Your soul-stirring testament to the incredible power of attention, of story, of showing up… with a pen, with a sandwich, with a gaze that dares to see moves me. Five years on, and this project feels less like a newsletter and more like a living archive of human tenderness in all its complexity: its ache, its art, its alchemy. You’ve made the private act of journaling into a public gesture of solidarity, turning solitude into communion. That is no small feat, and I think I might write in the name of many: thank you!
The way you describe the echo of one small encounter reverberating through years, bodies, losses, and art, it reminds me of Rilke’s line: “Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.” These letters, these prompts, these stories, they have gestated in hospital waiting rooms, in grief, in the long shadow of illness and the fleeting light of joy. And still, they bring forth something astonishing: connection without spectacle, empathy without pity, beauty without pretence.
Thank you again for creating a space where the stranger is never truly a stranger, and the page is never truly blank. This work is sacred. It matters. And it endures.
“connection without spectacle, empathy without pity, beauty without pretence.” That captures why I stay connected & keep journaling first thing every morning. I keep waiting for validation that it matters to someone besides myself. Friends tell me they’re surprised I’m still doing it. I’m surprised too as I think about the many times I’ve started & abandoned efforts when they became tedious. I’m not beautiful or have financial means or live in a metropolitan city or am well-connected or famous yet I feel part of this effort to change my isolated life into a state of satisfaction that I matter! Thank you Suleika for your encouragement in spite of never being able to meet in person. Somehow we stay connected through the magic of cyberspace & it feels more than ever like it matters!
I’m looking forward to your book. For the past four weeks, we have known that my mother has terminal colon cancer. For a week now, she has been battling an infection that entered through her port, and she is growing weaker by the day. I wish I could find the words to express my feelings, to write them down, but I don’t know where to start. I truly hope that The Book of Alchemy will help me process my grief on paper.
Thanks to your essays, I am more present in these moments by her bedside. I take in everything—the sunlight filtering through the curtains, the heaviness of her breathing, the brief smile when she opens her eyes for a moment. Your words help me absorb these final days with my mom more fully. I am grateful to you.
I’m so sorry to read about your mother. I sat bedside with my mother in law in these same moments. The words may never quite come but trying to find them will help. Sending you love.
Sending you both love and light. I just sat with my brother in law as he was dying from esophageal cancer. I love poems by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer to help me through the grieving. I've been moving my grief, sometimes that's easier for me than words.
Thank you very much, dear strangers. Your words and sympathy have meant a lot to me. My mom passed away in her sleep this night. I wasn’t with her, but I said a proper goodbye. My last image of her is her blowing me a kiss.
In the evening I realized that the time had come. Some things just can’t be explained. Wishing you all the best!
I’m sitting solo on Mother’s Day weeping at this letter. One of the most heart-squeezing parts of cancerhood is witnessing the pain of loved ones. At times, unbearable. My 3 children, my granddaughter, Sarah my Sarah. My parents who can talk of all things but cancer. Knowing that at any moment my joyful existence may be ripped away from me. I want to leave a smiling alter-self, probably in my dressing gown, to stand quietly in the garden of the future watching them all. Nodding and smiling as I know they feel me there.
The sandwich. The sandwich. I am astonished always at the lack of weeping in hospital waiting rooms. And the delicate beauty of glances, gestures, smiles and sharing of this surreal, unimaginable experience that we not only imagine but live.
I remember a mama, maybe in her thirties, in the chemo bed opposite me. ‘I need to get home to pick up my children. I can’t wait any more’. She wore a hat, she was dignified. She wanted to leave. She couldn’t. I am haunted by her. She is with me still.
I am a fellow lifelong journaler and was recently diagnosed with cancer. I stumbled upon Between Two Kingdoms by mention of your essays from my dear acupuncturist and friend. Reading your book at this time in my life, has given me words to address this kingdom that I abruptly entered into.
Reading this blog for the first time ever this morning, has cracked me open even more.
Merci, you are a lumiere to the soul of many in dark waters. A lighthouse and refuge. I look forward to reading your next gift in The Book of Alchemy.
