You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Elizabeth Gilbert is the mega-bestselling author of several books, including, of course, Eat Pray Love and Big Magic. Her new memoir is called All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation. It’s about her relationship with her late partner and very close friend Rayya who died several years ago. It’s a story of addiction and recovery, for both Rayya and Liz. And it’s about what happened when Rayya relapsed as she was dying, and what has happened for Liz since then. It’s beautiful, dark, funny, and incredibly illuminating.
Even though Liz’s story sounds quite rare at first, today we talk about how many of us have experienced something similar: A chapter in our lives where, as Liz says, you look back and wonder, what just happened? How did I end up here? Where did the ground go beneath my feet?
Liz shares her process of answering these questions, and what she learned from the patterns in her relationships. Namely, why she was continually drawn into relationships that had exciting, addictive, and ultimately codependent qualities.
We talk about what Liz has learned from addiction, withdrawal, and recovery. And why she often asks herself: What would somebody who isn’t addicted to drama do today? We talk about the relationship between excitement and boredom, and the journey toward a third option, serenity.
We talk about why it’s so much harder for many of us to simply live our own lives when we could be trying to fix, save, manage, and control someone else’s life. This actually makes us laugh quite a bit.
Liz shares a handful of stories about simply being human that will really stick with me. And at the very end, she shares the kind of love that she aspires to today. It’s beautiful.
MORE FROM LIZ GILBERT:
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
ELISE: