← Making Space with Hoda Kotb
Making Space with Hoda Kotb
Suleika Jaouad On How to Live an Inspired Life
00:40:16
Suleika Jaouad is a New York Times-bestselling author and journalist. When Jaouad was just 22-years old, she was diagnosed with leukemia, sidelining her dream of becoming a foreign correspondent. Instead, she chronicled her cancer battle in the New York Times column "Life, Interrupted", and went on to write a best-selling memoir. Jaouad opened up to Hoda about her journaling practice, which inspired her latest book "The Book of Alchemy: Creative Prompts for an Inspired Life."
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- [00:00]
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- [01:02]
Hoda Kotb
Write about a goodbye you wished you'd said or need to say. That's one of the many striking journal prompts from best selling author Suleika Jawad's latest project, the Book of A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life. The book is a beautiful guide to the art of journaling, something Suleika knows well. From the time she was young, Suleika has practiced journaling as a way to mark all the moments that define her life, from the joyful highs to the heartbreaking lows. Journaling, she says, has buoyed her through uncertainty and illness. But journaling doesn't always come easily, and as an avid journaler myself, even I sit down and stare at a blank page. So Suleika gathered wisdom from writers, artists and thinkers and combined them into essays and writing prompts. I cannot get enough of this book and I cannot stop thinking about this conversation. I hope it has the same impact on you. I'm Hoda Kotb. Welcome to my podcast, Making Space.
- [02:17]
Suleika Jawad
I am so happy to be sitting with you today. Number one, I have loved you for such a long time. I remember. I don't know if you remember because you've done so many interviews, but we sat together so long ago and just talked about your life. So let's start with that. Today, on this random rainy day in New York, how are you feeling? Like, where are you in your life?
- [02:39]
Okay. I adore you. I'm so happy to be here. Of course I remember that day. It was peak pandemic.
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Yes.
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And you know, I am. I am. How am I doing? It's, you know, the most commonly Asked question and the hardest one to answer honestly. So I'm doing really well today, health wise, less well. But that has been this sort of ongoing work that I've been doing, which is trying to figure out how to hold the beautiful aspects of life with the harder ones and the same palm without them, without things needing to be either good or bad.
- [03:30]
Is it about like where you fix your gaze or is it much more than that?
- [03:37]
You know, I think for me the balancing comes in welcoming all of it and not trying to shy away from the hard things or to compartmentalize, but to kind of note it. Sometimes literally note it down.
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Yeah.
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And trust that there's room for all of it. That our lives are not a binary. We're not either happy or sad or healthy or well. Most of us exist somewhere in the messy middle and life is flux and we are in flux. And I guess there's a sense of comfort that comes with knowing that everything is always changing. If you're having a hard moment or a hard day, you know it's going to change. If you're having a good day, you get to be extra present and grateful for it because, you know, not every day may be as good as this one.
- [04:36]
Yeah. For those who don't know, you said health wise, not so great. I'm not sure if everybody knows your story, but will you explain what you mean by that?
- [04:47]
Yeah. So I learned almost exactly a year ago that the leukemia I've had off and on now, you know, since the age of 22 is back for a third time. And that's the kind of news that can make you want to get into bed and hide under the covers and not re emerge. It's the kind of thing that can keep you frozen in fear because you know when you're living with a life threatening illness, the future becomes a scary place because you don't know if you're going to get to exist in it. And, and so, you know, very early on I kept saying to my oncologist, like, how do I navigate all of this uncertainty? How do I keep living my life without, you know, being consumed by fear of the many what ifs that I can't possibly answer? And the thing he'd always say to me was, you have to live every day as if it's your last. And I know that that advice comes from a good place. But whenever I heard it, whenever I tried to live it, I felt this intense sense of panic because it is exhausting and stressful to try to make every moment as meaningful as Possible to try to enjoy every family dinner, to try to be grateful every single moment of every single day. And I got to a point where I was like, I don't want to do that anymore. It's actually. It's tiring, and it's not sustainable. And I've come to actually believe that it's bad advice, because if we were all to do that, you know, we'd be emptying our savings accounts and declaring bankruptcy, and, you know, the whole world would be chaos. And so I've shifted to a gentler mindset as I navigate this, of living every day as if it's my first and trying to wake up and to cultivate this sense of curiosity and creativity and wonder that a little kid might, because as little kids, we do that so naturally. And when I do that, I find that I am able to shift out of the fear of uncertainty into a sense of wonder about the mysteries of how our lives unfold.
- [07:34]
By the way, what a beautiful shift in that statement, because I've never heard live each day like it's your first. Everyone talks about live each day like it's your last. Every song. I mean, I love country music, too. And every country song is like, this.
- [07:47]
Hoda Kotb
Is the last time your kid's gonna do.
- [07:49]
Suleika Jawad
And you're like, oh, my God, this is crushing me. Live every day like it's your first. That's very, very profound and beautiful. I want to talk about how you're doing this, because I think that's so important. And you have a book out that.
- [08:06]
Hoda Kotb
Is, first of all, extremely beautiful to hold.
- [08:09]
Suleika Jawad
It's called the Book of Alchemy, A creative practice for an inspired life. And you talk about journaling. And I thought, okay. When I first heard about the book.
- [08:20]
Hoda Kotb
And then when I read the statement.
- [08:22]
Suleika Jawad
That you said journaling saved my life, I thought to myself, wow, let me see how that lands. First of all, explain how journaling saved your life.
- [08:31]
Yeah. So I've been keeping a journal from the time I was a little kid. I was a kid who did not fit in, who really struggled to find that sense of belonging. And the journal, for me, was a refuge. It was a kind of hiding place and a finding place where I could sort of write my way back to myself when I didn't always know how to find that sense of belonging and safety outside of the journal. But when I got sick at 22, the Journal really became a lifeline for me. I was stuck in this hospital room for weeks and months on end and struggling to figure out what to do with Myself how to process the fear and the anger and the sense of grief that comes with having the ceiling cave in on your life and whatever plans it is that you had. And, you know, it's called the book of Alchemy because alchemy is one of my very favorite words in the English language. And I've always been fascinated by the kind of traditional notion of alchemy, of, you know, transmuting something like lead, something considered base or worthless, into something precious like gold. But in that hospital room and in the privacy of a daily journal, I began to think about how I might alchemize this life interruption into something interesting and useful and maybe even beautiful. And so what that looks like for me was keeping a daily journal in the form of a hundred day project.
- [10:35]
Why a hundred days? You just needed.
- [10:38]
It was something I did with my friends and family. And we needed that sense of accountability and that container, because journaling seems like a pretty straightforward thing. And I know you're a prolific journaler, but I think sometimes, especially when you're going through a lot, it can be scary to keep a journal. It's almost like too hot to touch. And so sometimes you need a sort of daily challenge or a goal in mind to get yourself going. Because how many of us have, you know, bought a brand new journal, filled out the first few pages, left the rest blank, then bought another journal because that journal is ruined and you have to start all over again. But I needed something to kind of keep me going.
- [11:27]
How did you. Because, okay, I'm imagining you in that moment. You've got your journal. It's just you and the beeping and all the sounds of a hospital room. How did you just not write about all of the. Cause I would imagine what was going on daily was horrible for you, and then it was more than documenting what was going on. What were you writing?
