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Andrew Anderson

@aanderssen_

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A mood board of nostalgia
🏔️🍁 🌊 🌲 💜 🐕 🍜
Stocking up on as much joy as possible
T1D | Transplant recipient
📍 Berkshires

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Perhaps the most beautiful thing about slowly dying over the last 5 years was the unexpected gift of raw, distilled, sobering perspective, which had been pressed into me by the crushing weight of survival.
Experiencing that uncertain hell has resulted in a sense of humility and gratitude, one that would have been impossible to feel or understand prior to this chapter. Hope turned to despair, then sadness, then anger, then breakage and fatigue… Finally acceptance started to sink in. Acceptance that a day I thought would soon come more than likely now could not. That’s when the room truly began to go dark.
I have always loved living and everything that comes with it. The point is just to exist, to experience it - the good, the bad and the in-between. Allen Watts said some shit like that. We are blessed and cursed with this beautiful & complicated brain. While I don’t welcome struggle, if you can lean into it, face it, alchemize it into something positive, into meaning, into framing and giving context to the beauty of it all, that’s another way of explaining the gift I was able to allow myself to have and use as a compass in my search for salvation.
On March 3rd of this year, I was given a second chance at this thing we call life. My best friend gave me an organ and muted the sounds of death whispering in my ear. With the time I have, for every second moving forward, taking things for granted is no longer something I am capable of and how wonderful is that? My coffee tastes richer, maple syrup tastes sweeter. The break of an egg yoke is so much more satisfying (breakfast is the best meal of the day obviously). The love I give and receive feels so much deeper, the laughter of friendship is infectiously louder, and the sound of music is candy to my eardrums. My curiosity and desire to learn is more voracious & the comfort I find in natural landscapes just hits different. I wake up on the right side of the bed every morning and I can finally sleep at night. My body is healing. My mind is focused.
For the first time in a long time, I’ve found peace. A few moments is all we really get, don’t waste them. Happy to share this story. I’m just glad to be here by @aanderssen_

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2 months ago

2026 - From dying to thriving 💁‍♂️ by @aanderssen_

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a month ago

Andy uninterrupted - for the first time in a long time, Dialysis for 4 hours a session, every other day, is no longer part of the equation 🙏

Hope this never ends taken in Omni Mount Washington Resort & Spa by @aanderssen_

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2 months ago

Rekindling parts of myself and a life that I had to learn how not to mourn because it became too painful. Hot coffee on a crisp fall morning in the woods of Northern New England… Cup always half full. Cheers Y’all 🍻 by @aanderssen_

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a day ago

I asked you for all things I might enjoy in life. You said no, I will give you life so you can enjoy all things

You truly only get one, lick that plate clean taken in Acadia National Park, Maine by @aanderssen_

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3 days ago

Last minute spot check… never met a Lighthouse I didn’t like 🏮 taken in Bass Harbor Lighthouse, Acadia National Park, Maine by @aanderssen_

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4 days ago

Northern Boreal Forests really do it fir me by @aanderssen_

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5 days ago

A walk in the woods by @aanderssen_

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6 days ago

That really famous pond in that really popular National Park taken in Acadia National Park, Maine by @aanderssen_

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7 days ago

Today I received a FB memory of this photo from a journey to The Great North 7 years ago… I’ve had a love affair with you from the moment we first met in 2003 as a young blood and have made it a point to visit as much as possible ever since. Every single pilgrimage besides this trip, was done during the summer months but it was in the fall, that I’ve found you to be the most breathtaking and intoxicatingly beautiful. I even have the GPS coordinates to a spot further up this valley tattooed on my body. I’m sorry I haven’t been back sooner but having your organs fail, I’ve felt, has been a valid excuse. There’s been an ache in my heart to return and I’m manifesting that will happen in 2027.

I’ve said this before, Alaska is the kind of place that will haunt you and it won’t ask, but rather just take a part of your soul, never giving it back. Grandeur has this wonderful and frightening ability to put us in our place, to humble, to make us feel small, to make us feel human. It’s this kind of ego death that eventually makes me feel grounded and at peace. That comfort can be very addictive. The pain of withdrawal from nature convinces me that you are like medicine, like the best drug, and I long for another hit

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods
There is a rapture on the lonely shore
There is society, where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but Nature more..." - Lord Byron taken in Hatcher Pass Alaska by @aanderssen_

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15 days ago

Another capture of my favorite Broccoli by @aanderssen_

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24 days ago

You will find me here by @aanderssen_

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3 months ago