Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It (12 page)

—

Karstee Davis

M
y best friend sat across the table from me and over happy hour margaritas announced, “You need to read
Eat Pray Love
. It saved my life.”

That's a mighty hefty review of a book. I don't know about you, but when someone tells me a book saved her life, I read it.

It was 2009, and I was barely surviving what had been the most horrendous year of my life. I had recently returned to the United States after having been stationed in England for my husband's job. Together, we had decided it would be best if I were in Colorado near my family when he was asked to serve a year in Afghanistan.

Only a few days after saying our goodbyes to each other in Washington Dulles Airport, I found out that I had endometriosis, a painful uterine disorder that can cause fertility issues. I let my husband know over the phone about my diagnosis and the
surgery I would need. Shortly thereafter he told me he wanted a divorce. I never found out if it was because of the reproductive challenges we faced, or if he had met someone overseas, or if it was just an amalgamation of moments and conflicts that led to his decision. All I knew for sure was that he had cut off all communication with me and he wasn't coming back.

So there I was: I had no career, having spent my life prioritizing my husband's passion over discovering my own. I was living in my parents' basement, and now I was staring down a difficult surgery to remove the masses that were growing on my ovaries.

The day of my surgery came, and as I sat in the waiting room in the early morning hours, my mother and sister by my side, I kept expecting him to show up. Every time the waiting room door opened, I would turn, thinking somehow it would be him. Of course, it never was.

Soon, a hospital administrator called me into a back room to complete some paperwork. Is this still your insurance? Is this emergency contact information still correct?

I crossed out his name and wrote my mother's information in the margins. Then I went back to the waiting room, tears streaming down my face. My mother began crying, too, and rubbed my back, neither of us saying anything. My sister didn't cry, because she's the strong one, but the look on her face was so intense, I didn't know if she was so mad at him for not showing up, or if she was so scared that someone you love could break you like that.

I watched as a tiny old woman pushed her wheelchair-bound husband to the check-in desk. He was holding her purse and making jokes about how he always has to hold her purse.

After the surgery, as I was waking up in the recovery room, I saw my mother sitting near the bed, watching TV. I looked around and told her how weird it was that men had nipples. Then, a little less loopy, I began to take in all the tubes and wires hooked up to my body, the little fluorescent yellow bracelet wrapped around my wrist that read
FALL RISK
. The doctors and the nurses told me I had to walk, so I walked past the nursery, looking through the window at all the newborns. They told me I had to shower, so I stood there as my mother washed my hair and body. Eventually, I returned home to my parents' basement and slept. I took Ambien, lots of Ambien. I took baths. I applied for jobs, binge-watched
The Sopranos
and left a trail of margarita salt behind me everywhere I went.

Nearly a year later, I received news from a mutual friend that my husband, the man who had greeted me every morning by whispering “You're my favorite person,” had remarried. Soon after hearing this, I had a seizure. Tests were done, and these were the results: I was carrying too much stuff around with me, and the stress was now manifesting itself physically. I had to learn to let it go.

So there I was, post–happy hour drinks, standing in the bookstore, following my friend's recommendation and buying
Eat Pray Love.
Could this book really save my life?

I wish I could say that after finishing it, I was moved to sell all my belongings and go find myself in the world. But that's not what happened.

This is what I did instead: As Liz writes, I prepared for “riotous and endless waves of transformation” and eventually I started to cultivate the practice of picking out my thoughts. I started by
keeping a gratitude journal, where I recorded one thing I was grateful for every day. Now, I look back through these journals and laugh at the days where I could find nothing else to be grateful for except the Denver Broncos.

I found a fulfilling job at the University of Colorado in Boulder, working to help send students abroad. With every student who leaves his or her comfort zone and sets out into the world, I can't help but think I'm helping to develop a generation of more compassionate citizens. And as a benefit of working at the university, I was able to take an early morning travel-writing course on campus during summer break. Summers in Boulder are one of Colorado's best-kept secrets: the Flatirons bask in the glory of the morning sun, and most of Boulder's student population has left town. I fell in love with the students who stayed behind and took that class with me; they would show up just out of bed, hair still tousled, and write the most enchanting descriptions of Cuba that I had ever heard. During one workshop session, in front of an entire group of students, I read aloud the most honest piece I've ever written. I couldn't stop the tremors in my voice as I was reading, but it felt good to be creating.

