Mar 20, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
I had a work trip last week, first since March 2020. On the flight there, I sat next to a woman who shared that her 24 yr old daughter, seated farther back, was recovering from breast cancer and a double mastectomy. I pulled up a link to Between Two Kingdoms on my phone and asked "do you know about Suleika?". She didn't. We proceeded to talk for the remainder of the flight. It was one of those moments where it felt like the universe had arranged for this meeting to happen.
Having physical things around you that engage your senses is something I’ve found critical in this season, very long season, of illness. Chronic pain is like the screaming toddler in the grocery store aisle with eyes of fire and the strength of an elephant. Their determination to capture your attention is their only objective. It is because of this incredible force of distraction that items that engage your other senses are all the more necessary.
Here are a few of my favorite:
• A luxurious hand lotion that smells good
• Fluffy socks
• Candles, scented and non-scented
• Lip balm
• Hoptimist
• Nail polish
• Music (Lizzie McAlpine, worship music that is rooted in scripture to meditate on God’s Word in a different way)
• Meditation app-Headpsace
• Plants, flowers, something alive
• A view of nature out my window
• A cute, yet cozy outfit. Something that’s not pjs so you feel like you accomplished one more thing
• A somewhat ridiculous skincare routine
• Body scrub-Coffee and almond oil followed by rich body lotion
• Hair mask
• Peppermint and licorice tea
• Tiny toy dinosaur from my nephew that his tiny hands gave me at age 2
• Pictures of friends and family from favorite memories together
• RBG calendar
• Fluffy duvet
• Heavy floral quilt
• Post-its around my room with encouragements from a friend who sneaked them into my room once
• Bracelet from my goddaughter
• Artwork from my goddaughter
• Fashion magazines
• Dopamine boosters photo album on my phone
• Painted rock made by cousins on summer holiday together on my desk
• FaceTime
• Cards from friends
• Cuticle oil
• My brave pineapple (every time I do something that was brave or that I’m proud of, I write it down on a small piece of paper, fold it and put in inside a glass pineapple with a gold lid on my dresser. Then on New Year’s Day, I read through them and remind myself all I have to be proud of.)
Mar 20, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
I am taking to heart your advice about not having a goal in mind for the 100-day project. Even while writing one poem (which is my go-to with writing), I have in mind all the people I want to wow with my abilities. It's so crazy to approach a piece with this kind of pressure, and I know it stymies my creativitiy, yet I can't seem to stop myself from this horrible approach! Here's hoping that 100 days will help me break this cycle.
Mar 20, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
Thank you for this prompt and the counsel on defining a 100-day project. I haven't come up with mine yet but really, really needed the reminder that this doesn't have to build to something tangible or attention-worthy for anyone besides myself. That said - I would LOVE some accountability checks - how can paid subscribers connect with you and Carmen about those check-ins or spotlights?
Establishing a creative space is also such a great question - it can be such a terrific way to procrastinate the creative act, because in itself it is creative. But I find myself spinning in loops when I, too, spend too long on Pinterest :) Here's my response for this week's prompt. Hoping your blood pressure is back on the rise and that the spring is welcoming you with open arms!
In "You've Got Mail", Meg Ryan's character tells a man she is talking with online that she would send him a bouquet of freshly-sharpened pencils in the early fall, back-to-school season, because it is such a perfect time of year. I have always loved that image - a bouquet of bright yellow number two pencils with perfect pink erasers smelling of freshly shaved wood and lead. It embodies the creative potential of a school year - and now, many years out of school, I still see pencils and get a jolt of enthusiasm to create. Unlike pens or a Word doc, pencils let me layer re-takes with mistakes, use unexpected shadows and give in to a changing line the tip grinds down to a soft, flat end. Pencils are for writing or drawing something I may never see again, something to which I owe nothing. I think about what would remain on the page after 100 years if I saved it, and it reminds me that the best creation is always yet to come. The shrinking pencil is proof that there is always more to say.
Mar 20, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
Good morning Suleika and Carmen. I had a big disappointment this week, and was surprised how lovely it was, in that context, to consider the 100 day challenge again. I was going to try it anyway, but now it seems to have my name on it. Anticipating with you, with us as a community. Healing blessings, Suleika, and to all who read these words who need a word of grace or healing.
