Suleika, I have a confession too...last year, I was too afraid to make 5 Lists. My home life was so awful, my parents were both spiraling towards death and I couldn't bear to see my life in writing. Now, I am ready and I thank you for your honesty, and for the rawthentic prompt of The Five Lists. Light, Laughter, Love, and Magic to you.
I just read the five lists prompt for the first time and the first thing I also felt was fear. This year was so difficult and the idea of writing about my anxieties scares me even though I know and have learned this year that putting it all out on paper always makes me feel more free than keeping it all in. Also the idea of the fifth question really delights me. So I plan to do all the questions even though it's scary partially because I want to get to that last question. I love the idea of writing out my wildest dreams.
Best of luck with your list. Just starting it feels like a brave first step!
Megan, I felt "delight" at your delight to get to the 5th question! Yes, that first step will lead us to our "wildest dreams." I am thinking of you and just know that we can do this!
Great work, Megan! I did it too, and found that the "Wildest Dreams" was the hardest part. This was so telling for me. Time to Banish the Censor inside myself.
Awesome!! Yes for some of the questions I started writing in my head and trying to decide what to say and then I said no! I'm the only one who sees this, write the first thing and everything that comes to mind. Perhaps when we make nothing off limits in our writing, we will find the same thing happens in our lives - we stop limiting ourselves. I hope so. Glad we both could do this one! Go us!
Yes! Go us! I love this, "Perhaps when we make nothing off limits in our writing, we will find the same thing happens in our lives-we stop limiting ourselves." May it be so for us both!
Ahh, you have put into words a feeling that has held me back from journaling. To put into words what is unfolding, to see it there, escaped and on a page. Sending you warmth and courage to write again. 💛
Oh, Mary, this is hitting me so hard right now. In the last year I've also had some awful things happen -- health wise, in my professional life, in my family, feelings of complete despair. Feelings of fear. Then an old and dear friend just gifted me a necklace, which has one word printed on it: Fearless
And it comes on the cusp of now reading Suleika's prompts, which I'd not seen before as I'm a new subscriber just this year. And so now it seems apropos to dive in, to feel that fearlessness, to understand that it's through writing that we work things out, that we discover who we are, that we find those kindred spirits who nourish us and keep us standing upright.
Nancy, I love that your friend knew just what would reach your heart. Yes, to the deep dive! And so, kindred spirit, let us go forth in the direction of our dreams, our truth, our fears and the fabulous Wildness!
Suleika, you are a gift to all of us. In 2024 I had chemo, surgery, radiation, and more chemo and I did not journal during the most intense chemo basically at all. Post op and during radiation I picked it back up and have had a lot of regret about not journaling during chemo, as part of me feels I may one day want to read words from the version of me who was going through it. At the same time I know I just didn’t have the space for it.
I am currently facing a health problem in my husband that has me more scared than anything ever has in my life and this is a beautiful reminder that journaling will get me through. It may take a little grit to get the words on the page, and it may not always be the easy escape with coffee in the morning that I want it to be, but if I put the work in during this time the reward will be great. Thank you for that reminder. Also, I love my journal as you designed it and I think of you every day that I open it ❤️.
Bridget, I'm sitting here drinking coffee, and as I read your piece, I felt a little connection...the ritual of coffee. You are a person who inspires great hope-I feel it through your writing. Sending you love.
Thank you so much Mary ❤️❤️. I love connecting a coffee ritual. Now that you say this I’m realizing I couldn’t tolerate coffee during chemo so maybe that was the real reason I didn’t journal! Thank you for getting me to this little insight. I hope you have a great night.
Every Sunday for quite a while I look forward to your presence and writing. Your journey and enthusiasm for living and meeting challenges seems “heroic” to me. Thank you, said a thousand times, would still fall short. I read today’s “five lists” suggestion and this arose:
INSPIRATION. Fueled by a vast amount of curiousity, this is my full-hearted response to each part of this “five list”. I’ll work on expanding my response, quietly, as the days go by. For today, this is the essence for me:
INSPIRATION. Taking a deep breath, I make room in my heart for inspiration. Best wishes, David🏮
Dear Suleika, thank you for your heartfelt words here.
For some reason, it prompted a strong memory of when I found your journal prompts during the worst of the pandemic. I live alone by choice but the isolation of that time, the suffering all around me felt almost impossible to bear.
Your prompts were a lifeline in getting through and I think transcending. It has been a hard year and there is so much uncertainty ahead. Perhaps that is what took me back to our first meeting.
Today reading your about the Five Lists project gave me a needed twinkle of hope--and that, my friend, is magic indeed.
