Elizabeth Gilbert on Life and Love

[Applause] No [Applause] oh that's brilliant that was great good night thank you hello everyone thank you very much for coming I am delighted to see so many of you here delighted but not in the tiniest bit surprised where else would you want to be what else could you be doing given you've somehow managed to lure here to talk to us tonight I'm thrilled to welcome you all on behalf of the how-to Academy I've seen some posts under comments on social media that suggest that some of you really have come from far and wide so well done for getting your hands on a magic ticket and for making such an inspired decision we're here to talk about the very small matters of life and love if they feel like quite big things to grapple with in just about an hour I don't think we could possibly have a better guide in Elizabeth Gilbert it's very hard to know how to introduce her she's so many things she's so many different things to so many different people I'm sure a number of you have probably decided over the course of the last few years that she's your best friend or closest counselor without actually probably having told her that yet and but I'm gonna let her describe her life how she lives it fully embracing all the ups and downs and I know there have been a number of both over the last few years she'll be able to describe that so much better that I can and suffice to say she is obviously one of the most loved and cherished writers of our generation and I'm gonna put us all into the same generation tonight for argument's sake she's brought us so many wonderful novels and works of nonfiction over the years and one I have an inkling you might have all heard of a certain Eat Pray Love that was obviously came into the world in 2006 occult for Don [Applause] you may already know then that it sold 15 million copies and stayed for four years which is extraordinary on the New York Times bestseller list and that was translated into 46 different languages and like so much of elizabeth's writing I think so many of us really found ourselves amongst those pages and she's fought us brilliant things since we've had big magic which is himself the acclaimed own signature of all things and the book that we're here we're gonna be also talking about tonight is her latest you may have already read it wonderful fun spirited joyous kind of bounding novel which is city of girls and it couldn't be more timely I think we all really need it and the quote on the front which I think encapsulate s' both the theme of the book but also I think the Elizabeth Gilbert philosophy of living is life is both fleeting and dangerous and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure or being anything other than what you are so we say commenting anyway that that's enough from me and I'm gonna be in conversation visitor for about 50 minutes or so and then we will have time for questions there are a lot of you I'm sure that many of you have questions please just try and keep them as concise as possible and then we can get through and as many as possible so thank you again very very much and thank you very thank you hi London how is London for you as a describer of places okay this is um I actually was just talking to somebody today about how guilty I feel in my apologies to anybody in here who will be offended at how much I like London more than Paris and I I just sorry you know I just do there so I always I it's a city I could imagine living in and and I have great friends here and I just I love it um I'm sorry person why why it what a dumb way to praise a thing like better but is something else like why would you need to take some why take poor innocent Paris down to praise London we just say I like London watch let's just leave it at that we're going through a bit of a you know tough time limit so compliments a great greatly well so are we yeah but we're not gonna we're not gonna get onto onto politics I I just wanna I want to ask I said you were many things to many people you're obviously a writer but it's very hard to imagine you ever really have to introduce yourself I think probably when you meet people they know who you are I usually straight men here tonight with their wives or girlfriends we may have to introduce me to them but otherwise I think everybody know so I am here if if we were gonna meet someone who'd be say living off-grid for the last 25 years or in a dark cupboard and you had to introduce yourself and say who you were what what would how would what would that be I would say that I always I mean that's what I do say on the airplane when people say you know what do you do and they don't know who I am I say I'm a writer and then they say have you written anything I've heard of and then I'll say I wrote a book called Eat Pray Love and then I'll wait and there's only two reactions and it's either oh that's nice or yeah I would say was right but I think I'm I think I'm a storyteller and I think I'm a seeker I think those are probably my two biggest jobs that that's how I spend my time although my main job honestly like what most of the hours of my day go to and I'm not even being facetious is actually just managing my mental health truly because like many of us I wake up in the morning and my first conscious thought is like oh you know like how how you know every single day for my entire life and so it's a really huge amount of my day my weeks my month and my years has been given over to trying to figure out how to take that exclamation point of panic that I wake up with and just kind of settle it as best I can so that's my actual job everything else that I do is just a hobby so did you always want to be a writer were you born dreaming of being a writer not born you know as soon as you could think of it were you wanting to be a writer as soon as I could think of it yeah yeah for sure and my I mean it's it's kind of ridiculous but my sister my older sister Katherine Gilbert Murdock who just won the Newbery Medal for young adult literature by the way who's a great great great writer she and I we were raised on a small family Christmas tree farm in New England my parents were so weird and libertarian off the grid as much as you can be off the grid an hour from New York City but they were in a sense we didn't have television and we didn't have a radio and we didn't have any neighbors our age and they my parents were not of the school that it was their responsibility to keep their children entertained and so we had to keep ourselves entertained and books were very very cherished and my sister pointed out to me that she figured out very early on that the only thing that we could ever be doing that my parents would not interrupt us and put us to work doing like farm work was if we were reading that was the only thing that was respected more than physical labor and so we both figured out read a lot it'll mean that you don't have to move the wood pile or milk the goats or do any of that kind of stuff so I think and then Katherine just created these worlds that we lived in because we didn't we didn't have input from the outside world so she would create these incredible universes she would embroider everything she was reading this is even this is when I was pre literate but she'd be reading a book about some dumb 1930s children's book about cave twins and she would take that she would embroider it with a children's biography about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and then we would live for a week in a story that we were cave twins who had a dinosaur who had polio you know or like all these weird things that she would put together and and that's all we did that is all we did and we we wrote plays and we created books I still have these books that we made when we were kids that we bound with thread and we wrote the stories and we drew the pictures I get this we drew our author photos on the back and then wrote quotes from the New York Times we didn't know what the New York Times was but we would take books from my parents shelf and see that something called the New York Times had put a quote on there so we were like really living into that already from a very early age so I can't imagine that I ever ever could have been anything else and now when you come to write do you have a set routine I read that you go away somewhere where you can eat and sleep and will so you dream your stories yeah I have a I'm a very social person it's personally why I think social media has been such a natural pond for me to jump into is because I want to talk to you anyway like if we didn't have social media I would sit next to you on a bus and I would talk to you I want I want that I'm so desperately hungry for connection always and and so I feel like in some way I don't have the typical personality of a writer I think a lot of people become writers so that they never have to deal with human beings again but I really I always say that I have the soul of a very serious literary author but I have the personality of an aerobics instructor come on guys you know so I have to but I have to put the aerobics instructor away in order to do the writing and and so my process is normally like for this book maybe four years of research of just trying to learn everything that I could about because it's set in New York City in the 1940s it's about the theater world's about showgirls it's about musicals it's about World War two in New York and so I had to just almost learn that world like learning a foreign language and you want to get really proficient in that language so that when you sit down to write it just comes out really naturally so it's all about research but then when it comes time to write I have to not be with anybody except a dog it's the only allowed