Elizabeth Gilbert I am not. Envy about her being number-one in Amazon.com’s “memoir” category aside, there are other reasons to dwell on her this morning just as the sun is about to rise.
Let’s start there. The sun is about to rise and I’m not consumed with angst. Breakfast with angst, for far too long, was part of my regular routine, as I’m guessing it is for most of the women who, like me, have had to come to terms with being barren (or fill in your own cataclysmic personal crisis). Just as crying in the shower and lying awake at night, consumed by “what ifs” and second guessing, was for me, and apparently for Elizabeth Gilbert as she shared in her book, Eat, Love, Pray.
As consumed as I once was with my own angst-sobbing-inducing-demon-plagued problem, I couldn’t get away from her or her book, with large posters of her and stacks of Eat, Love, Pray in places from Costco to Borders to the airport. Weeks, months went by and I didn’t buy her book. I was skeptical. I usually am when I hear a book has “changed people’s lives.” I needed to check her out further. I watched a video of a talk she did about creativity at the TED conference, and I read her website just to make sure she wasn’t some creepy self-helpie, get-rich-quick type. What I found was an observant women who openly shared, among other things her thoughts on writing, which I found honest and practical.
It was time to crack open her book. As I wrote in an online book club post in August 2008, like the author, I’m not the standard issue woman. The archetypal woman’s life doesn’t apply. What’s a girl to do? Elizabeth Gilbert set out to find peace and contentment after confronting her truths: She didn’t want to be married anymore. She didn’t want to live in big house. She didn’t want to have a baby.
My truths are these:
- Infertility devastated me and fundamentally altered my life and my identity.