Sending you, Jon and your fur family love, blessings, magic and purrs from me and my cat tribe.
How beautiful to find solace in the wee hours of morning from your words, Suleika, and from the comments of early birds who, nourished by your offerings, are beaming back care into this still-dark dawn. Thank you all for helping me feel reverberations and connections as this year comes to a close and we have a chance to begin again together. Suleika, I too have found this year to be one of immense loss and heartbreak and challenge, coupled with some of the most palpable moments of love and joy. As always, I appreciate you seeing, narrating, and resiliently embracing the overwhelming multitude that comprises life, and lighting a way forward. Thank you for creating and sharing your path with us!
Battling a fear of the upcoming year, your theme, “the need to let go of the fear of the unknown and instead to open ourselves up to the mysteries and the magic of the unknown,” is a beautiful way to look at life, especially in the face of overwhelming challenges. I’m chronically ill, underwent cancer treatment this year, and I’m raising my three-year-old granddaughter. She went through an intense open-heart surgery to repair a congenital heart defect last month. It’s been a difficult year, but I’ve learned so much and can look back on multiple victories. I’m going to start on my five lists today. Your prompts are brilliant and will help me clarify the mindset I need to have this year.
You're a fantastic inspiration. I can't think of anything more intense or painful in your struggle to move forward. I wish I had your stamina. Maybe I have it, but I don't want to recognize it. Nothing is more important than for you to receive the gift of love and admiration. I wish the best for you this New Year because if there's anyone more deserving, it's you, my friend. Sending you strength and best wishes for years to come. 🫶💝
Love that Yolanda, “maybe I have it and don’t want to recognize it”. That resonates with me. I think of Nelson Mandela “ Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerfully beyond measure. It’s our light not our darkness that most frightens us.” Woof
Hello All. Suleika. I am so grateful for you. And thank you for your consistent sharing of your heart. I love your writing for it allows me to be me. And I love what people write here to also be themselves. This year has had lots of journeys of difficulties of my health. ok really big difficulties. And I come here for connection and comfort. And I am a caregiver of my mom. And I have a wonderful husband that I worry about. And I love the lists. So I look forward to this week of writing. And all of you. I am truly grateful.
Thank you once again, Suleika. Every Sunday morning I sit with my coffee and anxiously await the arrival of your message—words of wisdom, invitations for self-reflection, perspective adjustments, reminders that we are all struggling + blessed humans. I so admire and am inspired by your fortitude. Thank you for continuing to give. You demonstrate and inspire grace, resilience, humor and grit. I continue to be grateful for your generosity.❤️ Be well.
Gratitude. Thanks, but more importantly, deep respect for the space you, Suleika, along with Carmen and Holly, have created and lovingly burnish every week so that we might see ourselves, find ourselves, and both give what we can muster, and take what for each of us will help/support/serve to keep us swimming in the sea of possibility that is life.
Last year I bought the new journal designed by your mom and looked forward to learning more about journaling. I had been sick thru December with a virus of some sort (not covid) and was looking forward to the new year. In early January I went to endorse a check and found I was unable to write my name for the first time since the age of what, five? A rapid decline in speech and gait and several tests later yielded no real answers except 3 brain lesions but to make a long story shorter-I’m much, MUCH better and am so very grateful. Still no definitive dx but they have narrowed it down to two possible neurological disorders. The important thing is I am so much better and no worse! I can walk, talk clearly, and use my hands. Wobbly sometimes but I just say “ call me Lurch”. But-I found for the first time in my life that one can be too tired to even pray. Some days all I could manage wasn’t even a whispered “help me”, “acceptance “ , “thank you”. Your writings, Suleika, and the thoughts of your co-creators and this community each Sunday, helped to give me hope and encouragement. I wish I had the gift of words to give that back to you. Holding you in my heart and wishing you strength and a lot of magic! Looking forward to writing in my journal this year.
I started to realize I need a journal at my bedside, a night time journal per se and one in my art/movement room, an “any time of day”journal. I don’t journal every day but what a great tool it is in my toolkit.
It has been there like a best friend, always to go to, with my hardest days and my best ones too!
I love your Five lists as a journal prompt thank you and always my best wishes for you Suleika. I am really looking forward to your book release !
Oh yes, I also haven't write a word in my journal for a long time and was looking for the New Year's Journaling Challenge - great that we're doing it again and can't wait to join ❤️
Wishing you a relaxed in-between-the-years time, happy contemplating and reflecting and "see" you all in 2025 ✍️
Thanks for being our guide in 2024, dear Suleika, despite all the challenges and hardships. It's a wonderful experience to be a part of this community 🫂 and again - one of my highlights this year was seeing you "live" in Montreux and being able to wave you with the Isolation Journals tote. A moment I will remember for ever.
