Suleika Jaouad: Survival Is a Creative Act
Everything Happens with Kate Bowler
Everything Happens Studios
4.8 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sometimes, the bad thing happens—again. The kind of news that flattens your plans, your energy, your sense of who you are. And you think, surely that’s enough now. Haven’t we hit the quota for suffering? But there’s no quota, just the long middle where life doesn’t follow a script and you’re left figuring out how to be a person again.
Suleika Jaouad knows this terrain well. She’s a writer, artist, and advocate, beloved for her memoir Between Two Kingdoms and her new offering The Book of Alchemy—a creative companion for those learning to live when life doesn’t go according to plan. Diagnosed with leukemia in her twenties and now navigating her third relapse, Suleika brings a voice shaped by experience, beauty, grief, and humor.
Together again on the Everything Happens podcast, Suleika and Kate talk about:
- how illness reshapes the rhythms of a life
- the grief and freedom of falling apart—and not rushing to fix it
- the idea of “creative injuries” and why so many of us stopped making
- how small rituals can anchor us in seasons of uncertainty
- why creating something, anything, can be a way to stay human in the in-between
If you liked this episode, you might also like:
- Artist Lanecia Rouse Tinsley on “When Hope Seems Lost”
- Stacey Heale, “The Aftermath of the Aftermath”
- Suleika’s first and second Everything Happens episodes
Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts.
Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Megan, and I've got a new podcast I think you're going to love. It's called Confessions of a |
| 0:07.3 | female founder, a show where I chat with female entrepreneurs and friends about the sleepless nights, |
| 0:12.8 | the lessons learned, and the laser focus that got them to where they are today. And through it all, |
| 0:18.8 | I'm building a business of my own and getting all sorts of practical |
| 0:21.9 | advice along the way that I'm so excited to share with you. Confessions of a female founder |
| 0:28.0 | is out now. Listen, wherever you get your podcast. Hi, everyone. I'm David DeCovny. Join me on my podcast, Fail Better, where we use failure as a lens to reflect on the past and analyze the current moment. I speak with makers and performers like Rob Lowe, Rosie O'Donnell, and Kenya Barris, as well as thinkers like Kara Swisher and Nate Silver, to understand how both |
| 0:55.9 | personal setbacks and larger forces impact our world. Listen to fail better, wherever you get your |
| 1:02.0 | podcasts. |
| 1:07.0 | What do we do when the worst thing happens again? |
| 1:11.6 | We can imagine that there's some kind of quota on suffering and trust us we have hit it. |
| 1:19.6 | The bad thing has happened. |
| 1:21.6 | And now we're through, right? |
| 1:23.6 | Tragedy must strike somewhere else now. |
| 1:26.6 | That should be the law somewhere we made it. |
| 1:30.3 | But then, but then, but then. |
| 1:33.3 | I'm Kate Bowler, and this is everything happens. |
| 1:41.3 | We all have to learn how to live out our beautiful days and our terrible ones, and all those in between. |
| 1:48.6 | And at the heart of this podcast and this community is a desire to mine collective wisdom, to borrow one another's courage, and to nudge us gently toward hope. |
| 1:58.8 | And today's conversation will do exactly that. |
| 2:02.7 | Suleka Jouad is an Emmy award-winning journalist, best-selling author of Between Two Kingdoms |
| 2:08.2 | and her latest The Book of Alchemy. And if you haven't seen it yet, you must watch the |
| 2:14.1 | documentary she made with her husband John Baptiste called American Symphony. |
... |
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