Mar 20, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
I am SO buying a creative diaper bag for my upcoming hospital admission this Friday! I can’t wait to fill it with all sorts of goodies to keep me occupied while I receive my GI treatments. Brilliant idea - thank you so much 💜
Mar 20, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
Dear Suleika, I was drawn to your watercolors that you showed from your first few days in the hospital. I really loved their surrealistic beauty and flow felt in such a usually harsh environment. Will you share them with us in some group format? They were special to me and inspiring and comforting at the same time. Quite unique and memorable.
Mar 20, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
I'm really looking forward to joining this community for the 100-day project. It will come one week after my last chemo treatment before scans, tests, and whatever recovery will look like for me from there. I'm playing with a few ideas before I settle on one.
In terms of things that ground my creative process, I think the only two things I really need are light and gentle noise. Writing during the day, I love to sit by the window wherever I am in natural light. If I write at night, I light a candle. I'm not great with music or a lot of noise, but the sound of birds, my keyboard, or something else outside my space helps me get into a flow state.
Thinking of you often, Suleika, and sending love in this chapter.
Mar 20, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
Dear Suleika, Wishing you the healthiest possible healing path. I’m glad you were able to avoid a return trip to the hospital. Hoping your recovery goes smoother in the days ahead. Sending healing thoughts, love and prayers your way. Thanks for giving so much of yourself to the community especially at a time when you must feel quite depleted of energy. May the group hold you as we join with you in a collective creative journey. ❤️
Mar 20, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
Hello Suleika and Carmen. I am not sure how this entry fits into the assignment but I find that two things calm my aching heart as I read and see what is happening to the people of Ukraine. This is such an unjust war where civilians are being targeted. Women in labor, children in hospitals, volunteers organizing food pantries, old or young, praying in churches or treating patients in hospitals or trying to rescue people from the devastation caused by raining bombs they are all targets. So writing or practicing on my cello brings me some solace. I feel so helpless but believe that by making music and journaling I am creating positive Karma. Karma that along with loving kindness energy soon will bring this unjust war to an end. I pray that the Russian invaders will realize that they are killing innocent people and destroying their country.
May love and compassion reign over hate and greed. May we have it within our own hearts to forgive the aggressors when they finally wake up and see that what they are doing is evil.
I am in for the 100 day challenge, and thank you for the clarification that we are participating, not moving toward a single daunting goal!
Creative spaces are the best! And I so want a dedicated room or backyard shed for such a purpose, but I totally embrace the idea that out of imperfect spaces comes maybe our best "work"? Just like in life we can be sculpted most beautifully by challenges and pain?
My creative space is my bedroom in our three room apartment. It's actually the place where both my partner and I sleep, but I seem to have taken it over with my books, plants, photos, and bulletin board of inspirational ideas. It is bright, with light and air from two sides. I have art my daughter made, pictures of all three of my grown children, plants, and a cheerful quilt we bought while in Gatlinburg for my daughter's wedding. It is a room of touchstones for me--quite important since I moved here to Colorado after a lifetime of living in the Ohio River Valley in Cincinnati. We moved along with Covid two years ago for a mid-life adventure, and it has been a tumultuous, disorienting, liberating, lonely, exhilarating time. I can sit here on the bed, as I am now, and see comfort everywhere I look: my children, my books, my sweet succulent on the top shelf, the Gratitude jar made by my "one friend here Julie", my pink-swirled mug of markers (mug painted by my oldest son when he was 5), notecards, a cup of tea, essential oil spray, the lamp from Target that reminds me of sea glass, the wide open Colorado sky out the sliding door, the dresser I've lived with since my first marriage 33 years ago. All these things help me relax and soften into myself and then somehow expand that self into books and ideas and words to others. If I were to categorize the items or concepts that help put me in a mood for creativity, I would say light, organic, personal, and private.
Two books that I have that have really touched me creatively this past year are Writing Wild by Kathryn Aalto and H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. Both are in the nature writing genre, but they contain ideas and have applications far beyond that description, in my opinion.