A hard truth, something that has caused me shame in the past; I have not journaled for years and years. I begin anew and divorce myself from the page almost as soon as I begin. When my children were young, writing was my solace. My confessional booth. My accounting of the life around me. I have many journals from those years and to re read them is both a joy and a sorrow. My words, like my life in some way, seem so repetitive. I tire at the tale they tell. What never ceases to amaze me is the wonder that stirs my heart. Words can not contain the beauty of hearing the beautiful voice of one lone boy singing the opening verse of "Once in Royal David's City", at the beginning of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. Words can not describe the chill of coyotes calling down at the river in the evening. And words can not bear witness to the love I hold for this broken world. Instead, I have begun to paint. This is a very new, never before imagined medium for me, but one that frees my mind. At the same time, the stories I read here and other places do move me. To absorb the joy, sorrow, and triumphs of others strengthens my faith and brings me again out under the evening sky where I can say, " Oh, thank you, thank you, for it all!" A blessed Sunday to you all. Love, Jacqueline
Thank you for your words. You always give me hope and inspiration when my life is breached with despair. My longing to journal has also taken a hiatus given some parallel paths - chemo again as of September and other hiccups along my path of life. Plenty of words traverse my thoughts. Yet to get up and write in the early morning darkness when my best thoughts percolate is rife with excuses. But this morning your words fertilized some solutions. Thank you.
Suleika, I have a confession too...last year, I was too afraid to make 5 Lists. My home life was so awful, my parents were both spiraling towards death and I couldn't bear to see my life in writing. Now, I am ready and I thank you for your honesty, and for the rawthentic prompt of The Five Lists. Light, Laughter, Love, and Magic to you.
❤️❤️❤️
I just read the five lists prompt for the first time and the first thing I also felt was fear. This year was so difficult and the idea of writing about my anxieties scares me even though I know and have learned this year that putting it all out on paper always makes me feel more free than keeping it all in. Also the idea of the fifth question really delights me. So I plan to do all the questions even though it's scary partially because I want to get to that last question. I love the idea of writing out my wildest dreams.
Best of luck with your list. Just starting it feels like a brave first step!
Megan, I felt "delight" at your delight to get to the 5th question! Yes, that first step will lead us to our "wildest dreams." I am thinking of you and just know that we can do this!
I did it! I'm so proud of myself for doing it. I hope you did too!
Great work, Megan! I did it too, and found that the "Wildest Dreams" was the hardest part. This was so telling for me. Time to Banish the Censor inside myself.
Awesome!! Yes for some of the questions I started writing in my head and trying to decide what to say and then I said no! I'm the only one who sees this, write the first thing and everything that comes to mind. Perhaps when we make nothing off limits in our writing, we will find the same thing happens in our lives - we stop limiting ourselves. I hope so. Glad we both could do this one! Go us!
Yes! Go us! I love this, "Perhaps when we make nothing off limits in our writing, we will find the same thing happens in our lives-we stop limiting ourselves." May it be so for us both!
Ahh, you have put into words a feeling that has held me back from journaling. To put into words what is unfolding, to see it there, escaped and on a page. Sending you warmth and courage to write again. 💛
Thank you, Sarah! I bought a journal today at my favorite little bookstore and started my 5 Lists. Warmth and courage received!
I love that, Mary! You inspire me to do the same ☺️
Sarah, sounds like we are on the road together. How wonderful to have a "travel" partner!
Oh, Mary, this is hitting me so hard right now. In the last year I've also had some awful things happen -- health wise, in my professional life, in my family, feelings of complete despair. Feelings of fear. Then an old and dear friend just gifted me a necklace, which has one word printed on it: Fearless
And it comes on the cusp of now reading Suleika's prompts, which I'd not seen before as I'm a new subscriber just this year. And so now it seems apropos to dive in, to feel that fearlessness, to understand that it's through writing that we work things out, that we discover who we are, that we find those kindred spirits who nourish us and keep us standing upright.
Nancy, I love that your friend knew just what would reach your heart. Yes, to the deep dive! And so, kindred spirit, let us go forth in the direction of our dreams, our truth, our fears and the fabulous Wildness!
I love your word "rawthentic."
Thanks for highlighting that, Gina, because I forgot to mention it. What a fantastic word!