Dear family at the table next to me at Bert and Ernies in Helena, MT. I still wonder about you. I wonder how your lives have gone since that day you provided me with a glimpse of the possibilities of a world filled with love and care. I heard one of you laugh and glanced over. I saw how you looked at each other across the table, all smiles and sparkles. My heart filled with such love for you that I felt lifted out of ordinary time and space. I knew that love existed, was all around us, but dampened by the cares of this world. Feeling it then reminds me that it is there, even when I don't feel it. It has changed the way I view all humans. I hope one day you will know you changed me by just being yourselves.
Your words brought tears to my eyes. They made me remember a very sad event in my life. And even though I didn't participate in the letter writing, please permit me to write a very belated one now
To Bobby's mother
After college I took a job as a music teacher in a rural area of Idaho. I taught at 3 schools, junior high chorus. In my first school there was a beautiful boy with dark curly hair, up and coming basketball player. 7th grader. Sweet kid. The following summer Bobby was riding his bicycle and fell and bruised his leg. Didn't think much of it at the time, but the bruise didn't go away. After a doctor's visit, it was determined he had cancer and it had spread into his bones. They amputated his leg above the knee. Of course that ended his basketball dreams. The next year he was in chorus again. He started to look healthy and was regaining his pink cheeks. Seemed to be ok. But a couple of months later he looked very ill . The cancer had spread and he was dying. He was very angry and acting out. I couldn't imagine what he was feeling. Didn't make it to the end of the school year. Bobby's mother asked me to play a piano solo at his funeral. I played Brahms Intermezzo in A Major. Very sad. Difficult to play through the tears. Bobby, you showed me how precious life is and how soon it can be gone. Thank you. Love to you forever.♥️
I love you, and we don't know us, It does not matter that we do not know us. I love you. My life became mostly solitary long long ago. It takes me a long time to trust. However, writing has long been a friend a way to spread me to a world of strangers, not looking for praise or affirmation. I love this community of strangers--being comfortable to share- our journey's. I write every day even before my beloved teachers suggested. It is kind of like paper birds lighting a universe with kindness.
You fell into my lap between page 112 & 113, just as the plot was turning. I wasn’t expecting you—your smile, soft & sunlit, your fingers caught mid-wave, your eyes looking just left of the lens, as if someone you loved had just called your name.
You weren’t meant for me—you belonged to someone else entirely. Yet here you are, slipped into the creased spine of a novel long abandoned, waiting quietly to be found.
Your dress looks like spring. There’s a looseness to your posture, a kind of ease I’ve forgotten how to wear. Behind you, a blur of trees & maybe a picnic rug—maybe a life. There is laughter caught in the air around you. I can almost hear it.
Who took the photo?
Did they love you? Did you love them back?
I wonder if you liked being photographed.
Were you framed once—beside a bottle of perfume, facing a window just wide enough to watch the world unfold?
And how did you get left behind? Did someone tuck you into the book to keep you safe, only to forget? Or was it too painful to look at you again, so you were hidden among fiction in hopes you’d fade?
You haven’t faded.
I’ve given you a name I won’t say aloud. I imagine you kept bees. And wrote letters in ink. That you danced until your dress clung like a second skin, & stood still at the edge of a graveside, unsure where to place your hands.
I wish I could return you to someone who misses you. But maybe, for now, you’re meant to stay with me—a reminder that every life leaves a shadow on the wall—& some of them still shimmer.
Thank you, Lisa. There’s such tenderness in imagining lives we’ll never know. Strangers, perhaps—but never truly unknown. Just unfinished pages we’ve been left to wonder over. I’ve always been drawn to the unfinished.
Hello All. I am so moved by your writing Suleika. I am every week. Yesterday I went to the place I go often to have blood taken for testing. It was right when they open and it was full. People were anxious and frustrated. I had my mom on my phone because she was again waiting for someone to come help her at her assisted living place. When the women came out she announced they were short staffed. She took me in and was frustrated. My mom said someone was there to help her so I said good bye. The women look startled since I had my phone hidden in my lap. After she finished I said I was sorry she was working under such circumstances. She started to talk about all of it. And then I told her about my mom. And she told me about her daughter working at a similar place. Suddenly we took deep breaths and smiled ( mine was under my mask). I told her how grateful I was for her. Thank you again for starting the isolation journals. And for all of you.
