Hey, quick favor before we head into today's episode.
We are working on new topics, and guests, and show formats, and brands to partner with, and we would so appreciate your input here.
We've put together a short survey, it'll only take a minute or two to complete, and you'd be helping us craft a podcast lineup and partnerships that most resonate with you, your interests, desires, and needs.
You can find a link to the survey at goodlifeproject .com slash survey or just click the link in the Thanks so much. None of the chemo I was doing was working.
My leukemia was becoming more and more aggressive.
It was terrifying and traumatizing.
Within 24 hours, my life completely changed.
Shaleika Dewad is a New York Times bestselling memoirist and visionary creative who has found ways to alchemize interruption and struggle, including recurring bouts of leukemia into a transformative journey of self -discovery and artistic expression.
From her groundbreaking, life -interrupted column, to the creation of the Isolation Journals community and her new book on journaling, the Book of Alchemy, she empowers us to turn life's interruptions into the alchemy of inspiration.
Journaling, to me, felt like, you know, a thing you do for yourself.
It's private. You just saying, let me take the few hours I have every day to feel the way I want to feel.
That experience had meant for me and how I wanted to apply that knowledge going forward and even how I might navigate things differently if I got sick again.
I found out in August that my leukemia is back for a third time.
decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills.
Wait, did I say job title yet?
Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn Ads.
We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign.
Get started at LinkedIn .com slash results.
Terms and conditions apply.
Good Light Project is sponsored by Headspace.
So you know that moment when someone asks, how are you, and you automatically respond good without even thinking about it.
Well, after decades of meditation practice, I have learned the profound difference between saying we're good and truly experiencing that state of well -being.
And that's one of the reasons I'm excited to share Headspace with you.
So what impresses me about Headspace is how they have really thoughtfully crafted content for every level of practice.
Their extensive library includes specialized techniques for specific needs, from performance anxiety to sleep challenges, all grounded in both Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science.
I mean, last night I actually listened to their Midnight Laundrette Sleep cast, and I literally drifted off in just a few minutes.
And this morning I listened to today's Headspace Meditation to really help my mindset settle in.
So feel good and mean it when you say it.
For a limited time, get Headspace free for 60 days.
Go to headspace .com slash goodlife60.
That's H -E -A -D -S -P -A -C -E dot com slash goodlife60.
to unlock all of Headspace free for 60 days.
Headspace .com slash Good Life 60, or just click the link in the show notes.
Good Life Project is sponsored by Wonderful Pistachios.
I am always looking for super yummy snacks that are packed with nutrients, especially protein.
And I've been thinking about how those small daily choices add up to helping you feel your best. That is why I am a longtime fan of Wonderful Pistachios.
Each one ounce serving packs 6 grams of protein.
That's over 10 % of your daily value, making it one of the highest protein nuts out there.
Plus, they bring this perfect combination of protein and fiber and better for you unsaturated fats that help keep me feeling fuller longer.
And what really cooks for me is also how they just kind of fit into any moment.
Whether you're deep in creative work or sharing stories with friends or outside, I often take these in my pack when I'm hiking.
If you're looking just for grab and go ease.
they're no -shells varieties, give you all that nutrient -rich goodness without missing a beat.
And come on, they just taste amazing.
So if you're ready to elevate your snacking, visit wonderfulpistachios .com to learn more.
You have deepened into the world of journaling and shared ideas, process, prompts in a way that has inspired just stunning, stunning, not just creative output, but community and connection at a time where I think so many people need it so deeply.
Before we dive into that and the new book, which I think is so beautiful in so many different ways, I want to talk to you about a recent newsletter.
You had a bit of a homecoming recently.
You gave a keynote to the incoming freshmen at Skidmore and this is a place that is not unfamiliar to you.
It has been the breeding ground of my most formative moments.
So, you know, my dad who's now retired I was a professor of French and Francophone literature at Skidmore College.
I so distinctly remember being a kindergartener in Saratoga Springs, where the college is located, and showing up on the first day of school not speaking a word of English, French and Arabic are my first languages, and feeling this kind of eternal sense of being a misfit.
And that has been a through line in my life and growing up in a town where there weren't a lot of immigrant families like ours, I was lucky to have access to this beautiful campus, thanks to my dad that lessened the isolation of being a misfit.
At that age, when you're young, the last thing you wanna do is stick out.
Assimilation for me was social survival.
used to beg my parents to let me legally change my name to Ashley, that sort of stuff.
But by the time I was a teenager about 12, 13, I started to embrace the fact that I couldn't fit in and to make use of this extraordinary college campus that, you know, offered a host of not just classes that I could take for free but but also summer camps.
And so the summer I turned 13, I was in an orchestra camp affiliated with Skidmore.
And at the same time, there was a jazz camp that was taking place.
And that was where I met a young, very awkward young man named John Batiste, who, you know, now my husband.
But Skidmore, for me, was not just the place where I ended up meeting my future spouse, but it was the place that I attended when I was 16 years old and dropped out of high school, because I was pursuing at the time, the double base and the deal with my parents was that I could focus on going to conservatory but that I had to at least take two days of classes at Skidmore.
And this may sound like an irresponsible parenting decision to let your daughter drop out of school to become a double bass player in a classical music orchestra which is not really the most viable career path anymore especially in a country that, you know, has a waning appreciation of classical music.
But, you know, I grew up in a house that really valued the creative arts above anything else And the sort of unexpected thing that happened in the course of taking these classes at Skidmore to appease my parents is that I absolutely fell in love with my academic experience there, and decided that I wanted to go to college after all.
And that sense of freedom at 16 to study anything I wanted, which for me you know meant signing up for a modern dance seminar and a class on Nabokov and memoir and all kinds of things, just to have the freedom to pursue whatever piqued my curiosity without worrying about it amounting to anything actually you know, set me on a path to identifying what it was that I wanted to do, which was, you know, not just a deep love of music and dance but a deep love of the creative practice and storytelling.
And so it was pretty surreal to return this fall.
My first book, Between Two Kingdoms, was assigned as the first -year experience, which, you know, it was a brave choice in a way.
it's not your conventional incoming freshman book.
And to get to speak to these students.
And I was so moved by the questions that the students posed.
And I think, the generation of students that are graduating from high school and entering the real world in some ways have had it so much harder than many other generations.
they've lived through a pandemic, they've lived through enormous political upheaval, and much like the rest of us, there's this sense of deep uncertainty in the air.
And to get to speak both about my own kind of unconventional path at that age and to speak to how in, you know, the context of my own life.
I've had to figure out how to navigate that sense of unheightened certainty.
It was a gift, and also pretty fun to have my dad there and all of his colleagues.
And it was so cool.
I've never been more nervous in my life.
The only thing more intimidating than a group of 18 year olds who desperately want to convince that you're cool as a group of 18 year olds and your professor father.
– As you're like literally saying that I remember the first time that I knew my mom would be in the audience when I was going to keynote.
I was petrified, absolutely petrified.
Like I've spoken to thousands of people in theaters before and I'm like okay, now my mom's going to be in the front row.
What am I going to do?
I was just completely freaked out but it was actually a really beautiful experience at the end of the day and like she got to see me doing my thing And it was, and like I couldn't have described it, but when she was in the room and part of the energy, like she was like, oh, I get this.
And it was just, it's a really neat way to share.
Terrifying as it may be.
I mean, from what I understand, yeah, you've written about this.
Like there was an interesting moment during that talk too.
And you know, came to the Q &A part of it and basically somebody said, hey, like, you know, for somebody who's my age now, like what'd you do?
And you had a really interesting response, which was basically like, don't single channel yourself.
If you're somebody who has that one passion and it's consuming, awesome.
But if you're like, if there are five parts of you that you love and treasure and savor, then like, let those be centered in your life, which is different from a lot of the messaging that I think people get these days.
Yeah, there's such an emphasis on finding your passion and translating that into your purpose and figuring out how to turn it into a profession.
And, you know, I just really believe that that kind of messaging does not only a disservice to young people who are very much figuring out who they are, but to all of us no matter how old we are.
You know, when I think back to my early childhood I had so many interests and even already at that age felt a kind of sense of shame around it.
I remember someone saying to me like, you're always going through a new phase.
And I took that to be a kind of criticism.
Like I really needed to stop flooding about and to really hone in on something and pick my path and ideally take, what were those called, advanced college courses?
APs? and be really strategic about what college I went to to make sure that it synced up with whatever it was I wanted to do, and I had no idea who I was.
And in the process of writing this new book, I've gotten to revisit a lot of my old journal entries from the time that I was a kid, and I found this entry from when I was about 12 years old, that same summer I was on my way to band camp, that same summer I met John, and I wrote a list of my goals and predictions and they're kind of hilarious to me because they're the opposite of careerist. Like my goal was to paint graffiti on toilet seats, to take my double base case and turn it into a costume by cutting eye and mouth holes in it and to wear it for Halloween.
It was like totally absurd, but I love that because when I fast forward just a couple of years later and look back at those journals, the journals I had in college, they're all aspirational in a kind of heartbreaking way.
It's, you know, one year and five year and 10 year lists about who I feel like I should become and what I feel like I should be doing and so much angst about the future and about becoming a person of import and value and a way that might look good on a resume.
It's, I've, you know, I had lost that sense of freedom and curiosity and playfulness that so many of us naturally have as children.
And so when I think back to my college self and I read back those journals, they're incredibly boring.
I have no idea what I was feeling or actually thinking in the moment.
It's all about some aspirational self in a really kind of conventional way and, you know, what I said to those students is very much what I wish I could have allowed myself to do, which was, you know, the freedom to take courses and fields I knew nothing about before feeling this pressure to identify a major.
And beyond college, in recent years, really made it a practice to try to allow for that kind of expansiveness.
Our mutual friend Elizabeth Gilbert says you have to be 1 % more curious than afraid.
And that when you follow your curiosity, that's such a gentler way in than feeling this enormous pressure to identify a purpose or a passion.
Yeah, I so love that.
I mean, both the notion of following your curiosity and also just 1 % more than you are afraid, because we feel so often like we've got to be sure, we've got to be really confident about this thing.
We're doing this internal cost benefit analysis and expected return analysis and like what's my likelihood of succeeding in this thing?
And it's like, and we set the bar really high.
well, I'm not even going to bother trying unless I think I'm going to have a 75%, 80 % chance of being good at this or enjoying it or succeeding at it.
And meanwhile it's like, A, nobody knows in advance.
And B, if you set the bar that high, you'll never take an action about anything that you're curious about in your life because you'll just keep talking yourself out of it and you'll just kind of stay in this little cage of your own creation, wondering why life isn't happening for you.
And that's the way that so many people live.
Absolutely, and it's, you know, it's that distinction that the journalists, uh, David Brooks makes between our resume virtues, the virtues that make us attractive in a modern job marketplace context, and the cultivation of our eulogy virtues.
You know, the qualities and characteristics that were lauded for often once we're no longer here.
Were we kind, were we brave?
Did we take creative risks, even if the cost -benefit analysis didn't make sense?
