Date: December 6, 2020
ID: 122598
Cource code: Mass2113/10
TEDTalks 5 title: Life After Surviving Cancer
Everyone talks about the cancer survivors and that they are heroes and warriors, but no one talks about what they go through after spending days, months or even years in the hospital fighting for their lives. Suleika Jaouad who is an American writer, advocate, and motivational speaker talked about what she went through after cancer.
She came back to her home and everything seemed different. Jaouad felt like she did not belong to the world and did not know how to live. “because no one had warned me of the challenges of reentry, I thought something must be wrong with me, I felt ashamed” she said.
In the hospital, Jaouad said that she had to accept her new reality. She adopted, made friends with a group of other young cancer patients. She also achieved her dream of becoming a war correspondent, it started with a blog where she reported from the front lines of her hospital bed, and then she wrote a column for the New York Times called “Life, Interrupted”.
People from all around the world had read her column and responded with letters, comments, and emails. One of the stories she received was from a teenager girl from Florida, and many others. Jaouad decided to go on a real journey to meet these people and talk with them.
When Jaouad started accepting the idea to stop expecting herself to return to the person she had been pre-diagnoses. Once She started accepting her body and its limitations, she started feeling better.
She said the trick is to stop seeing our health as binary, between sick and healthy, well, and unwell, whole, and broken. “Every single one of us will have our lives interrupted… we need to find place to live in the in-between place, managing whatever body and mind we currently have” Jaouad said.
URL: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5mZWVkYnVybmVyLmNvbS9URURUYWxrc19hdWRpbw/episode/ZW4uYXVkaW8udGFsay50ZWQuY29tOjQ0MDQw?hl=en-OM&ved=2ahUKEwi45JTC0rftAhWCRxUIHdpaCAQQjrkEegQIBRAF&ep=6










