Surrender to the Process with Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad

Well, let's get it going. So we're here to help. Oh, you guys. Ooh. We're all participating. A jingle, jingle, jingle. A jingle. Ah! Yeah. What you got for IMO. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ah. Yeah. Yeah. This is IMO. IMO. cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering cheering How are you? I'm good Craig Robinson. Exciting day today. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I want to sort of get right into this day because we've got two guests today. And you know these two and I'm just getting to know them. So dear dear friends, we've gotten to know them worked as people might know that we were a co-producer as of American Symphony. Wonderful piece of work and I'm not just saying that because I'm related to you. Talk about two creative forces in so many different ways. I want to hear about how they met. Yes. You know, so I'm really excited. But Craig, you are always in charge of doing the proper introduction. Yes, I am going to do a proper introduction. So Celicadjewad is a writer, artist, and author of the New York Times best-selling memoirs, the Book of Alchemy, a creative practice for an inspired life, and between two kingdoms. She writes the number one literature newsletter on Substack, the Isolation Journals, and in November of 2025, she released the Alchemy Journal, a companion piece to the Book of Alchemy. Along with husband John Batista, Celicadjewad is the subject of the Oscar-nominated and Grammy Award-winning documentary, American Symphony. And John Batista is a seven-time Grammy Award, Grammy Academy Award, and Emmy Award-winning singer, songwriter and composer. His ninth studio album, Big Money, is nominated for three-two-thousand-twenty-six Grammy Awards. Just keeps dragging them up. Including Best Americana album. In 2021, Batista released We Are, an album that carried nine Grammy nominations and five wins, including album of the year. Batista accolades also include an Academy Award for Pixar's Soul, and seven-year tenure as band leader and musical director of the late show with Stephen Colbert. So without further ado, let's introduce John and Celicadjewad. Come on out! Come on out. Welcome to I Know My Dear Dear Friends. Thank you for being here. You guys settled in. You're squeezing there. We've been looking forward to this. Yeah. All the way to the waiting room. Thank you guys. No, I wanted to be in here. I didn't know if I should put this in the official bio, but also fellow Princeton grad. Well, yeah, that's right. So Likah is like a legend on the campus when we went over there. You graduated top of your class. You showed them a thing or two. Yeah. It's it, you know, I think we both grew up and households where education was the priority. But we also had these musical paths. And so for me, I actually did not graduate from high school. I thought it was going to be a musician. Ended up realizing very quickly that that path was not for me. What was it about that path that made you realize quickly? So the deal with my parents was that I could drop out of high school to go to pre-college really hard where we both went. And I had to take at least two days worth of college classes at the nearby campus in my hometown. And for the first time in my life, I had the freedom to study anything I wanted. And so I was taking classes like women in literature. A class on the back off and modern dance. And I realized how much I loved the expansiveness of just being able to leave through a course catalog and get to just imagine all the possibilities. And that music as much as I loved it, felt narrow. And as a bass player and a classical musician, there wasn't a lot of opportunity there for me. So that's how I ended up making that change. And I'm glad for it. Can you talk to like about your childhood growing up? You have an interesting eclectic, diverse, multicultural experience. Can you talk a bit more about it? Yeah, so I'm first generation American. My dad is Tunisian. My mom is Swiss. We grew up moving around quite a bit until the age of 12 and settled in a small talent. And upstate New York. What was the reason for the moves? I think there were both trying to kind of find their place. All of our family is in Switzerland and Tunisia, but the job opportunity for my dad who was a college professor was here in the US. And so I think like a lot of kids who grow up first generation in an immigrant household, there's the culture you live in at home, and then there's the culture outside of school. So I remember on the first day of kindergarten and showing up and not speaking a word of English and feeling very much like an outside or my brother was in ESL in English as the second language. And he came home from school one day and said to my mom, I'm the dumbest kid in my class. And she said, you're not dumb. You just don't know the language yet. And so as beautiful and enriching as it was to have this multicultural interfaith household, I think as a little kid, all you want is to be normal. You want to fit in. And so it took me a long time to embrace that feeling of being a misfit. But John and I actually met in that town upstate when we were about 12, 13 years old. This is the band camp, right? At the band camp, the infamous band camp. How did you wind up at the band camp in the state of New York? Sarah Tolga Springs. That's up there. Sarah Tolga Springs is not New Orleans Louisiana. I'm telling you, it was, I remember going there and I saw Sue like wearing Birkin stocks. The first time I saw somebody wearing Birkin stocks, I kind of told you wrong. It was like, what's dang, this is like very granola, he made five. He made five. I heard about this vibe. But it was, it was Don McCormick, a family friend of ours and you know, now it's just somebody so special in life. But at the time, he was the guy who would come to our high school and scout who's the next one. New Orleans always produces these great musicians who's the young kid that we should look up for. And he came down