And I think we live in a culture that more than ever is obsessed with productivity and output.
But when we're all on that hamster wheel, it feels like surviving and not actually living.
I mean, what if, you know, I'm not somebody who tends to look at ways to measure life, but I think productivity is sort of a big common one, like you just described.
What have you made?
What have you created?
You know, but like if we were getting into the metric, what if it was, you know, like how much have you closed the gap between who you genuinely are and how you move through the world?
You know, like what if we just, what if we had an aspiration, what if it was just that?
Absolutely. You know, when I got sick at 22 and all those resume virtues were foreclosed upon, and I was not a person of value or import in the modern marketplace, right?
I wasn't working, I wasn't posting anything on social media, or doing anything that I felt social media worthy.
I was back in my childhood bedroom.
I was in the hospital.
I was my most stripped down, laid bare self.
The question was no longer who am I going to become, but what nourishes me?
What makes me feel most alive today?
And I had really limited energy.
I could maybe do two or three things a day.
And so that kind of constraint, And even though it was incredibly frustrating, proved useful in asking myself, what actually matters to me?
If I only have about two good hours, who do I want to spend it with?
What do I want to do during those two hours?
And it was never the things that would exist on a resume.
Yeah. I mean, for those who don't have the expanded context, when you were 22, you were diagnosed with leukemia, ended up going into treatment for what you thought would be 22, couple of weeks, and in and out of the hospital, in and out of all sorts of really brutal treatment for the better part of four years.
So your life was just profoundly, profoundly changed.
This eventually led to you taking the practice that had been a part of you for so long, journaling, and actually blending it with, if I'm remembering this correctly, the idea from Michael Beirut, who's this legend in the design world, in the creative world, you know, like just stunning, stunning mind of creating a hundred day project.
So you're like, let me actually, in a really, really rough time where I'm really having trouble even showing up to have the energy to write, let me actually see if I can commit to writing for a hundred days.
That eventually becomes more of a public project with Life Interruptive, which ends up being a column, a video series in New York Times.
And in a really interesting way, you just saying, let me take the few hours I have every day to feel the way I want to feel and be with the people I want to be, and then just, as much as I can, write about it, that becomes something that then starts to set a trajectory for your life in a really interesting way.
Yeah, yeah, and no part of me felt like doing a 100 -day project, no part of me was like in a creative mood or feeling particularly inspired.
I was 22 at that point, you know, I spent I think about six weeks in the hospital.
I was angry, I was miserable, I was scared and you know none of the chemo I was doing was working.
My leukemia was becoming more and more aggressive and I felt you know this deep sense of despair And you know, the interesting thing about despair is when you get to a real low down place where you've been really brought to your knees, for me it felt like there was a pretty clear choice.
It was like I needed, even if I didn't want to, even if I didn't feel particularly motivated, like I knew I could just stay in that despair or I had to kind of figure out how to vault myself out of it And I wasn't quite sure how to do that or what that would look like but I knew that something needed to shift. And this idea of alchemy, which was the under netting of the book of alchemy was not something that was really in my mind but I'll never forget.
And this is related to the 100 day project.
The day that I got that news that the chemo had not worked, the leukemia was getting worse because it happened to be the day that John, my old friend from band camp learned I was sick and then I was in the hospital and he left rehearsal with his band and they went straight to the hospital unannounced and invited.
And they put on this impromptu concert for me right there in my hospital room.
And as the sound of John's melodica and Joe's tambourine and a bondis tuba started to float out into the hallway, different patients and doctors and nurses started to file out of the rooms and we all ended up in the hallway and we started clapping and and singing and dancing and it was such an extraordinary moment because a hospital is a depressing place.
The only thing more depressing than a hospital is maybe a cancer ward where, you know, the only sounds you hear are the mechanical beeping of monitors and the wheezing of respirators and to feel that energy transform and to feel that shift from sorrow to joy, that shift from isolation to a kind of connection.
That was a really powerful moment for me and kind of set me on this path of thinking about how I might begin to alchemize, creatively alchemize my own relationship to these circumstances.
And so the 100 -Day Project was the beginning of that.
And I think felt really daunting to me because I wasn't confident that I could actually see it through and I didn't need any more reasons to feel bad about myself if I couldn't.
and so journaling to me felt like, you know, a thing you do for yourself.
It's private, there's no audience, it's not supposed to be good writing, it doesn't even need to be grammatical writing, it can be fragments, it can be doodles, it can be lists.
And I went into it with a couple of rules to make it manageable.
The first was that I should aim for three pages, but any amount would do.
And so sometimes it was three pages, sometimes it was a sentence, sometimes it was the F word, and that was it.
And that I couldn't reread it because I didn't want that kind of critical mind and that kind of performative impulse that creeps in when we feel like we have to be good at something.
It's like writing to judgment, yeah.
Totally. And so it was such a liberating experience to keep that journal.
And I've been a lifelong journaler, but I think a lot of people struggle to do it consistently and have more journals that I can count where I maybe fill out the first couple of pages and leave the rest blank.
And so that container of 100 days, thanks to Michael and that sense of community and accountability that came from doing it with my friends and family proved really useful and was something that I ended up returning to again and again over the coming years.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right?
notion of both of journaling, the notion of a 100 -day project and the notion of alchemy.
It seems like they keep, they keep finding this way to dance with um with each other in new and different and creative ways and also just the notion of alchemy into creative expression.
And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
Good Light Project is sponsored by Climbing The Walls podcast. So you know those moments when and something that's been hidden suddenly becomes crystal clear.
That's what's happening right now with ADHD in women.
And it's a story that needs to be told.
