Day 11 of 30: Reverberations

A prompt on vulnerability by the singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers

To celebrate a year of the Isolation Journals, we’re inviting you to join us in a 30-day journaling challenge for the month of April. To support your practice, we’ll be emailing you three prompts each week. Then in May, we’ll return to our regular Sunday newsletter.

If you want a little extra inspiration, you can find a daily prompt here on the site. And if you want to help sustain the Isolation Journals, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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Hi friend,

Since my memoir came out, there have been moments where I’m a bit horrified that I’ve laid everything out for the world to see. But in the last several weeks, I’ve received so many messages from readers that have left me humbled and stunned. 

Back in February, I got an email from a woman who was a fellow at the hospital where I received my treatment during that first summer after my leukemia diagnosis. She remembered me and the room I was confined to, and the pictures I had put up to brighten the drab walls. She remembered visiting me on most days of that first terrible month, as test results came back and showed the chemo wasn’t working. “My heart ached for you and how your life changed so dramatically,” she wrote.

A decade later, she still refuses to harden herself, to build barriers between her work and her patients. “As physicians we need to understand beyond how to review labs and select treatments,” she wrote. “I deeply mourn for the patients and families who I have lost. My hopes run high when I open the lab reports and PET scan reports for my patients, and the sadness cuts deep when treatments aren't working.”

I’ve been thinking about the term “thick skin” lately, and how we often think of it as a good thing. I’m a pretty sensitive person, and at times I wish I had more of a callous against the difficulties of the world. But staying open and allowing yourself to be vulnerable is a kind of magnet. It draws other people toward you, and they respond with the same honesty, the same vulnerability. It’s call and response, reverberation begetting reverberation.

Today we’re re-sharing a beauty of a prompt from the enchanting Maggie Rogers, who you may know from her gorgeous voice, goddess-like stage presence, and meteoric rise to popdom. What you might not know is that she’s a beautiful writer. Here’s hoping her prompt takes you somewhere tender and honest, and that it reverberates.

Sending love,

Suleika

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In Your Deepest Core by Maggie Rogers

Throughout my life I’ve thought of vulnerability as a shield. My logic goes something like—if I tell you my whole truth, everything I’m feeling, then there’s no ammo left for you to hurt me. It’s been my default defense mechanism for as long as I can remember. I was the kid in the second grade telling everyone who I had a crush on instead of trying to keep it a secret. 

As a songwriter, I’ve found vulnerability to be a source of real power. It’s at the core of how I’ve defined the greatest songwriting—songs that have the ability to take one person’s experience and make it universal, songs that can clearly and simply express one’s feelings, needs, and desires. 

I want to hold your hand. I want to dance with somebody. I want to be your dog. I want it that way. I want to break free.

Your prompt for today:

In your deepest core, in your most vulnerable moments—what do you want?

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One Last Thing…

Our prompts will always be free, and all are welcome. But if you have the means, we’re humbly asking you to consider becoming a paying subscriber. Over the last year, I’ve worked with the most incredible team of women to nurture this project, sourcing over 145 beautiful prompts from the most extraordinary people I could find, and coming up with new and exciting ways to build community. It’s been a labor of love but also a whole lot of labor. 

Our hope is to continue to do this work—because isolation did not start with the pandemic, and it will not end with it. More and more, isolation is a feature of modern life. We want to continue providing opportunities for reflection, connection, and inspiration. We want to continue creating with you. Because as our friend Elizabeth Gilbert says, a creative life is an amplified life.

I do this work because I know it works, and it’s necessary. Here, we create ourselves. Here, we write our way through.