Life Uncut - Single Needs A Rebrand. Uncut with Elizabeth Gilbert. Eat, Pray, Love.

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Elizabeth Gilbert is one of the most brilliant authors of our time. She authored ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ which sold over 12 million copies and was then turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts. She’s also written books like ‘Committed’, ‘Big Magic’ and ‘City of Girls’.  Elizabeth shares so many teachings around vulnerability, connectedness, living a life that is led by love,  and now  how to become ‘a relaxed woman, pushing back on the expectations of what society wants from you’.  Today we spoke about: Being an award winning writer who wrote about men and was sympathetic to the male experience, until she wrote the number 1 ‘chick-lit’ book of our time. Funnily enough, the award nominations dried up. The shared experience of having everything that we are meant to ‘want’ and feeling so deeply unhappy.  How Liz used to drain herself by giving her everything to relationships, and how free she now feels being emotionally autonomous  The facts about how marriage affects women: married women don’t live as long as single women, they’re more likely to report being depressed and anxious, they are more likely to have autoimmune conditions, more likely to be addicted to substances etc.  How all of our lives could be titled ‘not exactly what I had in mind’ The complexity of falling in love with someone knowing it will hurt other people that you care about Learning about loss through grief You can find Liz’s Aus and NZ tour dates You can follow Liz on Instagram  You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xx  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany, and I'm excited. Well, okay, you might remember we did an episode with Tori Dunlap a couple of months ago now. Now, she's an incredible money expert, has loads and loads of followers on Instagram, and she said quote unquote on that episode if you ever get the chance to spend all of the money that you have to see Elizabeth Gilbert live you should do it and now let me tell you this you don't have to spend a single penny because you're going to get it for free right here today Elizabeth Gilbert

is joining us and she is one of the most brilliant authors of our time she authored Eat Pray Love which sold over 12 million copies and then as so many of you would know it was turned into a massive movie starring Julia Roberts. She's also written books like Committed, Big Magic and City of Girls. Elizabeth shares so many teachings throughout her books around vulnerability, connectedness and living a life that is led by love. And now how also to become is what she describes a relaxed woman, which is pushing back on the expectations of what society wants from you. Liz, welcome to the pod. Hi, it's so nice to be here. Thank you. Gosh, that's a really nice thing to hear that somebody thinks you should spend all your money, that a money expert thinks that you should spend

all your money. She is the biggest money expert, female led money expert. She has the biggest podcast in the world. And she was like, every dollar you have, spend it on Liz. So there you go. Wow. Listen, listen, the return on investment is enormous on that. It's so lovely to be here with you both. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. Just to double down on that. We just like 10 minutes ago finished an interview with a psychotherapist in New York who's just written a book on toxic productivity her name's Isra Nasir and we were like hey we've got to go we've got this interview she's like who are you interviewing we said oh Liz Gilbert she goes no way she's like in the book that's just released she's like I quote Liz in the book she's like please tell her

so you've got a lot of super fans out there oh that's so sweet thank you well now that we've pumped your tires up enough it's time to take the gas out of them so we did just mention to you that we do at Accidentally Unfiltered Stories. And then I could just see you crumble into the shell of what I think is coming. Liz, please share your most embarrassing story with us. Okay. So I will share that when you asked me this, I immediately had one, but I was like, yeah, that was kind of a cute one. And then I thought of the real one and I was like, oh no, I can't, I can't, but we're going to go, I'm going to tell you the real one. So when I was in high school, my best friend, Jenny, and she and I are still friends all these

years later, we got invited to a party from a girl who was way above our status and who was also in college. And she was home for the summer. And I don't even know how we got invited to this party. We had no business being there. It was cool, older kids, and it was outside in a lawn and people were hanging out and drinking. We were trying to act cool. And this is such an awful story. He had brought with her, her two roommates from college home who didn't know any us and they had just come from the funeral of their best friend who had drowned this is a great way to start a comedy podcast so they were grieving those two girls were grieving and everyone else and they didn't know anyone else at the party and everyone else was trying to have a good time and

every time a song came on that reminded them their friend who died they would start crying anyway at one point we were all sitting in a circle of lawn chairs and there's one empty lawn chair next to them and somebody walked in and said is anybody sitting there and I said there was somebody there was somebody sitting there but she died why did you say you just forgot I don't know I don't know I don't know why I said that talk about I don't know why I said that to those two girls whose friends had died that was a thing I thought that I thought would be funny I thought I think I didn't I don't know all I know is that they both started to cry was that when your career in comedy ended

I it's like you say like I watch it's the worst thing I've ever said I watched it was like I wanted to reach through my mouth with my arm and grab me by the neck and pull me back into myself Like I was like, I can't, why would you, it was just a completely uncensored, unfiltered thought. And then we ran, Jenny grabbed me and my friend grabbed me and we ran into the bathroom and she was like, what the fuck did you just do? Why? What? And she was like, she, I remember her falling into the bathtub with laughter, like what? And I'm like, I don't know. I was screaming. I'm like, I don't know why I said that. I don't know why I said that. and then we had to figure out how to leave but we had run into the like the party was in the front of the house so there was no escape other than to walk through the whole thing again with the it was that's the most it's so beyond embarrassing it's like the definition of mortifying wrong thing to do i don't even i i can't answer for it sometimes something sounds really great in your head and it just doesn't land but sometimes words words escape and you have no control over

it was like that was an internal thought and somehow my mouth started moving and it came out of my body well i'll tell you just to make it this conversation fancy and literary gertrude stein told a story about how in paris between the wars when all those cool people were all hanging out they had a friend an acquaintance who was a french man whose father had been in the french foreign legion and he had been trampled the man's father had been trampled to death by a camel and gertrude stein said you would think that you don't bring up camels very much But every time this guy was in the room, somebody would start talking about animals. Like, stop talking about camels.