once. I was in 9th or 10th grade and he came to the class and they pointed to me and I was too afraid to play because I was very shy as a kid. Even up in the high school, I didn't like to be. I still, that's a whole another conversation. But we'll get there. And when we got to the time to play, I said, I know, I don't know. So he couldn't pick me because he didn't hear me and he went pick somebody else from the class or somebody other than the neighborhood and he came back to the next somebody and said, now I've been here about you for a year. You got to play. You just got to play for me. And I played for him and then I get accepted to this campus. The first time I'm leaving home seeing something for myself without the influence of my parents or my big sister or my cousins or whatever. Right. It was life-chained. Camp is a deep, this is a veiled advertisement for bad camp. You might, you meet your person and you see the world. Pretty girl in Berk and stocks. I'm saying everybody. So everybody loves to like, they're from the from the first everybody to camp. But no sparks there. You just met. Well, you all were 12. Yeah, okay. I just fell down this 13, 14. Yeah, no sparks. You were too shy related to talk to me. Was this bad camp, was bad camp sleep away, talk about where they're bonks, where they're bathrooms? Were you all just caring around your cellos or did you, did you swim? Were they a bathroom? Were they a bathroom? Well, a lot of times they don't have, you know, you got, you got an outhouse situation, right? Wait, what year is this? This is like, this is like 19, 14. What did you do in the bathroom? But that wasn't a camping experience or was it, were you at a school in a, in an, an, an, an, an, a college? It's from then there's, it was sleep away, but we were in the dorms. Okay. It was like, okay, you were doing. It got to be someplace for the instruments. So I don't know, they might have just it out by the campfire. I don't know how it just started to get a feel. It really did graduate from Princeton. It really did. So you were wrong, you're wrong, great, all of my goodness. For me, it kind of was like that though. It was kind of like the boonies because, okay. Well, so there was a jazz camp, but Sean was in. There was an orchestra camp, which I went to. Oh, god, I got it. I got it. So this was a college camp. Not as a college camp, but in the sleeping the dorms, no outhouses. Uh-huh. No, no. But I remember, John was so shy that I really don't think we spoke to each other. We met. Cause was he talking to anybody? No. Did you just, you just came? What were you doing? What did you think when you got, did you get dropped off? Or were you just given a ticket? You know, I've been working. I've been working in the last, uh, we've been talking about this for, for some years, but I've been working actively to remember the first 15 years of my life. Cause there's, it's all a blur. Why is that? I remember certain things. But I think I was doing some processing, some observing, some processing, checking out what's happening. And, uh, trying to understand how to engage with the world and engage with my talents and engage with all the things that it felt like every other week, I was evolving into something that I didn't even quite know where it was going. So I was trying to figure that out. But what, what was your, to like on the other hand, was always, yeah, she was always her, this fabulous specimen here. It's unbelievable. Just always so eloquent and charismatic. I remember she was calling through the woods with the Berkins stocks in the base. And on my way to the outhouse. Okay, you guys. I know. It's not funny. But what I remember about John, he really was in his own world. But that end of summer, recital, John played a solo. And it was like the entire audience took in a collective inhale. It was, you've been playing piano for a year or two at that point, not very long two years. Yeah, when I started at the, uh, wow. So what, what, what did you have to play in order for him to hear you? Were you playing a different instrument or were you playing just playing the piano? You've been playing piano for a year the first time he came maybe. Yeah, yeah. So I started going to the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. Great, you know, a lot of relatives went there, a lot of the great musicians jazz particularly. So when I started going to Noka, I was about a year in the Me playing the piano. So that time I was at the camp. I was maybe two years in. I started playing piano. I was 11 or 12 years old. So about 13, 14. I had been playing for about a year or two. And, uh, yeah, self-taught or sort of family, osmosis. You come from royalty, New York, New Orleans, music, royalties. They were pretty solid in music. Yeah, listen. And there was a lot of musicians growing up. There's a lot, we were here, you know, my dad was my first musical mentor, but it's actually my mom, who she's just, she has a clairvoyance to it. She has a deeply dedicated intelligent woman. But, uh, I mean, when we were kids, she would always come home with a new offering of tutelage for us to partake in. Lessons, tennis lessons, gymnastics, coding, you can go to this chess camp. But you are a piano player. And I'm going to take you to these lessons every Saturday morning. And if you like it, we can continue. How did she know you were a piano player? That was the clairvoyance. That's it. Got it. Yeah. She saw it. But what was it like with your siblings? I mean, so like is the older sister and I'm the younger brother. I was going to say it's the great gift and burden of being the eldest. Yes. That sense of responsibility. Yes. Yes. But it was definitely a reverse of the dynamic. You know, we went to at the time there was corporate punishment in our school. And I remember one time there was a, uh, it was the thing that something, something happened in the class where I got caught up in. You know, it was a class clown who was my best friend, Keon. And Keon was doing, he would dance like Michael Jackson behind the teachers back. And he