What We're Reading Now

Journaling is Still a Good Idea

3 June 2025

Barbara read The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life by Suleika Jaouad and learned how she turned her tough life experiences into meaning with the help of her journal and her friends.

Tags: barbara read, freewriting, writing

Seleika Jaouad is a brave and powerful woman. She said, “Journaling went from a favorite pastime to a lifeline when I was diagnosed with leukemia at age twenty-two.” In the midst of her despair, she found journal writing could help her cope a little better in her first four years of treatment.

Jaouad’s brave story is interspersed among 100 essays. During the Pandemic when she had a relapse, she said, “I reached out to the most remarkable people I knew, asking them to contribute an essay and an accompanying prompt. On April 1, 2020, I started a newsletter and sent out the first dispatch inviting readers to begin journaling each day for one hundred days and, if they felt so moved, to share their entries. I called it the Isolation Journals.”

I knew the names of a few who participated—Martha Beck, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jon Baptiste, Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Lesser, Mavis Staples, Ann Patchett, Salman Rushdie—but most of of the other contributors were new to me.

I took a long time to finish the book because after many of the essays, I went to the Contributors section at the end to read the short blurbs about each author, searched the internet for a picture, and then sometimes watched their TED Talks. My favorite was The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere by Pico Iyre.

This was also a scary read for me because one of my unhelpful negative thoughts that I have to manage is, "I don’t deserve my good health if someone else is so sick.” Or, “My God what would I do if I got that sick or my loved ones do?” Managing my anxiety and negative self-talk is a lifelong effort, so I had to take breaks along the way, but I’m so glad I finished and can definitely recommend this book to others.

I think Rachel recommended I read this book because she knows I’ve written in a journal almost every day since the late 70s when it was an assignment in a graduate school course. However, when I am sick or sad, I don’t journal for a while. I can’t stand to see evidence of my circumstances in print. But as I improve, I get back to it.

My journal entries are nothing like the refined two- or three-page essays in the book by brilliant and often famous people who have accomplished so much. Their journal entries are not the freewriting stream of consciousness that Julia Cameron recommends in The Artist’s Way. I love her instruction to not worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. Let it be three pages of stream of conscious writing as soon as you get out of bed before your coffee. Your censor might not be fully awake, and you’ll get more information on the page.

Freewriting is always necessary for me to get anything important written. I’ve used it to write three books, over 50 articles for the American Association for Physician Leadership, these blog posts for the last 10 years, and to prepare for any difficult feedback I need to deliver. But as Allison describes in this blog post, freewriting in a journal each morning just helps us to have a better day.

picture from Suleika Jaouad's website

The prompts at the end of each of the 100 essays in Jaouad’s book are marvelous, but if you’re new to writing in a journal, the essays are so good that they may intimidate you. My recommendation is to use the more free-flowing freewriting approach and not worry about your quality but definitely try answering some of her prompts as they helped me gain some important insights very quickly. You can even get a new prompt from her each week when you subscribe to her newsletter.

One prompt I used was by Cleyvis Natera—"Write about a time you had a breakthrough in despair.”

That night in September 2021 when my son helped me to see I needed to leave my beloved house in Charlotte so I could get some help taking care of my husband who’d had Parkinson’s for ten years. The next day I decided to move to Charlottesville to be near my daughter and to go back to the place where George and I met on a blind date and married in the UVA chapel. Eight months later we moved into a house Rachel helped us renovate.

Another prompt was by Angelique Stevens—"Write about an important first—where someone taught you how to use or do something.”

I remember Agnes, a grownup friend who taught me to knit when I was six. She could knit fast without looking at her hands, so she could constantly watch me. I sat close beside her. She corrected any mistakes I made at night. I was well behaved and got invited over often. She was so kind and skilled. I wanted to be like her. She walked very slue-footed. I started to practice pointing my toes out to each side like she did, and my mama said, “No, no that is not a good way to walk.” But my mama said yes to everything else Agnes wanted to do with me including letting me go to Glen Echo Park in Maryland with her where we rode a roller coaster that was the biggest in the country at the time. Agnes asked me to help her with the arts and crafts for Bible school when I was younger than children in the program. I have cherished Agnes and what she taught me all my life even though I didn’t see her again after I was ten. She was the inspiration for a lifelong love affair with creativity and made me feel so important and confident. I now realize I did all I could to ensure our children had the opportunity to build strong friendships with non-family members. It makes me happy that both of my children report that they felt supported and nurtured by adults in their lives under the age of 10 and that they both now have friendships with young children they aren’t related to. Agnes started a wonderful tradition for our family.

Jaouad explains the title of the book. “I have always loved the word alchemy. I love how it sounds on the tongue with its melding of Arabic, Greek, and French influences pointing toward how in human hands (and mouths) everything shifts and changes. Even more so, I am inspired by the idea that it’s possible to transmute something base, something considered worthless, into something precious, like gold. It appeals to me on the material level but also on a higher level: as a fusion or reunion with the divine.”

After three bone marrow transplants, she demonstrates alchemy and can say, “The journal allows us to navigate life’s waters, be they turbulent or calm, and to learn to hold the paradoxes—the beautiful and cruel facts of life—in an open palm….So stop looking for reasons not to do it. Open your journal. Pick up your pen.”

I am inspired by her fortitude and she has reinforced my practice of writing in my journal in my own style every day. In my 5-subject, wide-rule spiral notebook, I navigate my life—organize my day, hear words from my God, tell my higher power all my joys and troubles, plan what I want and figure out ways to work toward getting it, come to grips with what I don’t want to do, and give thanks for the multitude of blessings I have had and that I especially feel each day in this chapter of my life back in Charlottesville

Try journaling for a week and see what happens. I’d love to hear from you about it in the comments.

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