BOOKSHELF + COMMUNITY

“That is what literature offers, a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”

-Jeanette Winterson

Before you read any further this week, I encourage you to read the content warnings on this book. Themes of illness, grieving, and mortality can be a content trigger for many people. Please skip to the HOME + TRAVEL section of this blog post if this section is not for you right now. Find content warnings for this book on StoryGraph.

“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”

-Susan Sontag in Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

When the author of Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, Suleika Jaouad, writes in her journal to “stay afloat”, she is only twenty-two years old. A recent college graduate with unexplainable symptoms, she embarks on a journey to Paris to find work and a new life only to fly home to Saratoga, New York, and put her whole life on pause when she learns she has cancer.

Suleika quickly learns that she is diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (a type of leukemia) with a survival rate of only one in four. Even with a bone marrow transplant, only 35% percent of patients survive the first five years past their diagnosis. Finding a bone marrow donor is made even more challenging as minorities are underrepresented in bone marrow registries. Siblings are generally the best match. She is extremely lucky to find the perfect donor match in her brother.

“Naïveté has a shelf life, however, and mine didn’t last long.”

There were aspects of Sukeika’s cancer diagnosis that flew under the radar and caught her by surprise. Childhood vaccinations must be repeated because they are lost in the bone marrow transplant. She learned she would most likely be infertile and go into early menopause. The doctors never discussed this possibility because most of their patients were much younger or much older than she was. She learned to advocate for herself and froze her eggs with a process that involved painful fertility treatments leading up to her first chemo treatment. Until she talked with other cancer patients, she had no idea she wasn’t alone in being completely in the dark about how the illness affected her sexual health.

“For the person facing death, mourning begins in the present tense in a series of private, preemptive goodbyes that take place long before the body’s last breath.”

Suleika realized that the art of writing could be a way to move through her treatment and began writing a blog in 2012. The readers of her blog became her connection to community even while in isolation.

“I should have felt lonelier in the transplant unit than ever before, but these strangers and their stories quickly became my conduits to the outside world.”

Through the blog and her hospital stays and visits, Sukleika befriends fellow cancer survivors who understand what she is going through. Friendship reminds us that sometimes by feeling heard, we are seen.

“There were things I could talk about with Melissa, who understood better than anyone the bifurcation of personality that can happen when you’re sick - how illness heightens the good and the bad, unveiling new parts of yourself you wish you hadn’t known were there; how illness can bring you down to your most savage self.”

With her friends she could dream of a life outside of cancer even if it meant coming face-to-face with the realities of mortality. They were able to support each other in moments that no one else seemed to understand.

The quotation above from Suleika’s memoir reminded me of a video I watched recently where the creator of the YouTube channel Hamimommy said, “Even if there is no answer to the conversation, mutual empathy is a great comfort.”

“With mortality in the balance, one of life’s most delicious activities when you’re young - imagining your future - had become a frightening, despair-inducing exercise.”

Illness often arrives after a period of normalcy and floods your life with a torrent of raw emotion. The pain and isolation of Sukleika’s treatment made her feel as though she was floating away from the life she knew. When she began to get her head above water after her bone marrow transplant and during her chemo treatments, there was a period where everything seemed to have more clarity.

“. . .the way staring your mortality straight in the eye simplifies things and reroutes your focus to what really matters.”

Suleika’s lifelong love of animals drove her to find a pup named Oscar who helped her develop a routine that led her out of a dark place where she actually found herself missing the clarity she felt during treatment even if it meant being back in the hospital.

“I hadn’t noticed the fine print until now: When you survive something that was thought to be unsurvivable, the obvious is gained. You have your life - you have time. But it’s only when you get there that you realize your survival has come at a cost.”

“Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn’t there or allowing it to hijack your day.”

To move on in her life, Suleika decided to take a cross-country trip with her dog to connect with the people who reached out to her during her treatment. Halfway through the trip, she realized that everyone she thought she was leaving found their way into the passenger seat of her Subaru and the remnants of her illness seemed to tag along at every turn.

“Grief is a ghost that visits without warning.”

Suleika realized that there is no easy way through recovery. The hard work of grieving and healing and even re-inventing yourself is ultimately work that must be done alone, but that doesn’t mean you are alone.

Surrounding herself with a village of people who love her and nurturing a passion for writing while focusing on her wellness helped Suleika at her most vulnerable moments. Feeling at home in her body or her life may not feel like the supported structure that it once was or appeared, but life and a feeling of home can exist on the “fault lines” as Suleika says. Wisdom and clarity can be found even on the shaky ground of uncertainty.

“Wherever I am, wherever we go, home will always be the in-between place, a wilderness I’ve grown to love.”

You can read more about Suleika Jaouad (pronounced Su-lake-uh Ja-wad) on her website, her newsletter The Isolation Journals, her column in the New York Times called Life, Interrupted, or on Instagram @suleikajaouad

If you’re looking for a book from the perspective of a caregiver, I wrote about Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner in my Season 22 blog post last year in 2021.