Thank you for your beautiful letter. I’m writing as a first-time cancer caregiver. When people told me this would be tough, I thought I knew what they meant. I didn’t. This past month witnessing my husband struggling for his life following a stem cell transplant has been excruciating. Getting him to try to eat more than a bite of banana for the past 7 days has been immensely frustrating.
But there is so much more stress involved for caregivers, as you so beautifully expressed. I am fortunate not to have to worry about money, but I worry about my young adult daughter had home who is going through a relapse with depression since we left town to stay at Duke for my husbands treatment. Within the past month I also got a flat tire on a busy, dark highway and had to go to Duke Infectious Disease Clinic to treat heel wound that had been bothering me for over two months. (I was chasing a bear out of our front garden and stepped back hard on a rock resulting in an infection). Then the other night, sleeping alone in our Airbnb in Durham with my husband in the hospital, I thought my panic attack was a heart attack and I’d have to call 911 for myself.
Everyone at home thinks I’m strong but I know better. I am no stronger than all the cancer caregivers I’ve met here. I’m just a new member of the club. Thank you for sharing your letter and reminding me to have compassion for myself and others in this situation. We can do this hard thing—caregivers don’t have a choice. But sharing our stories helps us not feel alone.
Ann, perhaps "strong" does not mean fearless. Perhaps, it is just what you have so eloquently described here for us. And what small thing will you do for yourself today? Those damn panic attacks...(I get them too) You are so right, "sharing our stories helps us not feel alone." I see you, I honor you, as caregiver, you are often the forgotten one in the lives of others. May today, in this coheart of sweet souls, you find a soft place to land.
I agree. I think my son and husband have had a rough deal and made a lot of sacrifices on my behalf. For example, my husband has had to put in place precautions to protect me: e.g. social distancing, mask wearing, food hygiene, etc. My son came home from Cambodia where he had just settled into a new job and life to come home to be with me for the last few months - except I haven't died yet and he's uncomplainingly re-built his life here. Then when I do die, they are the ones left managing their grief and having to move on with their lives. We are all doing acts of love and try to live well enjoying the company of each other. Caregivers have a relentless role. Take care Anne - thinking of you xxx
Dear Fellow "Waiter in the PT Waiting Room," You always had your newspaper, and the pieces you had already read, neatly folded in the chair next to you. I was one chair over...with a book whose words I could not reach as my depth of worry over my then 17-year-old daughter and her stroke recovery shadowed my world. We always nodded and smiled slightly as I first entered the door with my daughter, then still in a wheelchair. One day, you spoke to me, "You can read those parts-I'm done with them." The folded part on top was The Style section-always my favorite part as it was the "shallow" part of the paper, with Fashion, Trends, Goings-On in the DC Metro area and an insulation from the other parts, detailing war, greed, oh, and Sports which I couldn't care less about. I thanked you, but what I really wanted to say was, "I see you. I honor you, waiting for your wife. I wonder how you two met and see the love you have for eachother. You are hurting, as you know, time moves forward, not back. You know she will die before you, and your heart will be broken...I suspect, it already is. May you find a piece of peace and know that you offering me your paper, helped me find my piece of peace. I am suffering so deeply, not knowing if the love of my life, my child, will recover. But for this moment, you shielded me, as I immurse myself in the beauty of The Style section. Thank you." I stopped seeing him in the waiting room by the time my daughter was 18. (she is 24 now and still goes to PT) Oh, sweet Newspaper Man, may you be at peace whereever you are. And Know, that my heart meets yours from time to time and feels a thankfulness for Seeing me.
Yes, Carmen, it was! So quiet, so kind and gentle. I am so appreciative for this prompt today, to help remind me to also do quiet, kind, gentle things for others.
