Read Online Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It by Elizabeth Gilbert - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elizabeth Gilbert
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pennies with me to cast over the side. Penny prayers. One of gratitude and one of hope.
I spent the next two weeks traveling around the country. The first week was mostly occupied with resting, reading and sobbing, and the second with dancing all night to âGalway Girlâ and drinking pints of Guinness. I visited castles and cliffs and watched rugby, slipped into churches and walked cities.
My last night in Ireland, in a pub in Galway, I met a young man who toured me around his city, showing me the Spanish Arch and ushering me into Irish music sessions. We talked aboutlife, love and heartbreak. We talked about what it meant to be
strong
, which I was labeled ad nauseam during the collapse of my engagement. I told him I was not strongâin fact, I was full of fear and still processing my loss. Whatâs more, I would have married a man I shouldnât have. I showed him the saint medal I had purchased in Sedona, still around my neck, and shared that I wore it to get me through.
At the end of the night, before we parted ways, he said, âI have a gift for you.â I was taken abackâa present for me? The kindness of this stranger surprised me.
He handed me a small medal of Saint Patrick. It seemed like a gift from God. I slipped it on and removed my Divine Mercy medal, thanking it for its service and acknowledging that someday I might need it again.
I wear Saint Patrick now as a symbol of a new time in my life. One of hope, one of peace and, for the first time, one of Halfpenny.
Road Map
â
Alexandria Hodge
I first read
Eat Pray
Love
as a teenager, and still think back to it almost daily. At nineteen years old, it was shocking for me to read about a woman ending a marriage simply because she wasnât happy. My mother hadnât been happy a single day of her nearly three-decade-long marriage to my father and yet they were still together. She believed that success, happiness (despite her personal experience) and wholeness began with an intact family unitâwhich, of course, meant an intact marriage. And Elizabeth Gilbert hadnât only left her marriageâshe had gone overseas, which was a dream of mine. And she had done this just because she wanted to; just because she thought it would heal her!
Eventually, after many tumultuous years in which we found ourselves unsuccessful in many ways, deeply unhappy and far from whole, my parentsâ marriage finally fell apart, no matter my motherâs steadfast beliefs. I was left feeling like the casualty of itall, with a deeply entrenched cynicism about marriage, a conviction that love, in the end, was doomed to unhappiness and a prevailing uncertainty over what happiness in a relationship even looked like or who had the right to it in the first place.
After the divorce, I looked at
Eat Pray Love
in a new light. It helped me rewire what my parents had unknowingly taught me about love and marriage just when I needed those lessons most. It became my road map, a way to avoid the minefield of what I saw as my parentsâ mistakes.
Because of
Eat Pray Love
, I was careful about the parameters of any relationships I entered into and made sure to monitor my own happiness. Like Elizabeth, I realized that I have a right to my own well-being. Iâm now in a healthy relationship with someone who is a true partner. Weâve made a commitment always to do the things that heal us and make us happy as individuals and as a couple. Right now, thatâs in the form of traveling. I just started my masterâs degree at University College London, and my partner is continuing his own education while weâre here. Turns out love doesnât have to be unhappy after all. Thanks for the powerful life lesson, Liz.
Curing the Incurable
â
Amy B. Scher
W hen the best medical doctors in America gave up on me at the end of 2007, I was twenty-eight years old and felt the steel doors of possibility slam shut. All the hope Iâd been
I spent the next two weeks traveling around the country. The first week was mostly occupied with resting, reading and sobbing, and the second with dancing all night to âGalway Girlâ and drinking pints of Guinness. I visited castles and cliffs and watched rugby, slipped into churches and walked cities.
My last night in Ireland, in a pub in Galway, I met a young man who toured me around his city, showing me the Spanish Arch and ushering me into Irish music sessions. We talked aboutlife, love and heartbreak. We talked about what it meant to be
strong
, which I was labeled ad nauseam during the collapse of my engagement. I told him I was not strongâin fact, I was full of fear and still processing my loss. Whatâs more, I would have married a man I shouldnât have. I showed him the saint medal I had purchased in Sedona, still around my neck, and shared that I wore it to get me through.
At the end of the night, before we parted ways, he said, âI have a gift for you.â I was taken abackâa present for me? The kindness of this stranger surprised me.
He handed me a small medal of Saint Patrick. It seemed like a gift from God. I slipped it on and removed my Divine Mercy medal, thanking it for its service and acknowledging that someday I might need it again.
I wear Saint Patrick now as a symbol of a new time in my life. One of hope, one of peace and, for the first time, one of Halfpenny.
Road Map
â
Alexandria Hodge
I first read
Eat Pray
Love
as a teenager, and still think back to it almost daily. At nineteen years old, it was shocking for me to read about a woman ending a marriage simply because she wasnât happy. My mother hadnât been happy a single day of her nearly three-decade-long marriage to my father and yet they were still together. She believed that success, happiness (despite her personal experience) and wholeness began with an intact family unitâwhich, of course, meant an intact marriage. And Elizabeth Gilbert hadnât only left her marriageâshe had gone overseas, which was a dream of mine. And she had done this just because she wanted to; just because she thought it would heal her!
Eventually, after many tumultuous years in which we found ourselves unsuccessful in many ways, deeply unhappy and far from whole, my parentsâ marriage finally fell apart, no matter my motherâs steadfast beliefs. I was left feeling like the casualty of itall, with a deeply entrenched cynicism about marriage, a conviction that love, in the end, was doomed to unhappiness and a prevailing uncertainty over what happiness in a relationship even looked like or who had the right to it in the first place.
After the divorce, I looked at
Eat Pray Love
in a new light. It helped me rewire what my parents had unknowingly taught me about love and marriage just when I needed those lessons most. It became my road map, a way to avoid the minefield of what I saw as my parentsâ mistakes.
Because of
Eat Pray Love
, I was careful about the parameters of any relationships I entered into and made sure to monitor my own happiness. Like Elizabeth, I realized that I have a right to my own well-being. Iâm now in a healthy relationship with someone who is a true partner. Weâve made a commitment always to do the things that heal us and make us happy as individuals and as a couple. Right now, thatâs in the form of traveling. I just started my masterâs degree at University College London, and my partner is continuing his own education while weâre here. Turns out love doesnât have to be unhappy after all. Thanks for the powerful life lesson, Liz.
Curing the Incurable
â
Amy B. Scher
W hen the best medical doctors in America gave up on me at the end of 2007, I was twenty-eight years old and felt the steel doors of possibility slam shut. All the hope Iâd been
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