company and I just went away off into the country and you go to sleep at 8 o'clock at night wake up at 4:30 in the morning right nap eat something repeat repeat repeat repeat and until it's done I do it in 1 1 go as fast as I possibly can because I've learned and this is a trick this is weird because we get very fussy when we're writing and we find it's very precious and we want to treat it like it's a Faberge egg but my experience with and I'll hand this to anybody who's writing do it faster it's better the faster you write the better it is you know how I'm a drunk person can run without falling but they can't walk without falling and they absolutely cannot stand without foot you know but like how drunk people have to be in motion to not fall down same with writing if you stop or slow down you will fall and you'll draw it's incredible and I actually took a circus class once when I was in college because I went to NYU where they give you credit for that but I took a circus class and I found out it's the same you can run over a tightrope easier than you can walk on one and it's very hard to stand on one so momentum is actually what's needed and so I really like is mind trick that I do to just see like how fast I can write it and and it's and I don't look back and I don't let myself look back and so it's what it's almost my friend Martha Beck said that watching me write this book was like watching somebody swim the English Channel in one breath but it's it's really better that way it's so weird but but it also remember there's four years of preparation to swim the channel but when you do it just run you know go faster that deliberating over is it of or should it be you know is it this adjective or that will kill you you'll die in it you'll be like those dinosaurs on the tar you just have to move fast fast fast actually that's one of the things that I think I highlighted most of all in big magic is the idea that perfectionism is really something we should try and let go of when we're trying to be creative let go of perfectionism is that right yeah except to do that you have to call it by its true name and so because I think that a lot of perfectionists including myself we use that word because we pretend it's a fault it's what you say in a job interview right if my biggest if anything I'm too much of a perfectionist I care too much you know you actually secretly think it's a virtue and so the trick is to actually expose it to pull off its fake mask and to expose perfectionism by it and call it by its real name which is fear and that's all it is it's fear it's fear that you're not good enough it's fear that you're not worthy it's fear that you're going to be revealed uncovered exposed betrayed criticized all of it and so you're trying to mask that absolute terror by never making a misstep and I feel like when I call my perfectionism fear it's easier to actually make it go away cuz that's not as sexy and it doesn't sound as fancy I always say that perfectionism is just fear and high heels and a mink coat pretending to be fancy like that you know or like sort of a mustache and a you know but it's a disguise it's just terror it's just terror that's the terror it's the lie perfectionism is the lie that says that there's some kind of a rent that you have to pay to be here on this earth and that you've got to master it in order to be allowed to be here when there isn't one you already it's like you're auditioning for a part you already got like you've yet to just be here you don't have to be perfect to be here or even good you just don't have to actually do anything you're allowed to just be that fear is the thing that stops us being creative you think creativity is innate within all of us it's just a fear that would stop us from expressing it yeah and I also think it's a misunderstanding I think a lot of what stops people from not being creative is that they think that it doesn't belong to them how many times have you heard or said I don't have a creative bone in my body I wish I did I wish it was creative I don't have a creative bone in my body it's that some loony that was absolutely crazy it's the hallmark of this entire species there's barely an inch for better or for worse of this world that has not been altered by human creativity it's what we do we take nothing and we turn it into another thing and then we take that and we turn it into another thing and everyone does it it's just it's I mean there's never been a you know you can't link jump a pile of Legos in front of a three-year-old and have them be like yeah I don't have a creative bone in my body I cut you don't put like crayons in front of a kid and they're like you know I'm not that I'm not the artist might you know they're like that you're like they just they just do it until somebody tells them that they're not supposed to write and it's just a notch and the best evidence of that is what kids do and what our ancestors did I always think of my grandparents who were Depression era dairy farmers in northern Minnesota so these are people who I mean their Scandinavian Lutheran's in Minnesota and the depression you can't get less frivolous than that you know like that is like as that is like as scraped away from Beauty pleasure delight and joy as you can get is to be northern Minnesota dairy farmers in 1931 with Lutheran values and and a Swedish accent I mean that is a grim that is really grim and they didn't believe in pleasure and they didn't they didn't trust it and they didn't they didn't like seek out beauty they worked and they struggled and you know they were constantly afraid of losing the farm which they did lose eventually and they were constantly trying to figure how they were gonna survive for the next day it was a really brutal struggle and yet both of my grandparents had things that they made with their hands that were so beautiful my grandmother made quilts and my definition of creativity and art is the making of something that's so much more beautiful than it needs to be so my grandmother needed to make quilts because she had eight kids and they were cold and they couldn't afford to buy material and they had to use old scraps so it makes sense to make a patchwork quilt it didn't need to look like this quilt looked it didn't need to it was excessively these quilts are excessively beautiful I have one in my house hanging on a wall because it is so beautiful and these are people who would have said artists like what does that word even mean but they did it instinctively because there's some human desire that makes us want to do that even in the most strict and harsh and and Beauty starved deprived circumstances there's something in us it's part of the hallmark of our nature and so if you're saying that you're not creative I would just encourage you to look at your ancestors and look at the stuff they made even if they were poor especially if they were poor and then look at the kids and see what they're making and try to figure out what's broken and you buy something you were taught that said that you're not that's frivolous to do this or you're not supposed to do this or you're not invited to do this or you you didn't get the right education do it or not don't have enough money to do it or you're not talented enough whatever those things are it's just lies lies lies lies before we come unto your beautiful creation just one more slightly more general question which is also in big magic you seem to suggest that this idea that you have to suffer for your art that it's a sufferance and that it's sort of something that creates anguish that we've thought about through history that's another myth that you want to dispel yeah my reaction to that is that and it always has been I hate it's like it's maybe it's maybe the cultural myth that I hate the most there's a lot of them there's a lot of really dumb ones about women too but I really really hate that one this this romanticized literally capital are romanticized from 19th century German romantics this romanticized idea that you are not a serious artist unless it makes you bleed unless it's painful unless you give up everything for it and it and there's so many examples of it it's very male it's incredibly male it's incredibly Northern European it's incredibly Calvinist it has a lot to do with a kind of death cult that a lot of this culture is based on it's very life destroying which is the exact actual opposite of what creativity is it's kind of incredible that they did that but they managed to take something that is so life-affirming healing generative generous and beautiful and turn it into a death cult but that's what that's what like 19th century Germanic men did you know with everything they're like let's make it into something about death and and it's not it's about life and I and I have in my relationship with creativity has only ever been one of its feeding me that's what it does it feeds us my grandmother didn't make those beautiful quilts because she had a whole bunch of free time or she was trying to make money or get famous she did it because she was fed and nourished and transported by it I can just imagine how exhausted she was she got up at 4 o'clock in the morning to start feeding the farmhands who lived on her farm so that they could get up at five o'clock in the morning and work until dark and then she worked after they worked and then she made these beautiful things that were so much more beautiful than they needed to be there's no reason she would have done it other than that it saved her and it helped her and it made her feel something that her life was more than just the list that never ended of her entire responsibilities of trying to survive that is what creativity is supposed to be and that's a more feminine