past few years, writting becomes a reflection of my mind. There’s an in-betweenness to writing that feels uncannily familiar — like living itself. Sometimes it feels less like I’m crafting a piece and more like the piece is comingthrough me. I’ve learned to stay open, like a radio tuning in, trusting that the words will find their shape. Not every day brings clarity. Some days I write. Others, I just try to stay unmoved. But I’ve come to cherish the variety — the breathing room that allows possibility to seep in.

Surviving cancer stripped me of many illusions, but perhaps the most tender gift it gave me was the courage to be with not-knowing. Not knowing if the treatment would work. Not knowing who I would be on the other side. Not knowing how to be queer in spaces not built for us, and yet choosing to show up fully, honestly. The queer experience, too, is its own kind of Bardo. We live in a world that tells us we are between categories, between norms. But in that fluidity is truth. In that refusal to collapse into binary, I found a spiritual home.

And then, after all that unraveling, something shifted. I discovered that letting your life fall apart can be strangely liberating. We spend so much energy fearing the worst, and then when it happens—when your body changes, when your heart breaks, when your future blurs — you find out you’re still here. Breathing. Living. Because I survived, I know I can survive again, no matter what else may come.

Writing about those moments — those ruptures where one day life was one thing and the next, everything changed — wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. It helped me find meaning when nothing made sense. It gave shape to the unspoken, and in doing so, helped me heal.

Hope in the LGBTQ+ community can feel like a rare bird — elusive, flickering. But I still believe in it. I find it in art, in the resilience of others, in community and connection. There are days when I swing wildly between hope and despair, sometimes within the same hour. But conversations with those who’ve felt what I feel, who keep showing up despite it all — they fill me. They inspire me. I borrow courage when mine runs low. Because there’s no creating without hope. There’s no living without it either.

Things feel chaotic and uncertain. But history reminds me we’ve been here before. Others have survived unimaginable times. They created. They loved. They resisted. They were brave. And they made it through.

So I take the long view. I remind myself that we are part of something greater — something ancient, something ongoing. The stakes are too high to turn away. The only way forward is through. And even now, in the middle of this Bardo, we can still make this place beautiful.