Latest news with #TheBookofAlchemy
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
He Faced Cancer Three Times Before 50. His Advice Could Save Your Life.
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." THE LATEST EPISODE of The Future You features a refreshingly candid conversation about a disease that affects every human being—or someone they know—at some point in their lives: cancer. While a sobering topic, the discussion is at once stoic and hopeful—and provides plenty of actionable takeaways for people living with or without the disease. Host and editorial director Rich Dorment gets the perspective of a medical oncologist—Elizabeth Comen, MD, co-director of the Mignone Women's Health Collective at NYU Langone and author of All in Her Head—as well as two patients who have lived through the experience. Colin Egglesfield is an actor who was diagnosed with testicular cancer at 32 years old. Suleika Jaouad is the best-selling author of The Book of Alchemy and Between Two Kingdoms, who was diagnosed with leukemia at 22. Both Sulekia and Colin were diagnosed at a young age, which is unfortunately becoming more common, per Dr. Comen, who says rates of breast and colon cancer are particularly on the rise. Her tip for listeners: Think about what you can do to reduce your risk—limiting alcohol, eating a well-balanced diet, exercising, not smoking—not the things out of your control. And don't be afraid to go to the doctor if something feels off—but also when everything feels right. People should be talking to their doctors about their personal risk for cancer based on their family history, which may warrant additional or earlier screening. Here's a look at some of the themes covered in the episode: Pay attention to early warning signs Colin was six months into a three-year contract for the show All My Children when he noticed his left testicle had swollen. At first, he wrote it off, but ultimately went to see a urologist for a blood test and PET scan. Three days later, he was having surgery for advanced stage testicular cancer. Men may be more likely than women to delay getting a diagnosis—don't be one of them! Be open about what you're going through Colin told his immediate family and a couple close friends, but didn't share the news more broadly or with his colleagues out of fear of losing what he'd worked so hard to achieve. He also says he didn't want that "stigma," and was afraid of what people would say. However, there shouldn't be shame around talking about sexual health issues—for men or women. Face fears head-on Colin thought he beat the cancer, but just a year later, a tumor on his other testicle was discovered—and the fear was more intense this time. In particular, he worried about being able to get an erection or to have sex again. Luckily, hormone replacement therapy helped him in both areas. 'The first time I got my first erection after surgery I was like 'thank god, first hurdle crossed,' he says. Monitor and stay ahead of disease Fast-forward to just one and a half years ago, at 50 years old, cancerous cells were detected in one side of Colin's prostate. Now, many men will get diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their lives, Dorment points out. But Colin was told there was a five-year window until the doctors predicted the cancer would metastasize if he didn't get surgery. He had to push aside fears, including of incontinence, to do what he felt was right for himself and for his family. Six months post-op, he has a message for other men facing this same difficult decision: 'Any guy out there worried about having this surgery, I'm glad I had it. I feel relieved and now I don't have to worry about this, and incontinence isn't an issue,' he says. Today, he says things are moving in a positive direction, and he's looking forward to doing more movies and being an advocate for other men facing similar situations. A sexual health education gap Also in this episode, Suleika talks about advocating for herself, learning to live with uncertainty, and shifting from survival mode to quality of life. The sexual health education gap is also discussed. Specifically, Dr. Comen talks about the fact that Colin received sexual health counseling ahead of his surgeries—something that's still much less likely to happen for women. Historically, when a man is diagnosed with prostate cancer, doctors will talk to him about erectile dysfunction before his surgery, but most academic centers do not have dedicated sexual health specialists for women, Dr. Comen says. 'We're two times more likely to ask men about sexual side effects from targeted cancer therapy than we are to ask women.' Fortunately, support for women's sexual health during cancer treatments is changing, Dr. Comen says. And ultimately, the episode ends on a hopeful note that positive change more broadly is also on the horizon, something the doctors at NYU Langone are on the forefront of. 'What we've wanted for so long is really personalized care and we're actually moving towards that,' she says. 'I'm really thrilled about the progress we're making in that space.' You Might Also Like The Best Hair Growth Shampoos for Men to Buy Now 25 Vegetables That Are Surprising Sources of Protein
New York Times
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Journaling Through Life's Plot Twists With Suleika Jaouad