- [11:48]
So I think I struggled, perhaps like a lot of people do when they're keeping a journal, was feeling like I was just either chronicling my day and then and then and then and then, and there's a kind of like episodic quality to it, or I was writing only about the hard things, which can be cathartic and necessary in its own way. But I started to notice a couple of things, that when I was feeling stuck in my life, I would get stuck in the same kind of thought loops and in the same kind of journal entries. And I really felt like I needed to push myself beyond myself. And so what I started doing before opening the journal was reading a short Passage of something. And it was often a journal of a favorite writer, like a Susan Sontag or a Joan Didion. And when I did that, it prompted me in a way, even if I didn't relate to what I'd read. It had this kind of kaleidoscopic effect of like slightly twisting the chamber and the light fell differently. And so that started me on this path of kind of philosophy, of journaling. That's the foundation of this book, of a slightly more guided approach to journaling. Because one of the things I love most about the journal is that it is stream of consciousness. There's no right or wrong way to do it. There are no rules. You come as you are. You don't have to be a good writer. It's not even grammatical writing. It can lists, it can be sentence fragments, it can be doodles. But I wanted to find little prompts that could spark some new train of thought that could sort of shift my thinking in an unexpected direction. And so I started doing that in the hospital. I started using it as a kind of reporter's notebook. I'd write about, you know, the gossip that the nurses were sharing with me. I wrote about this guy, Ned, down the hallway from me, who was trying to mount a hunger strike amongst the patients because the meal trays kept arriving when the food's still frozen, like these little details. And suddenly what I noticed is I wasn't just writing about the anger or the grief for every difficult moment. There were funny moments and interesting moments unfolding alongside. And I started to feel that sense of alchemy, that sense of something shifting, of possibility.
- [14:42]
Hoda Kotb
More with Silaika Jawad in just a moment.
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- [16:54]
Suleika Jawad
I think first of all, this is so incredibly beautiful. I mean, to be able to go down that road and not go down the slippery slope of despair. I think some people think I don't journal cause I'm not creative, I'm not a writer, I don't do that. And you can kind of see that. It's like if you blank page in front of you, what are you gonna put there? But do you think, is this like a learned behavior? Or if you're Mary Smith, who's listening, thinking, I've never done that. I don't even know what I would do. What's the advice?
- [17:23]
There's okay, I think we're all deeply creative. As little kids we have such an organic relationship to our imagination. We play make believe and at some point someone or something along the way tells us that we're not creative or that it's not a good use of our time. But when you think about it, everything we do is creative. Having a fight with your husband requires creativity and its resolution. Cooking a meal is creative. So that's the first thing I'd say. The second thing I'd say is I understand why the idea of a journal or even the blank page would be intimidating. And that's why I think having a container of 30 days or a hundred days and having some prompts to guide you can be really helpful, whether you're a seasoned journaler or you've never tried it before. But the other thing that I love about journaling is it's this rare space where you get to show up exactly as you are. You're doing it just for yourself. It's not for an audience. You get to be your most unedited self. You get to take a breath, sit down and for five minutes write your way back to yourself and you never have to read it again. And it's about the act of doing it more so than the outcome.
- [18:57]
You keep talking about prompts, which I think are the whole thing because I think if someone gave anyone me a nudge and said here's something to go on. What prompts helped you when you were trying to get back to yourself?
- [19:14]
So there are a hundred essays and prompts in the book and they're really a curation of my favorite prompts that I write to again and again and the people who inspire me most. And some of them are creative in the conventional sense and some of them live their lives creatively. I think our oldest prompt contributor is Gloria Steinem at 91 years old. And our youngest prompt contributor was 6 years old at the the time. He's two time brain cancer survivor named Lou Sullivan. And so the prompts that I write to all the time, you know, some of them are very simple. One prompt is called the to feel list and it is exactly what it sounds like. Before you write your to do list, you write a To feel list to feel with some ideas for how to get yourself there.
- [20:09]
That's so smart.
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So smart and so simple. And it's something I do every single day.
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Give me an example.