The new podcast Climbing the Walls takes us on this fascinating journey into why countless women went undiagnosed for years only to discover their ADHD during the pandemic when diagnoses suddenly soared.
I checked out the first episode and I was struck by how it illuminates these profound ah -ha moments when women finally understand patterns they've seen their whole lives but could never quite understand.
And the storytelling is intimate and powerful weaving together science and personal narratives and eye opening insights about women's health.
So if you're curious about how our minds work, or if you've ever wondered about ADHD, you need to hear this to listen to climbing the walls, search for climbing the walls in your podcast app that's climbing the walls.
Good Life Project is sponsored by Airbnb.
So, you know, last spring, we hosted this incredible staff retreat at a breathtaking beach house in Venturi, California.
Just steps from Pierpont Beach, this gorgeous space became our home away from home, and the natural light was just flooding through the windows, a gorgeous open kitchen where we made meals together, and admittedly, devoured a lot of chocolate and maybe some yummy baked goods.
And this inviting room where we shared stories and a lot of laughter, it all created this perfect environment for connection and creativity.
And what struck me was how the host had thought of everything, making our stay feel both luxurious and completely comfortable and here's something interesting while we were enjoying this beautiful space the host was off on their own adventure earning extra income from their home this got me thinking maybe you've got a trip coming up your home could be someone else's perfect getaway while you're away your home might be worth more than you think find out how much at Airbnb calm slash host Girl Life Project is sponsored by wild grain so you know those mornings when you wake up to the aroma of just
freshly baked bread?
That is what drew me to wild grain, they deliver artisanal breads and pastries and pastas right to your door ready to bake from frozen in 25 minutes or less.
As someone who watches their gluten, also I love that they offer gluten -free options like their gluten -free sourdough which tastes amazing.
So are you ready to bring all your favorite carbs right to your doorstep?
Be sure to check out wild grain So, you can begin building your own box of artisanal breads, pastas, and pastries.
For a limited time, Wild Grain is offering our listeners $30 off their first box, plus free croissants in every box.
When you go to wildgrain .com slash goodlife to start your subscription.
You heard me, free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain .com slash goodlife.
That's wildgrain .com slash goodlife, or just click the link in the show notes, or you can the promo code Good Life at checkout.
You end up transmuting this 100 Day Project, also then, into a 15 ,000 -mile solo road trip, which then becomes deeper awakening, deeper writing, deeper insights, eventually becomes the source of Between Two Kingdoms, your last book, really just sort of describing this experience and this.
And then we land in the pandemic, You know, where, yes, everybody is going through a moment.
The world is going through a moment.
You end up in your own moment with a recurrence.
And at the same time, it's interesting.
You write about this, you know, you've had this training at that point, in how to step into experiences like this differently than almost anybody else.
And it feels like that allows you, I'm not gonna say to just do this whole thing with more grace, because I think that's not what happened, but it allows you to experience the last couple of years, like the pandemic years, very differently.
Yeah. Yeah. So, when I last came on the podcast, Between Two Kingdoms had just come out And I was talking about survivorship and the challenges of that.
And the irony was that I was sick then and I didn't know it.
And I've been in remission for about a decade.
There was a less than 1 % chance at that point of the leukemia returning and yet it did.
And so when the ceiling caved in, Of course, it was terrifying and traumatizing.
And I had, thanks to keeping a journal, thanks to writing about that experience in Between Two Kingdoms, I thought a lot about what that experience had meant for me and how I wanted to apply that knowledge going forward and even how I might navigate things differently if I got sick again.
And so, you know, as much as a misfortune as it was to have this recurrence, I also felt fortunate to be able to go into it with that knowledge.
And I wanna be careful here because, you know, I don't believe that going through something traumatic makes you wiser or braver by default.
There's that old Hemingway saw that, you know, the world breaks you and you are stronger in the broken places, and I don't believe that.
That's where the element of agency comes in, how we choose to respond to the circumstance, and that choice, to me, is where things get interesting.
Because as much as it's easy to feel powerless when you get sick or when your life is upended in some kind of way, there's always agency available to us, or at least that's the thing that I try to anchor myself back in when things feel like they're spinning beyond my control.
And so, you know, when I got sick again, within 24 hours, you know, my life completely changed.
My husband John and I were making all kinds of plans.
We, like a lot of couples, were waiting until the pandemic was over, as over as it could be to have a big wedding.
We were talking about kids, we were, you know, future dreaming and planning and pretty much overnight we found ourselves packing up our house, finding friends to care for our dogs and back in the hospital where I was preparing to reenter treatment and to hopefully undergo a second bone marrow transplant.
I mean, and there's really interesting sort of contrast at the same time.
This is actually beautifully documented and nearly you end up having a documentary created about this moment in both of you and John's life where you're going through this just like extraordinarily challenging moment and at the same time simultaneously from the outside looking in, John's having the best year of his life.
Yeah, yeah. He's like, exploding as a public figure, as a musician, as like he's working on this incredible symphony that would be formed in this legendary hall in New York.
And meanwhile, you're both so deeply connected that you're both navigating both worlds simultaneously.
And it's just this really powerful exposition on the duality of life and how sometimes we don't get to choose all the good and all the hard. It just happens all at once.
And it's like, how do you be with all of it?
How do you acknowledge the fact that this is real, this is my reality?
To the extent that I can change it, I will.
But to the extent that I can't, how do I do this?
And it's such an interesting moment for both of you.
Yeah, that forever work of figuring out how to hold both the cruel effects of life and the beautiful ones in the same poem.
and, you know, I'll never forget that day.
It was my first day of chemo.