I took a yoga class at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison one summer morning, as the light crept over the city below. As I flowed into a
chaturanga
, I felt the most delicious burst of forgiveness and gratitude for myself and the man who was once my husband. In the company of two thousand yogis, I silently thanked him for the love that we had while it was good; the little moments that I carry with me: the scratchy good-morning beard nudges, the daisies at that metro stop in Paris, the feel of bare feet dancing on a stone-tiled kitchen floor, the way he always
offered his arm when we walked over slippery cobblestones. The nicknames like Blueberry Muffin and My Lady. Afterward, I got in my car, rolled all the windows down to enjoy the sunshine and mountain air and laughed to myself. I felt alive. Finally.

Upon discovering that yoga could really feel that good, I immediately joined a studio. Through my practice, I've learned that no matter what each day brings, my mat is always a fertile place where I can keep growing the person I'm meant to be, the person I'm already becoming.

I'm also a new member of the Auntie Brigade, a term that Elizabeth coined, and it is a role so sweet and rewarding that it fills me up, despite my ovary woes. It shows me I can embrace a different narrative, choose a different path.

Thanks to
Eat Pray Love
, I realized that a whole other life starts after marriage ends, and that there is tremendous value in learning who you are and what you want outside of societal pressures. There are other stories besides “man meets woman, they fall in love, buy a big house in the 'burbs and create lots of mini-me's.”

Then there's this.

Weeks after my surgery, I was standing in line in a department store, waiting to pay for my items. As I stepped up to the counter, I exchanged greetings with the cashier, who began scanning and bagging my purchases as I rummaged through my bag for my credit card. When I found it, I reached across the counter to hand it to her, and as I did, my sleeve moved up just enough to expose my wrist.

As she took my card, the cashier asked, “Do you want me to remove that concert bracelet for you? I have some scissors right here.”

I looked at my fluorescent yellow hospital bracelet. I didn't feel ready to be unbranded. But I held my wrist out, she slid the pair of scissors around the bracelet and snap!

That's exactly how
Eat Pray Love
made me feel—like I wasn't a “Fall Risk” anymore. For the first time, I knew I could stand on my own.

—

Laurie Granieri

F
or one solid week, it is 10:26 in my apartment.

The red clock in the living room has stopped, and it stays stopped. Every time I look, there it is: 10:26, all day long.

Eventually, I unfold the Lilliputian screwdriver on my Swiss Army knife, which also happens to feature a pair of tweezers that keeps my brows from going full-tilt Frida Kahlo. I perform some lefty-loosey action on two stubborn metal screws, pry open the backside of the clock, insert a new battery and make it 8:12.

Before I read
Eat Pray Love
, a week of 10:26 would have been unfathomable. Because 10:26 would exist as a 24/7 reminder that something was wrong, out of place, out of time. Back then, I'd rectify this brokenness by 10:29 at the latest.

Eat Pray Lov
e spurred my conversion from the stringent dogma of Perfectionism to a scrappy faith in Good Enough.

Now, “conversion” doesn't mean I experienced a full-bodied,
come-to-Jesus moment down by the riverside. I did not see The Light. This new approach has emerged in fits and starts. But it's here.

Bruce Springsteen recorded a song in the late '70s called “Ain't Good Enough for You.” That poor schlub: He does everything to please his girl. He gets a job in sales, buys a shirt at Bloomingdale's. No dice—she doesn't like the way he walks or the way he talks.

That was my anthem, for decades. Nothing I did was good enough. I was my very own petulant girlfriend, tossing myself to the curb for not being smart enough, quiet enough, Zen enough.
Eat Pray Love
challenged me to sing a different tune.

A little about Perfect and Imperfect: In 2004, within ten weeks, I divorced, sold my house and lost my big brother. I was caught in a tsunami of pain.

Eventually, I began suffering debilitating back pain and twice-weekly migraines. I was working in the crumbling newspaper business, watching helplessly as colleagues were escorted from the newsroom on a regular basis. It was as if I were squirming on an eternal chopping block. Who was next? Joy, even when it did show up, was totally suspect and all too brief.

And because I couldn't control big-ticket items, like death and divorce, my Miss Fix-It urge went to town on little things. (See: compulsive clock-fixing and eyebrow-tweezing.) I was forever anticipating the other shoe, the slippery banana peel. I had elected myself a one-woman vigilante, behaving as if the weight of my anxious attention could remove the sting of life's vicissitudes.

It's easy to forget, but Gilbert embarked on a year abroad with only a dim hope that she'd emerge whole. She didn't know
the end of the story. Who could predict a pearl of blue light and a loving Brazilian man, let alone Oprah Winfrey and Julia Roberts?

My own conversion from Perfect to Good Enough involved setting out on a path that held zero guarantees. I always relate to that distressed father in the Bible who cried: I believe; help my unbelief! In other words: I want to trust you, man, but I'm not sure I can put one foot in front of the other. I'm not certain if it's even worth lacing up my boots.

•   •   •

I
spend most of my life curled up in that semicolon between “I believe” and “Help my unbelief!” and when I'm there, Gilbert's own uncertainty keeps me company. She had no reason to believe anything would come of this journey, beyond a manuscript and a few passport stamps.

Still, she laced up her boots.

Eat Pray Love
nudged me to lace up my own, but at the same time it gave me permission to come undone; to every so often ignore an e-mail, skip a workout, take a nap.

I figured I had good reason to live a righty-tighty life, in which I was forever furrowing my brow, checking my watch and doing my damnedest to reach Perfect by lunchtime. When I was growing up, women who rested seemed depressed. They lay on their right sides atop efficiently made beds and zoned out on
The Price Is Right
and
The Young and the Restless
before returning to the daily business of serving others. Rest seemed akin to giving up.

But Gilbert writes convincingly about rest, and about mothering one's joy—nurturing and protecting it. Sure, Gilbert
visited a medicine man, but she administered her own remedy. As for me, my yearlong migraine odyssey involved a neurologist, a Reiki master, two acupuncturists, a handful of chiropractors, staring at mandalas in the local library, screaming in the car (to relieve the pressure—I figured, why not?), a brief hospital stay and a boatload of meds and research before I found a nutritionist who was able to alleviate most of my headaches.

Gilbert reminds me that joy doesn't just show up on the front lawn and begin doling out blank checks. Joy must be beckoned. Joy must be tended.

•   •   •

I
realize
joy
is a squirrelly word, right up there beside its abused siblings,
mindful
and
empowered
. I don't care. I am committed to the ongoing work of joy, and I don't mean a deaf-and-dumb, smiley-face-emoji brand of joy. I'm talking eyes-wide-open joy that sees the world for what it is and chooses to remain soft anyway. I'm talking about joy despite.

Eat Pray Love
did not make me bigger, better, more. Some days reality is all too real. Some days I can be impatient. I fret intermittently over my square toes. The difference is, nowadays I can live with myself.

There's still so much I long to fix. Some are worthy goals (gun laws, those overplucked eyebrows), and others can wait. I have arrived at a shaky but plucky faith in Good Enough. And I plan to keep on arriving, showing up for myself as often as I need to, hour after hour, minute after minute, no matter how long it takes.

—

Leslie Patrick Moore

W
hen I first read
Eat Pray Love
I devoured the entire book in one sitting. No matter that I was fairly happily married at the time—this woman's tremendous, jet-across-the-world bravery won me over and I fantasized about going on a soul-seeking mission just like hers—without the getting divorced bit. Perhaps I wished a little too ardently, though, because a few years later, the scenario actually came true for me. Though instead of leaving my husband,
I
was the one being left.

I had seen it coming. For seven months we had been dealing with my sudden and painful discovery of his infidelities. We screamed and cursed at each other.
Promise me you won't do it again
, I would shout, begging for an assurance he refused to give. I cried in therapy and drank way too much in order to cope. But deep down, I could feel a massive shift occurring. Like animals can sense a forthcoming earthquake, I could feel divorce lurking. Growing up in a family where one simply doesn't get divorced,
I scarcely acknowledged the possibility, but the inevitability of it shook me off my feet the instant my husband spoke those damning words—
I don't want to be married anymore.

I have a certain jealous longing when I hear the stories of some divorced couples—that the cheating spouse begged the innocent partner to stay in the relationship; that said cheater promised to stop the heinous extramarital behavior, swore he or she would do anything to save the marriage. To me, that sounded romantic! It meant the spouse still cared, maybe even felt truly remorseful. That he or she would truly make an effort to be present, to change. That there was still love—and the hope of reconciliation.

