We have several books to talk about this week – but one that needs its own post.

I am not even entirely sure how I ended up with a Libby hold on Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms – I think it was recommended because of my spoonie reading? – but when it came around, it really called to me.

Once I began, I connected with Suleika and her story quickly.

Shortly after her graduation from Princeton, Suleika fell terribly ill, and – after several misdiagnosis – was found to have a particularly aggressive form of leukemia with a devastating 35% five year survival rate.

Miraculously, her younger brother was an exact match for a bone marrow transplant and – despite many complications – her transplant was successful.

Throughout her treatment, she found the strength to write a column for the New York Times about her experiences and received messages from people all over the country telling her their stories – connections that would be so important to her after her therapy ended. She also developed some of the closest friendships she had ever known with her fellow cancer patients, walking through treatment with her, including her best friend, Melissa.

However, by the end of her treatment – which had been extended several times by months and months unexpectedly – her long-term relationship with her boyfriend who had stayed during her entire illness (moving from Paris to care for her) was wrecked, her body was ravaged with the effects of all the chemotherapy, and many of her friends – including Melissa – had passed away.

It is then that she takes her rescue pup, Oscar – one of the best gifts from all of this mess – and decides, having just learned to drive – go cross country in a borrowed van and visit some of the people who have been writing to her, to find a way back up and sort herself.

At this point, she says something that I know so well – and so many of my spoonies do too:

When life brings you to the floor, there is a choice: You can allow the worst thing that’s ever happened to you to hijack your remaining days, or you can claw your way back into motion. – Suleika Jaouad

Y’all.

I mean everyone – but especially my spoonies – read this book.

The title, Between Two Kingdoms, refers to another breathtaking quote from Susan Sontag, in The New York Review, in 1978:

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. – Susan Sontag. 

As I feel myself walking such a tightwire between the two kingdoms, where I’m doing very well – for me – but then have new nodules and collapse for 12 hours at night and still need a nap. . . or am having a good day overall – and suddenly feel my temperature spike out of the blue as my hands are swelling. . . this book spoke to my heart in so many ways.

I love Suleika and I love the friends she met along the way – and Jon, who has since become her husband.

I love Oscar too.

Suleika has relapsed unfortunately since the book’s release – which she knew was very likely – but is doing well.

I am following her now and rooting for her. ❤

She was at the Grammy’s with Jon in February.

People Article Suleika & Jon Grammys 2024.

Again, read this book, y’all. It is wonderful.

I have much more I am so excited to catch up and share this week – but, for now, I’ll let Suleika have the last word. ❤

When the ceiling caves in on you, you no longer assume structural stability. You have to learn to live along fault lines. – Suleika Jaouad.

Be well, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Grace and Blessings.