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Relating to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love

eat pray love book review

Hi there, I’m Nancy of Nancy Under the Stars. I’m a Canadian veterinary technician in love – in love with traveling that is. I write about my antics overseas as well what to do whilst in my neck of the woods.


eat pray love book

I’m a single woman. Ok, let’s be honest. I’m a mature, divorced, single woman and have been on my own for nearly five years.

I’ve been through my ‘Sex and the City’ phase. I’ve even played the role of ‘Bridget Jones’, swearing off on a variety of men in search of Mr. Right, rather than Mr. Right Now. Nevertheless, I’d established a pattern, a routine:

  • Meet a man and ignore that he is a blatantly obvious commitment phobe.
  • Make myself believe that there is hope for Mr. C.P. and I to have a relationship.
  • Present plan of relationship to Mr. C.P.
  • Break my own heart, dwell on what ‘could have been’ until the cycle repeats itself.

Not a very good pattern now that I put it down in writing. My friends saw it, but I of course have been blind for near half a decade.

A good girlfriend of mine told me about Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I tried to read it but clearly wasn’t ready to see the image in the mirror.

Single again and sitting on a plane to Toronto, I was scanning the movie selection on my flight. The top pick: Eat Pray Love. I watched. I cried. I got it. I picked up the book and read it cover to cover when I returned home.

Like the movie, Liz Gilbert’s words resonated with me like a G-string on an acoustic guitar.

“I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.”

Eat Pray Love is a memoir of Liz’s journey of “self-inquiry” through Italy, India and Indonesia. Liz explains the reasoning behind the three countries, all starting with ‘I’ as well as the organization of chapters as ‘malas’ – the prayer beads commonly seen worn in India. She touches on her divorce, her depression and her need to fall into another relationship, seemingly like a security blanket.

Eat takes us to Italy where she more than feeds her body, she rediscovers her appetite for life.

Pray takes place at an ashram in India. Visceral emotion of her past is faced in order to find balance and ‘God’.

Love of and for herself is found in Indonesia.

Prior to reading her book, I had little desire or urgency to see either Italy or India. Now, I anxiously await to hear the ‘ka-chunk’ of the immigration guard’s hard stamp on my passport.

Even though I can’t pick up and move to three different countries in the world for a year, I can do it on a smaller scale. Thinking about it now, I started my journey long before I realized it. I ‘ate’ in Australia. I toured for a month, meeting people, taking life by the horns and facing some long-awaited fears. I ‘prayed’ in Africa, although I think I need to revisit this section. I’m not sure when or where I’m going to ‘love’.

What I do know is I’m taking Liz’s advice and going forth with gratitude and gentleness in all that I am faced with.

eat pray love book

What a great insight into how this inspiring book touched on Nancy. If you want to read more about Nancy, do so on Twitter.

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