Sending love and support to all who are struggling. We can do this!
Mar 20, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
Dearest Suleika - you continue to inspire me, I am thankful you were able to avoid being readmitted to the hospital. I am looking forward to the start of my 100-day project. Thank you for breaking it down as I am very task oriented and I want this to be the a more liberated, playful and creative flow state. No pressure of trudging to an end goal for me. I want the project to fulfill me in ways that don't mean I have to accomplish to-do tasks every day, I want it to be something that makes my heart and soul happy. I look so look forward to finding those things that matter most to me in my world! Love and hugs! Vonda
Mar 23, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
Beloved friends sent me a big fleece-lined fuzzy blanket during the pandemic to cheer me and keep me cozy when I was housebound in quarantine. So when I crawl out of bed to do my morning pages, I wrap up in it on the sofa, snag my handmade bird-paper journal from its spot next to the tenor guitar and get to it, with a mug of hot jasmine tea on the coffee table. These things and this ritual keep me grounded in living a creative life. Now all I need is a pineapple for my brave deeds! What a great idea. Thanks to all for sharing. Be well, Suleika!
Mar 22, 2022Liked by Suleika Jaouad, Carmen Radley
I like your philosophy on the process is the product, that we don’t have to build toward anything. Process — being and doing — has been devalued so much that we do so much less because we hear a nagging voice that we are being unproductive. I hear it, anyway. So loudly it hurts the back of my eyeballs… sometimes the voice leaks out around the gaskets …
Anyway, in 2016, I was in Philly for the DNC and Chris Matthews said “100 days until the election…” and HRC said she would “fight for health care…” and I was going through some sh*t. I decided I would write her a letter a day for 100 straight days. It got hard in the middle… really hard and the goal was to get all this rage with the American medical “system” out of my system… maybe get a response (I got nothing, except David Pepper with the Ohio Dems called and we met, nice guy!) but about day 70, I figured I could package the letters into a book… sold exactly zero copies but that wasn’t the point. Anyway, my last 100 day project. I think I’ll join this next one! I miss the focus.
I had a work trip last week, first since March 2020. On the flight there, I sat next to a woman who shared that her 24 yr old daughter, seated farther back, was recovering from breast cancer and a double mastectomy. I pulled up a link to Between Two Kingdoms on my phone and asked "do you know about Suleika?". She didn't. We proceeded to talk for the remainder of the flight. It was one of those moments where it felt like the universe had arranged for this meeting to happen.
Having physical things around you that engage your senses is something I’ve found critical in this season, very long season, of illness. Chronic pain is like the screaming toddler in the grocery store aisle with eyes of fire and the strength of an elephant. Their determination to capture your attention is their only objective. It is because of this incredible force of distraction that items that engage your other senses are all the more necessary.
Here are a few of my favorite:
• A luxurious hand lotion that smells good
• Fluffy socks
• Candles, scented and non-scented
• Lip balm
• Hoptimist
• Nail polish
• Music (Lizzie McAlpine, worship music that is rooted in scripture to meditate on God’s Word in a different way)
• Meditation app-Headpsace
• Plants, flowers, something alive
• A view of nature out my window
• A cute, yet cozy outfit. Something that’s not pjs so you feel like you accomplished one more thing
• A somewhat ridiculous skincare routine
• Body scrub-Coffee and almond oil followed by rich body lotion
• Hair mask
• Peppermint and licorice tea
• Tiny toy dinosaur from my nephew that his tiny hands gave me at age 2
• Pictures of friends and family from favorite memories together
• RBG calendar
• Fluffy duvet
• Heavy floral quilt
• Post-its around my room with encouragements from a friend who sneaked them into my room once
• Bracelet from my goddaughter
• Artwork from my goddaughter
• Fashion magazines
• Dopamine boosters photo album on my phone
• Painted rock made by cousins on summer holiday together on my desk
• FaceTime
• Cards from friends
• Cuticle oil
• My brave pineapple (every time I do something that was brave or that I’m proud of, I write it down on a small piece of paper, fold it and put in inside a glass pineapple with a gold lid on my dresser. Then on New Year’s Day, I read through them and remind myself all I have to be proud of.)
