In moments of great uncertainty, I’ve always turned to my journal.
When covid hit, I was no stranger to isolation: I spent much of my twenties in treatment for leukemia, unable to travel, eat out, see friends, even take a walk. Suddenly isolation was back—this time on a global scale. To turn that isolation into creative solitude and connection, I asked my favorite writers, artists, and community leaders to share some words of inspiration and a prompt, and I invited my community to journal along with me.
By the end of the first 100 days of the Isolation Journals, there were 100,000 of us: writing, searching, seeking, connecting, making sense of our lives together. But isolation did not begin with the pandemic—more and more it’s a feature of everyday life. So I continued to send out a weekly newsletter with an essay and journaling prompt from a different contributor, along with a missive where I try to make sense of the peaks and valleys of life.
Then in late 2021, I learned my leukemia had returned after almost a decade, and I had to re-enter treatment and undergo a second bone marrow transplant. This relapse was followed by another in the summer of 2024. Illness and the prospect of being in treatment indefinitely have reminded me of all the lessons I’ve learned before and new ones too—lessons about learning to swim in the ocean of not knowing, about holding the unspeakably beautiful and unbearably cruel facts of life in the same palm.
Here at the Isolation Journals, we navigate life’s interruptions together. Here, we reimagine survival as a creative act.
I hope you’ll join me.
—Suleika
Why subscribe? You’ll get access to:
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,
The Hatch, our virtual creative hour;
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 the dazzling 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, translated into more than twenty languages. Her newsletter, the Isolation Journals, is the #1 Literature newsletter on Substack, and 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.
