Liz Gilbert’s memoir, Eat Pray Love, took the world by storm when it was published in 2006. Selling over 10 million copies, the book was featured in Oprah’s Book Club and eventually made into a film starring Julia Roberts, which received equal acclaim. It has become a sort of Bible for young, single women seeking to find their place in the world. Women who feel lost, incomplete, or perhaps, uninspired. There’s just something about Liz’s journey, and the beautiful way she shares it, that has had millions in a chokehold for almost twenty years now.

Hi. My name is Christine, and I am one of those women. I couldn’t tell you when I first saw the movie Eat Pray Love, but I can tell you that it’s been a great source of inspiration for me for well over a decade. It wasn’t until years later that I read the book. I’m glad I did it backwards because seeing the movie in my twenties was one experience, but reading Liz’s story in my thirties felt much more personal.

There’s a certain level of privilege that’s necessary for someone to take off for a year traveling like Liz. There were many favorable circumstances that made this financially and logistically possible, which I feel many people overlook when they take a risk and embark on their own Eat Pray Love adventures. A few years before the COVID pandemic, my best friend and I made this wild plan to take an EPL trip together when we turned thirty. It wouldn’t be a year-long trip, but we were determined to visit these three transformative destinations. It turns out that life had other plans. She got married and had a baby. I lost all my business due to the pandemic and had to rebuild from scratch. Needless to say, the EPL trip was put on hold indefinitely.

Yet here I am, a few years later, business recovered from the pandemic, and an EPL trip seems as evasive as ever. What does a girl have to do to eat pizza in Naples, attend an intensive meditation retreat, and find her peace in Bali? I mean, besides an updated passport, unlimited funds, and the ability to keep a job while taking a sabbatical. The fact is, it’s just not in the cards for me and most other regular women, at least not right now. And as disappointing as that is, it’s also just life.

What is it about Eat Pray Love that calls to us? Think about it. There are hundreds of travel memoirs out there, many of which have also been successful, but Eat Pray Love is different. The title alone has snuck its way into our vernacular in a way that hasn’t been done before. You can even go on an Eat Pray Love pilgrimage. And as much as I love Julia Roberts, Liz’s story resonated long before she took on the role for the film adaptation. She simply brought the journey to life.

Let’s set aside the fact that each of the featured destinations is romantic in its own way. Italy needs no explanation. The Ashram in India seemed to promise a level of enlightenment to transcend life. And Bali…well, Bali is just magical and beautiful. Add a handsome Brazilian gentleman who can dance, and it might as well be the perfect recipe. On the surface level, all of this is enough to captivate and perhaps encourage a few trips, but it’s not enough to create the storm of success that came to be.

Reading anything is personal and subjective to the reader. Our own life experiences shape the way we relate to the characters and the story. When a piece of art has such a profound impact, it transcends our individual perceptions and resonates with us on a fundamental level. Otherwise, it’s unlikely to have had such great commercial success. I can’t speak to the masses, but perhaps by sharing my personal connection to the story, I can help us all understand it a bit better.

Liz and I were at very different points in our lives when I first became enchanted with her journey. Eat Pray Love is about Liz’s life post-divorce, trying to find herself again – in the most basic summary ever to exist. I fell in love with her story as a late teen/early twenty-something. I was starting my career, had never been in a serious relationship, and had a lot of life to live that I was not expecting. Eventually, I started solo traveling, and in my mid-twenties, my best friend and I devised our original EPL plan. When she got married, I turned our trip into a solo adventure for myself, started researching to eventually kick it off around my thirtieth birthday, and cue pandemic business loss. I finally read Eat Pray Love in my early thirties. Liz and I were still at different points in our lives. I still had not been in a serious relationship, let alone divorced. But I had lost everything and then some, so we certainly had that in common. But while our relationship experiences differed, we were equally in a state of grief. Liz was essentially grieving a marriage and the time lost to it, while I was grieving the loss of a father figure and the time lost to caring for him in his last years. Both experiences meant we lost a piece of ourselves, and we were desperate to get it back. While our experiences were individual, the pain is universal. The ultimate rising out of the ashes that Liz achieves by the end of Eat Pray Love is the ending that we all hope for in our darkest moments.

