'To say that I'm healed, uh, would be to imply that there's an endpoint,' she said. And she knows the struggle will always be along for the ride. Suleika Jaouad's road trip may have ended, but her journey has not. She said, 'At every turn when I thought, you know, there was some aspect of this illness experience that was gonna scare him away, he was right there.' Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste. Their history was just what her heart needed to trust again. 'One of the first things he said to me was, you know, 'What did you do during all those years in the hospital?' And I said, 'I got really, really good at Scrabble.' And he looked at me, and he kinda laughed, and he said, 'Me, too!'' And I wanna be more like that girl!'Īn inmate in Texas named Little GQ, who'd written from Death Row and affirmed the power of connection. Jaouad told Axelrod, 'To imagine yourself in the future is a radical act of hope. Let's face it: life can be good.'Ī joyful, fearless teenage survivor in Florida named Unique, who said, 'I wanna, like, go on a food binge and just eat crazy things like octopus.'

He told her, 'You get immersed in life again. 'I would have to figure out a way, not to move on, because I don't think that's possible, but to move forward.'įrom the chest where she kept letters from her readers, she chose 22 letters, and hit the road with her dog, Oscar, for a 100-day, 15,000-mile reset ritual, meeting strangers she felt had something to teach her about healing.Īmong them: A professor named Howard in Ohio, who helped her find her footing in a precarious new life. 'But you knew that you didn't want your life to be defined by the worst thing that ever happened to you?' Axelrod asked. I couldn't return to the person I've been pre-diagnosis. No longer sick, but not exactly well, either.

'Yeah, there you go! Or workaholism, I don't know,' she laughed.Īfter a traumatic three-and-a-half-year ordeal of treatment, including that last-chance bone marrow transplant that carried a life-threatening risk of heart failure and organ damage, Jaouad beat the odds – she was cancer-free. 'There's a photograph of me in the transplant unit where I have a vomit bucket under one arm, I have my laptop on my knees, and I'm crying, not because, you know, I'm about to have a bone marrow transplant, but because I've missed a deadline!' Suleika Jaouad. Overnight, Jaouad had what she had yearned for most: purpose. And I remember waking up the next morning and opening my inbox and seeing hundreds of emails from strangers all around the world.' Jaouad said, 'My column launched while I was in the bone marrow transplant unit.

Facing Cancer in Your 20s - Life, Interrupted | The New York Times by

Between two kingdoms