Suleika Jaouad

I felt so destabilized.

I felt also a sense of shame.

My hair was falling out in clumps.

I was unrecognizable.

And I was also in this mode of comparing what was happening to my life to the lives of my classmates and friends.

And when John learned I was sick through my friend Michelle, the girl I was on the subway with.

Exactly.

He immediately took his whole band.

They were at rehearsal and showed up.

unannounced at the hospital and right there in my hospital room they began to play and as the sound of John's melodica and Joe's tambourine and Abanda's tuba and Eddie's sax started to float out into the cancer unit all these patients and doctors and nurses kind of came out into the hallway and suddenly everyone began to clap their hands and sing and dance and

It was such an extraordinary moment because I remember thinking to myself, this has probably been my hardest day yet.

And it somehow has gone from my hardest day to one of my most joyous days I've ever had.

And that to me is the power of creativity.

It doesn't necessarily cure, but it can heal.

It can shift the vibration.

It can change the entire energy.

And it's available to all of us all of the time.

And, you know, prior to that day,

I felt like my life was over before it had really begun.

I'd had these dreams of becoming a war correspondent, but there was no way I was going to be able to do that when I couldn't even get out of my hospital bed.