would get to a thing. It would be amazing. But then when the teacher turned around, he would, he would always be back in the seat. Yeah. And he was doing that once and he got me to get up and do it. Oh. And I did it and we got caught. So then they sent us to another class where they didn't have a board handy, I guess, for the paddle that we were about to get. So we went to my sister's class. And she was sitting there and as soon as she saw me walking, she was like, what are you doing in my class? And then they lined us up and her teacher gave us the wagon. I was like, I knew she was going to go home and say, you never guess what happened at school today. Guess who I saw. Guess what? Nancy Wilson. Getting your ass worked. You reported on the judge. So this is also a thing about younger older siblings. You didn't have to talk because other people were talking for you. That may be part of it. I don't know if you found that. It's like with your siblings, you had the poise. Did you find that your brother just sort of laid in the cut as we called it? Because Suleik is going to figure it out and I'll just observe. This episode is brought to you by TheraFlu, makers of fast acting cold and flu relief. Since 2021, TheraFlu's Rest and Recovery Fund has provided more than a million dollars to families to help offset the cost of a sick day. We had IMO listeners share stories about how paid sick time has impacted their lives and wanted to share a few of them with you. Many of our listeners are a part of the sandwich generation, meaning they are responsible for taking care of their kids and also their parents or in-laws. We had one listener share that they have had to take sick time for their own recovery and then also simultaneously care for their grandmother, which made it hard for them to fully rest and get better. I think this is something we both can relate to with caring for our mom and even now for me that my in-laws are living close by. Yeah, that's for sure. I mean, but I'd say that we are way more blessed than our mom was because we had resources. I mean, this is I think what TheraFlu understands. I mean, being a part of the sandwich generation when you don't have the resources and support means something totally different. We saw that with our mom because as many of you know, we lived in our home with our great aunt and great uncle as they aged and our mother was in that sandwich position where we saw her caring for our aunt and uncle as they aged while we were still pretty young. And I just remember those times with her being so exhausted, not just physically exhausted, but just exhausted by the worry of all what turned out to be 24-hour care. It's too much for a generation to bear, but thanks to TheraFlu and their work, their support out there. And there's another listener who shared that she is a single mom who doesn't have paid sick time. She said that she has no choice but to work when sick because she can't afford not to. Yeah, yeah, that's for sure. TheraFlu knows that resting and recovering when sick can be especially difficult for parents and caregivers who are just responsible for themselves, but also the loved ones they care for. That's why TheraFlu remains committed to continuing to fight for paid sick leave for all Americans because no one should have to choose between their health and their job. Learn more or help someone apply for the fun at TheraFlu.com slash right to recover. You know, in a weird way, I felt that way on behalf of my whole family. I felt like the translator of this American culture that we were trying to assimilate into and I felt this maybe outsized sense of responsibility to get everybody on board as a simulation with some kind of family project that was getting sure our safety. So I felt terrible about it now, but my mom, you know, would mispronounce a word and I'd immediately correct her or I remember she, you know, she was probably the most thoughtful person I know, but she would make us these beautiful lunches and I'd get and she'd write a little note on the napkin and I'd get to school and I would immediately put it to the side and put it in the trash because I knew I was going to be made fun of for our chicken, tijine, and couscous or whatever it was that we had for lunch that day. And with my brother, he was so shy, he got bullied a lot in school, I thought really protective of him. So I do think in some ways, yeah, that there's truth to to some of the things we associate with birth order. But also the first generation piece of it all, which, you know, as us American kids growing up and Americanized black kids, we had our own assimilation going on, but you make a wonderful point that you're trying to help the parents who don't know the culture, they don't speak the language perfectly and you're taking on an outsize responsibility to make sure that they don't stumble or fall or get hurt or get made fun of then you're just a child yourself in that process. I remember keeping lists of vocabulary words that I would learn at school like American idioms and I'd write them down, memorize them, practice them until they sounded somewhat natural in conversation. I found one the other day and it said talk to the hand. Oh yeah, that's a good one. On forward means loser. And it was like a whole sheet. Wow. Yeah. It's like this talk to the hand. Now how would you explain that to your mother? And you know, my thing I appreciate so much and we were both raised by such strong women who I think were really unique to have an example of someone who didn't really care what other people thought. My mom would come and pick us up at the best stop on cross-country skis wearing a backwards baseball cap, which you know, you guys were just like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, please never do this again. And now I just think that's the coolest thing in the world. I love it. Serious making it happen. Come on. Living just enough for the city. Yes, making it happen. You know, so when for each of you do you think as in your youth, did you break out? When did you feel like I got