We’ll get through this again InshAllah
My dear friends,
Last week, we were in NYC for more appointments at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (still feels surreal to type those words) to meet doctors, discuss next steps of my breast cancer treatment, and do a simulation for proton radiation that begins in a couple of weeks. It was not easy, there were more tears.
But during our few days in the city, we also got to take our son Zayd out for an early birthday celebration for his favorite omakase (he turns 22 today!); cheer on our daughter Saanya as she ran the NYC half marathon, after a year of injuries; watch an incredible Manchester United match together that had us cheering at the TV with sheer abandon; and loll on the Columbia grass under glorious sunshine and tell the kids, for the umpteenth time, how Arif and I met on this campus nearly 40 years ago.
Four days were packed with some of the most serious somber issues I’ve ever faced—and some of the most joyous simple moments I can remember.
Isn’t that life. The beautiful and the cruel, the light and the weighty, the happy and the sad all wrapped inextricably together.
I guess our job is to see both, not just get stuck on the hard; to eke out the joy amidst the sadness; to savor the moments we can still experience and not fixate on what may happen in the future; to tread gently and with grace as we wade through the turmoil.
No one has made me realize this more than the author, and my personal hero, Suleika Jaouad. I read her book Between Two Kingdoms last year and was incredibly inspired. At 22, just after graduating from Princeton and moving to Paris, Suleika was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. She spent the next four years in a hospital, getting countless rounds of debilitating chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, clinical trials, and fighting for her life. The way she writes about her experience is raw, vulnerable, heartbreaking, and deeply moving. The title of her book is inspired by Susan Sontag, who wrote “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.”
The day I got my recent diagnosis I picked up Suleika’s book and clutched it to my chest, trying to imbibe her resilience and strength. I devoured every word of her memoir again, this time underlining sentences that I knew I’d be turning to over and over.
Two years ago, Suleika’s cancer came back and she needed a second bone marrow transplant. The week she learned of her recurrence, her husband, the incredible musician Jon Batiste, found out he had earned a record 11 Grammy nominations. So much pain and elation at the same time. (This story is chronicled in the beautiful short filmAmerican Symphony.)
While we may never experience such high highs or low lows, no doubt each of us will need to figure out how to hold both, as Suleika says, in the palm of one hand; because, in Jon’s words, no one is exempt from the human condition.
Some of you have kindly said I’m brave to share my own story, that it takes courage to reveal such a personal challenge. Thank you; to be honest, as a writer of personal stories I think it’s by sharing what we’re going through that helps us get through it. That’s the power of our story. It allows us to feel less alone, to feel closer to one another, to know others are going through hard things too—it keeps us tethered to one another. And for me this is the essence of life, of living.
When I first got breast cancer in 2012, my family was shocked; it was the first time cancer had struck our younger generation. I wanted to reassure my close circle that I was doing okay, so I started writing a series of letters and emailing them to family and friends to let them know how I was coping. I ended each letter with, “We’ll get through this InshAllah.”
The founder and executive editor of a Muslim women’s magazine that I had written for found out about my cancer; she was concerned, I shared my letters with her. She asked if she could publish them on her magazine’s website. I hesitated, these were private letters after all. But when she explained that breast cancer is a topic Muslim women don’t talk about easily because they feel a taboo around the subject; that many don’t self-examine, or get regular mammograms, or discuss their concerns with their spouse or family because of the shame they perceive, I thought if my experience could help even one woman feel safe, feel seen, feel hope, feel less alone, it would be worth it.
The letters were published. When the editor asked what I wanted to title the series, my immediate response and the only thing that made sense: We’ll get through this InshAllah.
I’ve been blown away and deeply moved by how many of you have shared ways in which you get through challenging times in response to my last newsletter. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Hope you’ll continue to share with me, your messages are keeping me afloat like you can’t imagine. I’m cutting and pasting them together so I can print them out and keep them with me especially during the five weeks of radiation treatment. With permission, perhaps I’ll share a few with all of you.
We’ll get through this again InshAllah.
With my love,
Salma
PS: Several years ago I was in a hospital waiting room after a mammogram scrolling through social media when I learned that the executive editor of the magazine who published my letters had passed away—of cancer. I wrote this eulogy.
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This is newsletter #40. If you know anyone who might enjoy this newsletter, they can subscribe for free here. A few past newsletters:
“What a beautiful time we spent together”
Every life lost a story (+ 12 wisdoms I learned from humanKIND)
Reaching for hope, in hopeless times
What I learned from my father-in-law
A Letter of Gratitude, for my Husband’s Surgeon