Stop talking about camels. But it just happened every single time. Like, there's some sort of deadly magnetism that we have toward the most inappropriate thing that you could possibly say. So it's not just us. It's also fancy literary people in France between the wars. Well, I hope you've forgiven yourself now. I hope you got into a place where you're okay with the things that you've said in the past.

But speaking of the things you've said in the past, the success that you had with Eat, Pray, Love is something that most authors, well, every author can only dream of. Like people can't fathom that level of success, especially on something that's been written about your own life and your own experiences. Can you tell us a little bit about who you were before that moment? Because I have this picture of just like being a struggling author that's just going to every corner of the world to try and ride a hit what was life like what was i before that i mean right before that i was like practically suicidally depressed you know total failure divorced the

love affair i'd left my husband for had crashed and burned i was so full of shame i you know i was really a wreck heavily medicated and very lost so that's what i was right before that and then I went on that journey and it shored me up and kind of boosted me up. And then Eat, Pray, Love became Eat, Pray, Love. But the weird thing for me, like the thing that felt like such a cultural and emotional disconnect that I had to figure out how to kind of absorb is that prior to that, I had been a woman who wrote only about men and only for men. I wrote for all these big men's magazines back in the nineties for Spin Magazine, Esquire, GQ, back when magazines were King. I'd written three books. Two of the books I wrote before We Pray Love had the word men in

the title. Like one was called The Last American Man and one was called Stern Men that was about lobster fishermen. Like I was known as a woman who was very sympathetic to the male experience and I never wrote anything about women and I never wrote anything about myself. And when I quit my really good job at GQ to go travel the world for a year and sold everything that I had, what I felt like as I was writing that book was, this is something I have to do for myself and nobody is going to want to read this because it was so out of character from what I had been doing. And I even felt apologetic about it. Like, I'm sorry I have to write this like super emotional, vulnerable girl thing, but I have to do that in order to save my life.

And then suddenly I was catapulted into being like the ultimate chiclet writer and suddenly like a voice for women. And I was like, whoa, I'm all about women now. Okay, cool. I used to be all about masculinity and now it's all... And that was the really wild shift. And then learning how to respectfully hold that space. Because another thing that happened is that even though I wasn't a wealthy author before that, I was an award-winning author before that. And, and I got all the big awards and the big award nominations, the National Book Award nomination and the National Book Critics Circle Award nomination and, and National Magazine Awards and all of this stuff because I was writing about men. And so I was considered serious and important. And when I wrote about myself, and sold 12 million copies, I've never gotten another award since. shock horror. I instantly lost all my literary legitimacy, you know, and instantly got shunted into like, oh, she's a lady writer for ladies. So nothing important can possibly be coming out

of that mind. And I would do it again. I would do it again. I would give up all my literary legitimacy in order to have written a book that inspired untold numbers of women to get divorced, that inspired them to leave jobs that they hated that inspired them to realize that they didn't have to have children that inspired them to travel alone like that's the award right like that ends up being the thing that is so much more valuable to me those felt like the sort of really startling differences between before and after what i think is also so incredible about eat pray love and the phenomenon that happened obviously after you published the book i've heard you speak about how it went to the bestsellers list for a little while, and then it kind of dropped off and had

like the normal trajectory that some of the books that you'd published had had in the past. But A Prey Love was before social media. It was before book talk. It was before how some authors now become super viral really, really quickly. But your book had this groundswell. It was like women who had read it and then passed it on to the people that they loved. And then that's how this momentum organically grew from word of mouth how and what does it do to you as a person when something that you've written that's so authentically you that's based completely on your life that you've put out into the world when you know that that many people have resonated with your life experience when you go from being someone who nobody knows to everyone knows

and they also know your deepest heartbreak your your deepest traumas how do you reconcile that It's not my deepest heartbreak and traumas. It's our deepest heartbreak and traumas. That's where the reconciliation is. I don't think that it would have had the impact that it had if I wasn't telling a story that so many women recognize themselves in. Of course, yeah. And in addition to that, acting out, you know, there's a line in the prelude where I said, like, I didn't want to hurt any family, anybody's feelings. I didn't want to cause me trouble. This is me. Like, as I was trying to figure out how to get out of my marriage, I just wanted to run out of the back door of my house and not stop till I got to Greenland. You know, like just run, like to escape this life that was so inauthentic to me and that I had been taught and told was the ultimate of what a woman wants, which is to get married in her 20s and buy a nice house and have children. And I was about to do that third piece. And instead, I ran for the hills. And the fact that 12 million women read that book makes me know how much we want to run for the hills. Like makes me know that that story that we've been sold about what makes women happy must not be true. because every like a lot of people want out of like whatever they're in because they wouldn't have identified with it so much and so what felt to me like my private shame because because i was

really you know i was 29 when my marriage started falling apart and and my whole orientation in my mind was there's something wrong with me there's something wrong with me because i've got everything that you were supposed to get. And I, I either want to die or run away. And my friend, Martha Beck, who's a great teacher and writer has described like how many, when she was coming up in psychology and sociology, how essentially they were being taught how to medicate women so that women wouldn't run for the hills. Like the question was, how much medication do we have to give you so that you will be happy. Because women like me were coming into psychiatric settings and saying like, I have everything that I was told I was supposed to want. I have

a husband, I have a house, I have children, and I want to kill myself. And they were like, well, let's up your dosage of whatever we have to give you because you're right. You do have everything that you should want. And so I had so much shame about not wanting what I had. And now, I mean, now i'm 65 and i'm living like i'm like the patriarchy's nightmare the way i'm living like i'm like twice divorced i'm like a woman who were taught to pity like twice divorced widowed childless living alone you know like i've given up on my looks i shaved my like i like i don't care i'm not even trying anymore you know and i'm like man, this is the life. Now this is the life. I wish I could have shown my 29-year-old self what