this, you know, I'm no longer the misfit. I had a really right before I met you, 12. I went to the movie theater with my mom and I saw this movie Julia Roberts. It's called Julia Roberts. It's just a smile. Oh, okay. And all the girls on the first day of class had already read the textbooks and they were beautiful and fashionable and cool and more than anything they led with their intelligence. And I went home and that was one of those like bulb moments you can have as a little kid. And the next day I've been hanging out with these sort of cool kids in my grade who, you know, were in fact now looking back, not very cool kind of mixed up in the wrong things. And I walked straight past them in the cafeteria and I went to the library and I found this girl in my class who lived down the block from us who was top of our class. And I said, can you teach me how to study? And I every day from that point forward during lunch sat with this new friend and realized, you know, being smart is actually the coolest thing that I can do. Maybe not for current me. And in the school setting that we were in, but for future me. And that's going to be my past forward. Yeah, I remember the the the way that you in that time when we met felt like the world was open. It just it was a wide open. It was you could feel that for me, I don't. I love the title of your book because for me, it really resonates with coming out of my shallow or not really having one moment, but a becoming a sequence of a thousand decisions that culminate into this moment and then a thousand more from this moment forward to the next moment. And ultimately at the center of it, a strong intention to do something that's bigger than yourself. And the want to be to create something that's resonant for for people in a way that's profound and is the highest manifestation of your gifts and moving through the world to the point where I remember the years just before I started doing the late show. There was some of the best years of freedom and expression and the possibility of what things could be. We'd started dating at that time too. And our early mid 20s, there was um there was a period where we felt, you know, we weren't making no money, but we felt like we went on top of the world. And I think that might be the moment, I guess, but there's no moment. I can't think of the point. Yeah, in America, which was a beautiful, beautiful story, the two of you, but you said something that really struck with me and I think I knew what you meant, but I'd love to hear from you. You said music is inevitable. And I mean, that showed choke me up the whole thing. Tell me what you meant by that. Because I think I know what you meant. Well, I should say, I know what it means to me. Yes, but I want to hear what you meant when you said that. There's a power to what we do. It comes from the divine stream of consciousness, where all creative come from and we're a vessel of the creative, put it out into the world. And when we're true to that, there's a purity to that connection. There's a purity to the expression. And each note in the next note in the next note in the next note that come, it's inevitable. It's the only thing that could have happened because we've not tried to change it. I'm manipulated for personal gain or to commodify it for efficiency and scale. We've not tried to lie. When we hear music, that's why we love it. Because it's inevitable. It feels like life. It feels like divine align. And that's my belief of the simply about any music that I partake in. I try to make it tuned into that pure source. Yes. Now you too, so like a dealt with a little pushback and redefining yourself. Talk a bit about that transition for you. Yeah, you know, I think when you're a kid, there's this notion of a coming of age arc. And when you get to the end of that arc, you'll have answers and certainty about who you are and I'm now a the opinion that life is just a series of coming of age arcs. There's no there, there where you get to a place and you're like, this is who I am. This is what I'm doing. And if you can surrender to that and enjoy the process of discovery, then it becomes exciting and interesting. So I had a lot of those when I graduated, I wanted to be a work correspondence. And about a year after graduation, ended up in the hospital and was diagnosed with leukemia. And I stayed in that hospital that first year, I think I spent about eight months as an inpatient. And you know, those those moments where maybe you've invested everything into something and it doesn't pan out for reasons that may or may not be beyond your control can can obviously, you know, leave you feeling defeated. And for me, you know, especially at 22 when you're watching your friends and social media, starting careers and traveling the world and getting married and all the other big and small milestones of early adulthood, it's easy to feel like you're uniquely stuck. That summer, I started for the first time in my life, not doing things from a place of self and pose expectation or thinking about what was practical, but just trying to follow my curiosity. To be as a friendless, Gilbert says, one percent more curious than afraid. And I started keeping a journal in the form of a 100 day project with my friends and family. And I realized in the course of keeping that journal that I was using it like a reporter's notebook. And that while I couldn't be a work correspondent in the way that I thought, I was reporting from the front lines of my hospital bed. And so that ended up leading to a blog, like the good millennial that I was in 2011 when blogging was all the rage and that led to my my first time ever being published in the form of a weekly column. And so I think for both of us, you know, we've been the recipient recipients of great abundance and also great heartbreak and the work of learning to surf those peaks and valleys without letting yourself get stuck and defeat has been our ongoing work. And John's been such a great inspiration to me. I mean, yeah, when we talk about being a misfit, John doesn't fit into