Journaling was once just a comforting hobby for Suleika Jaouad. But after a leukemia diagnosis at age 22, it became something far more: a lifeline. In The Book of Alchemy, she shares how putting pen to paper helped her face the unimaginable. Through journaling, she traced the contours of fear, confusion, and hope, slowly gaining agency over her experience. Writing gave her the clarity to understand her feelings and the courage to speak honestly with the people around her.

When the world shut down in 2020, Suleika launched the Isolation Journals, a community journaling project born out of her own healing journey. Each day, she shared a short personal essay paired with a thoughtful prompt, encouraging people to write through their own uncertainty. That project became the foundation of this book.

The Book of Alchemy is a 100-day journaling companion designed for anyone navigating change, grief, or growth. Each entry starts with a reflection, by either Suleika’s or remarkable contributors, and ends with a prompt that feels like the start of a deep conversation. It’s less like being told what to write and more like being invited to respond.

I like how the book provided prompts instead of just filling the pages with structured forms like most mainstream journaling guides. The prompts stir something in you. I often found myself pausing mid-sentence to really think, then writing things I didn’t even know I needed to say.

Suleika has always loved the word “alchemy,” and it’s the perfect metaphor for this book. In her view, alchemy is about transformation that turning what feels painful or worthless into something meaningful and precious. This creative kind of transformation, she believes, is available to all of us. Whether we journal, sketch, write letters, or simply sit with ourselves, we all have the ability to turn fear into insight, and uncertainty into something rich with possibility.

If you’ve ever wanted to start journaling but felt stuck or self-conscious, The Book of Alchemy is a beautiful book to begin your journaling journey.

Summary

How Journaling Boosts Mental Health, Sparks Creativity, and Helps You Navigate Life’s Transitions

Journaling is a good starting point to practice for mental clarity, emotional resilience, and creative discovery. Especially during life’s uncertain phases, a journal becomes a steady companion, helping you process the space between who you were and who you’re becoming. It transforms isolation into creative solitude and becomes even more enriching when paired with reading. Engaging with another writer’s words before writing your own can unlock surprising insights, challenge your views, or stir something deeply familiar. Despite its reputation as a childish habit, journaling has proven benefits, from easing anxiety and depression to boosting memory and immunity. A journal is a rare space for honesty in a curated world: part memory keeper, part emotional release, part imaginative playground. It’s where you can be unfiltered, reflective, and wildly yourself.

How to Start Journaling Without Feeling Awkward

• Give yourself permission to destroy it later. Remind yourself you can always burn or toss it. Nothing needs to be saved.
• Use second or third person. Writing “you” or “she/he/they” instead of “I” can create distance from your inner critic.
• Write in lists or fragments. Skip the full sentences, just jot down thoughts, bullet points, or quick impressions.
• Call it something else. If “journal” feels too serious, rename it. Try calling it your un-journal or thought sketchbook.
• Stay in the present. When past events take over, gently say, “That was then. This is now,” and write from where you are now.
• Protect your privacy. Store your journal in a lockbox or private spot so you feel free to be completely honest.

How to Build a Consistent Journaling Habit

Try creating what author Lisa Ann calls a “sticky” practice, something that becomes naturally woven into your routine. Here’s how to build consistency without pressure:

• Tie journaling to a nonnegotiable habit. Link it to something you already do daily, like having your morning coffee or winding down before bed.
• Add gentle accountability. Set reminders, track your progress, or tell a friend. It helps you stay committed.
• Lower the barrier to entry. Keep it simple with three flexible rules:
  • Write every day.
  • Aim for three pages, but anything counts, even a paragraph, a sentence, or just one word.
  • Let your thoughts flow freely. You don’t need to reread or revise, just write and let it go.

Why Writing About Painful Memories Can Be Healing: How Journaling Turns Hurt into Strength

Avoiding painful memories doesn’t make them disappear. In fact, it often gives them more power. Journaling offers a way to face them gently and transform their impact. Here’s how:

• Avoiding pain keeps you stuck; writing about it sets you free. Facing difficult memories on the page helps loosen their emotional grip.
• Writing creates distance and clarity. Once the memory is written down, it’s no longer something you’re trapped in. It becomes something you’ve moved through.
• Pain becomes proof of resilience. Instead of being haunted by trauma, you create a record of survival, a reminder to your future self of what you’ve overcome.
• Excavating memory reveals meaning. Looking back helps you understand the patterns in your life, connect to your values, and recognize how your past continues to shape your present and future.

How Facing Fear Can Help You Heal and Grow: Journaling Insights on Hope, Risk, and Courage

Fear often feels like protection, but sometimes it’s the very thing holding you back from the life you want. Journaling can help you uncover the deeper truth behind your fears and move through them with strength. Here’s what that journey can look like:

• Fear often hides behind our deepest desires. The author realized she feared the very things she longed for, such as freedom, strength, love, creativity, because hope and risk can feel dangerous after experiencing loss or instability.
• Avoiding fear can shrink your world. Fear may claim to protect you, but it can also keep you stuck: afraid to rebuild, to dream, or to believe that life can be good again.
• Journaling helped make fear visible. By writing it out, she understood it better. She could see when fear was trying to keep her safe and when it was simply keeping her small.
• Confronting fear weakens its hold. The more she faced it, the less power it had. Like building muscle, it was often painful and tiring but day by day, she grew stronger.
• Living with fear is not the same as living fully. When fear takes over, you end up living in the ruins of what once was, afraid to rebuild, missing the beauty and safety that might already be present.
• Clarity gives you choice. Once she could name her fears, she could choose: to brace against discomfort, or open up to the full experience of being alive, even when it was messy or uncertain.

Letting Go of Ego and Embracing Creativity: How Mindfulness and Art Help Us Live with Openness

Much of our emotional suffering comes from how we relate to the world, clinging to what’s familiar, pushing away discomfort, and fearing change. Here’s how creativity and mindfulness can help us let go and reconnect with something deeper:

• Attachment and aversion are two sides of fear. We cling to what we know and resist the unfamiliar because the unknown feels threatening.
• Delusion stems from resisting impermanence. We want to believe something, such as our identity, our relationships, our stability, that can last forever, even though all things change.
• Ego isn’t just self-importance. It’s separation. According to Buddhist thought, ego is the illusion of being a separate “me,” detached from the rest of life. It thrives on labels, dualisms, and judgment: success vs. failure, good vs. bad.
• Practice the “open palm.” This Buddhist principle invites us to hold life gently, not clinging to what we want or rejecting what we dislike, but meeting each moment with acceptance.
• Creativity offers an escape from the ego. As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic, creative practice helps us step outside of limiting roles and labels, like parent, employee, or failure, and reconnect with something larger than ourselves.
• Creative work dissolves the small self. Whether it’s painting, writing, or dancing, the act of creating can quiet the ego and help us feel part of something expansive, alive, and deeply human.

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Author: Suleika Jaouad
Publication date: 22 April 2025
Number of pages: 305 pages

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