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A review by okiecozyreader
Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
5.0
I finished the last chapter before the epilogue and just said, “wow.” Such a beautifully written memoir of grief and illness and transformation.
The first part of the book is so difficult to read. I’m a highly empathetic person and had to read this in two days because I can’t live in the space of reading it for any longer. Which makes me think of all the people who have been stuck living in it for years. Suleika did such an amazing job of describing her story and helping us understand what it really feels like, what she learned, and what people really think and feel while suffering. Sometimes I’m sure it gets old to try to tell people how it feels or what it’s like, but I feel like it’s generous of her to share her experience (and at the time she wrote it to be able to do it from a place of health looking back). I can’t imagine it was easy.
The second half of the book begins with the quote:
“EVERYONE WHO IS born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick,” Susan Sontag wrote in Illness as Metaphor. “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.”
She then tells the story of her life after being diagnosed cancer-free, how difficult it is to live, and how she changed her mindset to try to have joy again. She goes on an epic road-trip visiting the people who wrote to her and shares many incredible stories. At the end, an inmate asks her “If you could take it all back, would you?” And I was so glad she thought about it and shared her response. I wonder now if she feels the same.
Suleika reads the audiobook, and does an amazing job.
“With mortality in the balance, one of life’s most delicious activities when you’re young—imagining your future—had become a frightening, despair inducing exercise.” 11 stuck
“Suffering can make you selfish, turn you cruel. It can make you feel like there is nothing but you and your anger, the crackle of exam table paper beneath bruised limbs, the way your heart pounds into your mouth when the doctor enters the room with the latest biopsy results.”
“I was growing accustomed to losing my dignity in front of strangers.” Ch 12
“Cancer made me brazen.” Ch 14
“Watercolors and words were the drugs we preferred for our pain. We were learning that sometimes the only way to endure suffering is to transform it into art.” Ch 19
“…illness heightens the good and the bad, unveiling new parts of yourself you wish you hadn’t known were there; how illness can bring you down to your most savage self.” Ch 19
“Cancer is greedy, I thought. It has ravaged not only my body, but every single thing I’ve believed to be true about myself, and now it has metastasized to our relationship, ruining what was good and pure between us.” Ch 22
“Grief is a ghost that visits without warning.” Ch 23
Part 2
“My medical team is focused on cancer, not its aftermath.” Ch 25
Ch 26
“the role of ritual in mourning—the ceremonies that allow us to shoulder complicated feelings and confront loss; that make room for the seemingly paradoxical act of acknowledging the past as a path toward the future. It gets me thinking about the other ways we mark the crossing of thresholds: birthdays and weddings and baby showers, baptisms and bar mitzvahs and quinceañeras.
These rites of passage allow us to migrate from one phase of our lives to another; they keep us from getting lost in transit. They show us a way to honor the space between no longer and not yet.
But living with a life-threatening illness for so long has changed my relationship to fear. It has trained me to be on high alert for the countless potential dangers lurking in my body and beyond.”
“After you’ve had the ceiling cave in on you—whether through illness or some other catastrophe—you don’t assume structural stability. You must learn to live on fault lines.” Ch 30
“Untamed fear consumes you, becomes you, until what you are most afraid of turns alive.” Ch 31
“I’m realizing that if I am to cross the distance between near-death and renewal, instead of trying to bury my pain, I must use it as a guide to know myself better. In confronting my past, I have to reckon not only with the pain of losing other people but also with the pain I’ve caused others.” Ch 31
“Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn’t there or allowing it to hijack your day.
…
I can’t think of a more powerful response to life’s sorrows than loving.” Ch 33
“Jon has been teaching me that sometimes all you can do is show up. And when things are hard, to keep on showing up.” Ch 33
“You can’t guarantee that people won’t hurt or betray you—they will, be it a breakup or something as big and blinding as death. But evading heartbreak is how we miss our people, our purpose.” Ch 33
“I needed to believe that when your life has become a cage, you can loosen the bars and reclaim your freedom. I told myself again and again, until I believed my own words: It is possible for me to alter the course of my becoming.” Ch 34
“When you’re abused by someone you trust, it confuses you. When you stay confused, you start to hate yourself.” Ch 34
The first part of the book is so difficult to read. I’m a highly empathetic person and had to read this in two days because I can’t live in the space of reading it for any longer. Which makes me think of all the people who have been stuck living in it for years. Suleika did such an amazing job of describing her story and helping us understand what it really feels like, what she learned, and what people really think and feel while suffering. Sometimes I’m sure it gets old to try to tell people how it feels or what it’s like, but I feel like it’s generous of her to share her experience (and at the time she wrote it to be able to do it from a place of health looking back). I can’t imagine it was easy.