a box. He like explodes the box and then draws a whole different shape for himself. And then he erases that and draws a new one. When did you guys reconnect? Now we're talking. So John was basically doing exactly that when I reconnected with him. I was 16 at that point. It's my first month in Agileard and I saw him on the win train. I had no idea that he was at Agileard and he was dancing and singing to himself with big old headphones on. And everyone in the subway cart was staring at him. Like what is going on with this guy? I got to be who you are, man. And I turned to my friend Michelle and I said, I know that guy. That's John Batiste from Bandcamp. And then out of nowhere, I said, that's the man I'm going to marry. So really, I have no idea why I said it didn't think of it. Again, we reconnected. And you hadn't thought of it prior. Nope. You didn't walk out of it after. You didn't walk out of Bandcamp singing. Oh, that John. He said not a word. I felt a thing. I felt something with that one. No, you were still in your gloriously awkward face. Yeah. Okay, what was he wearing? I don't remember what he was wearing that particular. I remember the headphones. Were they a color for sneaker? Error at that. You were trying some things at the time. Oversized suits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had three suits. Three suits. That's right. I would take drawings to a tailor. And they would be like, well, we can't make this, but we can give you the textiles to make it. So then I would get by the textiles. And then I would bring them to a tailor that I could afford to make the stuff. And then they started making suits. So I'll play shows and I'll take some of the money from the gigs I'll take to the tailor and I'll start making my own clothes. So that's not making my own clothes. And buying converse that matched the suits. What colors were these? Cadary yellow. Of course. I knew it. You should be remember that. I remember. I can. What is that? Yeah. I remember going on. One had tails on it. Oh, yeah. This is like a tuxed tails. A hard up tail. Yeah. Okay. Cloaks. Cloaks. Cloaks. Don't fall asleep on a cloak. No. No, no, no. Don't fall asleep on a cloak. Really? Because I have been sleeping on a cloak. I have been sleeping. Because I'm doing something. So you and the subway. Yeah. With your, did you consider this your subway a tire performance tire? Sometimes. When you're just going to the, you know, the Dwayne's drug store in it. You know, it was, it was performance at high, but it was more than that. It was a form of expressing the identity that we were discovering in the sound in the look. And it was just how it was when I was walking around in the world. You know, I remember I would go to vintage shops and drift shops and, you know, I would put stuff together. And I started traveling doing some performances where I discovered some tellers from different parts of the world. And they had different textiles and all kinds of stuff you could use. So that was that opened up a whole another thing. But yeah. And what was the sound at the time? Was it your jazz band? Were you, was it straight jazz, old school jazz? Was it? I don't, you know, I didn't have a term for it. So I made a term I called it social music. Social music. And the band's name. Was Stay Human. Okay. Yeah. That was the philosophy. And it was a mix of the idea of social music was really music from all of the different folk, lorick traditions of music before music was commodified. And how do you take all of those different traditions, study and find the different dots that you can connect between them and bring it into the 21st century. That was my vision. I was lofty. Yeah. You still are. It's what makes you beautiful. Yeah. It's going to be yourself, you see. So you saw this happening on the subway and you were like, that's my dude. You know, it was one of those things that you blurred out. I don't know where it comes from. You don't think I've ever done it. And it wasn't until our mid 20s that we really started dating. And it was such a beautiful time in our 20s. And I think, you know, your band name, stay human. It is really an encapsulation of what I love most about you. You were just so open and just so incredibly creative. I'll never forget the first time I went to John's apartment. It was like a site to behold. Oh tell us. There are monsters written on the ceiling and on the walls. Remember above his bed, he had written a list and it said, pray, drink water, phone home, have fun. It was suitcases. It looked like an airport terminal because he was, you know, constantly playing shows and on the road and would come home and not unpack and have his next city. This is New York in in Washington Heights. Piles of books. First time I had dinner there, it started to rain and there was a flood of water coming in through the window. And I was like, how long has this been going on for? And he was like, since I moved in and I was like, how long I'd go with that? And he said a couple of years ago. He just lived it right in your house. Yeah, exactly. But you were just fine. It's just water. And he was just living in the world of your creativity and your determination to do what your band was called to stay human and to figure out what that meant. But did he cook dinner that night? He did his water filled a part. He made red beans and rice. You don't remember anything. I thought red beans and red. Was it, it wasn't good. Was it good? It was. There's your answer. I think you can cook now. You can cook now. I wasn't. I was right. He's the cook of our family. But I wasn't cooking better. So it would probably not very good. But you were dazzled. I was dazzled and I was totally befuddled by John. He was unlike anyone I'd ever met. And I remember that first week we went to a park. And John sat me down and he said, what are your intentions? Which nobody had ever asked me before. And we had this conversation. It was a couple of hours long where we talked about what it was that was important to us. But the terms of the relationship were. I love