How having a life-threatening illness reshuffled Suleika’s priorities. The story of how Suleika started her blog before her bone marrow transplant.

The inspiration that Suleika found in the life and work of Frida Kahlo.Īn outline of the 100-day project and how it facilitated Suleika writing her memoir. The sense of liberation and vulnerability that Suleika experienced after chemotherapy altered her appearance. Suleika describes some of the emotions she felt when she was correctly diagnosed, including a sense of protectiveness over her parents. The months Suleika spent being misdiagnosed before a doctor diagnosed her with leukemia. Some of the symptoms Suleika started experiencing after graduating from college. Suleika describes a turning point in her life as a young adolescent after watching Mona Lisa Smile. How the lesson of Middle Eastern hospitality was present in Suleika’s life growing up. Suleika’s experiences moving between different countries as the child of immigrant parents. Methods for dealing with the need to keep your journals private from other people. Suleika’s early experiences with journaling and how to make journaling engaging and fun. Introducing today’s guest Suleika Jaouad. Join us today for a reflective and open conversation on illness, trauma, creativity, and what it means to truly heal. 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. 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. 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 hear from Suleika about when she first received her diagnosis and how it affected her life.

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. Her TED talk What almost dying taught me about living has been viewed over four million times.

She is also an award-winning journalist whose work on prison reform earned her an Emmy. 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. 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.

Author of between two kingdoms