2021-02-11
1 小时 5 分钟We all tend to step into our early lives with certain hopes and dreams and expectations about what we will be able to do.
And then we put the work behind them.
And when something happens that stops us that is utterly out of our control, it can be terrifying and change the course of our lives.
So my guest today, Suleika Jawad, was born in New York City.
Her dad was tunisian, mom's Swiss, and she ended up going to the Juilliard school's pre college program studying double bass.
Really thought music would be her thing for a while, then ended up in Princeton and kind of started to leave behind music.
And she thought she would start and build a career as a war correspondent.
But her plans were cut short when, at 22, she was diagnosed with leukemia.
That led to really a brutal four year stint in and out of the hospital, multiple rounds of chemo, and eventually a bone marrow transplant.
And while in the hospital, she began sharing her experience online kind of as a lifeline.
And that led to a call from the new York Times with an invitation to start writing a column about her experience.
That column became the New York Times column and Emmy award winning video series Life Interrupted, which was written mostly from her hospital room at Sloan Kettering in New York.
She has since written, reported features, essays and commentary for the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, NPR, and so many others.
Suleika has served on Barack Obama's presidential cancer panel, the National Advisory board of the Bone Marrow on Cancer foundation, and the Brooklyn Public Library's Art and Letters committee.
She is also the creator of the Isolation Journals, a community creativity project founded during Covid-19 to help others convert isolation into artistic solitude.
Over 100,000 people from all around the world have joined her.
And in her debut memoir, between two Kingdoms, which is this gorgeously written exploration, she shares so many of the moments, the people, the stories that have led her to this moment in life.
So excited to share this conversation with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
I have to tell you, I finished the book last night and it wrecked me in five ways.