version of it it's it's a more giving and generous and affirmative version of it but I actually think it's how most human beings created art for most of history and life-affirming is certainly what city of girls is and it reminds me of the literary version of girls just wanna have fun and there's singing that the whole way through as somebody said it was the 1930s version of girls gone wild [Laughter] and there's obviously morals beneath it certainly but what was what were you trying to do with it what were you trying to say what message did you want to get across well um there's a story I've wanted to tell for a very long time I've wanted to write a book about promiscuous women whose lives are not ruined by their sometimes very bad decision making I don't know where I got the idea to write that book so crazy whim I had one day to write but I I wanted to write I've wanted for years to write a book that's a counter to another myth I hate which is the the cultural romanticizing again death cult romanticizing of the ruined woman which is so ingrained in our in our cultural narrative and in our stories and it's a great story I mean it's a great opera to tell the story of a woman who's ruined by desire and who makes one bad move falls in love with the wrong person trust somebody that she shouldn't trust gives over you know gives herself over to passion and that's it the whole thing you know it's like my synopsis of all of those novels and operas and poems is like nice girl on the right path feels desire goes for it one orgasm under the wheels of the Train you know I could that's it and the punishment the wages of pleasure you know it's again this this this is a cultural absolute distrust of pleasure this distrust and fear of pleasure it's so brutal and the punishment is so extreme and and I think that the reality of women's lives not just now but for for all of history is that women are capable of actually surviving their own consequences and surviving there there's a little smattering to the consequences to the consequences you know and and and truly though because honestly if their show of hands it's like it if it wasn't possible for women to survive their terrible stupid mistakes around sex and love would anyone in this room still be alive you know um we're all still here you know we're all still here we're all still here and not just here but maybe more interesting stronger more in a weird way powerful for it and that's the story that I wanted to tell and I didn't want to also tell a sort of falsely cheerful sex positive story where there's no consequences no pain and and that's part of the maturing process of my character Vivian is that she has to she extends her wildness so far out into the world and to to the point where she causes pain and creates problems that she can't fix and a lot of the books about shame and about what you do with that but ultimately she's not a ruined woman she's a seasoned woman who in her 90s is looking back at her very interesting sensual life with a lot of affection toward herself which i think is an incredible accomplishment if you can be a woman in this culture who has affection for yourself that's quite remarkable because you're yeah you're going there's a lot against you but you but you chose to that in the 1940s why did you choose then the 1940s New York was a really interesting moment well first of all I've always wanted a write a love story in New York City as well because it's it's um it's New York City is one of the great loves of my life and and it's the city that is my name for it is the great mother because it's it's the place that always takes me in when I up someplace else like I'd go up and try to be normal in a respectable place and I fail and I come back to New York it's like come back it always just been so generous to me and I love it and so I wanted to write a book about somebody who has that same feeling of love for New York that I do and I feel like 1940s was just such an impossibly glamorous moment and I wanted to set it in the theater because there's always been a lot of promiscuity in the theater it's the world that has its own rules and always has so I thought I could get away with the girls being as wild as they are but um but it's also just a really interesting moment for women's history because it was in New York and it may have been staying here but in New York the men were all gone and and so the women were running the city completely they and and they had work and they were making a lot of money a lot of women who never would have had jobs got these jobs in the munitions plants and in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during the war and and doing all sorts of very interesting things and making Bank there was and saving money and packing it away and buying real estate after the war and creating this whole new kind of woman and there had been all these rules and mores prior to the war that dissolved during the war because their rules like if you're a respectable girl you can't walk around the city in the evening without being on the arm of a gentleman well there weren't any men you know so that rule just had to die you're not allowed to eat in a restaurant if you're a respectable woman because people will assume you're a prostitute well prostitute for who like there's no dudes there's no dudes I'm gonna sit this restaurant if I want to and there's a line in the book later in life where Vivian with her circle of female friends she says one thing that she learned over time is that when women are alone with no men around they don't have to be this or that they just can be and that's kind of what happened in New York is that because there were no men around during the war all these women could just be and they became a really interesting generation and then of course the men came back and all the rules came back and all the women lost their jobs and then the skirts got really big again and like you know it was all like tight waists and tits again after that but there was this period during the war it was like trousers and flats and nobody did anything with their hair and everybody was working and riding around in bicycles and and making money and I'm like that's cool that's kind of what my life is like you know and there was just this little moment in the middle of the century where it was what a lot of women's lives were like and and I just thought it would be a really great place to set it and do you think I mean it's the 1940s it's a long time since then but obviously when a book comes out you can't divorce it from the context and do you feel it's a reaction to a counter to where we are today in the sense that me to movement there are rules again and regulations and a slightly more sanitized view of how relationships between men and women should work I will say a couple things one is let me preface it by saying I'm a violent supporter of me too I think it's long overdue and very needed expression of female rage it also like all expressions of Rage spews out in a lot of directions that are particularly tidy and that's all right because it's finding its voice and it will and it's fine and it's good and it's better than not having it and and and the conversation around consent is is obviously incredibly important I just this is not a but but an and I don't think this is a counter it's just me saying as that's happening let us also please not forget that that consent well absolutely vital is not the only word that exists in the arsenal of female sexual desire history there's also such thing as lust and desire an agency and will and hunger and and passion and the idea of a woman's standing in her own full desire looking out into the landscape seeing something that she wants and being like I'm going to go get that which is something that women also do and there's also such a thing as as women behaving very badly around sex that also exists and and we can't have full and equal conversations about sex that we're going to pretend that that doesn't happen it absolutely does happen there's also such a thing as desire that not only that women themselves can't control there's an incredible book the best book of the Year is coming out in a few weeks that is called three women by Lisa today oh and you will be hearing a lot about it it's a nonfiction book by an American journalist who spent almost 10 years following these three women who were having affairs and it's all about how uncover noble female sexual desire can be and what women are willing to risk when they're overcome by passion and the crazy things that we do when we're in that state and I think it's also a very important book at this moment so none of this is - to take away to combat to discuss to argue to debate it's just let's make sure that in this buffet of conversation we also keep in mind that female sexual desire is an ancient primal dark and I don't mean sinful I mean primal muscular uncover noble force and efforts to sanitize that have always been futile no matter where they're coming from and but that doesn't mean that we can't also be having conversations about justice and the workplace and about it you know the safety of female bodies of course it's not either/or it's both end thanks [Applause] [Music] and there's no water in this cup the emperor has no clothes and well you better for well you're pouring wood it's it's also very much isn't it about female friendship and again something that hasn't been much written about in literature in history and and we're having a time here and I think obviously in the US where books and things about female friendship are coming back we've got fleabag I'm sure there's lots of fans of that if you've seen it I am and and Dolly Alderson everything I love female friendship is is its back and something you seem to really comes across in this book it's very important to you thank you for noticing that because it is of course a book with a lot of sex in it it is about female desire but my hope is that by the last page of this book where your heart actually is connecting to this book isn't the idea of female friendship but that's ultimately what this book is about it's ultimately about a woman who learns how to be a friend to other women and there's it's really important to me in my life to be that the the foundational relationships of my life are my female friendships some of which now I am turning 50 in two weeks three weeks something like that it's gonna pause for a second so I'm just waiting for everybody to be like no you couldn't so I should try that again oh no I am I I know I know it's I'm very useful um you guys slow on the way my friend Cheryl and I were talking about how whenever we tell people our age we did this thing where we wait we're like we wait and then they never say anything we're like no you're supposed to say you don't look your age um but they don't look anyway dude I thank you that's how you do it everybody um but one of the things I'm doing this year do you think I'm doing this year to celebrate turning 50 is that I'm taking each one of my beloved oldest dearest female friends on a trip that is particular to what she would love to do so I went I took my best friend from fourth grade since I was nine to Mexico in January and then I went to Hawaii and March with another really old friend of mine and a friend of mine from 20 years ago whose birthday it is today was just celebrating time and instagrams coming to meet me here tomorrow and we're gonna go do some traveling together and in September I'm going with another and it's all about like so much I think I think we can get so fixated on our romantic partnerships and and I think we can become so certain that that is the most important like all your focus should be on that and yet I look at this field of these women who I love and and you know like with my friend Jenny we've been friends for 40 years 40 years I will never have a 40-year marriage I'm too old to even try at this point like I will never have that I you know and and I'll never have that depth of intimacy with with with anybody who knows me that deeply and so so much of this book is about celebrating that in addition to the desire for sex and for intimacy and so Vivien there's a lot isn't there of you in in Vivian I mean not not least the line I think you said about when you sit in if once I got the hang of it I found that eating alone by the window in a quiet restaurant is one of life's greatest pleasures she says yeah that's I think one of the many obviously giveaway lines but also this thing you talk about shame and I think the line at some point in a woman's life she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time and she uh she looks back on her life after that she is free to become whoever she truly is you feel do you feel you at that moment and when you look back at the author that wrote Eat Pray Love yeah is that shame in that in that book oh my god that's like a so shame based III Seamus I'm sorry I interrupted you did you hold on oh sorry I mean it's about you might just love about shame no no I was just gonna say that that's women who wrote Eat Pray Love seems ashamed to break with convention she goes off for a year but is always coming back and you have potentially now decided screw convention forever I die I don't do well in it you know I keep trying but I don't thrive I really don't try it still trying now I don't know I just like keep thinking I'm supposed to be a thing and I'm not I'm just not supposed to be a thing other than what I am I'm really not and and shame is is God it's a killer it's just so brutal it's so and it's such a shame based scarcity based culture that we live in anyway and for women it's especially it's especially brutal and God you're not allowed to make a mistake and if you do you know the only respectable thing to do is to just lacerate yourself for the rest of time about it and it's so vicious and and it's so mean it's so terribly mean because this is you know every woman that I know and probably everybody here male or female if you're in this room I would guess that you are somebody who seriously wishes and wants to and actively wants to practice universal human compassion but that actually matters to you that you've heard of that idea and that you you would love to embody that that you would love to love the world that you would love to be in a state of love and that's probably an active part of your consciousness and then probably every single one of you holds a razor to your neck all day about what a piece of human garbage you are and how your history's greatest monster and it's the dichotomy between that you know the paradox of course is that universal human compassion that does not include the self as not universal there's one big gaping hole in the universal human compassion you have to fold yourself into that as well or else you're not doing it right you know like if you want to do it right that's how you have to do it you've got to just be like I'm just one of us I'm just one of the people who who is also suffering in the dilemma of being human and I need compassion one of the things that's been a big shame Buster for me and I don't know if I can convey this but let me see think I try it but like so hand me hand me that glass okay great that was great now hand me your shame it's imaginary do you see the difference like this is a thing it's here in the material world it's a phenomenon it exists I feel it I see you you exist give me your hand here we are you're real you're warm you're live I'm here I'm warm this is real this is happening you can't give me your shame because it's not a thing it's another thing we invented it do you understand this it's imagine it's literally imaginary it's literally imaginary if I were to go into the woods and I were to stare at a boulder in the woods and I always just say to it you should be ashamed of yourself you should be ashamed of yourself I blame you blame is another one give me your blame blame me what does it do to me unless I decide to agree with the dream right that we're having some sort of a dream that were greeing upon that I'm to blame that you're to be shamed it's all this dream that weren't so if I stand before a rock and I say I blame you you should be ashamed of yourself the rock is real I'm real my voice is real it makes it it's like a vibration and the air the birds will turn around and they'll be like what you know like there'll be something that happens this sort of on the physical level but the rock it will do nothing to it you know I'm a really really good thing to do when you're ashamed and I've done this I swear this is whatever it's how to Academy I'll give it to you sit in front of a tree and ask the tree how you should handle your shame ask for advice how do you think I should get over my shame just wait for the answer and it's like what are you even talking about this is this imaginary it's this dream we've agreed upon this is complete human invention and so when I pictured that I could go to the rock and I could rip the moss off it and that would impact it and I could hammer on it and that would impact it but me saying it's your fault I blame you you failed you failed shame on you nothing it's not it's nothing's happening literally nothing is happening so somehow that that idea kind of woke me to the dream of it a little bit where I'm like you know there's there's an idea of awakening that spiritual awakening that in order to awaken you have to wake up from the waking dream you know that's the next level so there's sleep and then there's this dream that we're in and then there's an awakening past that where you're like oh so much of this is just imaginary and shame is is is is a act of imagination that you are you can actually just decide to see for what it is just just the play that we're in when you're writing when you're writing this novel when you have these messages you want to convey do you have your reader in your sights do you know who your reader is when you're writing on Instagram dear ones yeah who are you talking to and when he writes is it for them or for you more or a balance of the both it's for me it's for me because I like doing it it's fun and I enjoy it and I did it long long long before you guys were interested and thank God you are now but I would do it even if you weren't and I don't not because it makes my life really great the you are but primarily it's for me but then when I sit down to write with every book I've had a different actual person in mind who I write to so eat Pray Love was written as a letter entirely to a woman named Darcy Steinke who just wrote the other best book of the year which is called flash count diary that is about menopause that's getting reviewed everywhere that's amazing but she's been a friend of mine for 20 years and when I left to go traveling for eat Pray Love she had just gone through her own divorce her own depression she was on her own spiritual journey we were very much in the same kind of headspace the only difference was that she had a three year old and so there was no possible way she could do what I did and so I had her in my mind the entire time I was traveling and part of my impetus when I was traveling like my real encouragement to go and do and put myself out there and try really hard things was I would just think Darcy can't do this like Darcy can't do this you've got to do this like you've got to go introduce yourself to this person you've got to get on this train and go to the city by yourself because Darcy can't there's the sense that I do have of like not just that but like all my female ancestors all the way back I always say that like my grandmother who had those eight eight kids and probably probably eight miscarriages who was a farm wife and who struggled and who had children and who struggled and who was at Nagre culture and who struggled her life was precisely and exactly like the lives of every single woman in the history starting there going all the way back to Eve it was just that it was just that it was just women having babies women trying to raise babies and women trying to feed babies women trying to grow food women trying to survive women haven't they it was just that and then something happened birth control came my mom had two kids and a very different life than her mother and I have none and I'm like a new species of woman and and what I feel sometimes is this in edible energy of all of their spirits just being like go do it like do because they didn't get to do anything and every single time I walk up to my tiny little 600 square foot one-bedroom tiny little jewel box of an apartment in New York City that I own that nobody else lives in but me where every single thing in it is stuff I love and I turn that lock on the key and I look in that space I hear all my ancestors being like yeah like yeah holy you got your own house you have your own bedroom you have your own bathroom and you know that like it's tiny it's like this big my apartment but it's like I feel that and I felt that so I wrote every word of Eat Pray Love to Darcy because and it made me be able to choose what goes in the book tune it's always a piece of advice that I give to people who are writing it's just always make sure that you're writing to somebody somebody and not not to a demographic because that's not anyone you know so when I ask people who are writing something who is it for and they say oh it's for women between the ages of 40 and 60 who are on their second marriages and who are you know worried about environmental collapse I'm like that's nobody it's nobody I can't feel who that is in my heart so all of my books have been written - so my last so this one I wrote to my dear friend Cheryl who's a great reader and who is in the theatre herself and I wrote it to delight her and and I wrote signature of all things for my fourth-grade teacher who is the first feminist I ever met in my entire life I walked into class 1978 and she had a short bright red hair and vivid clothes and she was young and she was cool and she had written on the bulletin board mrs. Miss Miz and circled Ms carpenter and we were like what and and she just sat there with a bunch of nine-year-olds and explained the whole history of these words and why she would be called MS and I just remember sitting there and being like this is going to be a very good year like and it was she was amazing and she was a great gardener and she loved novels and she read Hemingway to us when she taught us Latin and she just believed that we were infinitely infinitely educated and so I wrote all of the signature of all things directly for her pleasure in her delight so I think it's a wonderful way to create because it also means you're not alone in the room you get to be with the person you're talking to and that can make you feel less alone in your creativity oh there's so many places with that I want to go but because I'm gonna move on to we talked about suffering and creativity and I know you don't think that it's a myth that you need to sort of suffer for your art at the same time eat Pray Love was born out of a very difficult time in your life and I know that this one has come after or perhaps you can tell us about the context and where it came in a really tough and unimaginably hard time and yet you were able to produce this really fun wonderful so as I said free spirited work from a really difficult dark time tell us about that yeah well first a word on suffering um it's real it's the first noble truth of Buddhism it exists and it's universal and it knows where you live this is why I don't love the cult of suffering the cult of suffering which sort of built an altar to it and romanticizes and glorifies it it's not necessary to do that when it's your turn to suffer you'll know because it will come and knock on your door and it always knows where you live and once your turn you'll know cuz you'll be suffering and so you don't need to actually go seek it in order to kind of feel like your life is more important than this that's the kind of so I don't want to deny the existence of suffering and one of the knocks that came on my door for suffering was in 2016 when the most important person in my life my beloved best friend who for years I had not even been able to figure out a word for what to call the relationship that we had best friend was very and just didn't do it it didn't begin to explain what she was she was the only thing that I was ever able to call her was my person and so I would say a husband and I have a person and and Ray has my person she's my she's my first phone call in every emergency she's my first phone call and every celebration when I'm at the end of my power and I'm terrified and overwhelmed it's rare who I call you know she provided all of that she was my adviser she was my guide she's my hero she was she's Raya she was epic she was extraordinary and and then she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer in 2016 and and death death has many uses one of his which is death and dying and suffering it's a it's a it's a very clear light that shine that can shine suddenly there's a clarity that can happen around dying and the clarity of that moment within a couple weeks of her of us finding out that this was what was happening it was like this giant klieg light spotlight came in and just shone on my life it was just so evident that oh there is a word for what Riya is she's the love of my life I just didn't I hadn't quite pieced it together like that's what it is that's what this is this is who I love and and seeing that and seeing what I saw in the next moment was a future that was so horrific Lee it just it was so unacceptable and the future that I saw was that I knew I would take care of Riya I knew I would be the one taking care of her and I knew that I would be with her at the moment of her death and I was but in this vision that I had I saw that I saw her dying and leaving this earth without ever knowing that ever knowing what she was to me and it was just my soul was appalled by that vision and I saw myself going to her funeral and people coming up to me and saying I'm so sorry your friend died and maybe like yeah and going home after that and just nothing would ever work again I just like all I saw after that would just be this like post-apocalyptic landscape word like nothing would ever work and that couldn't be allowed to occur and so it was an instant pivot an instant pivot of a very happy marriage very loving marriage and and just instantly it just and it was so clear to everybody involved it was very fast and it was very bloodless it was just it was obvious it was just obvious that this is what had to happen so I went to take care of her for the 18 months that she was dying and prior to that I had been researching this book and I was about to start writing it and then she got sick and I put it away and I never thought I would go back to it I just thought who cares about showgirls in New York City in the 1940s I only cared about Raya and but but it so I didn't work on it at all well she was well she was dying but again it was this this clarity and I just I think I just have such trust these days in like in that kind of clarity this clarity that came just a few weeks after she died that I always say like instructions from the mother ship or from the magnet in the sky I don't know it was just the best thing you can do for your life right now is to write exactly that book that you were gonna write before she got sick the most light-hearted life-affirming say sexy sensual like gay spirited you know a book that goes down like champagne cocktail and that is how you're gonna move through this grief and that's what's going to restore you because there had been just such darkness and this is now we got to get some light into this room now and and it was exactly the best thing that I could have done for myself at that moment it was so so much of this book was about bodies about bodies being in in pleasure and enjoy and the sensuality and I think after having been with a dying body that where there's so much pain and so much suffering in the pain and suffering that I experienced in that there was something that was almost like like a pagan Rite of ritual rebirth to write this and to not write a book about Raya she's not in this book you know it's not about her someday there will be something that I will create about her but it this isn't it it needed to be an exact opposite was it was about okay look rotate the earth and bring light back now because the season of darkness has been so so so dark when you announce that your relationship with Raya had changed I think was it on Instagram and I I heard you say I think it was in another interview that you didn't even think to point out that it was with a woman it didn't matter love the curtain Sophia love is love it didn't it didn't even a current you know what's so funny is that at the end of that post and the reason that I announced it was to make my life easier and also because I think transparency is easier then I think transparency is always easier and and it's just I just found it so much simpler to just constantly be sort of telling the truth about what's going on than it is to be keeping up some sort of a story and and and I wanted to be free I knew I had such a short period of time with her and I wanted to be free really free to just anywhere that I went in the world to be absolutely with her in any way that we needed to be physically arms around each other holding each other and not be like we is that Liz Gilbert who's supposed to be married to Javier Bardem what is she doing with that you know like um so I just needed to kind of clear that and I would so much rather tell you but you I just mean anyone I would so much rather tell you what's going on than have people wandering or guessing or speculating and I also just feel like any truly anything I can ever offer about my life that will make your life feel less strange to you I'm why wouldn't I you know like why wouldn't I and so it just seemed like such an obvious thing to do and I knew that people were really invested in my marriage and in the story of Eat Pray Love I also knew that you guys would be fine I have a lot of faith in you I need all be fine like um you may have been invested in my marriage you could not possibly have been more invested in it that I was I'm fine you'll be fine we're all gonna be fine you know like I just knew everybody would be alright and and so I didn't want to like baby anybody by like keeping up some sort of an appearance for people it's just crazy to do live your life that way but but at the end of that post when I made the announcement I I said you know I have one request and it's please don't bombard us with cures like just don't because or horror stories because when you when you're with somebody or when you have cancer ulsan everyone has a story that they want to tell you about they're either cancer miracle or their cancer nightmare and and there's so much to wade through there's so much and it's so many different possible ways that you can take treatments and I just didn't I was like let let us do this let Raya do this she's gonna she's gonna figure out her own path for this and knowing way it will be very much her own path and and just be respectful and please don't you know don't do that and somebody way down in the Facebook comment said when you said started that sentence I have one request please don't she said I just assumed you're gonna say please don't judge me and it was like it never occurred to me to say that never judge me for what it never occurred just why um judge no it was just seemed so crazy and the reaction was incredibly warm credibly warm and loving and and generous and still is you know this is an ongoing conversation that I've been having on social media about this entire process of loss and grief I didn't write very much about it well right it was dying because I was really out with her you know but but since she's died there's been a number of things that I wanted to share and and the sense of the sense of community in the sense of grace that I know a lot of you in this room have been part of it's just it's been exquisitely beautiful what did she teach you about grieving and dying I think she did teach you a lot you you've said you wanted to be the Florence Nightingale and you had a way that you imagined it would be and it was very different to that yeah rheya was very humbling rheya was the most powerful person I've ever met in my our life and I was like I'm going to take care of her like she's a little beautiful precious broken bird and she was like no you're not and and I came in with all sorts of ideas about about how to create like the softest gentlest most and most enlightened most peaceful transition into light and you know she was basically like Keith Richards like that's what Raya was like like that's so no that's not actually how it went and so I had to be very humbled before a lot of things and I had to be very humbled in the reality of how brutal it is to be a caregiver and I thought that I would be really good at it and I thought that all you have to do to be good at it is to really love the person and then that's enough and it's and it's actually not because it will it will take you down and when people would say things like you have to take care of yourself I was like no I don't why would I take care of myself I have to take care of this person who I love and and then I was absolutely shredded by it and I became somebody who had to be taken care of because I collapsed you will you do I was humbled by the reality that there's not a right way to do this you know I really thought that there might be just a right way to do that to do to do caring to do love to do loving to do death it was so messy it was so chaotic it was so brutal andraia was a drug addict I mean she wasn't when I met her she'd been clean for 19 years but the minute they put her on morphine I mean she was she'd been a junkie like a speedball heroin junkie for years and those substances do different things to junkies than they do to the rest of us and so in the middle of this incredible love story all of a sudden there was this amazing blooming Renaissance of massive drug addiction that happened in the center of it and I was like wow oh my god I don't even know how to do this this is a whole other thing how do you deal with somebody who's becoming a drug addict while they're dying what possible threat can you give them to do less drugs you know it's like you have no bargaining chip whatsoever you know it was insanity and she just it was part of Ray's expression of rage and autonomy and fury was to do that and and there was a six-month period in the middle of her dying where she just went on this insane bender and it was it was like this whole other element of brutality and and then there was the humility of discovering that there were other people who were better too at taking care of her than I was and and I was so convinced that because I loved her the most that I would be her best caregiver but her ex-girlfriend and her ex-wife god bless them showed up at the end of her life knowing how tough Raya was to help her and to help me and there was this massive surrender that I had to do to realize that actually Stacy is better at this than I am you know when there are times where Raya wanted to be with other people decide to me because they didn't need as much from her as I need it they didn't love her as desperately as I loved her she could just watch a football game and she didn't have to be in this all the time you know and then and there was there were all these things so none of it when at all like what I had thought and yet it was truly the most beautiful experience of my life all of it there's not a minute of it that I would have changed it's it's the most close to the bone living truly living in presence and in the chaotic insanity of this world that I've ever experienced was to be with her during that and and I and the reason that my life after as dad that doesn't look like that post-apocalyptic landscape that I had envisioned is because we did that because we did that together we had that journey together we had that time together we had that love story we had that Horror Story and and we did it fully and that's why I'm as okay as I am which is not to say that I'm not grieving it's just to say that there's life doesn't feel it feels very much still in a vibrancy and a sort of a 3d because of having experienced that degree of love you know I think read perhaps this that you posted on your Instagram account that really encapsulates how to sort of get through or what grief is for you and then just before the end before we turn to questions from the audience could perhaps you might read that yeah and thank you for reminding me of this Hannah you've brought me this backstage and you know there's things that we find that are so important and then we forget like how did I forget about this poem I posted this poem very recently and it's a poem I should have memorized because it's so so so important it's by Ellen bass and it's called the thing is the thing is to love life to love life even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands your throat filled with the silt of it when grief sits with you it's tropical heat thickening the air heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs when grief waits you like your own flesh only more of it an obesity of grief you think how can a body withstand this then you hold life like a face between your palms a plain face no charming smile no violet eyes and you say yes I will take you I will love you again [Applause] [Music] you you say you don't regret a single day as part of your as I said at the beginning philosophy of life living fully every moment if people are in the audience thinking they're not doing that what is your it's it comes throughout all the pages of Eat Pray Love it's throughout this book what do you say to people who say okay how do I do that how do I make sure I live fully appreciate every my I don't know that I do really I mean I want to like hit the brakes on that a little bit cuz like sometimes you haven't just have to have a sandwich or something you know like and and I think there's a lining for love where I mean I am very intense and that has its benefits and it also has its drawbacks and there are times when I wish that I could just have a sandwich is saying I want to lift the most vividly decorated life I can yeah I do but it's also exhausting for everyone who like it's not like necessarily the most enviable position the world needs to be my partner you know like stuff it's okay it's hard it's a tsunami you know I'm I would wish sometimes that it would be a lot calmer and there's a there's a yeah and April have I said something like I know an unexamined life is not worth living but could I someday just have an exam and lunch you know just like a little break so I don't know that you have to I just think that I will say this I will offer that if you feel okay I'll give you I was about to say something else but I'm gonna go this way instead this is a new learning that I just got from a meditation teacher who I'm working with and I posted it recently but if you didn't hear it it's a good one in it and it helps a lot so depression just start kind of stuckness depression is the lowest human vibration it's almost death that's very close to death it can lead very you can slip very easily into death from depression as we all know and we've seen so depression is like an almost it's a vibration so it's just almost not even happening and and what this teacher taught me is that you can transcend you can break depression by allowing yourself to feel sadness and fear and dread right so a depression is a refusal you're so terrified of feeling those fins you can't so it's just as shutting down that's all the energies you just kind of go flat so you can break depression by allowing yourself to feel feel sadness fear and dread then you're in sadness fear and dread which are horrible and really uncomfortable really uncomfortable feelings you can break sadness fear and dread by allowing yourself to feel up the next vibration which is rage and lust so if you want to break sadness fear and dread allow yourself to actually experience and feel your rage and your lust problem is those are also extremely uncomfortable feelings you know you're feeling totally taken hostage by them like it's not comfortable at all the only vibration that's higher than rage and lust is pride like ego pride and so allowing yourself to feel how proud you are egoic you are how narcissistic you're that's actually a way that you can break anger and and and lust and rage that's the most uncomfortable feeling of all all right it's the narcissism the pride the ego that one that one is very hard to allow yourself to feel and the only thing that can dissolve that is courage and very specifically the courage to admit that you are powerless that you are powerless over all of this that you are not to quote my favorite chapter in the Bible from the book of Job when job is just wailing at God like why is everything why is it so horrible why am I being so punished why is it so awful rage rage you know the highest level of vibration he goes from being a nice quiet guy to being enraged you know it's like right close to divinity is rage pride why me why are you doing this to me and God gives the longest speech that's that's in the Bible and it's beautiful and it's it's it's something that brings me an enormous amount of comfort weirdly it's just this slam down where God just says who is this like disturbing the peace with words that have no knowledge you know what and then just just it's takedown just says to Jobe were you there on the day that I laid the foundations of the earth did you do that did you create this earth did you do that were you there answer you know and it's a one assaulting question after no there were you there were you there when I separated the water from the land you know how that worked do you know where the light came from did you do that did you make that have you ever commanded the dawn my favorite line in the entire Bible have you ever anyone have you ever commanded the dawn did you do that have you ever been able to stop the Sun from rising or make it rise have the gates of death ever been open unto you do you know what the mysteries of death are do you know what's on the other side do you have that information anyone have you ever in just one question after that who feeds the wild Raven do you do that you know just the lightning answer to you that's a great one just the lightning answer to you Jobe so that it comes to your side and says Here I am where do you want me to go no you have no power over any of this you have no power over any of this and it's so weird to realize that the opposite of depression is an acceptance of your powerlessness because depression can feel like it's so powerlessness but actually you're still what you're doing is you're still in resistance right and that surrender into your powerlessness is the threshold of peace but you have to go through the entire ladder of all the stuff so if you're stuck in this low vibration I would encourage you with safe help if you can get it to start to feel sadness start to feel fear start to feel rage and lust start to feel pride and ego and then finally start to feel the incredible courage to just be like I have never commanded the dawn I literally have no idea what the is happening here there's not only no ground under my seed there's like no earth under the ground and then that's all spit like nut like there's no safety there's no safety I'm out of control and you get that to that place and then there's this incredible relaxation that comes over you I love and the writer Annie Lamott talks about when her son was little and he had a little car seat she put a um she put a wheel a steering wheel on his car seat so he could be in the backseat feeling like he was driving and then she had to get rid of it because it cost him so much anxiety because he thought he was driving and he didn't know how so he was like he was this little three-year-old with white knuckles like I don't know who's doing this and she said she feels like that's what all of us are like you know and so when you get to the point where you have the courage to admit your powerlessness it's when you let go of the fake wheel that was never yours anyway right and that strangely is actually the opposite of depression you don't think so because what you keep thinking is that you can control your way out of depression you can't you have to surrender your way out of it so so that would be my advice is to start feeling [Applause] [Music] okay I'm gonna very reluctantly hand over to you lot for questions you've got about 15 minutes we started 15 minutes late so if you could put your hands up we've got some roving mics and we'll get through as many as possible is there mic there and be sure please to not take that my friend unless you have an actual question which is a short statement with a question mark at the end of it so no stories we're just gonna question I'm so glad you said that was gonna bit me yes that's the line and so you have to come to the mics that right okay so if you guess we'll take you hi thank you for being you um so so compassion often people say it's got to be your being your own best friend I just wanted you mentioned your female friends what advice or what have you learned from your best female friends about compassion oh I just wrote about this today on Instagram my dear friend Cheryl whose birthday it is today when I met her um almost 19 years ago and by the way if anyone has to leave cuz you've got like kids babysitters jobs dogs go it doesn't hurt my feelings and you don't have to tiptoe you just breathe we're all free to come we're all free to go just do what you got to do so she 19 years ago when I was going through my divorce and my very serious depression um very serious like three to four year long depression where I really actually thought like oh this is what I'm actually like now this isn't just a bad phase I'm going through and I met her and she invited me to come to a meditation night and I couldn't do it I couldn't sit alone with mice I was in such shame and I was in such terror that I couldn't sit for a half an hour in silence and I had to get out bought my cushion and go into the hallway and just lose it and and and it was just in there weeping and I didn't know her very well and I my marriage was falling apart and I didn't know what to do I didn't want to leave I didn't want to stay I I felt so I was supposed to be having I promised my husband we would start having kids when I was 30 I couldn't leave already pray love why am i you know but I was at the beginning of that and and she came and sat next to me and I was doing that heaving double-pumped sobbing like that kind you know um I've done it this week I still do it it's like a thing I do um but she came and she sat with me and all I could keep saying was I don't know what to do I don't know what to do I don't know to do because I didn't and she just took my face in her hands and she said this beautiful calm smile tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth that's it and that has continued to be so I learned that from her that was kind of the first time I heard that idea cuz I grew up like many of us in a family where I had an ethics professor in college who said he was this great guy with his Bronx accent and he said my mother demanded the truth but she couldn't deal with it like this is how most of us were raised where the truth was link demanded but nobody could deal with it so it's like be honest but don't let us actually know the truth and um and so that's where a lot of our splits come from in ourselves and and so telling the truth was how I got through that and Raya who was a great truth teller who had gotten sober and stayed sober for 19 years by being a truth teller because that's the only way to be sober and she had this great adage that I absolutely loved which was the truth has legs it's the only thing in the room that will always end up standing so everything else can fall apart all the relationships can fall apart all the dramas can blow up everything can turn to dust at the end of the day at the end of the whole drama the truth will be the only thing that is left standing in the room and Azrael used to say since it's where we're gonna end up why don't we just start there and that's what she would do is like that's and that's I've learned it and I learned it from her and I can honestly say that that's what I do now in every dilemma is I think let's just start there let's just start with the truth and since it's where we're going anyway and it's made it hasn't necessarily taken away suffering disappointment and pain heartache but it certainly has taken away a lot of drama yeah the truth-telling is a really good way to lure the drama but thank you so much yeah thanks thank you for you pretty love cuz it was my and to my spiritual journey oh yeah the question that I have is I've decided about eight years ago that I don't want children I don't think it's for me and everyone around me wants to convince me otherwise and I respect people who do decide to have children but it's just not for me but sometimes I do get the fear about you know when I'm older and then I'm gonna be alone because I don't have kids when everybody else you know might pass and I just wonder how do you deal with that decision and what advice do you have for women who might make that make that I have such a gift for you I have statistics would you like them I have statistics first of all you're gonna live longer you are women without children live longer than women with children you're gonna be wealthier you're gonna be less liable to commit suicide you're gonna be less liable to become an addict you're going to be less liable to you let you'll weigh less it's so weird it's like every single you'll you'll be healthier they'll have less heart disease less depression less anxiety so that's okay first of all you know and for everyone who has two kids doesn't mean you're doomed you know Mike I think that actually you what women do when they want to and when they when they feel that desire I almost think it's not a choice like that's how I felt for like for me is it that ultimately it was like I know what it feels like God do I know what it feels like to want something um I really it's not like I walk around not knowing what longing feels like I just never had that longing you know so I just been obedient to my longings and rather than to what what other people have told me to do so first of all like you've got great future ahead of you but secondly this whole is kind of this is how they get you like cuz they'll be like oh it's all well and good now you'll die alone and your cats will eat you so there have been some very fascinating studies that have been done in American nursing homes of elderly women to determine whether or not it is true that women who don't have children or family are unhappier an old age than women who do and this is what they have determined it is a non-starter in terms of a measuring they can't find any statistical correlation between happiness and old age of happiness and health and old age of elderly women and whether or not they have children here are the things that actually determine whether you will be happy when you are an elderly lady and it is your health so what they worry but what makes the old ladies unhappy is their poor health and financial and security so flustered teeth wear your seat belt save your money and you'll have a greater life of the absolute [Applause] [Music] hello this is a much easier way of doing it popping up yeah such a joy see you again it's a joy to show you last year as well my question is around something that you said on the Sheri and Nancy podcast which I've heard other people say which is that you can't truly love another person until you really love yourself and it's something that I've struggled with because I am incredibly kind and generous and giving to my friends and everybody but I'm awful to myself like without even realizing it and so I feel like I can give a lot of love now and though I'm not giving a lot of love and way to myself yeah how does that sentence fit together and if I'm wrong and you're right and it's just that you know we are all on the whole of life is a journey towards loving ourselves unconditionally right and that's why when we were in relationships with other people you know they might fail they might not be good or them we might have problems it's because all of us some further along than others at the point where we don't love ourselves give ourselves the love that we really need I'm kind of wishing ahead and said that honestly no I'm thinking not the only person that said I know I know I know it's like a trope it's a thing and actually as you're saying and I'm like it's true like where and and what did I mean when I said that and I think I I don't know that it's true because I think that a lot of people I know who are very as some of my very dearest friends are absolutely big they actually have terrorists who live inside their minds who are so evil to them and they're so good and kind yeah it's funny so they do absolutely have the capacity to love and to have really generative and beautiful relationships so I think that maybe that is simply not true and and maybe even it's cruel to say it because it just gives you another thing to think you're doing wrong and that's not nice and I don't like to ever ever kind of I don't ever like to add to the pile of things especially things that women think they're doing wrong so I'm kind of glad you brought it up and I think maybe I won't say that any more thanks for me I think um you know I I do think in my own case that you know self-love is a very very high lofty aspiration and and and I kind of don't even use the word self-love because I think it's a bit degraded and-and-and meme like and I'm not sure any of us really even know what it means and I settle for just the friendliness is the word that I use a sort of a sort of essential like a sort of essential friendliness from self to self I think that that's a good place to start self-love just seems like it could be out of reach for a lot of us and and when that doesn't work the word that I use that really will often restore me back to sanity and back to dropping the knife that I hold to my throat is stewardship so that the way that I see that especially because women are stewards of so many precious things like women of the women have always been the stewards of the vulnerable beautiful precious fragile things in the world right so so the way I have come to see it is that I again I don't know what is literally going on in the universe but it does appear that I was given this one to take care of I don't know why apparently they thought that I could like they're like we're gonna we're gonna trust you with this one and I sort of like to think they wouldn't have given it to me if they didn't think that I could take pretty nice care of it you know or protect it as much as possible and so the sense is the stewardship of your own being right that is for some reason they gave me this one they gave me this body they gave me this mind they gave me these talents they gave me these traumas and these anxieties and then I think that the I think the assignment is can you take care of it you know would you be kind to it we're giving it to you or putting it in your hands which would be kind to it as you would be kind to any fragile living thing and in that sense of my sense of land stewardship over myself has gotten me out of some very bad situations in my life that I might have stayed in longer that were not places where this being was thriving right so I believe that part of stewardship is to put this being into environments where it can thrive and thriving to me means being able to sleep well being able to eat well being and not as abrupt not not at burdens not really heavy with anxiety being you know like just being a good good situation for it like a good environment for it and what I've discovered over the years is that I can actually weirdly trust at this point that when I put it into a circumstance that's not good for it it will collapse and that's my dear friend life guiding me that this isn't actually where it's supposed to be because when I find myself back in a doctor's office asking for antidepressants again I'm like wait a minute wait a minute where am I in my environment that this isn't this thing's not thriving it's not thriving it can't sleep it can't it can't eat it's crying all the time it's like this thing that I was given to take care of isn't doing very well what are we gonna have to change to take care of it so that I think is is how I see self-love is just of a reverence for life which I think women are good at women are really good at reverence for life we take care of vulnerable beautiful special things we just forgot that we're one and that we're actually lead one that it's like whatever there's other ones that you may take care of for short periods of time or longer periods of time but they come and go even your own kids will eventually go and then who's the one that you're constantly in stewardship over it's got a you know it's got to be you so so I take back what I said and and I think it was kind of a mean thing to say and I'll pile contemplate that more but I do still think that it's worthy to cultivate an essential posture towards yourself a friendly friendly stewardship let's just call it that and then we can maybe aim for love but but I think essential friendly stewardship not treating yourself like you're a mugger would be nice you know so yeah thanks thanks honey yeah I'm sorry I know that there are so so many more questions but my little clock is just showing the noughts but thank you all so very much for coming and Elizabeth Gilbert thank you so so so much thank you get up there [Applause]

Channel: How To Academy Mindset

Views: 212,603

Rating: 4.8872433 out of 5

Keywords: Liz Gilbert, Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love, City of Girls, Big Magic

Id: fSsMjI1OcgM

Length: 80min 47sec (4847 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2019