Between Two Kingdoms Quotes

“We grow by the obstacles we face and the wide scope of emotions we feel. That's how we understand one another. That is how we understand ourselves.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“Joy is a terrifying emotion, don’t trust it,”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“I would not take back what I suffered to gain this.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“1) Write a list of things you are grateful for 2) Get your head out of your ass and take a walk outside 3) If you don’t have an eating disorder, get some good fucking chocolate and a strong cup of coffee.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“there is a spiritual exhaustion that comes with maintaining this kind of charade after a while. As a patient, there was pressure to perform, to be someone who suffers well, to act with heroism, and to put on a stoic façade all the time.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“The idea of striving for some beautiful, perfect state of wellness? It mires us in eternal dissatisfaction, a goal forever out of reach. To be well now is to learn to accept whatever body and mind I currently have.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“We both need our freedom from codependence but I don't see us achieving that together, at lease not anytime soon. In order for us to forge new identities, we have to go our separate ways. Even so, I'm stunned by how quickly we've transitioned from being a pair, utter enmeshed and in love, to two strangers siloed in private grief and anger. As we set about disassembling what's left of us, it feels less like the final stages of a breakup than the beginning of a gutting, protracted divorce.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“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.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“Write,” instructs Annie Dillard, “as if you were dying.” We are all terminal patients on this earth—the mystery is not “if” but “when” death appears in the plotline.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“You are a young woman, I am an old man. You are looking ahead, I am looking back. It is likely that we have only our mortality in common, he wrote. Meaning is not found in the material realm—dinner, jazz, cocktails, conversation or whatever. Meaning is what’s left when everything else is stripped away.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“the world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“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. It is learning to confront ghosts and to carry what lingers.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“If I’m thinking about my illness—abstracted from its impact on the people around me—then the answer is: No, I would not reverse my diagnosis if I could. I would not take back what I suffered to gain this.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“We grow by the obstacles we face and the wide scope of emotions we feel. That's how we understand one another. That is how we understand ourselves.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“Their openness has shown me what can happen when we quit all the bullshit posturing and admit to uncertainty.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“Grief is a ghost that visits without warning. It comes in the night and rips you from your sleep. It fills your chest with shards of glass. It interrupts you mid-laugh when you're at a party, chastising you that, just for a moment, you've forgotten. It haunts you until it becomes a part of you, shadowing you breath for breath.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“When you are facing the possibility of imminent death, people treat you differently: Their gaze lingers, recording each mole, tracing the shape of your lips, noting the exact shade of your eyes, as if they are painting a portrait of you to hang in memory's gallery. They take dozens of pictures and videos of you on their phones, trying to freeze-frame time, to bottle the sound of your laugh, to immortalize meaningful moments that can later be revisited in a memory cloud. All of this attention can feel like you are being memorialized while you are still alive.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“You can't guarantee that people won't hurt or betray you - they will. But evading heartbreak is how we miss our people, our purpose. May I be awake enough to notice when love appears and bold enough to pursue it without knowing where it will lead.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“They say that in difficult times you find out who your friends are, but mostly I found out whom I wanted to befriend. Some people I thought I could count on disappeared, while others I barely knew did more than I ever expected.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“Seeing them together makes me want to open myself up to the future, but hard as I try, I still can’t imagine myself growing old, alone or with anyone else. To learn to swim in the ocean of not-knowing—this is my constant work. I can’t know if there is a rogue cancer cell lurking somewhere in my marrow. I can’t predict if my body will scuttle commitments to myself or to others. I’m not even sure I want to settle down in a stable, more conventional way. But I’m beginning to understand this: We never know. Life is a foray into mystery.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“The semblance of a plan, no matter how tenuous, balanced out the uncertainty and confusion I felt about the future.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“mischief and audacity that made her company feel so freeing and magical; it made her accessible, not like one of those grown-ups who constantly reminded you of your immaturity. After”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“It’s a funny thing, coming home. Everything smells the same, looks the same, feels the same, but you are different; the contrast between who you were when you left and who you are now is heightened against the backdrop of old haunts.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“there is no word in the English language to describe a parent who loses a child.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“May I be awake enough to notice when love appears and bold enough to pursue it without knowing where it will lead.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“My heart ached for Johnny. Our shared experience was brutal, but between us existed a weird sort of beauty: There we were, two complete strangers, arms extending from our screens, wrapping each other in an intimate embrace.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“You have to shift from the gloom and doom and focus instead on what you love,” she told me before bed. “That’s all you can do in the face of these things. Love the people around you. Love the life you have. I can’t think of a more powerful response to life’s sorrows than loving.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“It’s a tricky balance, attempting to find resonance in someone’s story without reducing your suffering to sameness.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“But talking about the ones we’ve lost keeps them alive.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“A kind of sundering was taking place within me: There was the good-natured patient, young and spunky and cheerful, who raged courageously against her disease, determined to make the best of her terrible circumstances, and this new version, envious, short-fused, sleeping sixteen hours a day and rarely ever leaving her room. On Sunday nights, when Will packed his bags, preparing to leave Saratoga for the workweek, I wanted to put on a happy, supportive face. I tried. But as the weeks passed and I got sicker, it grew harder. It was unfair of me to resent him for going—not least because I was the one who had convinced him to take the job—but an anger unlike any I’d experienced before was building inside me, contained for now, but threatening to consume everything around me. Will, the social worker, everyone else who was out there participating in the world—they weren’t the enemy, the disease was. I knew that, but with each day, each dream deferred, it got harder and harder to tell the difference.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted