Suleika Jaouad

And I remember saying to him, because I kept waiting for him to make a move and he wasn't making a move, I said, do I make you nervous?

Uh-huh.

And he just couldn't tell me how he felt.

He couldn't do it.

And I said, call me when you're feeling less nervous.

And he called me later that night, and he was feeling less nervous.

And from that point forward, basically, we've been together.

But this is really just to give an ode to awkward men.

Yeah.

There's something...

Especially, you know, I was 26 when we started dating.

I'm like, no more slick men.

No more smooth operators.

Like, give me the awkward man who doesn't have practice lines and moves, who is showing up in all of his nervousness and glorious awkwardness and good intention.

And it's such a gift to...

have known each other through all these different phases because we get to remind each other of who we were and what the through line is.

So the book of alchemy is dedicated to John, because in a sense, I think he was my first teacher and how we can enact our own alchemy.

And

The summer that I first got diagnosed, I spent about two months in the hospital uptown.

I hadn't told almost anyone about what was happening.