The second half of the book begins with the quote:
“EVERYONE WHO IS born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick,” Susan Sontag wrote in Illness as Metaphor. “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.”
She then tells the story of her life after being diagnosed cancer-free, how difficult it is to live, and how she changed her mindset to try to have joy again. She goes on an epic road-trip visiting the people who wrote to her and shares many incredible stories. At the end, an inmate asks her “If you could take it all back, would you?” And I was so glad she thought about it and shared her response. I wonder now if she feels the same.
Suleika reads the audiobook, and does an amazing job.
“With mortality in the balance, one of life’s most delicious activities when you’re young—imagining your future—had become a frightening, despair inducing exercise.” 11 stuck
“Suffering can make you selfish, turn you cruel. It can make you feel like there is nothing but you and your anger, the crackle of exam table paper beneath bruised limbs, the way your heart pounds into your mouth when the doctor enters the room with the latest biopsy results.”
“I was growing accustomed to losing my dignity in front of strangers.” Ch 12
“Cancer made me brazen.” Ch 14
“Watercolors and words were the drugs we preferred for our pain. We were learning that sometimes the only way to endure suffering is to transform it into art.” Ch 19
“…illness heightens the good and the bad, unveiling new parts of yourself you wish you hadn’t known were there; how illness can bring you down to your most savage self.” Ch 19
“Cancer is greedy, I thought. It has ravaged not only my body, but every single thing I’ve believed to be true about myself, and now it has metastasized to our relationship, ruining what was good and pure between us.” Ch 22
“Grief is a ghost that visits without warning.” Ch 23
Part 2
“My medical team is focused on cancer, not its aftermath.” Ch 25
Ch 26
“the role of ritual in mourning—the ceremonies that allow us to shoulder complicated feelings and confront loss; that make room for the seemingly paradoxical act of acknowledging the past as a path toward the future. It gets me thinking about the other ways we mark the crossing of thresholds: birthdays and weddings and baby showers, baptisms and bar mitzvahs and quinceañeras.
These rites of passage allow us to migrate from one phase of our lives to another; they keep us from getting lost in transit. They show us a way to honor the space between no longer and not yet.
But living with a life-threatening illness for so long has changed my relationship to fear. It has trained me to be on high alert for the countless potential dangers lurking in my body and beyond.”
“After you’ve had the ceiling cave in on you—whether through illness or some other catastrophe—you don’t assume structural stability. You must learn to live on fault lines.” Ch 30
“Untamed fear consumes you, becomes you, until what you are most afraid of turns alive.” Ch 31
“I’m realizing that if I am to cross the distance between near-death and renewal, instead of trying to bury my pain, I must use it as a guide to know myself better. In confronting my past, I have to reckon not only with the pain of losing other people but also with the pain I’ve caused others.” Ch 31
“Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn’t there or allowing it to hijack your day.
…
I can’t think of a more powerful response to life’s sorrows than loving.” Ch 33
“Jon has been teaching me that sometimes all you can do is show up. And when things are hard, to keep on showing up.” Ch 33
“You can’t guarantee that people won’t hurt or betray you—they will, be it a breakup or something as big and blinding as death. But evading heartbreak is how we miss our people, our purpose.” Ch 33
“I needed to believe that when your life has become a cage, you can loosen the bars and reclaim your freedom. I told myself again and again, until I believed my own words: It is possible for me to alter the course of my becoming.” Ch 34
“When you’re abused by someone you trust, it confuses you. When you stay confused, you start to hate yourself.” Ch 34
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Death, Cancer, Chronic illness, Medical trauma, and Grief
Moderate: Vomit and Drug use