With a Catholic mother and a Muslim father, I've always had a great interest in religion, but I've never practiced one myself. After I received a diagnosis of an aggressive form of leukemia at the age of 22, I put my faith in medicine.

Faith redirected toward what works

Growing up between two faiths gives you a particular kind of clarity: you see how much religions share, and how much people in the same family can believe differently and still love each other. For Jaouad, that background made room for something else entirely—not the absence of faith, but faith redirected. When leukemia arrived, she didn't suddenly become religious. Instead, she transferred the trust and hope that faith typically offers into something she could actually observe: the rigor and evidence of medicine.

There's something quietly radical about that choice. In a culture that often treats faith and science as opposites, or suggests that serious illness should push us toward religion, Jaouad's move felt like clarity rather than loss. She wasn't rejecting meaning—she was placing it where it could actually help her. This matters now because many of us face similar moments: when we're scared or uncertain, we're expected to know where to put our trust. But sometimes the most honest response is to look at what's actually in front of us, what has evidence behind it, and to direct our belief there. It's not cynical. It's practical faith, adjusted for reality.