Ted Audio Collective.

a kind of bifurcation, a sense that there was my life before and now everything that would come after, and that the person I'd been, the dreams I'd had were buried.

From the TET audio collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.

For 19 years, Debbie Millman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on.

On this episode, Sulejoad talks about illness and its after effects.

I couldn't go back to the person I've been. about illness and its after effects.

I couldn't go back to the person I've been

pre-diagnosis.

I didn't know who I was.

When Suleka Joad was a young woman, she wanted to be a foreign correspondent.

That career plan was upended by a cancer diagnosis when she was 22 years old, but in spite of being told she had only a 35% chance of survival, her creative

spark didn't diminish.

They turned inward. So Laga wrote about surviving cancer in Life Interrupted,

her Emmy Award winning column and video series for the New York Times.

She's also written in New York Times best-selling memoir about the experience titled

Between Two Kingdoms.

More recently, her cancer returned and she had a second bone marrow transplant. That experience

is chronicled in the multiple award-winning Netflix documentary American Symphony

which also features her husband, the celebrated musician, John Batiste, as he

composed his first symphony for Carnegie Hall.

So Leke Gjawad, welcome to Design Matters.

Thank you, Debbie. I'm so honored to be here.

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