Suleika Jaouad

And so what she did, instead of waiting until she was better, was she began painting the self-portraits from bed and the portraits of

what it meant to live in a broken body and a pain body.

And she engaged with her reality.

And so that was, you know, very inspiring to me.

And it made me realize maybe there is a way for me to creatively engage with my circumstances.

without being Pollyannish about it, without putting pressure on myself to find some kind of silver lining or some sort of wisdom.

But maybe I can just explore this.

You know, the image of a kaleidoscope is what comes to mind where you sort of twist the cylinder and you see things in a different light.

And so that's what I started to do in the journals.

But to your other point about waiting for permission, in the lead up to my

bone marrow transplant, I realized I had about two months before I entered the hospital and I knew my chances of surviving that procedure were not very high.

And I began to rethink this idea of being a journalist.

And of course,

There was no way for me to be a word correspondent or to travel to some place.

I couldn't even leave my hospital room.

But I began to think about what I could report on from the front lines of my hospital bed.

And just that thought experiment alone opened up my entire world.

Absolutely.

And you spend enough time in hospitals and you very quickly learn that you are not the only one suffering, even though it can feel that way.

Even though it can feel impossible to think that anything else is happening in the world when you're