John and I are on our way to the hospital and suddenly his phone starts ringing and he had opened his phone and discovered he'd been nominated for I think it was 11 Grammys.
A record number, I think, tied only with Michael Jackson, something absurd like that.
And we were just in these kind of parallel moments that felt oceans apart.
And as exciting as that was, Don's immediate impulse was, I'm not doing any of that.
I want to be here. And for me, especially having known him from the time that we were teenagers, having watched him work so hard, not towards a moment like this, because I don't know that you can ever anticipate a moment like this.
But watching work so hard, uh, it was important to me that he get to live it, and also, of course, important for us to figure out how to stay connected.
And so, you know, one of the very first things John said to me, about 48 hours before I was admitted to the hospital, was, let's get married.
Let's get married tomorrow.
You know, we had a plan and we were not going to let this situation get in the of that plan and what greater response to life's sorrows than a proclamation of love?
And so we got married in the living room of the house that we just moved to in Brooklyn.
It was completely empty.
There wasn't a stitch of furniture, and we had red twists as rings and just a tiny handful of our very closest friends who had been able to quarantine to of help protect my immune system, and we ordered fried chicken sandwiches and and had champagne and it was you know not at all what we'd imagined and infinitely better.
And so I went into that transplant unit brimming with love and also brimming with ideas based on my prior experience of illness about how I was going to navigate that period of, you know, isolation in the hospital and because it was COVID, it was, you know, a step further than the typical medical isolation that you're in, when you have zero white blood cells and no immune system to do battle for you.
I was only allowed one visit or a day between very constrained hours.
And I was, you know, preparing to be in the hospital for about a month, and pretty immediately things went south.
I had packed with me about six different journals.
I had my private journal, I had my kind of reporters journal that I had written on the cover of it, observations from the nurses station.
I had my journal with John, John and I have had a longstanding practice of writing each other letters and our journals and snapping photos of them and texting them to each other, and my medical journal so I can write little notes down during the doctor's round, and fast forward a few days later and I was on a cocktail of medications that impaired my vision for about two weeks.
I could barely see, I was seeing double, I was seeing triple.
And so that meant that that writing, the thing that had always gotten me through was not really available to me, at least not comfortably.
And the other thing that happened is that John got exposed to COVID at work and for about a 20 day period was not allowed to visit me in person.
And the last thing that happened is that our dear friend, Elizabeth Gilbert, who was watching my dog called me one day, about a week, or maybe 10 days into that hospital stay when I was doing battle with multiple blood infections and really not in a good place to let me know that my dog had been diagnosed with cancer and needed to be put down in the next two hours.
and so you know that confluence of things is the kind of thing that you know can break a person and I certainly felt that I was at my breaking point you know my new husband, my creative coping practice, my faithful best friend who'd been with me you know since I was 22 years old, all of that was was gone.
And you know I had again that moment of feeling that deep sense of despair and feeling a kind of choice present itself.
And so you know that night I had this very clear vision.
It was the middle of the night I woke up, I was so distraught of a wooden marionette being lifted by four birds.
And I took out a piece of paper and a friend had gifted me some watercolors.
I'm not a trained painter.
And I started to paint that vision, that kind of weird hallucination.
And as I painted the marionette and the birds, and as I started to paint the strings, connecting the birds to the marionette, I felt my spine lift. And, again, that sense of alchemy, I ended up keeping a visual journal and doing a little watercolor of these bizarre medication -induced hallucinations I was having that were honestly kind of scary, but in the process of transcribing them became interesting to me and John and his own act of creative alchemy, though he couldn't be physically present, started composing little lullabies and sending them to me and I would play them on loop on my computer
and it was his way of enveloping me with his his presence and love at a time when we were apart.
And sweet Liz I'll never forget on Valentine's Day in the dark of the night on York Avenue, right below my hospital room window, I was up on the eighth floor, made a little heart out of LED lights and spelled out my name.
And so when I looked out there that night, I saw that beautiful message.
And though she couldn't visit me, it was again, that sense of connection that I think is available to us always through creativity.
And so, you know, not the thing I had planned, but maybe the lesson that I needed, which is that, you know, survival is its own kind of creative act, whether you consider yourself particularly creative or not.
Yeah, I mean, just so powerful in so many different ways.
I love also how, you know, you were able to take this practice that had been your coping mechanism, your creative expression for literally your entire life.
And then in this moment, you know, went into the hospital, literally saying, okay, so like, this isn't what I wanted, but I've done this before.
And I kind of, I had made a little more of a plan and you had your six different journals and like that all got blown up.
And your brain says, and maybe this wasn't a conscious, willful, logical thing.
This was like a fever dream type of decision, and just like this thing just came to me, like what is accessible to me in this moment?
Like if I am a creative being and my whole life has been a creative act and I want to sustain that as much as I can because maybe it's going to help me through this, what is available to me?
And for you, like the written word wasn't available in that moment in time, but visual language, visual expression was, and that became rather than you saying, but I'm a writer, I'm a journaler, like I can't do the thing I'm here to do.
You just kind of said like, this is what I have available to me.
Let me run with this.
Let me let this become my thing for however long.
And what's stunning is that I don't know if you were a visual artist before I can't remember, but now visual art is a really meaningful, big part of your life, in a way that, from what I know, it really wasn't before.
Like this has become something beautiful That's a part of your everyday life now.
You know, and I want to go on record and say that, first of all, I've tried lots of creative things that do not become a big part of my life.
So I feel like that's important to state.
Yeah, duly noted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you know, it wasn't part of some grand plan.
It was this moment of I have so much angst, so much despair in my body and I need to get it out.
Otherwise, it's going to kill me.