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So, okay, so on my to feel list I said I want to feel grounded. And I had a kind of chaotic morning. We're moving, dogs were barking, doorbells were ringing, and I was tempted to not go to the park, which is what I do every morning with my dogs. But that's what grounds me. So I ended up taking a cab to the park, skipping the walk because I didn't have time. But I prioritized going to the park, even if it was just for 10 minutes and even though it was a little bit rainy and I didn't get on my phone and I just tried to be there with my dogs and to throw the tennis ball and to get back on with my day. So that was one thing on my list.
- [21:06]
That's what a great prompt, the to feel list. Like I want to feel calmer or more at peace. And what kinds of things would I do throughout my day to get there.
- [21:15]
And doing it before your to do list because I think the order is important because how we feel should be the priority rather than our output.
- [21:26]
That's so good. Are there any other prompts that for.
- [21:28]
You there is one prompt I have been doing religiously called A day in the life of my dream. And it makes me.
- [21:39]
Wait, wait, that. Oh, my gosh, that's beautiful. A Day in the life of my Dream. Okay.
- [21:45]
And I credit my marriage to it. I credit so many of the most important decisions I've made. And I'm not someone who's prone to hyperbole, so I say this with all the sincerity that I have. So the prompt is this. You write about a perfect every day. So just a regular perfect day five years out in the future. But you write it in the present tense, and it starts from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep. Who are you waking up next to, if anyone? Where are you? What are you doing? How are you filling your day? Who are you filling it with? And what does that perfect day look like? And so I'm not someone who believes in manifesting, but I think what this prompt has done for me is that it's forced me to articulate what I want, which is actually really scary. Not just to say out loud, but to write down, because it's scary sometimes to actually articulate what you want. And, you know, it's changed over time, of course, but it's really helped me identify what I want so that when I see something that is in alignment with that, I don't hesitate.
- [23:11]
You said you credit your marriage.
- [23:14]
I credit my marriage. I do.
- [23:16]
For real?
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For real.
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Because you could imagine.
- [23:21]
Because I was someone who was so afraid. I think of marriage in part because I took it so seriously. You know, I think sometimes when you've grieved someone you love, it can make you guarded against new love, because new love opens up the possibility of more loss. And so I think I was protecting my heart. And that made it difficult for me to fully open up to the idea of what I think the best kind of relationships require of us, which is an unguarded heart. And so I kept trying to write these days in the life of my dreams, in which I was somehow protecting my heart, but still having the kind of relationship that I wanted. And I. I was like, you know, I'd finish the entry and I'd be like, this is a lie. Like, I don't actually. I'm not actually buying this. It's not actually what I want. So then the next day, I try again and again and again. And ultimately, you know, once I could get through past my fears and whatever kind of lies I was telling myself to the actual truth of what my perfect everyday would look like, it was not just with my husband John, but it was a way of being with him.
- [24:46]
Oh, that's bigger than just knowing you have the right person. It's how you were with him.
- [24:51]
Exactly.
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How did John Baptiste, by the way, who is like, you know, you two together are my favorite couple. Sorry. Forever and ever. And you two on the road with his was like, a sight to behold. I saw clips and it moved me to my core. I just wished it never. Like, I wanted it to keep going, just even for the small portions I saw. But when you articulated that to him, because you guys have known each other since band camp, how did he receive that? Or was he just patiently waiting for you to see what he already knew?
- [25:26]
I think it's funny. I credit journaling in more ways than just that one prompt to a relationship because he came up with the idea early on, during a period of time where we were both on the road, that instead of writing our usual journal entries, because he's also a prolific journaler, we would write them as letters to each other. And the way that we did it is, you know, I'd write my letter and my journal to John, snap a photo of it, and then text it to him.
- [26:00]
Okay. It's too much.
- [26:02]
Hoda Kotb
This is all too much.
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Suleika Jawad
Sorry.
- [26:03]
This is all too much to bear.
- [26:04]
Hoda Kotb
That's so beautiful. So that's how you did your journals?
- [26:08]
Suleika Jawad
That's how we did our journals. And it was so interesting because it's like when you're on the phone with someone, especially if you're both traveling or busy, it's hard to get to the deeper stuff. It's like, how are you? How was your day?
