“When opportunities and possibilities feel foreclosed upon, when you're...” — Suleika Jaouad Quote

When opportunities and possibilities feel foreclosed upon, when you're living with limitations, as I was, you have to find creative workarounds to exist, to hold on to some sense of self, to explore new parts of yourself that are emerging.

There are days when I even long for the paralegal job that once upon a time made me so miserable. It wasn't the perfect fit for me but it was satisfying to go to sleep each night after a hard day's work at the office.

Getting diagnosed with cancer at 22 really magnified the in-betweenness that I felt. All of my friends were starting careers and going to parties and dating, and I was stuck - literally - in this one hospital bed for weeks on end.

Youth and health are supposed to go hand in hand. And it was only when I got to a point where I was so weak, it was a struggle to walk up and down the stairs that I found myself in an emergency room. And within 24 hours I was on a plane back home to upstate New York, and I got the bone marrow biopsy that led to my actual diagnosis.

I feel like music is just a platform and foundation just to be able to explore and see what's outside of it.

I always say to my students that being a scientist is like being an explorer, and I really mean that because, in a sense, I think in science we explore the world, the universe around us.

And so much of my life has been about returning home and longing for home, wanting my children to know about my roots. And I thought I can't be the only one to feel this way so I thought it would be an interesting topic to explore.

A lot of people build up a backlog of songs and you can kind of go, 'Let's explore that song we did six years ago,' but we feel that's kind of lazy.