After the terrors of the pandemic, passing of loved ones, a firestorm of news now, I deeply appreciate the necessity of distractions like style sections. They are safe spaces where the reeling mind can catch a break and just wander. I have zero guilt about ‘wasting’ time like that.
It’s a route to “the glimmers”, which I recently learned are the opposites of ‘triggers’.
I can thank Alicia Dara of Womancake Magazine on substack for that term. 💖
I like how it encompasses subtlety, as many truly delightful things are. Not big fireworks, glimmer; like the iridescence of an impatien’s petal in sunlight. I just got a shiver of joy just thinking about that. For free.
Now let’s sing the Edelweiss song 🎶 whiskers on kittens…
Remembering, although blocking it out for many years. At age 7 being called “a dirty Jew” and I believed it for many years. In the past I shared my family did not come to my rescue or protection. I now realize it wasn’t only my family but entire generation of silence. So many people walking in pain and never sharing it! Heartbreaking! May you all stay in the light even on your darkest days. Bless you all!
When I read that old phrase the first thing that came to mind was a possible you now: reveling in a fabulous garden that you are healthy enough to work hard in yourself. Getting down in the wondrous soil, poking seeds in, the cathartic mess of a thorough weeding and visualizing fragrant joys to come.
There’s research now about components in living soil that are anti-depressants!
So I love being a dirty woman; badge of honor!
I’m sorry no-one had your back then, I certainly know what that’s like. It’s made me into someone who has interfered in public displays of abuse as a knee jerk reaction, putting myself in peril (in the afterthoughts…. Oops)!
Thank you Suleika, Carmine and Holly for this creative, transformative project. It has touched many lives, including my own. I spent multiple hours with my daughter on the 9th floor of MSK from 2012-2016. The journey continues. Thankful for strangers and friends, known and unknown— who’ve lent a hand, generously smiled, listened with love. This time on earth is very intense. Love fiercely; be fully alive; let the tears flow.
Expression, alchemy, transformation,LOVE, friendship, community, monumental grief paired with joy in the “mere” exchange of an egg with avocado sandwich. And so on. The wondrous nature of what this weekly missive has accomplished in 5 years will live on in space and time, and in the everydayness of the here and now. Gracias de mi corazón
Your soul-stirring testament to the incredible power of attention, of story, of showing up… with a pen, with a sandwich, with a gaze that dares to see moves me. Five years on, and this project feels less like a newsletter and more like a living archive of human tenderness in all its complexity: its ache, its art, its alchemy. You’ve made the private act of journaling into a public gesture of solidarity, turning solitude into communion. That is no small feat, and I think I might write in the name of many: thank you!
The way you describe the echo of one small encounter reverberating through years, bodies, losses, and art, it reminds me of Rilke’s line: “Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.” These letters, these prompts, these stories, they have gestated in hospital waiting rooms, in grief, in the long shadow of illness and the fleeting light of joy. And still, they bring forth something astonishing: connection without spectacle, empathy without pity, beauty without pretence.
Thank you again for creating a space where the stranger is never truly a stranger, and the page is never truly blank. This work is sacred. It matters. And it endures.
“A space where the stranger is never truly a stranger and the page is never truly blank”—love this distillation of what happens here so much! ❤️
Thank you, Suleika!
“Everything is gestation and then bringing forth”—love this Rilke quote so much ❤️
“connection without spectacle, empathy without pity, beauty without pretence.” That captures why I stay connected & keep journaling first thing every morning. I keep waiting for validation that it matters to someone besides myself. Friends tell me they’re surprised I’m still doing it. I’m surprised too as I think about the many times I’ve started & abandoned efforts when they became tedious. I’m not beautiful or have financial means or live in a metropolitan city or am well-connected or famous yet I feel part of this effort to change my isolated life into a state of satisfaction that I matter! Thank you Suleika for your encouragement in spite of never being able to meet in person. Somehow we stay connected through the magic of cyberspace & it feels more than ever like it matters!
Absolutely lovely comment. Your words are truth.