it. Yeah, it's very like all of those snow games. This should get to the point. Get to the point. Figure it out. What was going through your mind? Did you say, Suleika? Suleika, you call her Suleika. What do you say, Suleika? That's how I started saying it. You told me you liked it. So I just... I love it. I just kept it. I like it. What were you thinking when you saw her? I like it. I like it. I like it. I think now I'll never call you anything else. But... I was thinking that it felt monumental. It felt like that conversation was like a major turning point. How did you guys think about building your lives together? Because by then you had been diagnosed. You understood the messiness of it all. How did you, too, in real time, negotiate that? And how do you continue to negotiate it? Well, I think it's in the vows. You just decide that we're in it. I have it needs to be set up. And it's going to be ever evolving. You know, it's going to be a range of different realities that we can't predict. So let's exist with the commitment that we made and move however we need to move, knowing that we're not quitters. That's how you got to know that the person you're with is not going to quit. And if you know that, then the logistics, you saw that out. Just got to know that we're in this. That's my true North. And I think we've figured out a few different. There's an equilibrium to having this illness and not letting it define it. Given it only the attention that it deserves, it's not a defining characteristic of our life. It's just that's here. Okay, and we do what we need to do with that. But everything else is also here. Yeah, yeah, I think if anything, you know, the illness is just for us, a good reminder of the one certainty that we all share, which is that we are born and we will die. And we are here for a very short period of time. And so I think it's change our relationship to time in a way that I'm grateful for and doesn't feel unique to us or to my illness. But that does change the way we move through things. Because when you made a vow, the big shift for me is, yeah, there's no longer that question of am I in or am I out? But if this is the person I'm going to be with, how do I move forward as productively as possible? Because we are not only sharing our lives together, but we'd like to enjoy our lives together. And John really early on, in our relationship, had this idea that instead of writing in a journal and doing our individual journaling, we'd write them as letters to each other, which we do, especially when we're apart, when we're both on the road for work. And it was so interesting because there are things that would come up in these letters that would never come up in the quick phone call where you're like, how are you? How was your day? Are they letters, texts, you know, pen to paper or any form of... We've done pen to paper on the road where you take a picture of it. Oh nice. All of them in person, you know, you write and then we trade books, the journals. But you know, that's letters. It's the spirit of the letter writing. So I think it has to be right with your hand. I text. Yeah, it's a very different thing. Not a dictated note. Right, I guess. So, yes. But like you said, having the time to the writing part of it for me, I still write. You know, everybody asks me, what is it? Should we still go high? I get that all the time. I get it now. And I have to explain and re-explain that going high is about communicating with intention. And strategy. That doesn't mean you don't feel the emotion. But a lot of times the emotion isn't the truth. So you exaggerate in the midst of the emotion. You always do this. You never do this. But when you write it down, you start thinking, well, always isn't actually the right word. Or you people, you know, that's not really what I mean. Right? It's how we raise kids. Count to 10. You know, I mean, going high is counting to 10. And writing in a relationship is like counting to 10. Give yourself a moment to understand what you really feel and mean. And then have that be the source, the beginning of the conversation. Right? Yes. Our friend, Esther Pearl says, you need to say it's not always what they need to hear. And sometimes, like I know from me, I don't even know what I'm thinking or feeling until I start writing it down. And it takes me, you know, a page to get through all the emotions to actually get to the heart of the thing. Yeah. Well, that gets us also to journaling, right? Which is your project, your book. So like, would you talk a little bit about what you, what you've produced thus far? Yeah. So I've been keeping a journal my whole whole life. For me, it's always been this hiding place and seeking place and finding place. And just this daily practice that I do, I know you talk about small powers. Just something I do every day. It can be for two minutes, ten minutes to ground myself to right my way back to myself. But I found that I was kind of getting bored of the sound of my own voice. And so I started to find ways to prompt myself. So this book, the Book of Alchemy, is a meditation on the art of journaling and synthesis of this approach to journaling. And it has a hundred essays and prompts. Do you journal? So I don't journal by the typical definition of journaling. So I started my professional career in investment banking, sales and trading. So I had to keep a diary every day of what I did. Because it was really transactional, if you know what I mean. And so I never really journaled my feelings about Craig Robinson. And now, since my mom passed away, I keep the small little book in my back pack so that when I think of things that remind me of her or the kids do something that I try and remember, I have to write that down. Now I have something I can write it down. I'm of the opinion that there are no rules when it comes to journaling. But I know you had a journal that you kept and your 20s during a tumultuous time. And my teens and 20s had a journal. Spiratic Baroque was a big, big journal. He had a lot of written journals. But what I did do for the White