The Book of Alchemy – Grow Mindfulness

Listening to Our Interior Story

Dr. Rafael Campo, in an interview for the Boston Globe, spoke of the ability of poetry to reveal the “interior story” of the creator. He highlighted the rhythm of poetry and how it mirrored the rhythm of the body.

Dr. Rafael Campo, a Harvard trained doctor, is a highly acclaimed poet, essayist and medical specialist at Harvard Medical School. He is an untiring advocate and health professional for HIV infected patients. Rafael is the author of nine books of poetry and other publications. He is also the poetry editor for the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA). He teaches primary health care at several medical institutions, including Harvard Medical School.

Rafael has received many awards and honours for his poetry and prides himself in using a “palette of poetry” by adopting a diversity of poetic forms, thus reflecting his “hybrid” experience. Rafael uses his poetry to express his feelings for his cancer and AIDS patients as well as emergency room patients who have encountered the brutality of racism and homophobia in America. He also teaches poetry to patients and medical professionals alike.

Listening to the rhythm of poetry

Rafael considers poetry to be “the opposite of silence” because it expresses the stories of patients and medical professionals. He maintains that patients are often silenced by the biomedical focus of doctors who are trained to be “relentless in the pursuit of facts”. He argues that doctors are taught to suppress their own feelings and adopt a “detached” stance. In the process, doctors don’t listen to the life stories of patients and lose valuable insight into the “context” of the patient’s illness.

Rafael contends that just like listening to a heartbeat with a stethoscope, doctors can listen to “the physical rhythms of the body” expressed through the language of poetry. In his own words, “poetry is full of the music of the body”. He highlights the corporeal nature of poetry because, in his view, it fundamentally expresses “in a visceral way what it is to be human”.

Rafael argues that listening to patients’ poems and writing poetry makes him a better doctor because he is more attuned to the “context” of an individual’s illness and their “interior story”.

Writing prompts for our Creative Meetup Group inspired by Rafael Campo

I participated in the June, online Creative Meetup sponsored by the Health Story Collaborative for writers-with-chronic-illness. Our facilitator, Jennifer Crystal, read an extract from Boston Globe’s interview with Rafael. When Jennifer introduced Rafael’s perspective on the human rhythm of poetry, it immediately struck a chord with me.

The interview extract served as the stimulus for our writing during the Meetup. We were invited to write poetry or prose around the theme of the stimulus piece and the related writing prompts offered by Jennifer. I chose to write a free-form poem about my experience of chronic illness while addressing both the writing prompts.

Writing prompts:

What are the sounds and/or rhythms of your medical story?
If you could hold a stethoscope up to your interior story, what would you want us to hear?

After we had completed 20 minutes of writing, Meetup participants shared their writing which was rich with metaphors to describe the sounds of their medical story and the nature of their “interior story”. The metaphors employed by the participants focused on both disruptive/disturbing sounds and soothing sounds:

Metaphors of disruptive/disturbing sounds:

like war sounds
the storm that couldn’t kill
church bells ringing
loud chaotic concert
waves crashing
noisy, electronic hospital environment
like trumpet blasts.

Metaphors of soothing sounds:

sweet melody of harp
whispers of nature and beauty
soft pattern of soothing sounds
silence and solitude.

Poetry affords the opportunity to blend opposites (e.g. noise and silence) and change metaphors to break frames and create a new mindset. Poetry has the power to transform our perspective.

My response to the writing prompts is reflected in the following poem:

The Sounds of My Medical Story

A story that lacks rhythm,
a staccato effect.
Flare-ups like trumpet blasts,
Disrupting and interrupting.
Periods of silence and solitude,
A soft pattern of soothing sounds.
Poetry as alchemy.

Reflection

I have been inspired by The Book of Alchemy authored by Suleika Jaouad in which she explores the art of journalling with 100 very accomplished contributors. As Suleika was writing the final chapter of her book she received word that her aggressive leukemia had returned. While preparing herself and her house for another extended hospital stay (for chemo and a third bone marrow transplant), she recalled the alchemy of writing a journal. This led her to write a poem about how journalling alchemizes isolation and suffering and leads to new insights and a newly envisioned future.

In her poem, Suleika draws on multiple analogies to express how she has experienced the alchemy of journalling:

a companion to untangle the knots in her life
a source of memory and reverie
a teacher of mindfulness (through paying attention to the simple things in life)
a mirror for her past, present and future self
a refuge and hiding place and “finding place”
a means “to write her way through”
a co-creator of a future self.