And so, those nightmares that were so terrifying to me and the process of transcribing them, you become the handler of the thing you fear rather than the handled, and so that felt good.
And so the next day I did it again, and the day after, and by the end of my hospital stay, the walls of my hospital room were covered in paintings, and the nurses would come into my room and look forward to seeing the next apparition taped to the wall, and this young woman who would come to clean their floors told me that she would always clean and for longer than necessary and linger because it made her feel good to be in this room that was a weird, surreal kind of art gallery.
And again, much like that first 100 -day project, the goal was not to create a body of work or to turn it into fodder for some art exhibition.
The goal wasn't even to be a good painter or bad painter.
It didn't really matter at all the point was creative expression.
It was that transmutation of whatever was swirling around inside of me into something of my own making and that for me has been my way of being in conversation with the self and therefore feeling like I get to be in conversation with the world, even if the reality was that I couldn't step outside of that room.
When we talk about alchemy, we think of the transmutation of something worthless and base and led into something precious and noble like gold.
And so it felt like my own private act of alchemy.
But I think the important piece here, to go back to the Skidmore students, was that I wasn't doing it with a goal.
If I had done it with a goal, the ego would have immediately chimed in, the voices of insecurity and doubt would have said, you know, you've never studied this, what's the point you're going to embarrass yourself.
These are stupid, whatever it might be.
And I was getting to, you know, and the the weird container of the hospital that sort of set apart from any expectation of productivity, getting to tap into that 1 % more curious than afraid to follow that thread of intuition without caring where it might lead.
And to me, at every juncture when I've allowed myself to do that, the irony is, of course, that it's yielded something incredibly valuable, whether anybody knows about it or not.
Yeah, it's like the, like rather than going into it saying like, I'm doing this so that at the end of it I can have X. You do it simply for the experience of doing it.
And it seems like, just as you describe it, every time you've done something like that, there's like a purity in it, you know, and something kind of gorgeous emerges on the other side, you know, whether it was life -indirrupted, Whether it was the book, whether it was the new book, the book of alchemy, which through this experience and also the experience of bringing together community to journal collectively through the experience of the pandemic, which leads to the isolation journals, where you create this just stunning global community, and then reaching back into your past, into this realization in your
earlier days is that oh, when you can actually just have the seeds of a prompt in the form of somebody else's writing or ideas or experiences, it's really helpful to you.
So you start to invite people into it.
And then this leads to a book, the Book of Alchemy, which is now this offering to everybody else to say what if we took a hundred days.
Here's effectively, I don't want to say a roadmap because everybody needs to travel their own thing.
But here here are a hundred prompts divided into 10 different sort of categories that might be interesting for you to explore, each one provided by a different writer so that if it's interesting to you, maybe you can experience the same kind of alchemical transformation through the process of just showing up every day whether it's one word, whether it's five pages, whatever it may and I'm going to help you and I'm going to bring in 100 stunning minds and writers and hearts and souls to help just plant seeds for you to get you going a little bit.
I'm curious. I want to I want to dip into just a couple of different parts of that book for you.
When does your own okay, so I'm moving through another season.
I'm doing this thing.
It's I'm doing it differently in my but like, when does this make the transformation from this is what I'm doing for me to, oh, this could be something beautiful that can become an offering to others now?
So for me, it always starts with a resistance.
I very much tried not to write this book for a lot of reasons.
I think journaling has a lot of associations, but it just seems like the self -evident thing, like uncap a pen and write some stuff down.
What could be so hard?
And despite the mountains of evidence that show us the benefits of journaling.
Like I said earlier, how many of us have bought a journal with the best of intentions of using it and only filled out the first couple of pages and left it blank.
And in the beginning of the pandemic, when we all went into lockdown, so much of that experience felt familiar to me, you know, the face masks, the isolation roles, the challenge of figuring out how to feel a sense of connection when you're stuck at home, when your life as you know it has imploded, except that, of course, this time we were all living that and navigating that in real time.
And so I decided to start a newsletter called The Isolation Journals.
It was meant to be a 30 -day project, which became a 100 -day project.
But this short -lived thing where, because I know how challenging it can be to journal when you're not feeling particularly inspired or reflective, even though that's usually when it's most beneficial, to invite some of the most creative minds I knew to share an essay and a prompt.
And, you know, I'm someone who, in my younger years, if I'd been instructed to write to a prompt, would have said, absolutely not.
Always seemed like homework.
But also, as someone who's, you know, been keeping a a thought loop or stuck in your life, it's easy to get stuck in your own reflection.
And I need something to kind of ignite some spark that twists my mind out of its usual rut.
And for me, I've always found that in reading and in some kind of inquiry, which is to say a prompt.
And from the very beginning, I was very clear that first of all, you don't have to write to a prompt.
You can use it as a thought prompt, you can use it as a conversation prompt, you can write about how much you hate the prompt.
They're really meant to exist there as a sort of mirror showing you either what you find resonance in and or what repels you.
Either way it's kind of interesting.
And that there's no special skills that you need, which to me is why it's always been the most accessible way into cultivating a creative practice, you know, you don't need to be a writer, you don't need fancy equipment, you don't need to have taken a course, it doesn't even need to look like writing.
It can be songwriting, it can be, if you're a form of journaling, can be, you know, in in playing the piano, which is what my husband does.
Or voice memos when he's wandering around the house.
It's really capacious in that it contains anything and there are no rules.
There's no wrong way to do it.
And to my great surprise, within 48 hours of starting the isolation journals, because people were stuck at home, because they were looking for a way to stay grounded and stay connected to each other, we had over 40 ,000 people who'd signed up.