House years, because I knew that this was a unique time. That the things were, I always say it's like we were shot out of a cannon. And how do you keep track of all of that? And I just literally did not have the time to put pen to paper. But I knew that I needed to capture what was going on. So what I did do was that I worked with a dear friend of mine, a law school buddy of mine, who was a dean at a law school. We were very close, I trusted her, smart woman. She, a friend would come in twice a year. And it was a way for us to catch up and stay in touch while I was first lady. But she agreed to interview me. I need to just say out loud some of the stuff that I was feeling. So she would come in with prompts that she had gathered watching me in the news and what was going on. And I always would have her talk to my chief of staff and schedulers just to get a sense of what literally had happened over the course of that six month period of time. And then we did a series of interviews that after each one we got it transcribed. I did not read them over. But it's there for eight years. We collected the stories of emotions. And that material became essential when it was time to write becoming. Because you know how life is when life is moving so fast. Just like you say, you don't remember any of your teens. A lot of that is because you've packed so much life in. And that's what it was in those eight years. I mean, I would look up and you know, make a comment like, oh, I'd love to go to Prague. It sounds wonderful. And my chief of staff would say, you've been to Prague. I was like, no, I have. I had a discussion with my staff. They were like, you participated in a sit-in at law school. I was like, no, I didn't. And they were like, no, I think you did. And I was like, I absolutely have no recollection of taking over the dean of student's office and sitting in. I said, I would have remembered that. Until they showed me a picture of me. So what, you know, but I had no recollection of it. And I didn't want to go through eight years forgetting really major things. Well, and I think so many of us are living in a state of overwhelm. Well, I think we're grateful for this project. And I think this is the best time in the state of the world for people to start journaling. For me right now, the journaling happens through a need to write a speech and to communicate. I find that that's when, you know, I'm putting pin to paper. So I think I'm going to take on one of the challenges. I love it. And see where it goes as long as Craig commits to do it with me. Yeah. You know what, I'm going to commit to doing this listener question. Well, we, oh yeah, okay, we'll talk about this later afterwards. Oh, production. This question is from Sharon. I've lived with multiple sclerosis for 10 years. And I worry about the fact that it has on my family. I have a teen daughter who is so supportive of me, but I also am concerned that her needs might be lost in all of this. I definitely want to prioritize balancing my own health, but also carry the load for my family. From a shell and Craig, when you were growing up, how were you affected by your dad's illness? And if you've ever been sick, how do you build in self-care? How do you prioritize what you say yes to when it comes to family work and everything else in life? How do you preserve yourself so that you can feel good about the days you're having with your loved ones, Sharon from Atlanta? That's a lot there. Me shall let you go first. Well, how did dad's illness affect me because I think we're all individual in the way these things affect us. And I wrote about it in the light. I think having the father, the center of our household, be clearly vulnerable to us. Even though he was persistent, defiant, strong, didn't really claim it, never talked about his illness, because I think he was probably trying to project a level of certainty and security that maybe he hadn't come to grips with. So we didn't talk about it a lot, but it was staring us right in our faces. Our father was different, but there was also a sense of vulnerability that you live with that can make you hold back. But at the same time, I think our parents pushed us out at the same time. I don't think they wanted us to think of the world by their limits, because I think they were limited. From a socio-economic background, our parents were working class. They couldn't go to college because they had to make sacrifices. They had to work and earn living. Their world got smaller as a result. And they didn't want that for us. I think for me, a lot of that is consistent. Except I operated from a place of fear. I was fearful. I was fearful of vulnerability. I was fearful of catastrophe happening in the house. I was afraid of fires. I was afraid. I was always afraid. And I think I operated out of fear. So I was successful out of the fear of not being able to provide. And this is a great question because I've never really addressed it. But I was sitting here listening. You were a journal. Yeah, there we go. Here we go. I know. John, this is the show, man. But from that fear, I think my parents saw that in me. And the pendulum swung back over. And I think while they did push us to do stuff, they were more successful in pushing you to do more than they pushed me because I was reticent. I didn't. I was the oldest. I was like, I, you know, I almost didn't go away to college. You know, and it wasn't until my dad sort of was like, I'll be okay. I'll be, I'll, I'll be okay because I he knew I was always worried about him. And when the second part of the question is how do you do, how do you handle your own self care for the longest time I didn't because I was fearful that I'd find out that I was going to have some malady. And it wasn't until, it wasn't until I started. It's like we can laugh at it now. But it wasn't until I was in my mid 30s and I started and became a head coach where we had our own sort of team doctor that I was like, I got to start my, my wife Kelly was you got to start having getting regular physicals. And I was in my late 