Suleika, you are a gift to all of us. In 2024 I had chemo, surgery, radiation, and more chemo and I did not journal during the most intense chemo basically at all. Post op and during radiation I picked it back up and have had a lot of regret about not journaling during chemo, as part of me feels I may one day want to read words from the version of me who was going through it. At the same time I know I just didn’t have the space for it.
I am currently facing a health problem in my husband that has me more scared than anything ever has in my life and this is a beautiful reminder that journaling will get me through. It may take a little grit to get the words on the page, and it may not always be the easy escape with coffee in the morning that I want it to be, but if I put the work in during this time the reward will be great. Thank you for that reminder. Also, I love my journal as you designed it and I think of you every day that I open it ❤️.
Thinking of you and your husband, Bridget, sending prayers that all will be well ❤️
Bridget, I'm sitting here drinking coffee, and as I read your piece, I felt a little connection...the ritual of coffee. You are a person who inspires great hope-I feel it through your writing. Sending you love.
Sending you loving energy🙏🏻💛✨️
Thank you so much Carmen! That means so much.
Thank you so much Mary ❤️❤️. I love connecting a coffee ritual. Now that you say this I’m realizing I couldn’t tolerate coffee during chemo so maybe that was the real reason I didn’t journal! Thank you for getting me to this little insight. I hope you have a great night.
Greetings, Suleika,
Every Sunday for quite a while I look forward to your presence and writing. Your journey and enthusiasm for living and meeting challenges seems “heroic” to me. Thank you, said a thousand times, would still fall short. I read today’s “five lists” suggestion and this arose:
INSPIRATION. Fueled by a vast amount of curiousity, this is my full-hearted response to each part of this “five list”. I’ll work on expanding my response, quietly, as the days go by. For today, this is the essence for me:
INSPIRATION. Taking a deep breath, I make room in my heart for inspiration. Best wishes, David🏮
So well said David. Thank you.
Dear Suleika, thank you for your heartfelt words here.
For some reason, it prompted a strong memory of when I found your journal prompts during the worst of the pandemic. I live alone by choice but the isolation of that time, the suffering all around me felt almost impossible to bear.
Your prompts were a lifeline in getting through and I think transcending. It has been a hard year and there is so much uncertainty ahead. Perhaps that is what took me back to our first meeting.
Today reading your about the Five Lists project gave me a needed twinkle of hope--and that, my friend, is magic indeed.
Sending you, Jon and your fur family love, blessings, magic and purrs from me and my cat tribe.
How beautiful to find solace in the wee hours of morning from your words, Suleika, and from the comments of early birds who, nourished by your offerings, are beaming back care into this still-dark dawn. Thank you all for helping me feel reverberations and connections as this year comes to a close and we have a chance to begin again together. Suleika, I too have found this year to be one of immense loss and heartbreak and challenge, coupled with some of the most palpable moments of love and joy. As always, I appreciate you seeing, narrating, and resiliently embracing the overwhelming multitude that comprises life, and lighting a way forward. Thank you for creating and sharing your path with us!
Battling a fear of the upcoming year, your theme, “the need to let go of the fear of the unknown and instead to open ourselves up to the mysteries and the magic of the unknown,” is a beautiful way to look at life, especially in the face of overwhelming challenges. I’m chronically ill, underwent cancer treatment this year, and I’m raising my three-year-old granddaughter. She went through an intense open-heart surgery to repair a congenital heart defect last month. It’s been a difficult year, but I’ve learned so much and can look back on multiple victories. I’m going to start on my five lists today. Your prompts are brilliant and will help me clarify the mindset I need to have this year.
Patty, oh my stars! You are a warrior.
I am so in agreement that you are a warrior!!
You're a fantastic inspiration. I can't think of anything more intense or painful in your struggle to move forward. I wish I had your stamina. Maybe I have it, but I don't want to recognize it. Nothing is more important than for you to receive the gift of love and admiration. I wish the best for you this New Year because if there's anyone more deserving, it's you, my friend. Sending you strength and best wishes for years to come. 🫶💝
Sending it right back to you. ❤️
Happy New Year! 🎊
Love that Yolanda, “maybe I have it and don’t want to recognize it”. That resonates with me. I think of Nelson Mandela “ Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerfully beyond measure. It’s our light not our darkness that most frightens us.” Woof
You too!
Hello All. Suleika. I am so grateful for you. And thank you for your consistent sharing of your heart. I love your writing for it allows me to be me. And I love what people write here to also be themselves. This year has had lots of journeys of difficulties of my health. ok really big difficulties. And I come here for connection and comfort. And I am a caregiver of my mom. And I have a wonderful husband that I worry about. And I love the lists. So I look forward to this week of writing. And all of you. I am truly grateful.