SULEIKA: Lots of people buy a journal — CAIRA: Yeah. SULEIKA: — fill out the first couple of pages, leave the rest blank — CAIRA: Guilty as charged. SULEIKA: — then buy another journal, because that one's ruined. CAIRA: It's the aesthetic. SULEIKA: And it contains the evidence of your failure to commit. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . This episode is called: 'Journaling Through Life's Plot Twists.' ROSIE: Hi, guys. CAIRA: Hey there. CHRISTINE: Hi. ROSIE: So we're doing something a little different today. CHRISTINE: I've worked here a long time, and we have a lot of coverage on the site that is really supportive of a creative practice. So we have reviews for musical instruments, for things that can help you become a better cook, art supplies. You obviously don't need to buy gear or new things to be creative — anyone can be creative. Watch kids: They'll play around with sticks out in the mud, and they're very creative. But I do think that if you are approaching a creative practice, and you really get into it, having the right tools can … it's the right tool for the right job, right? So I think there are some real benefits to having that. ROSIE: So whether you find joy in making elaborate meals or working on a novel, playing music, we're going to talk about strategy for unlocking creativity today. And our guest is Suleika Jaouad. She's an artist, she's a journalist, she's an author. She writes the Substack called The Isolation Journals, and her most recent book is called The Book of Alchemy , and it explores how journaling can help unlock your creative potential. This is going to be a really, really special conversation. CAIRA: Oh, yeah. And if you're a New York Times reader, you might recognize Suleika from the column she used to write. It was a little over a decade ago, it was called Life Interrupted, which basically documented her experience with cancer in her early 20s. She also wrote a New York Times Bestseller about this experience, called Between Two Kingdoms. ROSIE: We're going to take a quick break, and on the other side, the two of you will talk with Suleika about how journaling can unlock creativity. And a little later you'll talk with Wirecutter writer Arriana Vasquez about some unexpected journaling tools. And I'll catch up with you at the back! CAIRA: Welcome back. With us now is Suleika Jaouad. She writes the popular Substack The Isolation Journals, and her most recent book is called The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life. Today we're digging into how journaling can really help you become more creative. CHRISTINE: Suleika, welcome to the show. SULEIKA: Thanks for having me on. CHRISTINE: We are so pumped to have you here. For listeners who aren't familiar with your story, can you tell us a little bit about how you started journaling as a daily practice? SULEIKA: So I have been journaling from the time I was old enough to hold a pen. As the kid of two immigrants, who showed up on the first day of kindergarten not speaking a word of English, I felt a palpable sense of being a misfit. What was so appealing about the journal, as a kid, is that it was a space where I could fully show up as I was. It wasn't beautiful writing, it wasn't even grammatical writing, it was a place to put all of the thoughts and feelings swirling around in my head that I felt I couldn't really share out loud. And so the journal, for me, really felt like a refuge. But it wasn't until I got sick at 22 and was diagnosed with leukemia that the journal really became a kind of lifeline. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that journaling saved my life. It was a container where I could write through whatever was happening and use it in whatever way I wanted, as a kind of reporter's notebook on some days, where I'd record overheard gossip between the nurses. A place where I could vent, a place where I could talk about the things that I couldn't say out loud, my fears around my illness and my prognosis. Emotions that felt somehow unsavory, like envy in watching my friends on Instagram traveling and starting their jobs and going to parties, and all the other big and small milestones of young adulthood, at a time where I felt profoundly stuck. CAIRA: It's just really interesting, because usually when people hear 'journaling,' they think it's childish. They think of the little notebook with the lock and the little hearts dotting the I's. The way that you mentioned in your book, like, there's scientific research that shows that journaling can have a real impact on mental health, and the benefit of it. So can you just kind of talk a little bit about that? SULEIKA: Yeah, the history of journaling is a fascinating one. People have been looking to the journal since the beginning of time, to record historical events, to record personal events. And there is evidence that shows the benefits of journaling, everything from reducing anxiety and stress to even improving your immune system. But I know anecdotally, both in the context of my own life and a Substack I write, called The Isolation Journals, the very real and, dare I say, transformational impacts of the journal on one's life. CAIRA: And that's why your Substack is so popular, is because people really felt a connection to you and what you were doing, right? SULEIKA: Yeah. I started it in the early days of the pandemic, and the idea was to share this approach to journaling that I had cultivated when I was sick, in the form of a 100-day project, one journal entry a day with a short passage and prompt for inspiration, with a larger community. Because so much of what we were struggling with in those early days of lockdown felt familiar to me as someone who'd had to be in medical isolation, who couldn't leave my house. And to my great surprise, by the end of that first month, we had over a hundred thousand people from all around the world — CAIRA: Wow. SULEIKA: — of all ages, not only journaling individually but also sharing those journal entries with one another. And what was so interesting about that project was that journaling didn't always look the way my journaling did. I am someone who keeps a kind of traditional journal — or has, for much of my life — a notebook and a pen. But one of the very first women we heard from during the early days of that project was a mother from Minnesota who'd lost her 13-year-old daughter. And she decided that for her 100-day journaling project, she was going to use her daughter's old art supplies and make a visual journal entry every day of a memory with her daughter. And it became a kind of grief journal for her. And what she said that moved me so much was that it was the first time that alongside the immense, indescribable pain of losing your child, she, for the first time, was also able to access the joy of remembering her, of being able to commune with her in this kind of creative way. CHRISTINE: That is so beautiful. The Isolation Journals, this a 100-day project at the beginning of the pandemic, this is sort of the genesis of your new book. For listeners who maybe aren't familiar with the book, it is filled with these awesome essays from some very, very famous writers. You've got people like Gloria Steinem, George Saunders, you have Salman Rushdie. But you also have people that are not famous who have contributed essays to this book, and then there are also writing prompts. So can you tell us a little bit about how the book developed from that project? SULEIKA: Despite being a person who is primed to enjoy journaling, I think, like a lot of people who've attempted to journal, there are moments where I either fall off because I'm tired of repeating the same old things — CHRISTINE: Yeah. SULEIKA: — and I feel like I'm stuck in my life, and therefore I get stuck in my journal entries. Or other times where I don't journal, and it's usually when I need to journal most, and that's because there's something that feels too tender to look at, it's a little too hot to touch. And so I've tried every kind of journaling over the years. But what I arrived at, with The Isolation Journals, was this notion of being prompted. And I'm not someone who typically — if someone had instructed me to write to a prompt — thought I would've enjoyed that. It would've probably felt like homework to me and a little too directive. But the experience of reading a short essay, of reading a prompt, has a kind of kaleidoscopic effect of sort of twisting the chamber, and the light falls differently. And sometimes I love the prompt, and it immediately sparks an idea. Sometimes I hate the prompt, and that's interesting in and of itself, and I write about that. Sometimes I ignore the prompt altogether, but there's one sentence I read in the essay that moves me. And so The Isolation Journals has continued, it's now a weekly newsletter. But in the course of running The Isolation Journals, I've gotten the privilege of gathering these incredible essays and prompts from the most creative people I know. And when I say 'creative,' I say that very broadly, because yes, there are the George Saunders, et cetera, of the world, but many of the contributors in this book are not people who you would typically think of as creative. Our youngest contributor was 6 years old at the time, two-time brain cancer survivor, named Lou Sullivan. We have a man who writes an essay and prompt who's days away from execution in solitary — CAIRA: Oh wow. SULEIKA: — confinement in Texas. We have a beautiful prompt from a young mother who is about to become widowed, whose husband is sick, and is anticipating a new beginning. It's such a wide range of people who, to me, embody that spirit of creative alchemy. CHRISTINE: I want to talk a little bit about something that you talk about in this new book, how the act of journaling has this ability to heal creative wounds. Can you talk a little bit about that and maybe some specific examples that you've seen, maybe in the people that are involved in The Isolation Journal community, or who've just responded to you personally? SULEIKA: Yeah. So my husband, to me, is Jon, who I met at band camp when I was 13, but now, to the rest of the world, he is Jon Batiste, who — yeah, I'm obviously biased — is a brilliant musician. CHRISTINE: I think there's no dispute that he is a brilliant musician. CAIRA: No, he's a musical genius. SULEIKA: Musical genius and brilliant person, full stop. And I dedicated this book to him, because in some ways I think he was my first teacher in the idea of creative alchemy; he's also one of the contributors in the book. But when I was 22 years old, and I found myself here in New York City, stuck in a hospital room for about two months, Jon, who was an old friend from band camp, learned that I was sick. And he ended up showing up with his entire band, unprompted, unannounced, at my hospital-room door. And right there in my hospital room, he and his band began to play. And as the sound of the tuba and the melodica and the saxophone filtered out into the hallway, patients and doctors and nurses started to poke their heads out and to come around my room in curiosity, and everyone began to clap their hands and to dance and sing. Now, oncology wards are not joyous places. I think it's safe to say they're typically music-less places. But in the place of the beeping IV poles and the wheezing of monitors, Jon transformed what was an incredibly grim and difficult day into the most joyous of second lines. And I think witnessing that led me to start to think about how I might enact my own experiences of creative alchemy. And for me, that's always taken place in the journal. And so I've gotten to witness so many people doing that in their own ways. One of my favorite early community members of The Isolation Journals is a man named Charlie Greenman, who's in his 80s. Had never journaled before, didn't really think it was for him, and has become one of our most ardent active members of the community. And he loves journaling. The way he described it, he said, 'It feels like an adventure, and I have no idea where it's going, but the best thing is, I don't need to know.' CHRISTINE: You're also a really creative person in other ways too — you paint, you have other creative practices. Do you find that journaling kind of speaks to those other creative practices? Like, I find, for instance, if I meditate in the morning, I tend to have a better, calmer day, and everything seems to connect a little bit better. Do you have a similar experience when you journal? SULEIKA: Absolutely. I feel like I am made of chaos until I put pen to paper. I'm someone who doesn't quite know what I'm feeling or how to even begin to untangle my thoughts until I start to write them down. And one thing that's very important for me is that the journal be a place where you abandon any sense of judgment. It can be sentence fragments, it can be lists, it can be doodles — there's no right or wrong way to do it. I rarely go back and read my journals, because I don't want to ignite that pilot light of self-consciousness. It's really a place where you come as you are; whatever comes out is great. I do it for as long as I want, or for 30 seconds if that's all I have, as long as I do it consistently. And I do think that it has informed every aspect of both my creative work and my life. I, three years ago, found out that the leukemia was back, I was going to have another bone marrow transplant, went into the hospital, and I was like, 'I've got this.' I brought, like, six journals. I had my medical journal, my reporter's notebook, I had my personal journal. And my vision was temporarily impaired for a couple of weeks, and I wasn't able to journal. And so I started keeping a visual journal. I'm not a trained painter, and started using watercolor, and I have become obsessed with painting. It is a whole new creative language that I certainly would never have stumbled across without the act of keeping a journal. And I think that, to me, is what keeps it endlessly enlivening and interesting, is the ability to write without any goal or outcome in mind, where you get to follow the thread of your intuition without knowing where it's going to lead. And that kind of stream of consciousness, to me, is so important in getting to the truth beneath the truth beneath the truth, and just taking a small moment to take a deep breath, to sit down, and to write my way back to myself. CAIRA: I feel like a lot of people will read your book, or hear your story, listen to this podcast, and feel inspired, and then there's so much freedom, that you can do whatever you want, and that's awesome. But sometimes it could also be a little bit daunting, just the idea of … you could do anything you want, but where do you start, and how do you keep going? Do you have any advice to help people who want to start this, continue doing it consistently? SULEIKA: Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the hardest things, because lots of people buy a journal — CAIRA: Yeah. SULEIKA: — fill out the first couple of pages, leave the rest blank — CAIRA: Guilty as charged. SULEIKA: — then buy another journal, because that one's ruined. CAIRA: It's the aesthetic. SULEIKA: And it contains the evidence of your failure to commit. So for me, what's always helped is some kind of accountability. I love the 100-day container, and the book is designed as a kind of 100-day project, with a hundred essays and prompts. But maybe start with 10, maybe start with 30. I love doing it in community. I have … I guess it's unofficially called a sort of journaling club, where we read an essay prompt, write for 10 minutes, and we don't share the journal entry, because that's private, but we talk about what came up. CHRISTINE: Do you do this together in the same room? Are you doing this virtually? Does it — SULEIKA: I've done it both ways. CHRISTINE: Okay. CAIRA: Yeah. CHRISTINE: Okay, but at the same time, together, in community? SULEIKA: Yeah. CHRISTINE: Okay. SULEIKA: With a group of people, it could be friends, it could be … I actually know someone who's doing it with her daughter, it could be a two-person journaling club. I find that having some set number of days that you aim for, to begin with … because the consistency, to me, is important. It's a little bit like going to the gym, you don't really reap the rewards of it unless you keep doing it. CAIRA: Yeah. SULEIKA: And something to prompt you, because I don't know about you, but the blank page immediately summons all of the questions. Certainly the big question of 'What is it that I possibly have to say?' And so just having a little directive that might push your train of thought, in an unexpected or new direction, I find to be useful. And whatever comes up is great. If it's your grocery list, wonderful. If it is a petty grievance, fabulous, you're no longer carrying that around in your body, you've externalized it onto the page. CAIRA: Yeah. SULEIKA: Yeah. CHRISTINE: We're going to take a quick break, and when we're back, we're going to talk brass tacks of journaling. Suleika, we're going to talk about your favorite tools for journaling. And then after that, we're going to bring on one of our colleagues, Arriana Vasquez, to talk about some unexpected digital tools that we've reviewed and recommended. We'll be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. We're here with Suleika Jaouad, author of The Book of Alchemy. So earlier we talked about how adopting a journaling practice can help you unlock creativity, and now, we're going to get into some of the practical details. So, Suleika, because this is a Wirecutter podcast, of course we have to discuss your gear. So you are a pen-and-paper person, right? You have to handwrite. SULEIKA: I am a pen-and-paper person. You do whatever works for you. I personally can't resist the Backspace bar. CAIRA: Oh, me too. SULEIKA: And so in order to not self-edit, the inkier the pen, the better. I actually use a fountain pen, a Lamy pen. CAIRA: Oh, wow. SULEIKA: And I like the feel of palm on paper, and I'm less likely to scratch things out or to start over. CHRISTINE: Do you have a favorite paper that you use? 