Suleika Jaouad

But to me, where the creative process really comes into sharp relief is when you're thrown into a situation, whether it's an illness or something else, where you feel like

you're having to reimagine who you are, where you're having to rebuild your life in the aftermath of a traumatic incident.

And for me in particular, dealing with leukemias I have for so much of my adult life has required a tremendous amount of creativity.

Using my imagination to

to travel beyond the confines of a hospital room, having to figure out how to communicate with loved ones when the fabric of language can't seem to hold the suffering.

All of that requires creativity.

How does it resonate for you?

And I will say the actual creative process of writing or painting or music has been so central, not just to surviving those moments, but figuring out how to heal and to live.

I'll give you an example that's captured a little bit in American Symphony.

But when I went through a second bone marrow transplant three years ago, I was in the hospital for about a month and it was during a COVID surge.

So the visitor policy was really strict.

I was only allowed to have one visitor a day for a very limited number of hours.

Wow.

And I think far harder than the side effects of chemotherapy and the physical pain was that sense of isolation.

And the creative process for me became a way of not just being in deeper conversation with myself at a time when

when I had no idea who I was anymore, but also of being in deeper conversation with the people around me.

So I started painting during that period for the first time.

I was having these really intense night terrors and medication-induced hallucinations that made me very afraid of my own subconscious.

And I decided to create a visual journal of these weird apparitions

And during that period of time, John and I couldn't see each other for about two weeks because he'd been exposed to COVID.