When the world shut down in March 2020, I returned to the one thing that had always steadied me: my journal.
It was my way of making sense of a life that had unraveled. A place to turn when I didn’t know what else to do with what I was living. A space for making meaning in real time.
Isolation was not new to me. I had spent much of my twenties in treatment for leukemia—unable to travel, see friends, even step outside for a walk. But this time, it was shared.
I wondered what it would look like to turn isolation into something else—into creative solitude, into connection. So on April 1, from a makeshift quarantine in my parents’ attic, I began sending out a newsletter with an essay and creative prompt by writers, artists, and thinkers I admired. I invited anyone who wanted to join me.
I didn’t set out to build a community. I was just trying to stay human. But one reader became a handful. A handful became a chorus. Strangers became familiar. And this solitary ritual began to feel like something we were building together.
At the end of the first 100 days, there were more than 100,000 of us. By then, it was clear: isolation hadn’t begun with the pandemic—and it wouldn’t end there either. And so we continued writing, noticing, searching, trying to make sense of our lives together.
A year later, my leukemia returned, and I re-entered treatment, undergoing a second bone marrow transplant. Another relapse followed in the summer of 2024. Again, I was reminded that uncertainty is not an interruption. It’s a condition of being alive.
This space became an exploration of how a creative practice can help us stay present inside that not-knowing. Of holding what is unbearably hard alongside what is unexpectedly beautiful. Of making something, even there.
Six years later, the Isolation Journals has become a living, breathing community—hundreds of thousands of us, writing our way through. I now get to do this work alongside two of my closest friends from graduate school, Holly and Carmen, who help steward this space with care, intelligence, and deep belief in what we’re building together.
What we’ve created here is a shared practice: writing as a way of paying attention, creativity as something we return to rather than perfect, survival as a creative act. Over the years, I’ve heard from so many of you—about marriages, diagnoses, creative awakenings, ordinary Tuesdays that became something else because you paused to put pen to paper.
To those of you who’ve been supporting this work, I offer a deep bow of gratitude.
If you’ve been wanting to step more fully into this space—to not just read, but participate—this is a beautiful moment to begin.
What I know is this: your life is happening whether you are paying attention to it or not. The days are passing. The moments are arriving and disappearing. The question is whether you’re there for them.
This space exists as a small, steady invitation—to notice, to practice creative alchemy, to begin again. And to do so together.
I’m so grateful for what we’ve built.
With love,
Suleika
Why subscribe? You’ll get access to:
Our daily journaling projects, like our 30-Day New Year’s Project,
Our monthly virtual Journaling Club;
Dear Susu, my advice column, along with other essays and writings from me,
Poignant meditations on the creative practice like this podcast with my husband Jon Batiste,
Special events like this workshop with the beloved Elizabeth Gilbert,
Our Studio Visits archive, a collection of conversations with extraordinary artists, along with other opportunities for creative inspiration and community;
Early access to merch like our Isolation Journal No. 1,
Most importantly: a way for people who appreciate my work to support & sustain the Isolation Journals.
I do this work because I know it works, and it’s necessary. Through this practice, we create ourselves, and we write our way through. My hope is that you’ll join us.
If a paid subscription is out of reach, and you’d like access to these offerings, email me at suleika@theisolationjournals.com.
From the Archive
Here’s a snippet of our Studio Visit with Elizabeth Gilbert.
The journal is oceanic. It is capacious. It is memory, reverie, distillation. It teaches us to pay attention, to examine, to reflect, to play. The journal is tabula rasa and terra incognita. It is a mirror for the self—past, present, and future—and a portal onto the not yet known. It is refuge: a hiding place, a finding place.
—from the Isolation Journals Manifesto
About Suleika Jaouad
Suleika Jaouad is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoirs The Book of Alchemy and Between Two Kingdoms, which has been translated into more than twenty languages. Her essays and reporting have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Vogue. A three-time cancer survivor and Emmy Award-winning journalist, she launched her career from her hospital bed at age 22 with her New York Times column and video series, “Life, Interrupted.” She is also a visual artist whose work has been exhibited nationally, most recently a commission to paint a grand piano for the 2025 Super Bowl in New Orleans, now on display at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Along with husband Jon Batiste, Jaouad is the subject of the Oscar-nominated and Grammy Award-winning documentary American Symphony, produced by the Obamas—a portrait of two artists during a year of extreme highs and lows. Her newsletter, the Isolation Journals, is the #1 Literature newsletter on Substack.