Each destination in Liz’s journey throughout Eat Pray Love is representative of things we all desire. The freedom and community found in Italy. Peace found in India. Love and balance found in Bali. I used to find it funny that Liz started in Italy because it was such an indulgent part of her journey, but now, I understand why. Before diving into any sort of deep, impactful work, you have to find a sliver of joy. Rock bottom is not a fun place to be. It’s hard, it’s humiliating, and it can feel impossible to pull yourself up. To do the work to reach the next level of who you’re meant to be, you need something to make you want to get out of bed in the morning. What better place to find that joy than in the heart of Italy, enjoying the most delicious food, learning a beautiful language, and creating a found family of incredible people. That joy leads to a sense of freedom from the darkness. Freedom that says, “eat the damn pizza and buy a bigger pair of jeans.” But just like the crash from the pizza eventually comes, so does the crash from joy.

India was a rude awakening. Liz learned that her mindset was all wrong. She discovered that peace isn’t something you can find externally; it’s something you need to find within. As Richard tells her, “The meditation room is within…you want to control your life so bad, work on the mind. That’s the only thing you should be trying to control, cause if you can’t master your thoughts, you’re in trouble forever.” On some level, we all know this, but chances are we go about it the wrong way. It took a lot of heart-to-heart conversations with Richard and a lot of time learning to forgive herself for Liz to finally let go of the illusion of control she had been holding onto for so long. I’ll even go so far as to say that peace is also an illusion but we’ll save that conversation for another day. For all intents and purposes, Liz found that inner peace she was desperate for all along.

In Bali, Liz has this newfound “peace” and inner light after doing hard introspective work in India. She reunites with a mentor, hoping to learn all she can and continue her daily meditations for a simple, peaceful existence, until a future love interest literally runs her over. Cue a whirlwind island romance we’d all die for. But when it came time to leave, Liz was about to give up all the happiness she found. And for what? As she says to Ketut, “I couldn’t keep my balance,” to which he responds, “Sometimes to lose balance for love is part of living balance in life.” Bali, for Liz, was the perfect blend of the joy and community she found in Italy, the peace she discovered in India, and the love and balance she found in Bali.

What Eat Pray Love teaches us, or what it’s taught me, is that we need all of these pieces for a truly fulfilling life. We need the frivolous joys to take us out of the dark moments just as much as we need the discipline of mindfulness to find inner peace. We must sacrifice balance for love and relinquish control for genuine freedom. I haven’t even begun to master any of this. I’m tiptoeing shark-infested waters just trying not to drown most days. Liz’s journey represents so much that I aspire to embody. The main disservice that Eat Pray Love has done is to give the illusion that by visiting these three destinations, we can magically achieve the same results. But that’s not how life works. Italy, India, and Bali were significant to Liz because they served a unique purpose for her at a very specific time in her life. Who says yours or mine will be the same? The geography doesn’t matter as much as the intention.

I still fully intend on taking an epic EPL trip one day. My destinations are a little different from Liz’s, but they have similarities. It’s not in the cards this year, and maybe not even next year, but I know, just as the sky is blue, that I will take that journey someday soon. Until then, I will continue to be inspired by Liz’s story and carry the lessons she learned with me on my own adventures. Right now, I’m struggling with the illusion of control and the cage it’s been keeping me in for most of my life. I wish I had a Richard to yell at me about the deadlines I think about when I should be clearing my mind. I’m also struggling with a skewed idea of what balance should be and trying to reframe what that word means, as well as how my life fits into that definition. Eat Pray Love isn’t a destination or a series of destinations. It’s the messy bits of life that take place wherever we happen to be in the moments they come up.