Prompt 235. Slow Dreaming

& the novelist Ashleigh Bell Pedersen on possibility

Sandro Botticelli, Primavera (c. 1480)

Hi friend,

In the last few months, I’ve been in a mental tug of war with time. I’ve been feeling better and have more energy, and when that happens, I always want to seize it and make the most of it. I have a huge backlog of responsibilities to attend to, such a future log of dreams I’d like to enact. I feel a sense of urgency to thrust myself back into my work and into the world.

At the same time, I’m thinking of what Dr. G, my transplant doctor, said to me: “Don’t be a warrior. Don’t overdo it one day, then have to pay for it the next.” I’m trying to listen to that—to avoid jumping back in at the first sign of feeling better only to build up to some unsustainable pace. For years, I worked seven days a week, to the point of exhaustion. I used to feel relieved when I got a bad cold because it meant I could take days off without feeling guilty. I could only slow down when my body forced me to. I see now that it was a response to being as sick as I was at such a young age, and also knowing relapse was a possibility. I was working like I was running out of time.

The other day, The New Yorker shared this quote from the Pulitzer-winning novelist Jennifer Egan: “I wanted success violently. But my ability just wouldn’t back me up. It just insisted on moving more slowly. And, in retrospect, I have to say I’m really grateful for that.”

I, too, am trying to savor slowness. I still have so many dreams to work toward, but I don’t want to pursue them violently anymore. I want more balance. I want to create space for the kind of sweet moments and simple joys I’ve experienced in the last year that I wouldn’t have otherwise because I was too overcommitted, too overscheduled. Moments on the couch, arms wrapped around my dog, or lying on the floor of Jon’s studio, talking and listening to rough cuts of new songs, or sharing meals with my parents and my brother, or puttering around my house, arranging bodega flowers in a pretty vase. 

And yet, when you live with a life-limiting illness, the fear is that slowness equates to never reaching your destination at all. I think that’s why I’m so excited about a daily journaling project in April, and why I’m so thrilled to hear from this beloved community—that so many of you are eager to join me. The journal is so capacious, making space for everything. There’s no destination. It’s meandering, all just exploration and play. Absent that pressure of productivity, our minds can wander, can conjure. We can slow dream.

That’s how I’m approaching this idea of a 30-day journaling project—as finding a way back into creative work and the world, but gently. In moments when I have felt most balanced in my life, I’m not getting up, rushing to answer a million emails. My anxiety sends me that way, but when I’m journaling consistently, it allows for a much slower transition between waking and working. Starting the day with my journal—even if it’s just five or ten minutes—allows me to take more moments for myself throughout the day. And I’m so excited I’ll be doing this alongside all of you. (More on that soon!)

With all that said, I’ll turn to today’s prompt, which is perfectly fitting here on the dawn of spring. It’s from the novelist Ashleigh Bell Pedersen, reflecting on the upheaval of illness, on the challenge of recovery, on what is left in the wake. I hope it allows you to explore whatever is awaiting you, even on the most distant horizon. 

Sending love,

Suleika

Some Items of Note—

• Today from 1-2 pm is our next meeting of the Hatch, our virtual creative hour for paid subscribers—where we gather for some inspiration, connection, and a dose of accountability too. To join, click here.

• Did you experience a moment of wonder? Some small joy this week? Add it to our chorus of collective gratitude, which you can find in the Isolation Journals Chat (now also available on desktop!).

Katrina Cuenca, Slowly We Unfurl (2020)

Prompt 235. Cities, Summer Forests by Ashleigh Bell Pedersen

In the winter of 2020, I was feeling celebratory. I was newly thirty-seven, I was considering moving from my decade-long home of Austin, Texas, to New York City, and I was pitching my novel to agents. My life felt brimming with possibility. My New Year’s resolution was—in all seriousness—to host more parties. That spring, of course, the pandemic arrived. And one day after Austin went into lockdown, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. 

As a cancer patient, I relished each milestone: the halfway point of chemotherapy rounds, the MRI results that showed my tumor was shrinking. The afternoon of my last chemo infusion, friends and I met at a park with champagne. I felt bloated from all the IV fluids, but overjoyed to celebrate (in our small, mid-pandemic way) the end of what I thought would be the hardest part of cancer.

After chemotherapy, however, I embarked on a year of surgery, radiation, and maintenance chemo infusions—and as I navigated the continued barrage of medical treatments and appointments, my emotions began to catch up with me. In the worst of chemo, I had rarely admitted (or let myself experience) my fear, sadness, or anger. I insisted on a positive attitude, plodding from milestone to milestone. But in the year that followed, I was knocked sideways by powerful waves of grief. It was the loneliest time of my life, and deeply frustrating. I had survived cancer only to feel further than ever from my old self, whose life had seemed so limitless.

As I approached my fortieth birthday this winter, the milestone invited yet another wave of grief. A third of my thirties, I suddenly realized, were spent first surviving cancer, and then its emotional aftermath. The revelation felt gutting. How could I lose such a precious window of time?

Then, days before my birthday, I discovered a poem. 

In “It is Difficult to Speak of the Night,” Jack Gilbert describes his changing relationship to himself as he ages. The last lines read: 

I am forty, and it is different.
Suddenly in midpassage
I come into myself. I leaf
gigantically. An empire yields
unexpectedly: cities, summer forests,
satrapies, horses.
A solitude: an enormity.
Thank god.

The poem arrived at just the right moment—as though from a friend who knew I could use a gift. I felt such kinship in Gilbert’s admission of aloneness, and wonder at his discoveries within it. What “cities, summer forests” await me as I navigate midpassage? What seeds are within me, longing to leaf gigantically?

Your prompt for the week:

What cities and summer forests await you? What seeds are longing to leaf gigantically?

If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals.

Today’s Contributor–

Ashleigh Bell Pedersen is the author of The Crocodile Bride (a New York Times Editors’ Choice) and has nonfiction forthcoming this month in Garden & Gun. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she also paints, acts, and struggles to teach her sweet dog, Ernie, better leash manners. You can find her on Instagram at @ashleighbell12.

For more paid subscriber benefits, see—

• On Moons and Birds and Other Artistic Preoccupations, a recap and prompt from a past Hatch, where we parsed the poem “Sorrow Is Not My Name,” by Ross Gay and wrote about the promise of spring

• Love in the Time of Cancer, Part 2, the second part of a special Dear Susu, where my beloved mom, Anne Francey, and I contemplate the question, “How do we keep going?”

• On Finding Your Voice, a video replay of my Studio Visit with Ashley C. Ford, where we talk about taking risks, dreaming big, and the most important question you can ask yourself when you’re at a crossroads