Eat, Pray, Love

Today I finally finished reading a delicious book, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. I actually started it last summer, but a hectic schedule made me put it aside. I have heard many women pan this book, and plenty others love it since I started it, but I loved it from its first pages, and I’m sorry to have the story come to an end.

This story is a non-fiction travel and spiritual memoir of a woman whose marriage has come to an end. The women who have hated this book are usually “happily married” with kids, and or uncomfortable with their own sense of self. This book is a memoir, for goodness sake, the tale of a woman on her own journey to herself, so the perspective is exactly what it needs to be. As another woman whose marriage fell apart around the time of September 11th, I was amazed at how much I related to her journey. Through a year of travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia, Elizabeth Gilbert takes the most important journey: the one inside herself.

As anyone who has had the fortitude to go on such a journey could tell you, it is not easy. And in my opinion, anyone who bristles at this woman’s story could probably benefit from a little self-searching of their own.

We are born alone, and we die alone. As humans, I don’t believe that we are only here to live for others. It’s important to examine our lives, and admit that we have many shortcomings. But we also have wonderful parts too. This book demonstrates our shadow side as well as our light, and I highly recommend it for anyone else willing to embark upon their own spiritual journey – even if it’s only from an armchair.

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