- [26:20]
Logistics stuff.
- [26:21]
Walgreens Advertiser
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- [26:22]
Suleika Jawad
And sometimes even in conversation outside of that, it's hard to get to the deeper stuff. And so things showed up in these journal entry letters that, like, I didn't even know I was feeling. And, like, that's the cool thing about journaling. It's like, you may start with an idea of what you think you want to say, but if you're really, like, following the thread of your intuition, it always leads to somewhere unexpected.
- [26:49]
This book called, again, the Book of a Creative Practice for an Inspired Life. You have chosen such incredible people to contribute stories and prompts and things, your husband among them. But I feel like I dog eared the whole thing. You know, how you're like, why am I dog earing the whole book? I might as well just not bother.
- [27:09]
Hoda Kotb
But all of these prompts are so incredibly beautiful.
- [27:14]
Suleika Jawad
Like, I don't even know where to start. How did you choose by the way, the people who are in this book.
- [27:18]
They really are the people who inspire me. Most people I've learned from. And not necessarily people I know personally. Yeah, that people who I think embody the spirit of creative alchemy, the idea that you can transform something through an act of imagination.
- [27:41]
You talked about the young boy with cancer, the 6 year old. How did you come to be aware of him and what did he teach you?
- [27:48]
So I came to know him through his mother, who's also a cancer survivor. And he had this game that he and his mom would play in the hospital and he calls it Inside Seeing, which was he'd tell his mom to close her eyes, and he would close his eyes and then he would narrate everything that he was seeing. So sometimes he'd see tickly lights, that is like the little pin pricks of light. See, sometimes he'd see a monster, but it was like kind of cute and funny. And so that was his game that he did. And I think in a way his form of meditation. And so his prompt is to play his game of inside seeing, which is to close your eyes and to focus on the images that come up and then to write them down. So simple and so inspiring.
- [28:41]
So let's see. Okay. Latonya Yvette, who is also beautiful. This is her prompt. Write a goodbye you wish you'd said or need to say. I don't think there's a single person listening who doesn't have a goodbye that they have yet to say or need to say, or even if it's never really too late to say that. That prompt is so moving and beautiful.
- [29:04]
I love that prompt so much because sometimes you want the perfect goodbye or the perfect sense of resolution with someone and it's not possible for whatever reason. But that doesn't mean you can't still achieve it.
- [29:19]
I just. I'm so fascinated by you and by this book. Okay, I like this one. This is from Laura McCowan. Tell me about her.
- [29:27]
Laura McCowan is a brilliant writer. She's written so vulnerably about her sobriety journey and she writes about a big heartbreak in her life. And the way I organize it's divided into 10 chapters and a hundred prompts so that if you want, you can make it your own hundred day project that you could do alone or with friends. But the titles of the chapters are thematic. So there's On Love, On Fear, On Ego, on purpose. And the way that I arrived at those chapter titles was by rereading the hundreds of journals I've had since childhood and noticing that the same themes kept coming up again and again and again at every phase of life from childhood to now. And so Laura is in the On Love chapter.
- [30:22]
I like her prompt. She says without judgment, because we all do this. Write about the ways you escape your pain. What do you think may be on the other side of these escapes? What are you trying not to feel or know? What might be possible if you allowed yourself to be present with those feelings and thoughts? I like this one. If you really knew me. Complete this sentence. If you really knew me, you can write one or many of these statements, then sit with them and ask yourself, what would your life be like if people knew these things about you? How would your circle of friends change? What about your job? I mean, these are all so like wows.
- [30:58]
Hoda Kotb
But what I love about how you.
- [31:00]
Suleika Jawad
Created this book, like you said, if you don't know what to write in a journal and you have no idea, if you even just crack this book open, on any page you'll find a prompt that will lead you down a road. But you have to be, you've got to be brave, right?