was coming. Wait till you're in your 50s and answer them to nobody and you see how good it gets. So much of what you said, I have lived myself. I went through a horrific breakup, bought a one-way ticket, moved to Italy for a year, went around the world for three years. I live alone now. I'm 37. I'm constantly fighting whether or not I have kids and settle down and have that life because deep inside, I'm not convinced I still even want it. But the internal battle comes from society telling me that you should want it and you should have it. Or you're going to miss out if you don't. Or you're missing out on something. And I still can't reconcile with that within myself. And I

know that I'm not alone. And everything that you have written has just hit so many women so deeply did you get to cast julia roberts to play you like do you get to pick who gets because that's the biggest question right we all ask our friends at dinner parties if you were ever in a movie who would you cast to play yourself because like i'd probably choose julia too no i don't have that kind of power no here's how it works ladies julia roberts chooses you right like like I don't have that kind of power like that was a phone call that I got one day saying that Julia Roberts wants to make this film and wants to be when I was like oh you have my consent that's how that conversation went watching something that's so precious to you back and being

involved in the production of it was the movie adaptation what you wanted for yourself was it something that you felt deeply proud of in the way that you feel about your own book? Or were there variations in it that you kind of, I don't know, reflect on and don't feel as though they're as aligned? How do you see the two projects? The movie is exactly aligned to the book. They were so incredibly loyal to the book. And that's very rare, I think. And I wasn't involved in the production at all. I've had other instances where things that I've written have sold the film rights And I learned, I'm lucky enough that I learned very early on to just stay out of it because you don't really have any power or control.

I mean, they don't even really have, the director doesn't even have all that much power and control. It's such a different art form. Like I get to sit in this exact room that I'm talking to you guys with my bookshelves and my plants and my desk and the door shut. And this is where I spend my life doing what I want, you know, like doing what I want and making what I want and creating what I want all within my own imagination. And then when you sell that thing to have a film made out of it, you're suddenly selling a singular, very intimate art

form into a mass collaborative art form. Like when you look at the credits rolling up at the end of that film, how many people are involved in making that vision? It's entirely different from the way that I work. And I happen to know that they don't really want me there. They already have enough, the producers and the director and the actors already have enough people with opinions. The last person whose opinion should be there is mine. So I stay out of it. And I'm like, I'll see you at the premiere. I'll see you on the red carpet. I actually just sold the, recently I'd sold the movie rights to City of Girls. And I think the producer was a little shocked because we went to lunch and they were trying to say like, we'll include you. And I'm like, well, you don't need

too. Like, it's yours now. You know, like, it's yours now. And when you sell something, I feel like you must let it go. You know, just it's like selling a house and then driving by the house every day for five years and being like, they took down the perg a lot. You know, it's not yours anymore. You sold it. And so that was the decision I made with Eat Pray Love was to just like, it's yours, you guys do whatever you want. But what they did was so true to the book that it ended up working out really nicely. Your writing is so deeply personal to you, but is writing something that you've always had an affinity for? Has it always been something that's been purposeful for you? Yes, always. I mean, there was never, I've been really lucky. There's never been anything

else that I wanted to do. And it's been like 35 years now that it's the only thing I've had to do to make a living. And that's extraordinary and far beyond what I ever could have dreamed. but I was writing the entire time. I always tell people, it's not that I, when people say like, when did you start writing? I always say, it's not about the fact that I started. It's about the fact that I never stopped because I grew up with a lot of, a lot of, you know, kids are intuitively creative and all the people that I grew up with when I was kids, we were all doing, we were all writing, we were all singing, we were all dancing, we were all creating. And then as people get older, you know, they drop one art form after another and I never draw. I

I wouldn't drop it. So it's been with me always. Liz, you've spoken a lot and written a lot about pouring yourself wholeheartedly, completely into relationships and giving everything to that relationship. And then as we know, they hadn't worked out for you a few times. What do you think you've learned from heartbreak and from those experiences, from being in such a relationship like that and putting the pieces back together? Well, I just want to say I really did the research, y'all. I went out there. I really did the research. I went out there hell-bent to find the platonic ideal of romantic love, to find a soulmate, to find perfect love multiple times. And I've tried every possible kind of

combination of ways that you can do it. You know, like I've been with men and I've been with women and I've been in open relationships and I've been in closed relationships and I've cheated on people and I've been cheated on. And I've tried to be with somebody who loved me more than I loved them and been with people who I loved more than they loved me. You know, like I tried to be with people I didn't really love, but liked and tried to be with people that I was obsessed with. And I really do feel that I put the years in. I really put the years in. And some of those, I really did, man. I did the work so you don't have to. But I guess we all have to do the work that we have to do. This wonderful thing happened after my second divorce. My mom wrote to my grandmother, who at

the time was almost 100, and said, Liz is getting divorced. And I must have said, Liz is getting divorced. And I was going through my grandmother's things when she died. And I found this note that my grandmother wrote back to my mother that I cherish. And she said, maybe Liz just doesn't like being married. And I was like, you know, Grandma Maude, I think you're right. I think that maybe all that trying to make it work with like one person after another person after another person after another person, and just always finding disappointment somehow, always finding heartbreak or disappointment or boredom or ambivalence or or shatteredness or devastation like it might be that after 35 uninterrupted years of doing that the universe was like