I am taking to heart your advice about not having a goal in mind for the 100-day project. Even while writing one poem (which is my go-to with writing), I have in mind all the people I want to wow with my abilities. It's so crazy to approach a piece with this kind of pressure, and I know it stymies my creativitiy, yet I can't seem to stop myself from this horrible approach! Here's hoping that 100 days will help me break this cycle.
Sending energy for your continued healing.
Thank you for this prompt and the counsel on defining a 100-day project. I haven't come up with mine yet but really, really needed the reminder that this doesn't have to build to something tangible or attention-worthy for anyone besides myself. That said - I would LOVE some accountability checks - how can paid subscribers connect with you and Carmen about those check-ins or spotlights?
Establishing a creative space is also such a great question - it can be such a terrific way to procrastinate the creative act, because in itself it is creative. But I find myself spinning in loops when I, too, spend too long on Pinterest :) Here's my response for this week's prompt. Hoping your blood pressure is back on the rise and that the spring is welcoming you with open arms!
In "You've Got Mail", Meg Ryan's character tells a man she is talking with online that she would send him a bouquet of freshly-sharpened pencils in the early fall, back-to-school season, because it is such a perfect time of year. I have always loved that image - a bouquet of bright yellow number two pencils with perfect pink erasers smelling of freshly shaved wood and lead. It embodies the creative potential of a school year - and now, many years out of school, I still see pencils and get a jolt of enthusiasm to create. Unlike pens or a Word doc, pencils let me layer re-takes with mistakes, use unexpected shadows and give in to a changing line the tip grinds down to a soft, flat end. Pencils are for writing or drawing something I may never see again, something to which I owe nothing. I think about what would remain on the page after 100 years if I saved it, and it reminds me that the best creation is always yet to come. The shrinking pencil is proof that there is always more to say.
Good morning Suleika and Carmen. I had a big disappointment this week, and was surprised how lovely it was, in that context, to consider the 100 day challenge again. I was going to try it anyway, but now it seems to have my name on it. Anticipating with you, with us as a community. Healing blessings, Suleika, and to all who read these words who need a word of grace or healing.
I am SO buying a creative diaper bag for my upcoming hospital admission this Friday! I can’t wait to fill it with all sorts of goodies to keep me occupied while I receive my GI treatments. Brilliant idea - thank you so much 💜
And with heartfelt gratitude to Carmen, and to all those who surround Suleika with the deepest of love... for Suleika's very many families of love
Dear Suleika, I was drawn to your watercolors that you showed from your first few days in the hospital. I really loved their surrealistic beauty and flow felt in such a usually harsh environment. Will you share them with us in some group format? They were special to me and inspiring and comforting at the same time. Quite unique and memorable.
With love and appreciation, Ruth Andrea
I'm really looking forward to joining this community for the 100-day project. It will come one week after my last chemo treatment before scans, tests, and whatever recovery will look like for me from there. I'm playing with a few ideas before I settle on one.
In terms of things that ground my creative process, I think the only two things I really need are light and gentle noise. Writing during the day, I love to sit by the window wherever I am in natural light. If I write at night, I light a candle. I'm not great with music or a lot of noise, but the sound of birds, my keyboard, or something else outside my space helps me get into a flow state.
Thinking of you often, Suleika, and sending love in this chapter.
Dear Suleika, Wishing you the healthiest possible healing path. I’m glad you were able to avoid a return trip to the hospital. Hoping your recovery goes smoother in the days ahead. Sending healing thoughts, love and prayers your way. Thanks for giving so much of yourself to the community especially at a time when you must feel quite depleted of energy. May the group hold you as we join with you in a collective creative journey. ❤️
Hello Suleika and Carmen. I am not sure how this entry fits into the assignment but I find that two things calm my aching heart as I read and see what is happening to the people of Ukraine. This is such an unjust war where civilians are being targeted. Women in labor, children in hospitals, volunteers organizing food pantries, old or young, praying in churches or treating patients in hospitals or trying to rescue people from the devastation caused by raining bombs they are all targets. So writing or practicing on my cello brings me some solace. I feel so helpless but believe that by making music and journaling I am creating positive Karma. Karma that along with loving kindness energy soon will bring this unjust war to an end. I pray that the Russian invaders will realize that they are killing innocent people and destroying their country.