- [31:15]
You've got to be brave. And I'll say too, if it feels daunting to do this by yourself, do it with a friend. I've been doing instead of like a book club with my friends and a few of my co workers, journaling club, where we read one essay and prompt out loud, write to the prompt for 10 minutes. And then we just, we don't have to share what you wrote because journaling is private and it's not. You don't want the pressure to make it pretty writing or anything like that. But then we talk about what came up. And I've had some of the best, deepest conversations with these people whom I've known for many years. And we've learned things about each other that we never knew as a result of it. And that to me is really the power of being brave enough to be in conversation with yourself. Because when you're in conversation with yourself, you get to be in conversation with the world.
- [32:20]
Hoda Kotb
More with Suleika Jawad after the break.
- [32:30]
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- [33:00]
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- [33:26]
Suleika Jawad
Safety info found @freestyleebre us.
- [33:30]
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- [34:36]
Suleika Jawad
I'm already thinking about going home and trying these prompts because I too have felt stuck. When I write my journal in the beginning, I kind of write a little prayer. I usually write dear God, thank you for this precious day. And I remind myself of this, a day that will only come one time exactly like this.
- [34:52]
Hoda Kotb
It's a little bit about what you.
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Suleika Jawad
Were saying like live each day. But I like live each day as if it were your first. But I try to remind myself in that I write allow me to see all the love and lessons. I feel like so much of it I'm sprinting through and when I left the Today show, the word unhurried kept coming cause I kept thinking I'm in a hurry, I'm in a hurry. But where am I in such a hurry to go? Where am I sprinting off to?
- [35:23]
Totally.
- [35:23]
So another Interview another meet about. But what is it about? It's like trying to remind myself to slow down, like to go in slow motion.
- [35:33]
And I think, like, so many of us feel that way. I feel that way. It's. You know, we live in a world that is obsessed with productivity and we're all just like tumbling headfirst into our days. And I don't know, it's like I get to the end of the day and my to do list is somehow longer than it was when I started. And then you get up and do it all over again. And I think it's really hard to find some of my favorite TS Eliot lines. But the still point in the spinning world, and no one's gonna do it for us. You have to find the practices, the things that allow you to be unhurried. I love that word, the practices.
- [36:20]
You're right. God, this all makes me feel so good. Everything you're saying. I mean, you really are. You have. I mean, the stuff should all be yelled from the mountaintops, which I'm sure it's been already, but I'm gonna help amplify. Cause it's so good, so important. How do you. You talk about journaling as a way of. It's. You're caring for yourself. You're obviously doing that. But in what other ways do you take care of yourself? I feel like you put so much into the world. It just seems that way from watching you. I don't know if I'm right, but you know, your tank, you want to keep it full. So what do you do to make sure that you keep it full?
- [37:06]
I sounds so kind of silly. I schedule unstructured time for myself and I have to schedule it, otherwise it's never going to happen. And I do this because in the moments when I've had a forced interruption in my life, those have always also been the moments, no matter how brutally difficult or heartbreaking they may be, where I felt the most clarity about what's important to me. Because when. When you're stripped down to your most laid bare self, you know, there's no time or energy for anything that feels extra or certainly anything that is taking energy from you. And I think in those moments of forced interruption when I haven't had a plan, and I love a plan, I love my one year plans and my five. Like, I'm such a planner. So it's very hard for me not to have a plan when I've made room for something, anything to emerge. I'm always so endlessly surprised by what comes out of that. And so, you know, three years ago, I had a second bone marrow transplant, and I couldn't journal. I temporarily lost my vision, and I started to paint. And I'm not a painter. I'm not a trained painter. I was just doing it to keep myself entertained. It was like a kind of visual journal. And I have fallen deeply, madly in love with painting in my mid-30s, and that's now all I want to do. It's not. It's not part of the plan, but I'm so happy. I love it that it happened. And it doesn't always have to be something like painting, but having scheduled time where I have zero expectations of myself is how I recharge. And that can look like painting. It can look like lying on the couch with a book. It can look like taking a nap. It can look like cuddling with. Our newest rescue, a tiny, toothless senior dog named Lentil, who we are very obsessed with. But, yeah, giving myself the permission to not do anything and not be anything is how I recharge.
- [39:42]
I so admire just how you live your life. I feel like there are many people, myself included, who don't have an illness, who aren't living in such a way. Like, I know you're holding all things equally, but sometimes, like, you know, I'll obsess about the dumbest thing. I'll wake up in the middle night. I can't go back to sleep over something so ridiculous like, is my kid okay? Like, what do I. Did I do that wrong? Oh, God, am I ruined them already? You know, they're only eight. Like, what have I done?
- [40:13]
Hoda Kotb
You know? And then I'm thinking to myself, like, there's a.
- [40:16]
Suleika Jawad
You have a calm. I'm sitting with you and I'm telling you right now, I have chill sitting next to you. I'm not sure what that is, but I think it's like you have something that's different, I think.
- [40:30]
Okay, let me go on record and say I too, wake up in the middle of the night consumed with fear, Fear, worries, anxieties. Why did I say that? Should I have said that? You know, whatever the news, I think that it's not that I don't have fear. I've just had to cultivate practices and tools to help me carry that productively. And so when I say, for example, keeping a journal saved my life, it's not that I somehow am more evolved or inherently calmer, it's that I've had to do it because the alternative, which is to, you know, be in Despair or to be in fear is not how I want to spend my time here. I think survival for me has always felt like a kind of creative act. It requires imagination, it requires improvisation. It requires collaboration. And so that's what I try to do without making it too simplistic. And I think about this all the time. It's like I do not have a good prognosis, and I could sit with that and let it hijack my days and let it stop me from doing the things that I want to do. Or I can take that fact and reality and use it as a springboard to do more of the things that make me feel most alive, to spend time with the people who make me feel most alive. And when I think about it that way, and when I'm able to identify what the small steps are that I can take to cultivating that sense of wonder that we were talking about and creativity and curiosity, then I feel like I'm actually, well, regardless of what's happening in my body and in my bone marrow.
- [42:53]
That's everything. That's everything. We call this podcast Making Space. So you've answered this in different ways, but if you did have one day, Zuleika, that was just for you. From the moment your eyes opened until they closed at the end of the day, how would you fill that time? With no obligations, you had nothing on the calendar. It was a clean slate.
- [43:19]
How would I fill that time? Probably it would be a day that involves hanging out with my husband, hanging out with our three dogs, journaling and reading a book. Because what is more delicious than getting lost in the story?
- [43:40]
Simple.
- [43:41]
Having a phone call or a meal with a friend. All the things that I love with all the people I love most.
- [43:48]
Well, I love you.
- [43:49]
It definitely does not involve zoom calls or conference calls or all the things on my to do list.
- [43:55]
Hoda Kotb
Exactly.
- [43:56]
Suleika Jawad
I'm starting my Phone to Feel list right after this is over. Suika, thank you so much. Again, pick up the book. It's called the Book of Alchemy. A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life. Thank you.
- [44:06]
Thank you, thank you.
- [44:15]
Hoda Kotb
Hey, guys. Thank you so much for listening and for coming on this journey with me. If you like what you heard, and I hope that you do, please give Making Space a a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And make sure you tell your friends. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now. Making Space with Hoda Kotb is produced by Alison Berger along with Kate Saunders. Our associate audio engineer is Juliana Mostarilli. Our audio engineers are Katie Lau and Mark Yoshi Zumi. Original music by John Estes. Bryson Barnes is our head of audio production. Missy Dunlop Parsons is our executive producer. Libby Least is the executive vice president of Today and Lifestyle.
- [45:09]
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