On reading her poem about the alchemy of writing and journalling, I was inspired to produce an “erased poem”(in Haiku format) from her words:

An Ode to Poetry

Friend for company,
finding place for future self.
Create my way through.

As we grow in mindfulness through writing poetry, blogging or journalling, we can access our “interior story”, develop creative approaches to challenging situations (such as illness) and build a new level of acceptance of “what is”. We can also draw inspiration from others by writing in community – accessing the power of storytelling and sharing.

Rafael reminds us that a poem is “crafted” around a theme and structural elements such as rhyme. rhythm, alliteration, metaphor, length, format, and language. I found that I had to craft this blog post when I became overwhelmed by the volume of information about Rafael and his poetry. In crafting the post, I needed to reduce the focus to one key area, find ways to integrate disparate sources and explore avenues for integrating the material. The content and structure evolved through multiple edits and rewrites.

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Image by Olle August from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Journalling for Creativity

In the Book of Alchemy, Suleika Jaouad provides ten themes for journalling, with each thematic chapter prefaced by her own essay on the focal topic. Each chapter, in turn, has ten authors who contribute to the chapter theme by providing a short essay and related writing prompts. The book thus provides an excellent source of inspiration for journalling for creativity as well as practical hints on how to overcome writer’s block when attempting creative writing. The sub-title of the book, A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, highlights the intent of the book to stimulate creativity and provide inspiration.

One of the many contributions that had a profound impact on me is that of Natalie Warther who wrote about “Poetry by Erasure”. Natalie was awarded a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her essay in the Book of Alchemy, in the chapter “On Seeing”, explains the process of writing poetry by erasure and states that she started this practice in the early months of quarantine during the pandemic. Natalie found that the erasure practice helped her to overcome overwhelm as it provided a way to be creative without having “to start from scratch”.

The process involves starting with a piece of text – a poem, newspaper article, book you have read or a novel you are reading – and progressively whittling away at it until it is transformed into “the thing that needs to be said through you”. Words are lifted from their context and studied as discrete entities with a disembodied meaning. Your “creation through elimination” results in the original text being unrecognisable – the context, sequence and meaning of the employed words have changed. You can give your created poem a new title to communicate the change in focus and meaning. Natalie cites the famous poet Mary Ruefle as saying of her own erasure poetry process that she doesn’t read the page of the original text but rather just the words.

Erasure poetry

I found that starting with an existing poem made it easier for me to come up with an erasure poem. My initial attempts were basically a restating of the theme of the original text while using some of the words employed by the original author. This involved elimination but little in the way of creativity. Here are two examples of my early attempts:

Acts of Kindness

The simple act
sending love
when I was terribly low.

I trust acts of kindness
live in my body.
I am made of them.

(Erasure poem drawn from The Making – a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)

The Gift of Solitude

Suddenly a solitude,
an enormity, an empire.
It’s gigantically different!
Thank God.

(Erasure poem drawn from It is Difficult to Speak of the Night– a poem by Jack Gilbert)

As I made further attempts with erasure poetry I started to move away from the theme of the original creator and establish a new focus and meaning. Here are two examples of these transformations:

The Pursuit of Science

Commitment and wonder,
passionate and precise,
no detail too small,
noticing the smallest of things.

(Erasure poem drawn from No Detail Too Small – a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)

The Wonder of Stories

Listen to stories
I carry everywhere
for sharing.

Break open the vast ache
that all of us carries
for wonder.

(Erasure poem drawn from The Elephant in the Room – a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer provides a poem-a-day so her poetry is a good source of inspiration for erasure poetry. What I found in reading her daily poems is that the lack of structure seemed to get in the road of my appreciating the full meaning of her poems (I’m used to reading other people’s poems that are more structured although I write “free form poetry” myself). However, by taking out individual words and examining them closely and then putting them back into the context of Rosemerry’s poem, enabled me to really appreciate the meaning of her original poem (I saw her poem in a new way as if the light of understanding illuminated the meaning of the original poem).

The benefits of erasure poetry

Besides helping the reader to see the original poem in a new light, erasure poetry can be (in Natalie’s words) “freeing” and “playful”, even “meditative”. It can free us from writer’s block and get the “creative juices” going. It can be inventive and creative, opening up new insights, perspectives and different ways of looking at things and situations. Natalie suggests that erasure poetry creates a space where we can be a writer without using an original word – thus taking the pressure off to start from scratch, particularly when we are exhausted or overwhelmed through the challenges of daily life and the human condition.

Reflection

Several of the contributors to Suleika’s Book of Alchemy are experiencing (or have experienced) chronic illness, including Suleika herself who has leukemia (diagnosed at age 22). The contributors discuss writing for healing and explain how journalling has helped them through the highs and lows of chronic illness.

Suleika turned to journalling during her periods of treatment including chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants. In her words, “journaling went from a favorite pastime to a lifeline”. Initially she started with the 100-day project, developed by Michael Bierut, which basically involved undertaking a creative act (of your choice) each day for 100 days. Both her parents were supportive and led by example (her mother being creative with ceramics while her father “wrote a daily memory from his childhood”).

Suleika chose journalling for her 100-day project and indicated that instead of giving in to a sense of hopelessness, she was able to “trace the contours of what she was thinking and feeling and gain a sense of agency over it”. However, after “four harrowing years of treatment” she gave up journalling. She was “lost in translation” for a year – having to process her new reality that had negatively impacted her heart and body.

Suleika became fear-driven and stale. So, to break with this downward spiral, she undertook a 15,000 mile solo road trip across country and visited people on-route, capturing their stories in the process. A key journal entry at the time stated, “It is possible to alter the course of my becoming”.

On returning to New York Suleika moved “to a log cabin in Vermont”. There she faced the challenge of writing her memoir – with self-doubts abounding. Her way through was to “set a daily word count” for her memoir writing. However, her inner-critic about writing a memoir overtook her. Suleika then returned to journalling and used the “morning pages” method made popular by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way.

When this new method of journalling failed to stimulate her creativity, Suleika turned to the writings of inspirational authors such as the Journals of Sylvia Plath. She also drew on the creative works of women who shared their stories about chronic illness and its effects on mind, heart and body. Suleika concluded that reading, just like journalling, can “alchemize isolation into creative solitude”.

Reading, too, can help us grow in mindfulness and increase our self-awareness, awareness of the world around us and of the people in our inner and outer circles. Suleika’s book not only provides her own story of resilience through the pursuit of creativity, but also gives snippets of the lives, challenges and successes of the 100 contributors through their short essays and writing prompts. The Book of Alchemy offers endless stimulation for our own daily journalling. The benefits that accrue as a result include enriched creativity, heightened gratitude and enhanced equanimity.
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Image by Warren Griffiths from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

The Art of Journalling

Suleika Jaouad brilliantly illustrates the art of journalling in The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, which she published in 2025. In explaining the practice, she drew on examples and stories from her own life and that of others. The book grew out of a 100-Day Project she started during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Suleika, experiencing the negative effects of isolation, decided to start a newsletter to encourage people to start journalling daily to manage their challenging situations as a result of the Pandemic.

Suleika provided a short essay and writing prompt with each newsletter to encourage people to write about their experiences. She first approached some well-known people she knew but before long the project went truly viral beyond anyone’s expectations. Participants in the project were encouraged to share their journalling to create a sense of community and shared challenge. The Book of Alchemy draws some of these contributions together. In the process, Suleika shares her own experiences and wisdom, sometimes painfully achieved, as well as the insights and personal changes experienced by the contributors to the book.

Each chapter has an introduction by Suleika around some theme such as “On Beginning” and “On Memory”. The contributions of people such as Sharon Salzberg, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Esther Perel are grouped under one of the ten chapters, with ten contributors in each chapter. Thus the book provides essays and writing prompts for our own 100-day project.

In her book, Suleika, as well as many contributors, offer suggestions on how to overcome blockages to writing a journal. At the outset, she points out the need to avoid expectations about output volumes, just the admonition to write daily. Suleika explains that there were times when she had to accept a paragraph in her journal as her output for the day. She points out that no one has to see what you have written. There is no coercion (apart from self-messages) to achieve coherence, cohesion, clarity or content in a journal entry.

Overcoming blockages

Suleika found that by reading a poem or an excerpt from something someone else has written (e.g. a memoir or novel), she was able to progress her writing even when initially “stuck”. She maintains that reading can prompt ideas, offer creative solutions and provide inspiration. It can also propose alternative perspectives, stimulate lines of enquiry and identify new aspects on which to focus. Erin Khar, in her contribution to the book, states that when she feels blocked she pulls a single sentence from one of her favourite essays or books to use as a starting point. She often uses the sentence as the opening for her journal entry. Erin is the author of Strung Out,

Ash Parsons, in her story in the book, discusses her “Ten Images” approach to journal writing.. She had adopted a son who was premature, football-size and confined to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Being with him and holding him close to her was “all-consuming and not conducive to writing”. She had to rely on creating “mental notes of images” of whatever was around her, e.g. the scrub room used before entering the ICU. She would write about the images once she returned home after hospital visits. Unwittingly she was effectively “writing her life”.