And some of my very favorite individuals and stories that emerged from that project are what made me want to write this book.
There was a woman named Joelle from Minnesota who lost her 13 -year -old daughter and she decided to use her daughter's art supplies to create a visual journal entry each day, a little memory of her daughter.
And the way she described it was that she felt like she was in collaboration with her daughter, that she was keeping a kind of grief journal that allowed not just for the immense unspeakable pain of that loss but also for the joy of remembering her, of getting to visit with her, and so she continued that visual journal long after the hundred days.
Another story that comes to mind is Charlie from Minnesota, an 80 -year -old grandfather who never journaled before and who was feeling, you know, isolated before the pandemic and and certainly isolated during it, and he started doing a daily journal and sharing his entries with this sort of global virtual community, and he's still one of our most ardent community members, and the way he describes journaling is it feels like an adventure, and I have no idea where it's taking me, but the best part is that I no longer need to know.
And so, I had started to think a lot journaling and all it can contain and started to think about these you know extraordinarily creative minds who've helped me shift the cylinder and allow light to fall in a different way and you know in the last year, year and a half as I was recovering from that bone marrow transplant and trying to find creative ways to alchemize my own sense of isolation and to a kind of creative solitude and connection.
The answers and the questions that kept emerging were the ones in the journal.
And so in writing this book, I revisited, I think I have over 100, 200 journals since childhood and started to notice that the same old themes came up.
So this book is divided into those ten themes that most frequently came up, which I think are the themes that probably most frequently come up for many of us.
You know, there's a chapter on love, there's a chapter on fear, there's a chapter on purpose.
And that began to inform the framework of it.
And so, you know, really, it's kind of like a memoir and essays, not just my own, but the 100 contributors.
And my very favorite part of getting to write that book was getting to curate that extraordinary collection of voices, those incredibly brilliant creative minds.
And when I say brilliant creative minds, I don't mean, you know, the famous authors and musicians, though there are some of those in there, you know, the George Saunders and the Elizabeth Gilberts of the world.
And I think, you know, for me, I interpret that very broadly.
You know, there's, at the time, he was seven or eight years old, a contributor in the book who, two -time brain cancer survivor, who shared a beautiful essay and prompt.
There's a young man who is reentering the real world after a long prison sentence.
There's a young mother who writes a beautiful essay as she's on the verge of widowhood.
And so it's really a collection of the people who have embodied that idea of creative alchemy and who've inspired me to find ways to tap into it in the context of my own life.
And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
Good Life Project is sponsored by One MD Liver MD.
So you know how we often overlook the quiet heroes in our lives?
Your liver just might be one of the most underappreciated ones.
This remarkable organ is working around the clock, handling everything from processing nutrients to helping you bounce back after those weekend celebrations.
And when it's struggling, you often feel it everywhere.
That mid -afternoon energy crash, uncomfortable bloating.
even those moments of mental cloudiness.
That is where LiverMD steps in.
With its physician formulated blend of 7 clinically studied ingredients, over 3 .5 million people have transformed their health with LiverMD and 80 % of users have seen real improvements in their liver test results along with better energy and digestion.
So ready to support your hardest working organ, visit 1md .org and use the code GLP to save 15 % on your first order.
Good Life Project is sponsored by Thuma.
So you know that feeling when you walk into a room and just everything feels right.
That is what Thuma creates, an oasis of calm and intentional design in your bedroom.
And speaking of design, I have been looking at potentially redoing our bedroom and Thuma just keeps catching my eye with their thoughtful approach to simplicity.
I just love their design aesthetic.
using traditional Japanese joinery techniques.
Each piece is precision cut from solid wood creating a foundation that's both silent and incredibly stable.
And the assembly just five minutes and one hand tightened screw.
No tools needed. What really stands out is their commitment to quality.
Every bed is green guard gold certified for cleaner indoor air, comes with a lifetime warranty and with over 17 ,000 five -star reviews it's clear they have created something special.
So ready to transform your bedroom to get $100 toward your first bed purchase, go to thuma .co.
slash goodlife that's thuma .co slash goodlife or just click the link in the show notes to receive $100 off your first bed purchase.
Good Life Project is sponsored by Headspace.
So you know that moment when someone asks, How are you?
And you automatically respond good without even thinking about it.
Well after decades of meditation practice, I have learned the profound difference between saying we're good and truly experiencing that state of wellbeing.
And that's one of the reasons I'm excited to share Headspace with you.
So what impresses me about Headspace is how they have really thoughtfully crafted content for every level of practice.
Their extensive library includes specialized techniques for specific needs, from performance anxiety to sleep challenges, all grounded in both ancient wisdom and modern science.
I mean last night I actually listened to their midnight laundrette sleep cast and I literally drifted off in just a few minutes and this morning I listened to today's Headspace meditation to really help my mindset settle in so feel good and mean it when you say it for a limited time get headspace free for 60 days go to headspace .com slash goodlife60 that's h -e -a -d -s -p -a -c -e dot com slash good life 60 to unlock all of headspace free for 60 days headspace .com slash good life 60 or just click the link in the show notes.
I love the way that you've approached this.
I also love just the voices that you've assembled for this.
And it's interesting I've been I've been using it in a sort of a different way of journaling.
So like, I'm very fortunate I live to Colorado, I hike on a very regular basis.
I'm out in the mountains, in the woods for an hour and a half, two hours, many days of the week.
And I've actually started my own form of what I would just almost call walking journaling.
I would read a prompt from your book and it would, I mean, A, there's so many beautiful writers who are sharing, these aren't just prompts.