There was no such hope for us. My husband's uttered words meant it was over, that I was no longer loved, though I still loved him. They meant there was nothing I could do to save our marriage.

I had married young, at twenty-one, going straight from my father's household to my new husband's. He had been my first everything. We were newlyweds when I finished college and began a fledgling career in marketing, writing copy for a local bank, unsure of what I really wanted for my life. My husband became my sole system of support, both emotionally and financially. I was working a full-time job and dabbling in freelance writing on the side, so I had my own money coming in, but most of that I gave to my husband for our monthly bills, and I had no idea what happened to anything extra. He also made significantly more money than I did, so my contribution never seemed to amount to much anyway.

I didn't know how to be in the world on my own. I didn't know how to cook, I couldn't program the DVR, I didn't even
know to whom we paid those monthly bills. I was utterly dependent on him in every way.

So after our marriage fractured, I was adrift. I quit my job and moved to the East Coast to be closer to my sister. Everything terrified me. Things that people do on a daily basis, like calling the cable company or renting an apartment, were seemingly insurmountable tasks. Other things petrified me as well. One day, I was so frightened by the fact that I'd never had sex with anyone besides my husband that I couldn't get out of bed and decided that maybe I would remain celibate for the rest of my life.

I had been a respectable married woman all during my twenties. Now at twenty-nine, I was divorced and unmoored in the world. I didn't know who I was anymore. I felt an urgent need to leave the country. Sure, my support system was here, but so were all my memories of my eight-year failed marriage. The thought of staying sickened me.

For six months, I popped Xanax and Prozac like handfuls of M&M's, drank bottles of wine a day and cried over every reminder of my past life, waiting for the divorce to be finalized. When I finally received that paper in the mail, undoing what I had so happily done with my husband all those years before, something in me changed. I stopped crying long enough to think,
I should do the
Eat Pray Love
thing.

As a now freshly divorced writer, I genuinely related to Gilbert's every word. I, too, cried on my bathroom floor! I, too, wanted to escape to a foreign land to learn Italian from sexy men with names like Luca Spaghetti. However, with a writing career not nearly as developed as Liz's, and a bank account depleted from making do on a single income plus the plethora of expenses you incur when splitting with your spouse, jetting over to Italy to
revel in eating seemed completely out of the question—let alone praying and loving.

Then, I remembered a girl I had sat next to on a bus in Cambodia while traveling. She was on vacation from her job teaching English in South Korea. On our daylong ride from Siem Reap to Bangkok she explained to me the perks the job offered and all the money she had been able to save, which she used to fund her frequent trips around Southeast Asia. Listening to her, I had wished I could do something like that but dismissed it as a possibility. After all, my job, mortgage and husband were all waiting for me back home in California.

Still, the idea had stayed with me over time, and now I clung to it vehemently, certain it was my ticket to a new, adventurous life. No matter that my teaching experience was nonexistent and I was shy speaking in front of groups. It wouldn't be quite the same as a stint in Italy, India and Indonesia, but it was a perfect way to get a free ticket overseas. All the recruiting company asked was that I be a native English speaker with a college degree. Two weeks after my divorce was finalized, I found myself in South Korea.

I was mesmerized by the experience of living alone. I was mesmerized by the overwhelming sense of foreignness I experienced each time I stepped out of my small apartment. I was mesmerized by my new teaching job. In fact, everything mesmerized me. To say that I “found” myself through this experience may be trite, but it's also true.

In Korean culture, people are defined by things like age, job title and marital status. My middle-school students would constantly ask me if I was married. No, I would respond. You have boyfriend? they would continue. No, I am single. I repeated this
phrase,
I am single
, countless times during the first few months, and each time I spoke the words, their palpability became more absolute. I am single. I am not defined by my husband.

Living in a country so obsessed by marriage reinforced my singleness, but I was now existing and even thriving on my own and I loved every minute of it. I learned that I could live by myself, pay my own bills and even be intimate with someone besides my husband—I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life celibate after all! I was shocked to find that the things I dreaded most were the very things that turned out to be the easiest to overcome. After a few months, I, like Liz, even met my own tall, dark and handsome stranger—though mine is English and didn't happen to run me down with his car.

I had done what I set out to do. What I thought was the end of my world morphed into a whole new beginning. I may have eaten kimchi and rice instead of pizza and gelato along the way, but I still had my very own
Eat Pray Love
happy ending. Thanks for the inspiration, Liz.