“Heartbreaking, moving, and witty, it had me scribbling Korean dish names in my reading journal to look up later. I found myself needing to pause or copy down weighty quotations from the book that hit me right in the heart and brought me to tears. With so many life events we have no control over, this book is a reminder to enjoy the time you have with the ones you love.”

Check out the author Michells Zauner’s band Japanese Breakfast (coming to the Austin City Limits Festival very soon!)

I discovered the perfect clock for readers and anyone who feels inspired by quotations. You’ll find the time of day nestled inside a quotation from a book. The Author Clock is going on my wishlist! The clock is still in the developmental stages, but you can contribute to the crowdfunding campaign or even submit a quotation that mentions time. The company, Mechanical Design Labs, is in the process of designing the clocks and gives away one free large Author Clock to someone who submitted a quote.

HOME + TRAVEL

Mid-Autumn Festival, also known in many Asian countries as the Moon Festival, Mooncake Festival, and Harvest Moon Festival, welcomes the autumn harvest and full moon. (information from AsiaSociety.org) You can find out more about how moon festivals are celebrated across Asia here.

OMG Squee is hosting Mooncake Fest in Austin, Texas on September 10, 2022 where they will have an outdoor artists’ market featuring soaps from Solid Soaps and bags from Kaiju Cut and Sew, and mooncakes with flavors like salted custard and salted egg yolk, matcha and red bean, black sesame, and chocolate orange truffle and served with tea.

Bom Bakeshop here in Austin is celebrating with Mid-Autumn Festival-themed mochi doughnuts at their Friday and Saturday pop-ups. Pre-order here and follow their Instagram page to find out about their weekly flavors.

The transition to fall has me thinking about fall camping. We decided to book two camping trips at a state park campground in the Hill Country this fall and winter. Experiencing the joy of a crackling fire and a view of stars above that are often absent in the city can help us recharge during a busy holiday season.

Camping takes us out of our comfort zone and into nature. Being immersed in trees, water, rocks, the night sky, and birdsong brings us home to our most elemental state. Whether we are roughing it at a primitive site at campground or curling up in our beds in a glamping style setup, getting outdoors and into nature can be good for all of us.

Here’s a comprehensive look at all the National Parks in the United States (link from The Washington Post) and a clip from the PBS show America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston with an inspiring outdoor enthusiast who is making outdoor activities more accessible for all.

Making the Outdoors Attainable Beyond ADA-Accessible Campgrounds

Campspot has some incredible options when it comes to camping (or glamping! if that is what you prefer!). From tents to cabins, you can experience the outdoors and seasonal transitions in comfort.

GARDEN + NATURE

Tucking native plants into the garden this time of year means battling heat and mosquitos as the weather hardly feels like fall around here just yet.

I spent Friday of last week browsing at my very favorite plant nursery here in Austin, Barton Springs Nursery. They have an amazing selection of native plants in various sizes which means you don’t have to spend a lot to transform your garden.

During that particular trip, I was focused on finding all the wildlife-friendly and native plants I could, especially those that produced berries for birds and deer. We have an open back fence that allows for wildlife to come up and browse the plants along the fence, so our back garden bed is the perfect place to tuck in a few plants. I added the following plants to further diversify our offerings for wildlife and pollinators:

elbow bush

American elderberry

pigeonberry

Barbados cherry

desert globemallow

Our garden is currently in a transition phase from summer to fall, and we’re keeping it small and letting our existing plants grow until we add on to the garden this fall and winter.

Being the curious gardener that I am, I couldn’t help but plant two more tomato plants into our existing raised tomato garden bed. How can you resist with a name like Dancing with Smurfs Cherry Tomato? (Thanks Barton Springs Nursery for making me smile with this variety!)

Listen to Cultivating Place: Raise ‘em Right: Plant & Human Community at Barton Springs Nursery in Austin, Texas on NSPR

WELLNESS + CREATIVITY

A Playful Way to Problem-Solve

Start your weekend off with some tunes by Adrian Quesada

A wonderful reminder for balancing productivity and wellness from Thuy Dao on the Her86M2 You Tube Channel.

I’d love to hear about your simple joys in life right now and what you’d like to see in future blog posts. Please share in the comments below this post.

What’s my simple joy this week? Propagating new basil plants from cuttings that I put in water on our kitchen windowsill (more on that next week!)

Enjoy your weekend!

I read once that if there is something that you want to do, but you're not sure how to get there, just begin.

Writing blog posts for 52 Seasons is a creative journey into the expressions that come from my heart: writing, photography, tending a garden, immersing myself in nature, reading stories from voices that need to be heard and sharing them with others, keeping a home, being an advocate for education and basic human rights, and sharing resources with others.

Get involved in your community. VOTE. Speak out. Volunteer. One small action can create momentum for change.

“Do your little bit of good where you are. It’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” -Desmond Tutu