are you getting the pattern are you starting to notice that maybe you just don't like this yeah and have you noticed that you really like being by yourself and and all of that sort of shatteredness and boredom and ambivalence and trying and striving when i'm on my own i don't have any of that like i don't have ambivalence about being on my own and i always have ambivalence about being in a relationship always like no matter how passionate i am about the person there's always a part of me that's like but is this the right person the right time the right thing the right way. And because I'm passionate and because I'm intense and because I haven't had great boundaries, my answer to ambivalence is to just double down. It's like, well, just

pour more of yourself into it. Like make it work by just pouring even more into this person until there's really nothing left of me. So I'm starting to get the message that where I seem to really bloom is the way I've been living for the last almost six years, which is single and solitary and emotionally autonomous is the word that I keep using because all of that energy and emotion that I've poured into the other, I suddenly have freed up. It's like a reserve or a reservoir of just this massive amount of energy, this massive amount of energy that I'm pouring now into my spiritual work, into my creative work. I've written three books in the last six years. It used to take me four or five years to write one book, but it's because I was shunting and

draining so much of myself into creating, sustaining, leaving, managing these intimate sexual and emotional relationships. I feel like I'm having this tremendous renaissance. I have a friend who wrote a book about menopause and said that in some African cultures, menopause is called second childhood because you're not menstruating anymore you're not sexualized you're free you know that's the feeling that i feel right now is just i'm going to costa rica for three months and two days and i don't have to ask anyone i can do that like i don't have to i don't have to run it by anybody i'm just like oh well you know people invite me to things and I'm like yeah or no like there's none of this negotiating like it's this so emotional autonomy

is what I think the second half of my life is going to be all about and I think there's a blossoming happening that feels more ecstatically alive than anything I've experienced yet the way you just sell the fact that like you're so comfortable in your own skin and in your own company it's such a beautiful thing that I don't think a lot of people ever get to truly experience Well, traditionally, women have never gotten to experience it. Women's jobs throughout history in all traditional societies, which is all societies, have been jobs of service. And it's chilling.

And I knew this when I wrote the book Committed, and I got married again anyway. And I don't regret it because I loved the 12 years that I spent with my Brazilian husband. I loved those years. And then it was time to move on. But I did this research when I wrote the book Committed because I had such ambivalence about marriage. And it's devastating to see the statistics, what marriage does to women. There's not a single sociological data point at which married women do not fall so far below unmarried women. Married women don't live as long as single women. They're more likely to

report being depressed and anxious. They're more heavily medicated. On average, they weigh 10 pounds more. They have more autoimmune diseases. They have more addiction. They're more likely to die of suicide or homicide. Most likely person to kill them being their partner. Like it's so freaking grim. And it's because we pour our life, our actual life force into the people that we love. It may be from just having all this estrogen that tells you to nurture, but it's like the job of women like biologically and traditionally has been empty into you know like out of your body will come life from your breasts will come milk from your hands will come food for the entire family from your heart will come the love that nourishes everyone and deplete yourself and just

be depleted into love right and on the other hand married men fucking thrive it is the best idea that a man can have to marry a woman. They will live on average seven to 10 years longer than single men. All the opposite things will happen. They are healthier. They are less likely to suffer from addiction. They take care of their health better. They're more likely to hold property, married women, much less likely to hold money and property than single women. It's incredible, the benefit. It's called the marriage benefit imbalance about how much more strongly marriage benefits men than women. And yet culture, because it's opposite day, pours into women like as though they are like foie gras geese force pieces women this story

that without this union you are incomplete when in fact be wary i think it's taken me 55 years and two marriages and many many more relationships and watching myself again and again and again deplete deplete deplete into the other and see them shine and rise because i'm uplifting them and I'm supporting them and I'm encouraging them and I'm loving them. The really big important question to ask in any relationship is who in this relationship is doing the traditional work of the woman? And that includes emotional work. Like who is the one nourishing, encouraging, uplifting, sacrificing, tending, nurturing? And what is the cost to the one who is doing that? My friend Martha Beck was telling me about this sociological data that says the happiest people

and culture married married men right up at the top right underneath that unmarried women right underneath that single men right underneath that married women lowest lowest right so like to know that that's true and then to see every fucking romantic comedy in the world be like the messaging is completely opposite to the reality and i think that's why so many women in relationships feel crazy because they're like, wait, I was told that reality was this, but what I'm experiencing in my body and in my life and in my bank account and in my energy and in my moods and in my mind is the opposite of what I was told. So I must be crazy. I remember going to couples therapy with my first husband and him saying to the therapist, we're here because my wife is going crazy.

oh wow can i just ask that data that you were just saying is that linked solely to marriage or marriage with kids only to marriage wow it's even worse i was gonna say the kids haven't even entered the chat yet how grim it's even worse now that i get to be the crone i feel like i get to walk around and share illegal knowledge with young women and be like just so you know like look at the data you know and it's it's so interesting to me because I had a very similar conversation not with the data points by any means with my mother-in-law recently my mother-in-law she lives with us she's completely single and has been for the better part of 15 years and everyone always says like but maybe you'll meet someone or maybe you'll you'll be with someone

again like aren't you lonely don't you want the companionship all of these tropes that we kind of expect you get from a relationship or the expectation that you can't be possibly happy being completely single and on your own because it must equate to loneliness and she said I have never been more unhappy than when I was in relationships and I don't trust myself to make good relationship choices and not commit everything to that she's like and I just love being a grandma and I love having my friends and I love having my time she's like and people cannot comprehend that that is a possibility she's like people cannot comprehend that I am not lonely I won't let you have it. It's interesting when she said I've never been lonelier. I could tell you the loneliest I've ever felt. And it was sleeping three inches away from somebody. And it's happened multiple times in my life. It hasn't happened all the time. It's not like every relationship left me lonely.

But like, there have been a couple of relationships that I was in, two can be lonelier than one, you know, where I was so lonely. I was so lonely inside that relationship that I remember in one case, my body, what happened in all these cases is that my body, because bodies can't lie, like, you can't sell a story to your body. you can't it knows truth that your mind is trying to gaslight itself around right so my mind was like I should be happy I should be grateful I should be this I should be that and my body was like I can't live in this house I can't live with this person anymore and and in the relationship I was in where I experienced such loneliness I remember waking up in his bed and I remember hearing if my body could speak what it said was if you don't get me out of this this is not a place for us we should not be here this is not safe this is not loved this is not warm like we're not being seen we're not being met and if you don't get me out of here i'm going

you either leave or i'm jumping out that window like i will jump us out that window to get you out of here because this is not okay but the the emotional autonomy that i feel now is is less about, I don't even want to frame it where it's like, I'm happy because I'm not with someone because that still includes them in the story. You know what I mean? Like to even talk about not having a partner makes the story about me not having a partner and what is actually happening in the ecosystem of my spiritual life and my physical life and my emotional life is a garden is blooming you know that's what's actually happening it's not about who isn't here it's about what is here you had this beautiful friendship for 15 years with a woman named

Raya and you ended up falling in love before she very sadly passed away how did you guys find each other and how did you know that this was your person why was it different to any other relationship you'd had before? Raya was so extraordinary. I, she, it took so long for us to become what we became, which is the very opposite of all my other relationships, which tend to be like very fiery and fast and, you know, and immediate, but we were friends, we were acquaintances, and then we were friends. And then she moved to my small town where I live and we became neighbors. And then we became best friends. And all this was happening while I was married in my really contented second marriage. And then gradually, we became something that we didn't even

have a word for anymore. Because we would say like, Liz, she would say, Liz is my person. You know, Ray is my person. And what we weren't saying was, this is the love of my life. Because it would have been extremely inconvenient to say that because it would have meant like now lives have to be flipped again you know like and chaos has to enter and you know contracts and relationships have to end and you know every there was just no way and and we both loved each other too much to do that I think to ever put the real name on it and we loved we both loved my husband too much to do that like all of us just we didn't want anything to change but i feel like i always say that after like 35 i think every woman can write a memoir with the same title and that same

title is not exactly what i had in mind or or an alternative title is everything changed yeah you know like and then everything changed and that's the nature of reality is not exactly what I had in mind and then everything changed. What I loved about her, and I love talking about this because she was, when she was at her best, the most fearlessly honest person I've ever met. And it was so exciting for me to be around her honesty. She would sail her ship straight into the teeth of the gale. If there was any conflict, if she sensed that there was something that was being withheld if she sensed that somebody was having a problem with her like she'd go right into it like she would shoot herself right into the person like an arrow and she used to say like

the sooner we put this on the table and look at it the sooner we can fix it so like just what is it what is actually going on like raya at her memorial service a friend of ours said she didn't want your fake self she wouldn't let you have your fake self she could smell it from like three blocks away and she could read it. And she was like, dishonesty is happening right now. What is it? And she was one of the only people I've ever met in my life who actually meant it when she said, I would rather hear the truth. That's a dangerous thing to say, because you might hear the truth and you might not like it, but she meant it and she could handle it so beautifully. There was a fortitude in her and the honesty and truth that I've learned so much

from and that I aspire to be even though I'm much more frightened of the truth than she is she was powerful and incredible and then she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer and they gave her six months to live and it was no longer possible for any of us I mean not her not me or my ex-husband to anymore pretend that she and I didn't love each other and so we needed to go be together what impact did it have on you and I love the way that you speak about her having this truth teller in your life when you I mean I've heard you describe yourself as a people pleaser and someone who kind of wanted that affirmation from other people that you're doing a good job you know that you're almost being a good girl what impact does it

have on you having someone in your life who is so unapologetically a truth teller when you are on the opposite of that spectrum and you're a people pleaser I mean that's why she was sent to me and I was sent to her because she was so frightened of creativity and I'm not, and I'm scared of people and she isn't. I say all of this in the present tense because people, I don't know, we're still in relationship. She doesn't happen to be here in a body, but we're still in relationship. And that was what we brought to each other was that I was able to fortify her and show her how to be really fearless and courageous with, with expression and with vulnerability and with creativity and with daring to do something, even if you might fail, like that

stuff is so easy for me. Like it's easy for me to do. And being honest and direct with people was easy for her. What was hard for her was easy for me and vice versa. But before she died, she said, I refuse to leave. I'm not going to leave until we're both ready. And I'm not going to leave until I see you standing on your own two feet in every circumstance in your life. That's what I want for you. And I didn't, I wasn't ready for her to go because I wasn't sure that I could do that. But the impact has been, and I'll add a caveat to, as I came to know Rhea and I saw her toward the end of her life, and I saw more of her frailty and her humanity, and I saw the places where she was dishonest, you know, with herself and others. And, you know, the pedestalization

that I am so often guilty of, of, you know, just really thinking that somebody's this perfected being who's got all the answers, which never is true. One of the legacies I've been left with, and what I've been hearing in meditation sometimes is you have the opportunity now to become what you always thought she was, because she wasn't necessarily always what I thought she less. But that same value of radical, courageous honesty, I can now embody that and make that like a singularly important characteristic of my own existence. I have the opportunity to do that now. You mentioned that it took her terminal diagnosis for you both to recognize the love that you have for each other, like truly, honestly, openly recognize the love and want to

be together. What do you think the messaging and the takeaway there is? Because I feel like there's a really powerful message in that. Oh, I just, honestly, the word that just drifted into my mind was innocence, you know, because I think it would be tempting to say like, don't wait, you know, till somebody is dying to tell them your true feelings, you know, don't squander. Like so much of my life, I've made really big, bold, radical decisions because of this anxiety about not wanting to waste or squander my life or miss the opportunity. And it would certainly be tempting to have that be the takeaway here. But the takeaway for me, having gone through that extremely painful experience was how terribly innocent we all are. It was such a