May love and compassion reign over hate and greed. May we have it within our own hearts to forgive the aggressors when they finally wake up and see that what they are doing is evil.
I am in for the 100 day challenge, and thank you for the clarification that we are participating, not moving toward a single daunting goal!
Creative spaces are the best! And I so want a dedicated room or backyard shed for such a purpose, but I totally embrace the idea that out of imperfect spaces comes maybe our best "work"? Just like in life we can be sculpted most beautifully by challenges and pain?
My creative space is my bedroom in our three room apartment. It's actually the place where both my partner and I sleep, but I seem to have taken it over with my books, plants, photos, and bulletin board of inspirational ideas. It is bright, with light and air from two sides. I have art my daughter made, pictures of all three of my grown children, plants, and a cheerful quilt we bought while in Gatlinburg for my daughter's wedding. It is a room of touchstones for me--quite important since I moved here to Colorado after a lifetime of living in the Ohio River Valley in Cincinnati. We moved along with Covid two years ago for a mid-life adventure, and it has been a tumultuous, disorienting, liberating, lonely, exhilarating time. I can sit here on the bed, as I am now, and see comfort everywhere I look: my children, my books, my sweet succulent on the top shelf, the Gratitude jar made by my "one friend here Julie", my pink-swirled mug of markers (mug painted by my oldest son when he was 5), notecards, a cup of tea, essential oil spray, the lamp from Target that reminds me of sea glass, the wide open Colorado sky out the sliding door, the dresser I've lived with since my first marriage 33 years ago. All these things help me relax and soften into myself and then somehow expand that self into books and ideas and words to others. If I were to categorize the items or concepts that help put me in a mood for creativity, I would say light, organic, personal, and private.
Two books that I have that have really touched me creatively this past year are Writing Wild by Kathryn Aalto and H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. Both are in the nature writing genre, but they contain ideas and have applications far beyond that description, in my opinion.
Sending love and support to all who are struggling. We can do this!
Dearest Suleika.....just a moment to send you much love and gratitude.
And, for reminding us, that after even the darkest of winters....Spring emerges..
Sending you very much and Gratitude, Dearest Suleika
Dearest Suleika - you continue to inspire me, I am thankful you were able to avoid being readmitted to the hospital. I am looking forward to the start of my 100-day project. Thank you for breaking it down as I am very task oriented and I want this to be the a more liberated, playful and creative flow state. No pressure of trudging to an end goal for me. I want the project to fulfill me in ways that don't mean I have to accomplish to-do tasks every day, I want it to be something that makes my heart and soul happy. I look so look forward to finding those things that matter most to me in my world! Love and hugs! Vonda
Beloved friends sent me a big fleece-lined fuzzy blanket during the pandemic to cheer me and keep me cozy when I was housebound in quarantine. So when I crawl out of bed to do my morning pages, I wrap up in it on the sofa, snag my handmade bird-paper journal from its spot next to the tenor guitar and get to it, with a mug of hot jasmine tea on the coffee table. These things and this ritual keep me grounded in living a creative life. Now all I need is a pineapple for my brave deeds! What a great idea. Thanks to all for sharing. Be well, Suleika!
I like your philosophy on the process is the product, that we don’t have to build toward anything. Process — being and doing — has been devalued so much that we do so much less because we hear a nagging voice that we are being unproductive. I hear it, anyway. So loudly it hurts the back of my eyeballs… sometimes the voice leaks out around the gaskets …
Anyway, in 2016, I was in Philly for the DNC and Chris Matthews said “100 days until the election…” and HRC said she would “fight for health care…” and I was going through some sh*t. I decided I would write her a letter a day for 100 straight days. It got hard in the middle… really hard and the goal was to get all this rage with the American medical “system” out of my system… maybe get a response (I got nothing, except David Pepper with the Ohio Dems called and we met, nice guy!) but about day 70, I figured I could package the letters into a book… sold exactly zero copies but that wasn’t the point. Anyway, my last 100 day project. I think I’ll join this next one! I miss the focus.