These are just beautiful pieces of writing, of thinking, of feeling that get into you, that get under your skin and into your heart and into your mind, and I would read them, and then, yeah, and it takes maybe two, three minutes to just read through this, and then I would go out for a hike.
And I would hike with it.
Like my form of journaling with your book has kind of become, I'll read something, you know, I'll almost flip open to a random page in one of the 10 categories, I'll read the prompt.
And then, I'll just go walk with it in the woods for an hour and a half and see what emerges.
And it's been just this kind of magical experience.
It's super cool. Oh, I love that so much. I mean, nothing can make me happier than these prompts being used in creative ways than the notion of journaling and its conventional sense being exploded.
I sent the book to a friend of mine who has two young kids and is in a book club with some of her dearest dearest friends, all of whom are also very overwhelmed, exhausted young mothers.
And she, in their last book club meeting, read one of the prompts and asked everyone if instead they could journal together for 10 minutes.
And some of the moms were like, okay, that's not really my jam.
And others were like, I'm never gonna have time to do this, but whatever we can do it for right now.
And afterwards, they talked about what came up in their journal entries and some even shared their journal entries.
And she called me yesterday and she was like, I've known these women for a long time and I learned things about my friends that I have never learned before.
And we don't have time right now or to do it every single day, but we're gonna keep working through the 100 essays and prompts together, no matter how long it takes us.
And I love that so much, because again, it's that sense of connection to the self that I think allows us to feel connected to the world and our fellow humans in it.
And yeah, I'm so happy that they've offered good fodder for your walks in the woods.
Yeah, no, it's been really beautiful.
And in fact, shortly after this conversation, I'll be doing the same.
So I look forward to flipping open to like whatever page I land on today and meeting the ideas in the woods.
It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well.
So I've asked you this question before.
It was a number of years back and you were in a different place and the world was in a different place, but in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, What comes up?
So I found out in August that my leukemia is back for a third time.
And it's been really interesting navigating this new chapter of illness and all the uncertainty and what ifs that come with it.
And when I express that to my doctor, my wonderful doctor, and I said I just don't know how to do this.
It feels scary and it makes it hard to plan a couple of months ahead without fearing the future and wondering if I'll get to exist in that future.
His advice to me was that kind of advice that lots of people reach for when someone's in this situation and he said to me and has said to me more times than I can count, You have to live every day as if it's your last. And as well -intentioned as that advice was, every time he said it to me, I would feel this intense sense of panic.
Like, I have to, you know, carpe diem the shit out of every moment and every day, and everything has to be meaningful.
And every, you know, gathering with my loved ones has to be beautiful and make it into the memory bank.
And that is an exhausting way to live, and it's certainly not sustainable.
And just a lot of pressure.
And so I've come to believe that while it may come from a good place, it's really bad advice.
And that we were all, you know, to live every day as if it were our last, our world would be chaos.
We'd be emptying our bank accounts and declaring bankruptcy and doing all kinds of things.
And so for me, you know, What living a good life has come to look like is a much gentler kind of twist on that advice, which is trying to live every day as if it's my first and to go back to that sense of childlike curiosity and wonder that we have access to, you know, with such ease when we're little um, and that we lose as we get older, and to wake up like a little kid might, and to do what delights me and that's rarely the big bucket list items. It can be pausing to admire, you know, a caterpillar scuttling across the grass.
It's, you know, hanging out with my three dogs.
It's embarking on a new creative project just for the hell of it, without sense of expectation.
And when I do that, when I take the pressure off, when I allow myself to tap into curiosity without any expectation or outcome, that's when I feel most alive.
And so to me, it's that right now.
Thank you. If you loved this episode, you'll also love the conversation we had with Elizabeth Gilbert about unlocking creativity and reinventing your life.
You'll find a link to that episode in the show notes.
This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields.
Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young, Christopher Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Del Bliss for her research on this episode.
And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too.
If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here, do me a personal favor, a second second favor, share it with just one person.
And if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too.
But just one person even then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered To reconnect and explore ideas that really matter because that's how we all come alive together Until next time I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for good life project Banking with Capital one helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees Just ask the capital one bank guy.
It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too.
Ah, really? Thanks CapitalOne Bank Guy.
What's in your wallet?
Terms apply. See CapitalOne .com slash bank.
CapitalOne NA member FDIC.
If you work in quality control at a candy factory, you know, strict safety regulations come with the job.
It's why you partner with Grainger.
Grainger helps you find the high -quality and compliant products your business needs to inspect, detect, and help correct issues.
And the sweetest part is, everyone gets a product that's as safe to eat as it is delicious.
Call 1 -800 -GRAIN -GER, click Grainger .com, or just stop by.
Grainger, for the ones who get it done.
Support for this podcast and the following message is brought to you by E -Trade from Morgan Stanley.
With E -Trade, you can dive into the market with easy to use tools, $0 commissions, and a wide range of investments.
And now there's even more to love.
Get access to industry -leading research and insights from Morgan Stanley to help guide your decisions.
Open an account and get up to $1 ,000 or more with a qualifying deposit.
Get started today at etrade .com.
Terms and other fees apply.
Investing involves risks.
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC Member Sipik.
E -Trade is the business of Morgan Stanley.
Ever wonder what your lashes are destined for?
The cards have spoken.
Maybelline New York Mascara does it all.
Whether you crave fully fanned lashes with Lash Sensational, big bold volume from The Colossal, a dramatic lift with Falsy's Lash Lift, or natural looking volume from Great Lash, your perfect lash future awaits.
Manifest your best mascara today.
Shop Mabley New York and discover your lash destiny.
Shop now at Walmart.