good guess for all of us. And I say all of us, all three of us to try to preserve what we cherished for all those years. You know, I mean, I was in love with Rhea for so many years and I loved my husband. And it was such an honorable thing that we were trying to do. Let's not create chaos and drama. Let's not dishonor the vows we make to people that we love. There were times where I would vaguely allow myself to have the thought like, I'm in love with Rhea when I was married. And then I would just, I would put it away, but I don't want to criticize myself for that because the thought I had was, well, then love her, you know, well, then, then love her. That's it. Just love, just love her. You don't have to do anything about it. But then life presents all

of us with these, none of us get to move through this curriculum of life without these like terrible dilemmas. I also think it hugely oversimplifies because I think it is so easy to say, well, if that's the way you feel, like run after those feelings, but an entire life can't be lived off impulses. Not everything that you do in life can be off the back of a surge of feelings because you want to do the opposite. And I'm not saying that you should deny those feelings if they're screaming at you for a long time. But I think if we were always just driven by the feelings that we have, we would probably be also very conflicted around what it is that we want and how we feel in life. Something that you touched on, and I know it's been something

that you have spoken about is that Rhea prior to your meeting she was an addict and then when she was going through her treatment for cancer part of that was opioid prescriptions for the pain medication which was obviously something that can be very triggering for someone who has addiction issues what was it like discovering a different side of a person when they aren't the person that you fell in love with? Yeah, you know, it was pretty shocking. It was pretty shocking because Rhea was the person who I trusted more than anyone I've ever trusted in my entire life. The feeling that I would have somatically for years whenever Rhea walked into the room was, I'm safe. Rhea's here. You know, like that's how my body registered her. That was the non-lie that

my body told was now we're safe. Like this is our safe person. And to watch as the person who I experienced as being the safest person in the world devolve into a raging, and I use that word in all definitions, a raging junkie very quickly. And to descend, you know, I had never known Raya when she was a speedball heroin and cocaine addict. I'd heard stories and the stories were amazing, but they were kind of like the heroic stories of I survived this thing. It wasn't the true ugliness of what that actually looks like and what it does to a person's spirit and what it does to a person's personality. I remember her nephew during the time that she was using at the end of her life saying, I wish she was a nicer drug addict. Because some are nice,

some are just sort of nice and tragic but she was not a nice drug addict she was a mean drug addict and she was a narcissistic drug addict and she was a cruel and demanding drug addict and adding to that the immediacy of the death that she was facing which eroded her in so many ways but it also empowered her with a case of what i now know in the words of 12 step they call like a massive case of the fuck it's like she got a really big case of the fuck it's and nobody could blame her because she was facing a few months left to live so there was an element at which we were all like well look go for it like ride the dragon one more time who cares like you know you're dying anyway but then she didn't die she ended up living like a year longer than anybody had expected and a year

as a rage like a it was a nightmare you know in the zen tradition they say i gotta back up and look at the sort of spiritual view of this they say like going back to this idea of not exactly what I had in mind. And then things changed. And the Zen say, first, they pull the rug out from under you. And then they pull the floor out from under the rug. And then they pull the ground out from under the floor. And now you're ready to begin. Now you're ready to begin your spiritual journey. There's no ground under your feet, right? And that was the feeling was I had expected to lose her to death, but I had not expected to experience her addiction and to lose her before i lost her to to the nightmare that is addiction and it was one of the most shattering things i've

ever been through i mean it took years for me to recover from that that's it's pretty powerful to say you lost her before you lost her and i guess that's what addiction is is right like you're already mourning someone the person that you know before they leave that actually turns everything we're ever taught on its head as well like we're taught when you get unwell to live the healthiest best life you possibly can and you hear all these people that do that they don't go down the holistic path and they're getting the treatments and it doesn't work and here raya is fuck it i'm just gonna go hardcore on the drugs and she doesn't die like she she continues to extend her life and i wonder if that's got something to do it's insane like it's insane it goes against everything

we've ever been taught i mean i remember the doctor at one point saying like i don't know how she is alive, but not just alive, but like alive and being a motherfucker, like alive and being like a problem, you know, like alive and like, like a problem to everybody. And, and he's, I'm like, welcome to my world. Like, I don't know how she's still, he's like, how can someone survive on a diet of whiskey, cocaine, opioids, candy, beer, and cigarettes was essentially what she was eating, you know, and like, but I think what she was surviving on was I'm going to do it my way, which I actually sort of also loved that she was like, no, you're not going to give me a green juice. That's not how Ray lived. You know, so there was something that was kind of epic about

it, even it was as it was happening, except for that it turned into a disaster for me because, you know, I was having to try to manage an unmanageable, dangerous, exploitative sort of psychopath was what it felt like suddenly if there's ever been a lesson in like things will change you know like we all just long to create these lives where you can be anchored in your life and grounded and i feel like i don't know my curriculum here in earth school is like i get grounded i'm like oh i'm doing this really well yeah why not okay i figured out and then the ground changes and the planets flip the sun explodes and it's like i don't know how to live in this world you know I figured out how to live in that world and I think that's just maybe what

life on earth is you've written so much about loss in relationships you know about divorce about the untethering of two humans but what was this experience and and learning about loss but through grief about through actually losing someone tangibly they're not here anymore what does that taught you about grief and loss so humbling I mean I will say this I don't know that grief can be done right I have a friend right now who just had a terrible sudden loss in her family and she called me and she said I just want the syllabus like tell me what I have to read like tell me what podcasts I have to listen to tell me what TED talk I have to watch so that I I mean essentially so that I don't have to feel what I'm feeling, you know, don't like, what do I have to do