30s, early 40s when I started having physicals every year. But now I think having children has made me more more cognizant of being intentional about my own health in order to stick around for those guys. Right. Right. I really so much to that. I think, you know, when you've had the ceiling cave in on you, you no longer assume structural stability. You're kind of living on, on fault lines. And that can make it hard to push yourself out into the world. I know that that for me is someone who has sat both in the caregivers chair and and is right now, you know, going through treatment. I just finished five days of chemotherapy right before coming here. I have to actively figure out how to be in relationship with the fear that's there because it's there. I've tried ignoring it. I've tried compartmentalizing it. And when I do that, I find it looms even bigger. And to acknowledge it, but not let it be in the driver's seat. And I've had to figure out how to allow myself to do things that feel risky, to say yes to the invitation, to make the plan, even if I don't know I'm going to be well enough to do it, to, you know, undertake writing a book that takes two years and you don't know if you're going to be able to see it through, to prioritize, you know, time with friends and family. And so I think, you know, for me, one thing I think of a lot is in periods when I've been up my sickest and I've had maybe only two or three good hours in a day. It's been a very specific kind of clarifying exercise in that when you only have two or three good hours, you get really clear about what you want to do in those two to three hours, who you want to spend it, and then what's important to you. And right now I'm feeling good. I have lots of energy. But in the morning, sometimes I'll think to myself, if there are only two or three things I could do today, forget my to-do list, what is it that would make this day a really good day? And the other thing I do as someone who loves a to-do list, like you, I love a list. I'm the person who at the end of the day, I'll add things to my to-do list that I've already done just so that I can press them off and feel that sense of satisfaction. I start with, in my journal, I'll start with a two-feel list before I get to my to-do list. And it's just like whatever it is. I want to feel rested today. And then I write a couple of ideas of how to get myself there. And I actually make whatever that self-care is part of the list and has attached the feeling that it produces, not to the, you know, I have to go to the gym or whatever it is. It's going to make me grown and want to avoid it. I'm more likely to get myself there. I love that. Yes, there's a care giver that's important as well. Caregivering can make you feel the need to, I'm just going to power through. But your body keeps the score. So you know that, well, after a certain point, you realize I have to do something to maintain this role. And you have to make it be something that you motivated to do. So finding those emotions and not just emotions, but the practice of self-care as same with the craft of making music, I find that there's a practice to self-care. You gotta go in the woodshade as we say, musicians, you gotta learn what's the techniques. And it's very much a shift in perspective that you don't have to martyr yourself in service of those you love. In fact, that's a disservice to those you love. It's the internal world. What's it feel like in there? Do we need to renovate? Do we need to, maybe we need to... There's a whole bunch of water coming in your window. It might be a little leak. Gotta patch that up. Well, I know I did learn that from watching my parents martyr themselves on both sides. Mom and dad, I did work. I think I have worked hard as an adult to find that balance. If only to show my daughters a different balance. Because if I want them to change, I can't show up like my mom who it's like I'm taking care of everybody and I put myself fifth on my priority list. People are okay. They can do without you. And sometimes the best way to care for someone is to model care by caring for yourself. I think about that all the time with you. Yeah. It's not selfish or indulgent to take a moment for yourself. It's actually a way of giving permission to the other people in your radius to do the same thing for themselves. John, how are you taking care of yourself these days? I like my to feel this. What's on my to feel I'm in a vibe. I want to be I want to feel vibey and free. You know, a lot of times we have self-imposed pressure to respond. And I can mean anything. I mean, just to respond to act versus to just take a pause and sit with something even if everything is telling you this has to happen now. Everything is in fact totally fine. So I'm in a very deep on a cellular level. I've gotten to a place of fortitude in the chaos and comfort and taking the time. Exactly the time it needs for me to show up as the best version of myself. Everything else I like that. It continues to run, believe it or not. Feeling the vibe. Well, that's a perfect vibe to end on. Yes. Yes. Appreciate you guys being here. It's been fantastic discussion and thank you for making it so much for this thing. Really, really means a lot. I love you guys. I really, really do. Yeah, I'm grateful to have you in our lives. Just to have this beautiful opportunity to have conversation and celebrate your great work. My love. Yes. Thank you. As always, we're, yeah, it's such an honor for us to get to have this kind of a conversation. It's really such a gift. The honors are. Well, everyone, the book of Alchemy, plus your journal and I'm getting mine and I'm going to challenge myself to start a new journal series for myself. So thank you. Thank you for going to. She's going to bully me and to keep going. I'm definitely going to. I have to do it. It's your list. Yes. Yes. I like the list. Yeah. Well, maybe you're doing it to feel this for you because I want to know what you feel. What's on your list? I feel like you leave me alone. I just keep it by. Keep it by. Yeah. Oh, no. Okay.