Grateful💐🙏💐
I’m looking forward to your book. For the past four weeks, we have known that my mother has terminal colon cancer. For a week now, she has been battling an infection that entered through her port, and she is growing weaker by the day. I wish I could find the words to express my feelings, to write them down, but I don’t know where to start. I truly hope that The Book of Alchemy will help me process my grief on paper.
Thanks to your essays, I am more present in these moments by her bedside. I take in everything—the sunlight filtering through the curtains, the heaviness of her breathing, the brief smile when she opens her eyes for a moment. Your words help me absorb these final days with my mom more fully. I am grateful to you.
I’m so sorry to read about your mother. I sat bedside with my mother in law in these same moments. The words may never quite come but trying to find them will help. Sending you love.
Thanks for your words ❤️🌼
Sending you so much love as you navigate this dark valley, Kathrin. I so hope that this work helps light the way ❤️❤️
Just write it … now …whatever you are experiencing. You’ll be so glad that you did.
You can shape it later. You and your mother are sharing sacred space. I’m so sorry that she is dying but so glad that you are with her.
Sending you comfort and encouragement. -Nancy Ortenstone
Sending you both love and light. I just sat with my brother in law as he was dying from esophageal cancer. I love poems by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer to help me through the grieving. I've been moving my grief, sometimes that's easier for me than words.
Thank you very much, dear strangers. Your words and sympathy have meant a lot to me. My mom passed away in her sleep this night. I wasn’t with her, but I said a proper goodbye. My last image of her is her blowing me a kiss.
In the evening I realized that the time had come. Some things just can’t be explained. Wishing you all the best!
I'm so sorry Kathrin... There are so many words, but nothing is adequate. Much love and peace are being sent from a stranger.
Kathrin I hear your feelings right in this moment and so does your mother
Speak from the heart and write whatever
It will all come together when the time is right a sentence one day leads to another
Being in these precious
Moments is your job
One sentence a day just to keep up your practice together
I’m sitting solo on Mother’s Day weeping at this letter. One of the most heart-squeezing parts of cancerhood is witnessing the pain of loved ones. At times, unbearable. My 3 children, my granddaughter, Sarah my Sarah. My parents who can talk of all things but cancer. Knowing that at any moment my joyful existence may be ripped away from me. I want to leave a smiling alter-self, probably in my dressing gown, to stand quietly in the garden of the future watching them all. Nodding and smiling as I know they feel me there.
The sandwich. The sandwich. I am astonished always at the lack of weeping in hospital waiting rooms. And the delicate beauty of glances, gestures, smiles and sharing of this surreal, unimaginable experience that we not only imagine but live.
I remember a mama, maybe in her thirties, in the chemo bed opposite me. ‘I need to get home to pick up my children. I can’t wait any more’. She wore a hat, she was dignified. She wanted to leave. She couldn’t. I am haunted by her. She is with me still.
I hope she made it in time.
So beautifully, poignantly said, Mel ❤️
Thank you Carmen. Sending Londony love ❤️
❤️❤️
such a true phrase, 'heart squeezing'....love the image of you in the garden of the future, watching and smiling.
Thank you Sheila. Lovely to meet you here. X
Mel, I felt every syllable of this piece. Thank you. X
Oh thank you so much Kim. Sending sunshine from London. 🦋
Sending you soft stars from Melbourne tonight. X
Oh how wonderful- time travel! 🩵🦋
I am a fellow lifelong journaler and was recently diagnosed with cancer. I stumbled upon Between Two Kingdoms by mention of your essays from my dear acupuncturist and friend. Reading your book at this time in my life, has given me words to address this kingdom that I abruptly entered into.
Reading this blog for the first time ever this morning, has cracked me open even more.
Merci, you are a lumiere to the soul of many in dark waters. A lighthouse and refuge. I look forward to reading your next gift in The Book of Alchemy.
Beyond grateful for your light. Thank you.
We are so glad you found your way here!
I’m so glad you’re here, Heather! Sending you love and strength ❤️
Sending blessings and healing energy!
This is a place of "shelter from the storm." I know it is my weekly shelter. You are safe here and embraced.