to not go to the bottom of hell? Are there any hammocks along the way where I can take a breather? And my experience with grief is that the bad news seems to be that you have to go to the bottom of hell. The good news seems to be that there is a bottom, You know, I mean, that's what Dante's Inferno teaches us. It's like you keep going down and you keep going down and you keep going down and it can't possibly get worse. And then it gets worse and it gets worse and it gets worse. And in the end, you know, he comes out of hell by going through the lake at the bottom of the hell that is in the center of Satan's heart, like the middle of the worst thing. And it's such an easy cliche to say that the only way out is through, but the only way out is through. And I think I've spent my life trying to find other ways out. But surely there's got to be another, there's got to be some sort of hack that I can figure out so that I don't have to experience grief at this level. And I had to experience grief at the deepest, deepest level. And it was so humbling. But my friend, Gigi, who was actually Raya's ex-wife and a beloved friend, taught me this phrase.

And she called it a bow down moment. And she's like, when the waves of grief come, because they come in waves, surrender immediately to it. Like, don't try to evade it. You can't. It's like a tidal wave is coming. You get under it. Like, get under it. And the way you get under it is that you literally get on the ground.

We also called it starfishing. You get on the ground on your face with your limbs out as low as you can get. And you just bow down before the God of grief and you let it take you. And you just let it and you just sob and you wail and you peen and you don't resist because the resistance actually just makes it worse. And the really weird thing about the nature of grief is that you think you're like, I'm going to be able to survive how hard I'm feeling this. And then 20 minutes passes maybe, and the sobbing diminishes. And then you're like, I need to go to the bathroom now. I need to get a glass

of water. I have to have a sandwich. Something changes. It moves through you. And then you have to stand up and go about your life until the next one comes. And I think I've heard a beautiful description of depression, that depression is the refusal to grieve. What depression is, is like, I will shut down rather than feel these terrible, terrible, terrible feelings. But I actually want to find this quote. I just sent this to my friend by a fellow named Stephen Jenkinson, who wrote a book called Grief Walker. And he said, grief is not a feeling. Grief is a skill. And the twin of grief as a skill of life is the skill of being able to praise or love life, which means wherever you find one authentically done, the other is close at hand. Depression

is I won't grieve and I also won't live. I will control the wild ride by not allowing myself to be fully human and I think that I didn't experience depression after Rhea died I've experienced depression in my life I experienced massive grief like level 10 grief but I didn't experience depression because I experienced grief well this might be an unusual question but going off what you described that last sort of year of Rhea's life and your relationship. Was there also a complicated level of relief that came? I don't want to cause any offense by that, but I imagine you would have wanted her to live forever. But the state she was in with the addiction and what was happening, it doesn't sound like your

relationship was quite where it should have been anyway. Was there sort of a level of relief that was mixed in with the grief? A hundred percent. Yeah. I want to take you out of the awkwardness of feeling like, no, it wasn't even a complicated amount of grief. And I say that openly in order to normalize when people have that feeling. I mean, people who have dealt with, even people who are addicts, people who have been caregivers and caretakers of people who are dying long, painful, extended deaths, where there is a feeling of caregiver fatigue and caregiver overwhelm, where there does you do reach this moment where you're like if this person doesn't die soon i am going to die soon i can't keep going at this pace and giving at this pace and people

always feel guilty about saying that they were relieved and they always want to couch it by saying well i'm just relieved because their suffering is over and they're in a better place dude your suffering is also over yeah and you are going to be you know like and it doesn't mean that grief won't follow that feeling of relief but but that's one of the ingredients is relief like you've been freed by this person's death if it was a long painful agonizing difficult death often that is the case that doesn't make you a monster i do want to go back to asking one question we mentioned it but then i don't think you gave closure to it completely you said that raya had said that she didn't want to leave until you were able to stand on your own

two feet you had this chance of embodying all the things that you saw in her or that you thought that she was in yourself do you feel as though you have achieved that you know I'll work backwards from it I feel as though she has left like when I said before like we're still in a relationship I feel her less now than I have ever felt her and at times that's disturbing because when she in the year or two after she died, especially she was so present. Like she was as present as you are right now. Like we could speak, she was so present and it wasn't just for me. I mean, she was such a vivid person. And the thing about really vivid people is that I think their vividness remains for a long time after they're gone. But like she was here, you know, she was

here and she was inside my head and she was, we were in constant dialogue. I turned to her for guidance you know i would say like don't go don't you dare like don't you dare like vaporize off into the cosmos and become music and leave me here with all these motherfucking assholes on this dying planet to figure this shit out like i need you you can't you you like like don't you don't get to go you know and also you owe me because you're such an asshole for the last six months of your life. You better stick around and help me. I need your assistance. And she did. I felt like she really honored that and that she was here. And certainly in the last year, I can't find her. I can't feel her and I can't find her. And actually, I'm really grateful that we had

this conversation because you're reminding me, like us going on this thread that we've gone on is sort of my own answer of like, oh, she said, I'm not going to leave until I see you standing on your own two feet in every circumstance of your life. She's left. I must be standing on my own two feet in every circumstance of my life. That's so nice. You should be really proud of yourself. I think so too. That's a nice realization. Yeah. Oh, at least you got a from crying because it is really beautiful but you recently have gone through a bit of a life change you've shaved your head you've given up the fillers the injectables the botox you're going to costa rica for a couple of months what's that about what has changed in your life to get you

to this point i've been wanting to shave my head for decades it's a fantasy that i've had for such a long time and i always think about it i also just want to make really clear like I like didn't have the greatest hair like honestly I'm vain enough that had I been gifted with the hair that I felt I deserved in life had I been given a gorgeous mane of hair I doubt that I would have been quite so like fuck it you know I'm just gonna shave it uh so it's I always had difficult hair and problematic hair so part of it is just the relief of not wanting to deal with that anymore but I did tons of stuff in my face there for for about 10 years I did like really good, you know, pretty good. It's one bad case of Botox, but for the most part, like, you know,