Marie Howe, author of New and Selected Poems, shared her “Radical Receptivity” story in the Book of Alchemy and explained her own process of journal writing. When she is overcome with the pressures of her “to-do” list, she clears her desk and gathers a pile of clean paper and begins to write with her non-dominant hand after setting a timer for a specified number of minutes. She then repeats the cycle and finds often that her mind slows down and she can more readily access her subconscious.

Suleika suggests too that we don’t have to only resort to writing for our daily journalling. We can draw pictures, paint with water colours, build a collage (e.g. from photos), or create a poem. Kim Rosen reminds us that writing poetry can be transformative. Poetry, like other forms of journalling, can enable us to “blend opposites and break frames”.

Carmen Radley offers the idea of mind maps as a way forward when we are stuck. She adopts the practice of creating a mind map by putting a year, place or person at the centre. The mind map can be developed by extending out from the centre using any other items of association such as words, feelings or events. Carmen describes the process as surprising and exhilarating as it effectively “mines the memory for things long buried”.

Overcoming the self-critic

Suleika suggests that we have to find our own ways to overcome the self-critic so that we can “let the words flow without self-censure”. There is a natural tendency to be self-critical, to perpetuate negative self-stories. She proposes the idea of addressing the ego directly by saying “You are sabotaging my writing, be quiet!” The processes of challenging expectations (about output and quality), writing with the non-dominant hand and writing freehand are also ways to help overcome the “internal censor”.

Even the very best and most experienced writers have to deal with the inner critic. Dani Shapiro, author of 11 books, suggests that no matter what you are attempting to write “you must first gather up an unreasonable, unearned confidence bordering on lunacy”. She talks about the inner voices that say something like, “You will fall flat on your face”, “People have done this before”, “Who do think you are to talk about your life?”, “How many followers do you have on the Internet?”. Dani ignores these voices and tells herself, “Here goes nothing!”. She says to get to this point in self-awareness and beyond self-censure, you need to believe that you have “nothing to lose”.

Even highly successful writers such as Elizabeth Gilbert have to deal with negative thoughts that can attack self-esteem and derail creative endeavours. After the outstanding success of her first book, Eat, Pray, Love, she was beset by negative thinking about her second book and whether it would be good enough – the challenge of expectations, our own and that of others. Elizabeth addressed the related anxiety in her TED Talk, Success, failure and the drive to keep creating. She found that reflection, meditation, mindfulness practices and writing herself “daily letters of love” enabled her to overcome the natural inclination to “self-hatred”. She explains this “letters of love” process in Suleika’s book and offers a writing prompt based on this approach.

Why people journal

Suleika explains that people journal for all kinds of reasons, reflecting where they are at in life. Some use journalling to deal with grief, to manage transitions (such as leaving home for college), to gain self-understanding, to manage a relationship break-up or to help them to live with a chronic or terminal illness.

People who journal find that the process is transformative – they gain new perspectives, insights and creative ways of moving forward in their life. Suleika describes the process of journal writing as alchemy – a metaphor for inner transformation or purification. She maintains that journalling creates space for exploring alternative responses to those generated by our habituated behaviours. In her view, journalling provides the tools necessary “to engage with discomfort, to peel back the layers, to uncover your truest, most laid-bare self”.

Reflection

I was stuck for what to write for this blog post until I started reading The Book of Alchemy by Suleika. Her book provides 100 essays and writing prompts by accomplished writers as well as extended essays by Suleika at the start of each chapter. There are numerous prompts available online including poetry prompts by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Rosemerry contends that poetry enables us to blend opposites, break mental frames and change perspectives.

The barriers to daily journalling are typically internal – our own self-criticism, mental blockages and excuses we give ourselves (such as not enough time). The secret is to start small and build on an existing daily habit like having a cup of coffee or undertaking an exercise routine. What will help to maintain the habit of daily journalling is develop your own personal strategies to deal with expectations, mental blockages and self-criticism. Suleika and her hundred contributors offer numerous suggestions for strategies that you can employ to achieve these goals.

As Suleika and her contributors attest, there are numerous benefits to daily journalling, not the least being that we can grow in mindfulness and tap into “flow” as we experience “being-in-the-zone”. As we commit to daily journalling we can grow in self-awareness, enhance our creativity, progress a writing project, and find creative solutions to life’s daily challenges.

If you need community support to start your journalling, you can join a journalling club or start one of your own as Sheri Campbell did (she provides some guidance for others who want to do the same). You can also access Suleika’s Journalling Club Guide here.

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Image by Penny from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.