Shameless Groupie

because you asked, Nicole:


Okay, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one of those books that make me feel like beating everybody over the head with it, all the while yelling, READ THIS BOOK. No, not after you finished the one you just started. Now. Well, I don’t know about my born-again Christian cousin, I might just have to sidle up to her and whisper, have you read this book? If you have read it, I want you to talk to me about it.

It’s rare for me to find a book that reads completely right to me, but Eat Pray Love is one of them. Elizabeth Gilbert has been a seeker for the heart of love all of her life, all the while creating her own form-world path in order to pay the bills. After a bad divorce and a bout with depression, she strikes out on her own to explore first pleasure in Italy (which involves a lot of gelato and pasta) and then spiritual devotion in India (where she experiences transcendence), finally traveling to Bali to balance the two.

When Keetha practically begged me to read Eat Pray Love, I thought it was going to be something less rigorous than I required from my spiritual reading, but I bought it for my niece for Christmas. Keetha is a good reader, and young, so I thought it might be a young person’s read. But then on impulse I bought it for myself for Christmas, one of those stocking stuffers Keetha also goes on about. Still, it took me another month to read it.

Folks, I am begging you to read this book. All the way through it I carried on a dialogue with Elizabeth (I do feel we are on a first name basis) and first one friend and then another. I was talking to myself, of course, and felt close to fainting more than once at the rightness of what I was reading.

Elizabeth talks about life’s metaphors, and I believe this book contains many of them. No matter what your religious convictions or nonconvictions may be, this book will speak to you. If it doesn’t, you might want to let some defenses down, and laugh a heck of a lot more. And maybe eat a lot more gelato. Though we might not leave home, we are all on a journey of discovery, and deserve to give ourselves the love, kindness and courage that Elizabeth found has always been available for her, within the fabric of her being.

While you are at it, you might want to check out this essay on writing here.

and from you tube:





What are your inspirational sources for living?