'Cause if you're using a fountain pen, what's your paper of choice? SULEIKA: Yeah. Okay, so — CAIRA: Is it, like, an old, wrinkled scribe? SULEIKA: Yeah, exactly. I make the paper by hand. CAIRA: Yeah, you make it by hand, you mash it up. SULEIKA: I have a collection of journals. I love a drugstore composition book from a country, if I'm visiting a new country. I have my Leuchtturms and my Moleskines. I'm really not precious about the actual journal itself. Right now I'm using a Leuchtturm, and I like the Leuchtturm a lot. CHRISTINE: They have really nice, soft paper. I mean, the texture of the paper is very lovely. SULEIKA: Yes, they have, like, this acid-free, ink-bleed-proof paper, which is especially important with the fountain pen. CAIRA: Sounds like it. SULEIKA: Yeah. CHRISTINE: Yeah. CAIRA: Well, I actually want to get back into your ritual of journaling. Do you always do it at a specific time? Are you outside? What does your physical setup look like? SULEIKA: Yeah. CAIRA: How do you get into your journaling habit? SULEIKA: So we talked about accountability as something that I find to be important in order to do it consistently, but I also think folding it into a nonnegotiable part of your routine is important. So for me, perhaps the only nonnegotiable part of my routine is my first cup of coffee. Nothing else is going to happen until I have that first cup of coffee, and so that's when I journal. CAIRA: Okay. SULEIKA: Different times, I would journal in the five minutes it took for my French press to steep, and then I would keep journaling, but it's usually around my first cup of coffee. My other nonnegotiable part of my routine is walking my dogs, so I'll do it when I get back from walking my dogs. But I think the most common thing I hear is, 'I don't have time to journal.' And to anyone who says that, I would suggest that they look on their phone at the number of hours they've spent on their social media app of choice. What I would say is that you make time for the things that you value — CAIRA: Yeah. SULEIKA: — and that are important to you. And so one thing I really try to do for myself is to lower the barrier to entry. I don't adhere to a page count or, certainly, a word count. My feeling is, if I show up, even if it's a couple of sentences, that is more than enough. I'm much more interested in the consistency of it. CAIRA: Yeah. SULEIKA: Because in the act of being consistent, especially if I'm not making it too complicated, I'm more likely to return, and I'm more likely to reap the benefits of it in a way that does make me prioritize it. CHRISTINE: Is there anything else that you use in your creative practice, beyond pen and paper, that helps kind of support your journaling practice? SULEIKA: I love ritual, and I'm always designing and redesigning little rituals for myself. I love a candle, or some incense or something. Typically when I journal, it's curled up on the couch with my coffee, with my dogs and some kind of a candle or something. CHRISTINE: Do you have a favorite candle right now? SULEIKA: Oh my gosh, you're asking my … I am obsessed with Le Labo's Santal — I'm going to get it wrong — Santal 26. It's woodsy, but it's not overpowering. It kind of reminds me of an incense that my parents burned, I think that's why I like it so much. And it lingers for a long time, so I love that candle. Other things that I use that kind of get me into a creative mode is watercolor. I've been keeping a visual journal in addition to a written journal, and that can be a doodle, it can be one swatch of a color. I've been really excited to sort of expand my earlier definitions of journaling and to see how that kind of shifts the way that I think and the way that I then move through my day. The other thing I have on my desk are stacks of the journals of some of my very favorite writers. CAIRA: Oh. SULEIKA: And I find that to be really inspiring. CAIRA: That's awesome. Do you have any particular ones that you're loving right now? SULEIKA: Well, I'll tell you the ones that I always have on my desk. Susan Sontag's — CAIRA: Oh yeah. SULEIKA: — journals, Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals. I love Frida Kahlo's journals, because they're a kind of hybrid of writing and painting. Sylvia Plath, because she's actually so delightfully funny and wicked. Yeah, I think I'm just fascinated by how people write and think when they're not doing it with an audience in mind. CAIRA: Thank you so much for joining us, Suleika. SULEIKA: Thank you. CAIRA: So now Arriana Vasquez is in the studio with us, and she's Wirecutter's home-office writer. And she's here to chat about journaling tools that Wirecutter recommends. Arriana has tried a lot of these different tools, so we're really excited to chat with her. Arriana, welcome. ARRIANA: Hey, thank you. This is exciting. CAIRA: We actually just talked with Suleika about journaling with a paper and pen, but Wirecutter also recommends some digital tools, right, for journaling specifically, like digital notebooks. What even is this? ARRIANA: Imagine your favorite e-reader, like a Kindle or a Kobo, that's the size of a sheet of paper — you can write on them, you can draw notes, you can do sketching. It's a different feeling than writing on a glass like a tablet; there's a little bit more friction with the pen on the surface. It's not an LED screen, it is an E Ink screen, so you get that feeling more of like a pencil or a pen on paper. CHRISTINE: And is a device like this storing your entries in the cloud? Are you able to access them from other devices? ARRIANA: Yeah, all of our picks have a folder structure inside, where you can organize all your notes into different things; you can have a journal and a to-do list and various things. And then, sometimes with a subscription, sometimes buying the device, depending on the model you get, you can have all of that stuff uploaded to a drive, a cloud, your Google Drive, or their personal online servers, whatever you need. CHRISTINE: Okay, great. So, Arriana, why choose an E Ink type of notebook over traditional pen and paper? Why do you like to journal on E Ink? ARRIANA: It's best illustrated. So imagine you're a notebook-and-pen person, right? You've got a notebook dedicated for your bujo or your daily planning. You've got a notebook dedicated for, maybe, a small art book, if you do some kind of sketching, and some tools. You've got a notebook dedicated to your journal, maybe. I know some people who carry those things and also individual index cards, so they can quickly jot down a note and then later transplant that into whatever notebook it goes into. That takes up a lot of space and can be kind of heavy. And then on top of that, there's also your phone, your tablet or your laptop, whatever other digital devices you're carrying to exist in our digital age. On the other hand, you've got one very slender, lightweight device that has folders for your journaling, your to-dos, your big projects and plans. All of our picks have an app of sorts that has an art space, so you can do your pencil sketches or your arts or do your doodles. While digital notebooks are not indestructible, if your notes are backed up to the cloud and your water bottle opens in your bag, you haven't lost all of that the same way that you would if your notebook got wet and you didn't get a chance to wipe everything down really quickly. CHRISTINE: Right. You brought one into the studio, can we see? ARRIANA: Yeah, this is the reMarkable, which is a pick. CAIRA: I like that name. ARRIANA: Yeah, it is pretty cool. CHRISTINE: Can you describe what this looks like? ARRIANA: Imagine a really thin composition notebook, like a notebook where most of the pages have been ripped out, and it's maybe only a quarter of an inch thick. It's got a lock and an unlock, and then when you unlock it, it's just a really simple user interface with all the notebooks that you have. You can hit a plus sign and open a quick sheet, for example, and that's essentially like a little art space. So if you wanted to draw on it or — CAIRA: It's got a pen attached to it the way that an iPad would, too. ARRIANA: Yeah. CAIRA: Okay, I am actually really surprised at the way that this feels to write on. I'm also a pen-and-paper person, because I am very tactile. This does feel like it's kind of like writing on a whiteboard with a marker. CHRISTINE: Right. CAIRA: I'm shocked. CHRISTINE: Let me try it. CAIRA: It doesn't feel … like, I've tried using my iPad to write notes, because I like the idea of having some place that is easy to organize my stuff, but I always ended up not doing it, because I just didn't like the way that the stylus was gliding over the iPad screen. ARRIANA: Yeah, I've tried a bunch of different solutions for that for the iPad. There are companies that sell alternative pen tips that are a slightly more coarse silicone, to try to imitate the drag of a pen on glass. There are also screen films that you can add here. It's really hard to replicate pen and paper, but I think this — CHRISTINE: This does a pretty good job. ARRIANA: It does a really good job. CAIRA: It does. CHRISTINE: I like the way it feels. So if I, say, wrote a journal entry on this, will it somehow magically turn my handwriting into type? ARRIANA: It does have writing-to-text recognition. CHRISTINE: Okay. So let's say I was working on a novel — ARRIANA: Yeah. CHRISTINE: — and I was at the beach, writing my novel. I could write it all in hand, and then I wouldn't have to go back and type it up. It would just go to the magical — ARRIANA: Yeah. CHRISTINE: — place that would — ARRIANA: I mean, I've tried it a few times, and it's pretty good. Like, my handwriting can put any doctor's handwriting to shame, it's real chicken scratch. But it was able to get most of my barely passable letters into actual words that I could read. Which is nice, 'cause my handwriting is so bad when I'm journaling, especially if I'm moving fast and in a flow and getting things out, it gets really bad. CAIRA: Yeah. ARRIANA: And then I'll go back three days later, and I'm like, 'I can't tell what the heck I wrote.' CHRISTINE: Right. CAIRA: Yeah. ARRIANA: So it's a very handy tool. CHRISTINE: Can you tell us what our picks are? ARRIANA: Yeah, so the primary pick is by Supernote, it's the Nomad, and it's smaller, more portable. It's a little bit different writing experience than this is, in that you kind of have to press through, like old, old tablets, but it's fantastic. And if you're someone who really likes a premium pen, the pens that you can get from Supernote are, like, weighty, and they feel like a premium pen. This is another one of our picks, this is the reMarkable 2. And then the other pick we have is by a different brand, it's for people who don't want to necessarily use the Amazon Kindle app, it's by Kobo. And it's similar to this one that we have here, the reMarkable; it also gives you the opportunity to use other third-party stuff if that's what you prefer, if you don't want to