🥹❤️
Dear family at the table next to me at Bert and Ernies in Helena, MT. I still wonder about you. I wonder how your lives have gone since that day you provided me with a glimpse of the possibilities of a world filled with love and care. I heard one of you laugh and glanced over. I saw how you looked at each other across the table, all smiles and sparkles. My heart filled with such love for you that I felt lifted out of ordinary time and space. I knew that love existed, was all around us, but dampened by the cares of this world. Feeling it then reminds me that it is there, even when I don't feel it. It has changed the way I view all humans. I hope one day you will know you changed me by just being yourselves.
Love this observation
What a tender, beautiful remembrance. Thank you for sharing this glimpse—love really does ripple outward, even quietly, even unknowingly.
Your words brought tears to my eyes. They made me remember a very sad event in my life. And even though I didn't participate in the letter writing, please permit me to write a very belated one now
To Bobby's mother
After college I took a job as a music teacher in a rural area of Idaho. I taught at 3 schools, junior high chorus. In my first school there was a beautiful boy with dark curly hair, up and coming basketball player. 7th grader. Sweet kid. The following summer Bobby was riding his bicycle and fell and bruised his leg. Didn't think much of it at the time, but the bruise didn't go away. After a doctor's visit, it was determined he had cancer and it had spread into his bones. They amputated his leg above the knee. Of course that ended his basketball dreams. The next year he was in chorus again. He started to look healthy and was regaining his pink cheeks. Seemed to be ok. But a couple of months later he looked very ill . The cancer had spread and he was dying. He was very angry and acting out. I couldn't imagine what he was feeling. Didn't make it to the end of the school year. Bobby's mother asked me to play a piano solo at his funeral. I played Brahms Intermezzo in A Major. Very sad. Difficult to play through the tears. Bobby, you showed me how precious life is and how soon it can be gone. Thank you. Love to you forever.♥️
Thank you for sharing this painful, beautiful relationship from your life. Bobby. Gosh. 🩵
Dear Strangers,
I love you, and we don't know us, It does not matter that we do not know us. I love you. My life became mostly solitary long long ago. It takes me a long time to trust. However, writing has long been a friend a way to spread me to a world of strangers, not looking for praise or affirmation. I love this community of strangers--being comfortable to share- our journey's. I write every day even before my beloved teachers suggested. It is kind of like paper birds lighting a universe with kindness.
And how glad we are that you trust us with your beautiful words.
I have good judgment.. xoxo----
Much love to you, Mae ❤️
And much love to you-Carmen..
Oh how lovely a gift. Thank you and I feel the love and volley it right back. ❤️
“Paper birds……” - exquisite Mae X
Five years on, the world breathes again—
but not as it did.
Dear Stranger Between Sentences,
You fell into my lap between page 112 & 113, just as the plot was turning. I wasn’t expecting you—your smile, soft & sunlit, your fingers caught mid-wave, your eyes looking just left of the lens, as if someone you loved had just called your name.
You weren’t meant for me—you belonged to someone else entirely. Yet here you are, slipped into the creased spine of a novel long abandoned, waiting quietly to be found.
Your dress looks like spring. There’s a looseness to your posture, a kind of ease I’ve forgotten how to wear. Behind you, a blur of trees & maybe a picnic rug—maybe a life. There is laughter caught in the air around you. I can almost hear it.
Who took the photo?
Did they love you? Did you love them back?
I wonder if you liked being photographed.
Were you framed once—beside a bottle of perfume, facing a window just wide enough to watch the world unfold?
And how did you get left behind? Did someone tuck you into the book to keep you safe, only to forget? Or was it too painful to look at you again, so you were hidden among fiction in hopes you’d fade?
You haven’t faded.
I’ve given you a name I won’t say aloud. I imagine you kept bees. And wrote letters in ink. That you danced until your dress clung like a second skin, & stood still at the edge of a graveside, unsure where to place your hands.
I wish I could return you to someone who misses you. But maybe, for now, you’re meant to stay with me—a reminder that every life leaves a shadow on the wall—& some of them still shimmer.
This beautiful. I too love making up stories about people I encounter or even photographs.
