Ep 60: Between Two Kingdoms with Suleika Jaouad
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Between Two Kingdoms with Suleika Jaouad
Episode 60: Show Notes.
In today’s episode, we hear from Suleika Jaouad, author of the memoir Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, about her journey through being diagnosed with leukemia at age 22 and how the experience of illness and recovery intertwines with her writing career. Suleika reflects on some of the frustration she experienced at the time with existing cancer narratives and how that informed the blog she chose to write during her difficult years of cancer treatment. She is also an award-winning journalist whose work on prison reform earned her an Emmy. Her TED talk What almost dying taught me about living has been viewed over four million times.
Tuning in you’ll hear about Suleika’s memories growing up as the daughter of immigrant parents, her early experiences with journaling, and why she views it as a sacred activity that can have endless possibilities when you liberate yourself from expectations. We hear from Suleika about when she first received her diagnosis and how it affected her life.
Suleika shares the inspiration she found in people like Frida Kahlo who undertook rich creative pursuits while being confined to their beds and how that informed her writing. We delve into what it was like for Suleika to spend years in a hospital during her early twenties and how being cured does not necessarily equate to being healed.
Later Suleika unpacks what drove her writing and shares how the letters she received in response to her blog helped her feel a sense of connectedness during her most intense periods of medical isolation. Join us today for a reflective and open conversation on illness, trauma, creativity, and what it means to truly heal.
Key Points From This Episode:
Introducing today’s guest Suleika Jaouad.
Suleika’s early experiences with journaling and how to make journaling engaging and fun.
Methods for dealing with the need to keep your journals private from other people.
Suleika’s experiences moving between different countries as the child of immigrant parents.
How the lesson of Middle Eastern hospitality was present in Suleika’s life growing up.
Suleika describes a turning point in her life as a young adolescent after watching Mona Lisa Smile.
Some of the symptoms Suleika started experiencing after graduating from college.
The months Suleika spent being misdiagnosed before a doctor diagnosed her with leukemia.
Suleika describes some of the emotions she felt when she was correctly diagnosed, including a sense of protectiveness over her parents.
The sense of liberation and vulnerability that Suleika experienced after chemotherapy altered her appearance.
The inspiration that Suleika found in the life and work of Frida Kahlo.
An outline of the 100-day project and how it facilitated Suleika writing her memoir.
The story of how Suleika started her blog before her bone marrow transplant.
How having a life-threatening illness reshuffled Suleika’s priorities.
Some of the frustrations that Suleika had felt with other books, films, and stories by cancer survivors who wrote about their experiences long after they had recovered.
How the letters that Suleika received during her time in hospital gave her a feeling of connection despite being so isolated.
The difficulties Suleika faced after being cured of her illness, like survivors' guilt and trauma.
Suleika's choice to connect with the people who had written her letters while she was sick.
Why it was important to Suleika that she portrays the ripple effect that a life-altering diagnosis has on a family and community in her memoir.
Suleika’s experience visiting GQ in prison and some of the ways it resembles hospitals.
Suleika’s definition of success and how that has changed over the years.
Tweetables:
“My journaling style was no style. I also found it very exhausting to recount all the details, big or small, of my day. I never found that to be fun. It felt like a chore. I very quickly got sick of my own voice in my own life.” — @suleikajaouad [0:14:43]
“As long as I keep it that pure, liberated space, where I can show up as my most unedited self, without any expectation of what a journal should be, or what a good journal entry might look like, then I found that the form keeps opening itself up to me in new ways.” — @suleikajaouad [0:14:43]
“If I wanted to be the person I was intent on becoming, if I wanted the life that I was intent on having, that I was going to need to not just be disciplined, but to really take myself and the cultivation of my mind seriously.” — @suleikajaouad [0:19:14]
“I was tired all the time. I was bruising easily. I was constantly coming down with new infections and bouts of bronchitis and things like that. I was losing a lot of weight and was very pale and no one could figure out what was wrong with me.” — @suleikajaouad [0:25:03]
“There was a sense of vulnerability, but also great openness. Because, all the usual things that you're consumed with in your early 20s, dating, and looks and body image, or whatever it might be, just weren't even really on my mind, or on anyone's mind in those hospital rooms.” — @suleikajaouad [0:30:16]
“An editor from the New York Times invited me to write something for the paper. In this surreal twist, I went from being an aspiring writer who'd never been published before, to being offered a weekly column and video series in the New York Times.” — @suleikajaouad [0:41:50]
“I think, one of the strange, beautiful byproducts of being very sick or very close to death is that all of the artifice falls away. Whatever you might put on your resume, whatever awards, whatever accolade, none of that really matters anymore.” — @suleikajaouad [0:43:36]
“I wanted to be able to leave more than I'd taken from the world. That sense of purpose and that sense of love for my family, and for my closest friends, were the two things that felt important to me.” — @suleikajaouad [0:44:38]
“I was in medical isolation. I couldn't go out in public and I was stuck in a room. It felt like a conduit to the outside. It felt good to shift my perspective away from my own circumstances, to the stories of others.” — @suleikajaouad [0:50:39]
“I befriended fellow patients. I understood that world. I got used to navigating it. Suddenly, it was the outside world that felt really scary and disorienting. I found it hard to connect with people who hadn't lived what I lived through or some version of that.” — @suleikajaouad [0:56:10]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption