This book sits on my shelf as one to dip into, or reread, from time to time. The plot is well known to everyone and had a great impact on people’s lives, including mine, as she searches for meaning to life in Italy, India, Indonesia and searches for love, following a divorce. So many of us empathised. It was a block buster movie starring Julia Robert. Fantastic film.
Not long after the controversy surrounding The Salt Path, written about last week, I read an article in the Saturday Times magazine of a frank interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, about her life now. Like the Salt Path it gave me a jolt, a shock to the heart.
a) In what ways did ‘Eat Pray Love’ originally affect my life? It gave me hope. I felt a connection; a kindred spirit enjoying adventure, whilst searching for some meaning and purpose to life.
b) I realised that I was not unusual and certainly I was not unique.
c) I continued my search for spiritual peace, travelling and meeting different peoples too, for a greater understanding of the world and my tiny part in it.
When I read this recent article about Elizabeth Gilbert today, at first I felt that sinking feeling. We put people in our lives on a pedestal, whether they be celebrities, friends or family. To realise that ‘their feet are made of clay’ is a sobering moment. After the initial shock though, there are moments of calm. Not only to realise they are only human too, not much different to ourselves, but to realise that their original message, and its positive message, remains firm in our hearts, and that can’t be bad, can it? And so, Eat, Pray and Love remains on my bookshelf, alongside Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘The Big Magic’ which actually, more recently, had even more of an effect on my psyche.
This book made me reflect on of my own memoir, “The Healing Paths of Fife” which has raised over £750 for local charities, including The Kirkcaldy Foodbank. It is a beautiful part of the world, with a lesser known coastal path, meandering along the Firth of Forth (and the Tay), with castles, quaint fishing villages, history, cliffs, machair, golf courses, rocks, beaches and, of course, The Forth Bridge. I describe it as a fantasy memoir, making clear that it veered from truth to history to fiction. It too has made an impact on people’s lives, selling mainly in gift shops, fairs and events.
Diana Jackson 