Eat, Pray...Read Eat Pray Love

One book I recommend to all women, men can read it too, is Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Why? Well the story is about a woman who is completely unhappy with her life. She isn’t being fulfilled in her marriage or job and reaches a breaking point. On a business trip to Indonesia she meets this man who tells her that she will lose everything but it will be fine because she would return in a year with the means to replace all she had had. She would also find happiness and a new love. Now, like any of us, she was skeptical. Life goes on and soon she decides to divorce her husband. This is a major blow to him and he is unable to handle the idea. So she agrees to give him everything just to be out of the relationship. So without a home, money or anything she has to figure out how to piece together the already fractured pieces of her life. So the story follows her journey of putting her life together as she travels to Italy, India and Indonesia.

I feel that it is this journey we all go through at different periods of our lives. We find that everything we do or the situations we get into, i.e., marriage/relationships/careers, we do not for happiness but to make the ends meet, use as a Band-Aid to temporary feelings of loneliness, etc. What keeps us from radically changing our lives is often the fear. Fear of failure, fear of the unknown. Not all of us have the luxury of just taking a year off to travel and “find one’s self”, but reading a book is a good way to live vicariously through others. You may even learn something. Maybe hearing her story, which is based on her own adventures, you can take some small steps into finding some happiness in your own lives. Even if it’s as small as taking up a hobby you always wanted to explore.

Most importantly, the book gives insight to the path of a life after rock bottom. We have all experience the rock bottom feeling. When you hit rock bottom you feel like this is the worst. There is no bright side to the rock bottom. You are literally at the lowest of the lowest. In the book she allows herself a good grieving period. She lives her depression, cries her cries from losing everything and feels the sadness that has permeated to her soul. After she has cried her last tears then it was time to start a fresh. Learn how to be a person again. Learn how to enjoy food, people, the small moments, etc. Sometimes it’s easy to get stuck in rock bottom so I really enjoyed reading this because it shows the journey. By the end life isn’t perfect but by concentrating on being positive and putting her life back together, she paved the path out of the darkness to a life she could truly enjoy.

If you can identify with the book and it has positively affected you comment below! Share! Go read the book or watch the movie!