Thank you, Lisa. There’s such tenderness in imagining lives we’ll never know. Strangers, perhaps—but never truly unknown. Just unfinished pages we’ve been left to wonder over. I’ve always been drawn to the unfinished.
What an exquisite description of a mystery photograph, a way to create a story from a simple picture. Thank you!
Thank you, Teri. The photograph was still, but something inside it kept moving—as if memory had left its handprint behind.
such beautiful descriptions!
Thank you, Sheila. She seemed to ask for remembering. I did my best to follow.
Hello All. I am so moved by your writing Suleika. I am every week. Yesterday I went to the place I go often to have blood taken for testing. It was right when they open and it was full. People were anxious and frustrated. I had my mom on my phone because she was again waiting for someone to come help her at her assisted living place. When the women came out she announced they were short staffed. She took me in and was frustrated. My mom said someone was there to help her so I said good bye. The women look startled since I had my phone hidden in my lap. After she finished I said I was sorry she was working under such circumstances. She started to talk about all of it. And then I told her about my mom. And she told me about her daughter working at a similar place. Suddenly we took deep breaths and smiled ( mine was under my mask). I told her how grateful I was for her. Thank you again for starting the isolation journals. And for all of you.
Those moments of connection change everything ❤️
I’ve got lymphoma. I know what those waiting rooms are like. Your essay moved me to tears.
Sending healing energy and caring!
Dear Jennifer
Thank you for your beautiful letter. I’m writing as a first-time cancer caregiver. When people told me this would be tough, I thought I knew what they meant. I didn’t. This past month witnessing my husband struggling for his life following a stem cell transplant has been excruciating. Getting him to try to eat more than a bite of banana for the past 7 days has been immensely frustrating.
But there is so much more stress involved for caregivers, as you so beautifully expressed. I am fortunate not to have to worry about money, but I worry about my young adult daughter had home who is going through a relapse with depression since we left town to stay at Duke for my husbands treatment. Within the past month I also got a flat tire on a busy, dark highway and had to go to Duke Infectious Disease Clinic to treat heel wound that had been bothering me for over two months. (I was chasing a bear out of our front garden and stepped back hard on a rock resulting in an infection). Then the other night, sleeping alone in our Airbnb in Durham with my husband in the hospital, I thought my panic attack was a heart attack and I’d have to call 911 for myself.
Everyone at home thinks I’m strong but I know better. I am no stronger than all the cancer caregivers I’ve met here. I’m just a new member of the club. Thank you for sharing your letter and reminding me to have compassion for myself and others in this situation. We can do this hard thing—caregivers don’t have a choice. But sharing our stories helps us not feel alone.
Love, Ann
Sending you love and strength as you do this hard thing ❤️❤️
Ann, perhaps "strong" does not mean fearless. Perhaps, it is just what you have so eloquently described here for us. And what small thing will you do for yourself today? Those damn panic attacks...(I get them too) You are so right, "sharing our stories helps us not feel alone." I see you, I honor you, as caregiver, you are often the forgotten one in the lives of others. May today, in this coheart of sweet souls, you find a soft place to land.
Sending love to you, Ann. 🙏🏾
I agree. I think my son and husband have had a rough deal and made a lot of sacrifices on my behalf. For example, my husband has had to put in place precautions to protect me: e.g. social distancing, mask wearing, food hygiene, etc. My son came home from Cambodia where he had just settled into a new job and life to come home to be with me for the last few months - except I haven't died yet and he's uncomplainingly re-built his life here. Then when I do die, they are the ones left managing their grief and having to move on with their lives. We are all doing acts of love and try to live well enjoying the company of each other. Caregivers have a relentless role. Take care Anne - thinking of you xxx
Sending love and strength. ❤️🙏
Ann,
If the only reason this journal, this prompt, existed
was for me to find your words—
then I have.
I see you.
I was you.
You are doing the best you can.
And that, my darling, is more than enough.
With tenderness,
from the southern side of the world X
Dear Fellow "Waiter in the PT Waiting Room," You always had your newspaper, and the pieces you had already read, neatly folded in the chair next to you. I was one chair over...with a book whose words I could not reach as my depth of worry over my then 17-year-old daughter and her stroke recovery shadowed my world. We always nodded and smiled slightly as I first entered the door with my daughter, then still in a wheelchair. One day, you spoke to me, "You can read those parts-I'm done with them." The folded part on top was The Style section-always my favorite part as it was the "shallow" part of the paper, with Fashion, Trends, Goings-On in the DC Metro area and an insulation from the other parts, detailing war, greed, oh, and Sports which I couldn't care less about. I thanked you, but what I really wanted to say was, "I see you. I honor you, waiting for your wife. I wonder how you two met and see the love you have for eachother. You are hurting, as you know, time moves forward, not back. You know she will die before you, and your heart will be broken...I suspect, it already is. May you find a piece of peace and know that you offering me your paper, helped me find my piece of peace. I am suffering so deeply, not knowing if the love of my life, my child, will recover. But for this moment, you shielded me, as I immurse myself in the beauty of The Style section. Thank you." I stopped seeing him in the waiting room by the time my daughter was 18. (she is 24 now and still goes to PT) Oh, sweet Newspaper Man, may you be at peace whereever you are. And Know, that my heart meets yours from time to time and feels a thankfulness for Seeing me.
Such a lovely gesture ❤️❤️
Yes, Carmen, it was! So quiet, so kind and gentle. I am so appreciative for this prompt today, to help remind me to also do quiet, kind, gentle things for others.
After the terrors of the pandemic, passing of loved ones, a firestorm of news now, I deeply appreciate the necessity of distractions like style sections. They are safe spaces where the reeling mind can catch a break and just wander. I have zero guilt about ‘wasting’ time like that.
It’s a route to “the glimmers”, which I recently learned are the opposites of ‘triggers’.
What’s new???
"The Glimmers" Oh, I love that such much, Ali! Thank you.
I can thank Alicia Dara of Womancake Magazine on substack for that term. 💖
I like how it encompasses subtlety, as many truly delightful things are. Not big fireworks, glimmer; like the iridescence of an impatien’s petal in sunlight. I just got a shiver of joy just thinking about that. For free.
Now let’s sing the Edelweiss song 🎶 whiskers on kittens…
Ear 🪱!!! 😺
and hot cups of coffee, really good books that I just can't put down, finding new friends who will sing this great song! (Thank you, Ali)
Remembering, although blocking it out for many years. At age 7 being called “a dirty Jew” and I believed it for many years. In the past I shared my family did not come to my rescue or protection. I now realize it wasn’t only my family but entire generation of silence. So many people walking in pain and never sharing it! Heartbreaking! May you all stay in the light even on your darkest days. Bless you all!
When I read that old phrase the first thing that came to mind was a possible you now: reveling in a fabulous garden that you are healthy enough to work hard in yourself. Getting down in the wondrous soil, poking seeds in, the cathartic mess of a thorough weeding and visualizing fragrant joys to come.
There’s research now about components in living soil that are anti-depressants!
So I love being a dirty woman; badge of honor!
I’m sorry no-one had your back then, I certainly know what that’s like. It’s made me into someone who has interfered in public displays of abuse as a knee jerk reaction, putting myself in peril (in the afterthoughts…. Oops)!
Sorry to hear that. ❤️
Thank you Suleika, Carmine and Holly for this creative, transformative project. It has touched many lives, including my own. I spent multiple hours with my daughter on the 9th floor of MSK from 2012-2016. The journey continues. Thankful for strangers and friends, known and unknown— who’ve lent a hand, generously smiled, listened with love. This time on earth is very intense. Love fiercely; be fully alive; let the tears flow.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
Expression, alchemy, transformation,LOVE, friendship, community, monumental grief paired with joy in the “mere” exchange of an egg with avocado sandwich. And so on. The wondrous nature of what this weekly missive has accomplished in 5 years will live on in space and time, and in the everydayness of the here and now. Gracias de mi corazón
Ohhhh This was such a lovely delicate read. I was so moved by Everything that my words don’t really color the emotions correctly