Thank you once again, Suleika. Every Sunday morning I sit with my coffee and anxiously await the arrival of your message—words of wisdom, invitations for self-reflection, perspective adjustments, reminders that we are all struggling + blessed humans. I so admire and am inspired by your fortitude. Thank you for continuing to give. You demonstrate and inspire grace, resilience, humor and grit. I continue to be grateful for your generosity.❤️ Be well.
Gratitude. Thanks, but more importantly, deep respect for the space you, Suleika, along with Carmen and Holly, have created and lovingly burnish every week so that we might see ourselves, find ourselves, and both give what we can muster, and take what for each of us will help/support/serve to keep us swimming in the sea of possibility that is life.
Be well, all.
So, so beautifully put, Sandra. Yes, this sacred space we each hold because of Suleika, Carmen, and Holly.
Last year I bought the new journal designed by your mom and looked forward to learning more about journaling. I had been sick thru December with a virus of some sort (not covid) and was looking forward to the new year. In early January I went to endorse a check and found I was unable to write my name for the first time since the age of what, five? A rapid decline in speech and gait and several tests later yielded no real answers except 3 brain lesions but to make a long story shorter-I’m much, MUCH better and am so very grateful. Still no definitive dx but they have narrowed it down to two possible neurological disorders. The important thing is I am so much better and no worse! I can walk, talk clearly, and use my hands. Wobbly sometimes but I just say “ call me Lurch”. But-I found for the first time in my life that one can be too tired to even pray. Some days all I could manage wasn’t even a whispered “help me”, “acceptance “ , “thank you”. Your writings, Suleika, and the thoughts of your co-creators and this community each Sunday, helped to give me hope and encouragement. I wish I had the gift of words to give that back to you. Holding you in my heart and wishing you strength and a lot of magic! Looking forward to writing in my journal this year.
I'm so glad to hear you're doing better, Cathryn. Sending you love. ❤️
Sending so much back to you and wishing you everything you need and hope for.
I started to realize I need a journal at my bedside, a night time journal per se and one in my art/movement room, an “any time of day”journal. I don’t journal every day but what a great tool it is in my toolkit.
It has been there like a best friend, always to go to, with my hardest days and my best ones too!
I love your Five lists as a journal prompt thank you and always my best wishes for you Suleika. I am really looking forward to your book release !
I love the idea of a journal for each room!
Oh yes, I also haven't write a word in my journal for a long time and was looking for the New Year's Journaling Challenge - great that we're doing it again and can't wait to join ❤️
Wishing you a relaxed in-between-the-years time, happy contemplating and reflecting and "see" you all in 2025 ✍️
Thanks for being our guide in 2024, dear Suleika, despite all the challenges and hardships. It's a wonderful experience to be a part of this community 🫂 and again - one of my highlights this year was seeing you "live" in Montreux and being able to wave you with the Isolation Journals tote. A moment I will remember for ever.
Say hi to Jon and your beautiful dogs 🐾
Eva
A hard truth, something that has caused me shame in the past; I have not journaled for years and years. I begin anew and divorce myself from the page almost as soon as I begin. When my children were young, writing was my solace. My confessional booth. My accounting of the life around me. I have many journals from those years and to re read them is both a joy and a sorrow. My words, like my life in some way, seem so repetitive. I tire at the tale they tell. What never ceases to amaze me is the wonder that stirs my heart. Words can not contain the beauty of hearing the beautiful voice of one lone boy singing the opening verse of "Once in Royal David's City", at the beginning of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. Words can not describe the chill of coyotes calling down at the river in the evening. And words can not bear witness to the love I hold for this broken world. Instead, I have begun to paint. This is a very new, never before imagined medium for me, but one that frees my mind. At the same time, the stories I read here and other places do move me. To absorb the joy, sorrow, and triumphs of others strengthens my faith and brings me again out under the evening sky where I can say, " Oh, thank you, thank you, for it all!" A blessed Sunday to you all. Love, Jacqueline
Thank you for your words. You always give me hope and inspiration when my life is breached with despair. My longing to journal has also taken a hiatus given some parallel paths - chemo again as of September and other hiccups along my path of life. Plenty of words traverse my thoughts. Yet to get up and write in the early morning darkness when my best thoughts percolate is rife with excuses. But this morning your words fertilized some solutions. Thank you.
🌟 Here's to what unfolds today, tomorrow, into 2025 & beyond...
I wish you all the magical in this world. May your light continue to illuminate us All, dear Suleika!
🕯💜🕊