use Kindle. CHRISTINE: Okay, great. And what is the ballpark price of these notepads? ARRIANA: As far as prices go, this unit here, the reMarkable 2, is $400. And they range in price from $300 to $400, and they go up from there if you want more features like color, for example. So the prices are still kind of high, definitely way more than a notebook and a pen would be, but you're going to have this for a lot longer. CAIRA: Thank you, Ari. Thanks for coming. CHRISTINE: That was so great. ARRIANA: This was cool. CHRISTINE: I'm very intrigued by these. ROSIE: I'm back. CAIRA: Hello. ROSIE: Hey, I want to hear how it went. CAIRA: It was great. ROSIE: What did you all learn about creativity? CHRISTINE: Oh, so good. Well, I was just really into this conversation with Suleika. I loved so much of her advice. And I am going to take something that she talked about in this episode: If you're trying to establish a habit, rolling it into a nonnegotiable sort of event that you do in your day anyway. So for her, it was having a cup of coffee; that's when she journals. I feel like that's a really good time for me to pair some writing, as well. And then it was also great to talk with Arriana. I'm really into these digital notepads. I think I want one. They're kind of expensive. CAIRA: I'd be interested if they cut the price in half. ROSIE: Yeah, it's just something I should wait for a sale. CHRISTINE: Maybe, maybe. They're three to four hundred dollars, so they're not cheap, but I really like that you could also use some of them as an e-reader, so I could find that — CAIRA: That's really cool. CHRISTINE: Yeah, I could find that as a way to justify it. CAIRA: It's like a tool for the future. It's really so futuristic. It's pretty awesome. CHRISTINE: Yeah, it's awesome. ROSIE: What about you? How was the conversation for you? CAIRA: I feel inspired. I really liked Suleika's encouragement to not set a solid goal for yourself. Just kind of go with it, whatever makes it easiest for you so that it's a very low barrier of entry, so you just, like, roll journaling into your daily routine. And I think I'm also gonna get a fountain pen. CHRISTINE: Oh yeah. ROSIE: A fountain pen? CAIRA: Yes, she literally writes with a fountain pen. ROSIE: Like Shakespeare did? CAIRA: Yes, exactly. CHRISTINE: I mean, I think he had a quill. No? ROSIE: Oh, forgive me. CAIRA: Old-age fountain pen, isn't it? But yeah, I also like writing on pen and paper, and I really like a super-inky pen, so I'm gonna try it. ROSIE: That's awesome. I love that. If you want to find out more about Suleika, her book is called The Book of Alchemy. We'll link it here in the show notes. And you can also check out Arriana's recommendations for digital notebooks. That's it for us for this week. Talk to you soon. Bye! The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Rowan Niemisto. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. ROSIE: And I'm Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening. CAIRA: Grrrreat. I started saying that now. It just rolled off the tongue. ROSIE: Yeah, it does. CAIRA: Rosie always goes 'grrrreat' when we're done.
New York Times
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Journaling Her Way Through Cancer for the Third Time
Suleika Jaouad didn't intend to become a proselytizer for journaling, despite having the utmost respect for her own ragtag collection of Moleskines and marbled composition notebooks. 'I don't think it's melodramatic to say that journaling has saved my life,' Jaouad said. 'But when I hear someone use the words 'creative practice,' some part of me is inclined to roll my eyes.' Before we explore her change of heart, a few notes on terminology: 'Journaling' is one of those squishy newfangled verbs like 'friending' or 'tantruming.' Just go with it. Also, a journal is not to be confused with a diary. The latter is a linear accounting of daily life, often bedecked with a lock that's no match for a sibling with a bobby pin. The former invites tangents, musings and half-baked ideas. Think of it as a sketchbook for language (although drawings are welcome too). In short, a diary is a fenced yard; a journal is an open field. Jaouad, 36, has cavorted in that field for as long as she can remember. She writes every day. She isn't precious about it. She journals the way a runner stretches or a musician practices scales. She's filled hundreds of notebooks, now piled in trunks and closets, on the floor of her home office in Brooklyn and in bins behind the couch where she sat during an interview, cradling her dog, Lentil, atop a fringed pillow. But this writing ritual took on new significance in late 2021 when, after a near decade-long remission, Jaouad had a recurrence of leukemia. Her first round was well documented: She'd written about it in Life, Interrupted, a column for The New York Times; in 'Between Two Kingdoms,' a best-selling memoir; and for The Isolation Journals, her Substack community which started as a 100-day journaling challenge. The cancer returned as Jaouad and her husband, Jon Batiste, whom she met as a teenager at band camp, were filming a documentary about a classical work he was composing. The movie, 'American Symphony,' ended up following Jaouad's treatment on a parallel track. Her private grappling happened in her journals. They inspired 'The Book of Alchemy,' coming out on April 22. When Jaouad arrived at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2022 for her second bone marrow transplant, she brought a gray felt diaper caddy stuffed with reading material, art supplies and a quartet of notebooks. One was for medical jottings and notes on doctors' visits. Another was for character sketches and overheard conversations. The third contained Jaouad's half of a shared journal with Batiste, in which they exchange letters when they're apart. Finally, there was Jaouad's personal journal, where she planned to write what she couldn't say aloud. 'I was like, I've got this,' Jaouad said. 'I've done this before. I'm going to do the exact same thing that worked for me the first time around.' Then her vision blurred, thanks to a cocktail of medications. She started having hallucinations and nightmares. Instead of reaching for a pen, she grabbed a paintbrush. 'The only way I knew how to navigate that immense upheaval and uncertainty was to try to collaborate with it,' Jaouad said. 'I decided to keep a visual journal.' She pointed to the wall behind her couch where a procession of watercolors climbed, two by two, all the way to the ceiling: 'These were the originals, these paintings.' In one, a mermaid dangles from the mouth of a heron. In another, a pregnant figure stares down a snake. Several images feature IV lines. Taken as a whole, the images look like framed calendar pages from a year in hell. They're also eerily, ethereally beautiful. 'Not only did it defang the fear, it made the nightmares interesting,' Jaouad said of her watercolor jag. 'I became excited for my nightmares. They were fodder. They were creative grist.' Eventually Jaouad started writing again, but she held onto the paintings, and to the solace that came from those outpourings. She began to reconsider a book idea she'd dismissed as 'unserious and lacking in rigor.' To be clear, 'The Book of Alchemy' isn't a how-to manual, a self help book or a guided journal. (The only tense moment of our interview came when I asked Jaouad if she'd considered a workbook approach. She had not.) Her 336-page, pleasingly chunky tome is divided into 10 chapters, covering subjects such as memory, fear, seeing and love. Jaouad sets up each one with an autobiographical essay, followed by a series of shorter pieces from a hundred different contributors, complete with creative prompts. Some are simple: Describe a day in the future. Write about a public figure you've been fascinated with from afar. Write about your relationship to your hands. Others are more complicated: George Saunders's four-step instructions for writing a short story call to mind a recipe where you realize too late that you were supposed to make creme fraiche from scratch. Jaouad's table of contents includes more stars than the credits of 'Love Actually,' although hers are of the literary variety, including Ann Patchett, Salman Rushdie, Elizabeth Gilbert, Lena Dunham and John Green. Then there are unexpected contributors: Photographers and a philanthropist, a hospice volunteer and a Lutheran pastor, an Olympic speedskater and the founder of a surf school. A milliner. A prisoner. In some ways, theirs are the most powerful pieces in the collection, since they come from people who aren't writers with a capital W. These essays prove Jaouad's point: that journaling is an equal opportunity form of expression, regardless of experience or age. 'The youngest contributor, at the time, was 6,' Jaouad said. 'The oldest is in their 90s.' (That's Gloria Steinem.) Jaouad didn't approach Green — whose novel, 'The Fault in Our Stars,' was a lifeline after her first diagnosis — until two days before her deadline. Green understood the assignment. He delivered a meditation on things unseen yet somehow envisioned — a dodo bird, the root system of a tree, the inner workings of the human heart. His prompt: 'Write about what you've never seen until you feel like you can, in some way, see it.' 'Writing is my way of collecting and organizing my thoughts,' Green said in an interview. 'What did Mr. Rogers say? 'Anything mentionable is manageable'? Journaling helps me make things mentionable.' A particularly moving essay comes from Jennifer Leventhal, a caregiver adviser for Memorial Sloan Kettering. In March 2020, her 25-year-old daughter Danielle, who was in treatment for her third recurrence of a rare sarcoma, asked her mother to join her in the daily creativity project from The Isolation Journals. 'I agreed,' Leventhal said in an interview. 'I agreed to a lot of things that were outside my comfort zone. Anything that would distract her, or bring comfort or pleasure, was a yes for me.' When Jaouad prompted followers to to compose a letter to a stranger, Leventhal immediately thought of a mother she'd seen in a hospital waiting room with her young adult son. Writing to this fellow caregiver, she said, helped her 'shift toward acceptance and, later, gratitude for all the ways that it wasn't so hard for us.' Danielle died a year later, leaving her own journals to her mother. 'The Book of Alchemy' can be read linearly, as a narrative, or dipped into for inspiration. Some parts read like a memoir; others, like the syllabus for a class with a well-deserved waiting list. With its something-for-everyone approach, Jaouad's book is bound to bring new writers to the fold; after all, you don't need to be a person of words to journal any more than you need to be Katie Ledecky to practice freestyle. 'My hope is that it reaches people who are in between, who are in transition,' Jaouad said, 'whether that's the transition from graduation to the 'real world,' whether it's someone like me who's grappling with illness or some other heartbreak that's upended their life.' In August, Jaouad learned that her cancer is back. 'When you learn for the third time that you have leukemia, that's the kind of uncertainty that can make it hard to get out of bed in the morning,' she said. But 'the goal is not to find an answer, to reach some distant point on the horizon. It's to continuously experiment and explore and reflect and refine what emerges.' That's what her journals are for.
