Suleika Jaouad

And so I decided to return to the thing I'd done from the time I was a child and to journal every day.

And I made a couple of rules for myself.

One was that I couldn't go back and read it because I didn't want to be concerned about how good the writing was and that it didn't matter how long or short my entry was.

And often it was one sentence and...

Occasionally it was one word, frequently the F word.

Exactly.

But something interesting began to happen in the process of keeping that journal.

And I started to use it almost as a reporter's pad.

And rather than feeling mired and helpless in this situation, I began to observe the

the hospital world around me.

I started recording these overheard snippets of conversation by the nurse's station.

I started writing about the new friends and fellow patients that I was encountering and a young man a couple doors down from me who was trying to incite a hospital food strike because our meals kept arriving still frozen from the cafeteria.

And I began to realize that

that while this wasn't necessarily the circumstance I would have chosen for myself, there was a whole world of humanity unfolding right there that I could write about.

And little by little, in keeping that journal, although I had no expectations of doing anything with it, I began to find a voice.

And I think for me, it was my first indication that,

That while I would never have chosen this new reality for myself, and while I had to cede a lot of control to my doctors, to my caregivers, to the ever-changing treatment protocols to my body, ultimately, I did have some agency.

And that was that I could make meaning of this experience on my own terms, in my own words.

Absolutely.

And I do think, you know, we often feel like we need to check certain boxes or climb certain rungs in order to give ourselves permission to do something that we actually want to do.