I was doing, I was doing it well enough that I looked good and I looked pretty. And it seems to be very important that I look pretty. And it seemed to be very important that I stay looking pretty. And I remember when my last book came out, the New York times did a profile of me and the, the woman said like, you know, Gilbert is whatever age I was 48, she's 48, but she looks 10 years younger than she is. And I remember feeling that to be like a trophy victory. You know, it's like, I won a medal the New York Times said I look 10 years younger than I am and that seemed to be extremely important and also as a public figure I was like I'm gonna be people are gonna be looking at me a lot I'm on TV a lot like I can't have these lines so that all seemed that all seemed

very very very true and it also felt very true that I felt better when I looked better and so it felt like it was an act of self-care. So I don't want to demean anybody who's doing those things or for whom those things feel true. But something shifted in the last couple of years where that just doesn't seem true anymore. All of those things just don't feel true. And part of it was that I spent a week traveling actually across Costa Rica with a woman in her 80s who is a great hero of mine and actually I took a road trip with three 80 year olds it was amazing I was like I'll be your tour guide in Costa Rica I'll be your driver I've got the jeep you know like let's go and they're all amazing people and none of them have done any work on

themselves physically I mean what we define is like cosmetic work and they were all so gorgeous and I was walking the wild thing is I was walking down the street in Nosara Costa Rica with these two women one argentinian this 84 year old and this 83 year old both incredibly spiritual beings incredibly creative beings passionate beautiful amazing women and we were walking side by side and a man walked by us and said are you sisters and i was 50 54 and they were 84 and i said yes and i was never did i feel so honored that somebody thought that they were my sisters and they have white, like full on white hair covered with wrinkles. And being in their presence was an awakening where I just thought like, it's a funny thing to be afraid of getting older or

looking old. That's a funny thing to be afraid of. It suddenly became like, no, like literally, why is that scary? Why is it scary to look at your face and see a line? Like, why did I experience that for so many years as frightful? Like, that seems like a weird thing to be frightened up. and I just lost my fear. Like I lost my fear. And you know, like I look when I shaved my head and stopped doing Botox, I instantly looked, I looked 10 years older than I looked three years ago, but I find that I don't care. And I actually find that not to get like too woo, but my higher power, what I choose to call God has said to me, it's extremely important that you don't do those things. I've heard this in meditation now. It's extremely important that you don't do those

things. And it's extremely important that you go out in public on TV with no makeup and lines in your face and no hair. We really need you to do that. And it's extremely important for you that you look in the mirror and look at what you look like and that this is what 55 looks and i accept and believe that that's extremely important so that's my that's my vibe well we've even seen like even just recently the level of media attention that pamela anderson has received just because she decided to stop wearing makeup so brave it's insanity the fact that we as a society are so shocked to see a woman turn up as her natural self with no makeup and no botox It takes so much work to unpick those values. It's a lifetime of values that we have been conditioned to believe that. And I know it's a sliding scale, like some people place more value on it than others. But I think all of us as women have this feeling of like, well, we will be more liked, we will be more loved, we will be more pleasant, we will be more accepted.

Successful. The better we look, you know, and it's and that condition. You are not wrong. unpicking it is is yeah i mean you know it shouldn't be something that that you're like wow you should be so proud of yourself but it really you should most people don't get to that place of being able to unpick those societal values yeah you're not wrong all of those things that you said are true like the prettier you are and the lighter your hair color is and the smoother your skin is, the more you will be approved of. It is true. And I don't give a

shit. You are the best. I don't care. I deeply approve of myself these days. Liz, you have incredible perspective in life and I have loved so deeply speaking to you. for everybody who's listening to this who is based in here in australia most of our listeners are you're coming out here soon what does that look like for you how can people hear more read more and get as much liz as they could possibly have oh that's so sweet if you go to my website you can see my tour schedule for for coming to australia and new zealand in february and so making a bunch of stops in a bunch of cities i actually have i used to go to australia all the time like every year for a really long time because my ex-husband's kids lived there still

live there. And I've spent a ton of time in Australia. But the last time I was in Australia was right before the pandemic. And I mean, right before the pandemic. I mean, I was on Bondi Beach in an Airbnb. And I jumped in a cab and went to the airport without even a plane ticket and was like, I got to get home because the president said they're closing the borders right before the pandemic. So I'm excited to come back in a slightly less frantic way. But the really cool thing is I'm going to be teaching, there's a creativity workshop that I teach that I've taught for years all over the world. And don't be frightened of the word creativity. It's not, you don't have to be a quote unquote creative person to come. It's really about teaching

everything that I've learned about what I call creative living, which is not so much about what you produce, but about how you live and a style of living that is based more on curiosity than fear. Anyway, I'm going to be teaching my creativity workshop in Sydney. It's the, I've never taught it in Australia or New Zealand before so that's exciting so come to that but then I'll also be giving talks where I we tell stories and I take Q&A from the audience and it's going to be lovely it's always it's always lovely and it's always better if you're there so come say go and spend all your money and make sure that you go and see it well I think we'll spend our money and come and see you as well thanks so much Liz thank you for coming I can't wait to see you in person

well we live in Bondi so if you want to come back we'll have a coffee in Bondi we'll have but it'll be really nice to catch up. You are both really lovely and brilliant and delightful to talk to. And this time has passed so swiftly and easily being with you. So thank you for just being as great as you are. We'll be right back.