News & Blog

FRIDAY HOUSEKEEPING! Dear Ones – We get a lot of new people joining this Faceb…

Oct 24, 2014

FRIDAY HOUSEKEEPING!

Dear Ones –

We get a lot of new people joining this Facebook page every day (thank you for joining our little community, new folks!) so once a week, I try to give everyone all the information they might want, about other places on the Internet to find me.

So let’s run down the list:

My website is https://ift.tt/sUqSyM. There, you can find information on all my upcoming events (SEE YOU IN PITTSBURGH, OHIO, SEATTLE & SAN JOSE soon!) see videos, read my thoughts on the writing process, and download book club guides to my books!

I have an email newsletter (where I always reveal my big news first, see exclusive home videos, and sometimes run contests, when I remember to.) You can join the newsletter by clicking the icon on the left of this page called "LizNews" and signing up. (You can also sign up for LizNews on the homepage of my website.)

You can follow me on Twitter, where I basically just goof off, at: https://ift.tt/1tJzIxR

You can follow me on Instagram (which I just started because some 14-year-olds told me to) at:

https://ift.tt/1tJzIO7.

You can follow me on Pinterest (that addictive crack house, whose vortex I try not to tumble down too often because it’s a gorgeous suckhole) at: https://ift.tt/1tJzKpd

And if you EVER want to buy to buy signed copies of ANY of my books, you can buy them online through the shop, Two Buttons, that I run in New Jersey with my husband (otherwise known as “that Brazilian guy”.) The link is right here: https://ift.tt/1pfR7PX

That is all, my dears!

(And yes, in all these various social media forums, it is actually ME doing the posting, the chatting, the responding, the pinning, the time-wasting. I like it. It’s fun. I like hanging out with you guys. I’m glad you like hanging out with me. Also, I have no children and my husband cooks, so I have plenty of extra time on my hands…)

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Thanks for everything!

(And love from the rainy beautiful beaches of Miami! See you tonight at Oprah's The Life You Want Tour — those of you who are going!)

ONWARD,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

THANK YOU, RICHARD FROM TEXAS…and rest in peace. Dear Ones — Today is the bi…

Oct 24, 2014

THANK YOU, RICHARD FROM TEXAS…and rest in peace.

Dear Ones —

Today is the birthday of my dear friend Richard from Texas, who passed away in 2010.

I loved this man so much, and I miss him constantly.

Many of you came to love Richard, too, from the minute he walked onto the pages of EAT PRAY LOVE. His influence and guidance over my life was certainly incalculable — as was the joy of his company.

Richard was a trickster and an outlaw by nature, which made him such an unusual candidate for a spiritual teacher (although maybe not, since there's an awful lot of trickster energy in the universe.) We always had adventures together that bordered on the illegal and the illicit — or sometimes even crossed that border.

The last time I saw Richard alive, he'd come to visit me in New Jersey, and somehow he convinced me to break into an abandoned house with him. We'd just been driving around the countryside, and he saw this big old empty house, and he wanted to check it out. It was totally illegal, of course, and also a bit of a complicated operation. (There was a ladder involved, "borrowed" from an old barn, and the jimmying of windows and locks.) The whole time, he was totally relaxed. Richard climbed up to slip into an second-story window while I held the ladder for him, quite nervously (I am NOT an outlaw).The whole time, he was grinning like a kid — like a very naughty kid — while I kept saying, "I can't believe you're a spiritual role model to millions!"

I'll never forget Richard grinning at me from a window on the second floor of that abandoned house, saying, "Groceries! You gotta come in here and check it out! It's AMAZING!"

I said, "How am I going to explain this to the police, if they drive by and see me holding this ladder?"

He said, "I'll hide, and you tell them it was an accident. Tell them you didn't know it was private property."

I said, "Richard, I'm holding a LADDER!"

He said, "You're a writer; you can make up a good story for the cops if they show up," and then he vanished into upstairs of the abandoned house — though he kept popping his smiling face out of various windows to tell me what a great time he was having.

This is how I always picture Richard up in heaven — popping his head out of various windows to grin down at me. Daring me to take risks. Laughing at my fear. Way up high in an unknowable world. Having a ball.

I love you, Richard. Thank you for the laughter, the lessons, the felonies!!!

LOVE,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

Dear Ones – A story: Years ago I was on the midtown cross-town bus in NYC, in…

Oct 23, 2014

Dear Ones –

A story:

Years ago I was on the midtown cross-town bus in NYC, in evening rush hour, in January, in the sleeting wind and rain.

Yeah, it sucked.

The bus moved at a crawl, and everyone on it seemed depressed. It would've been far faster to walk across town, but the weather was too godawful to bear. Everyone was definitely hating their life that day.

When we reached 10th Ave, the bus driver made a surprising announcement.

He said, "Ladies and Gentleman, we are now nearing the Hudson River. I'm going to ask you to do me a favor. When you get off the bus, I'm going to hold out my hand. As you walk past me, I want you to drop your troubles into the palm of my hand. I'll take your troubles for you, and when I drive past the river, I'll throw them in. The reason I want to do this is because you all seem like you've had a bad day, and I don't want you taking all your worries and sorrows home to your friends and families now. Because they deserve better than that, don't they? So you just leave your troubles here with me to dispose of, and you all go have a wonderful night, OK?"

The whole bus — the whole grumpy lot of us — broke into laughter. (Some of us, myself included, might have even shed a tear or two.) And one by one, as we filed off the bus, we dropped our troubles into the palm of this good man's hand, and we stepped off the bus with smiles on our faces.

What that guy did? That's the best and most powerful example I've ever personally witnessed of TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ENERGY THAT YOU BRING INTO A SPACE.

The quote I've posted here today is from the great Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, a neurologist who had a stroke, and who wrote about it in her beautiful book MY STROKE OF INSIGHT. (If you aren't one of the 15 million people who already watched her incredible TED Talk, here it is: https://bit.ly/1t6z1CM)

When Jill had her stroke, she lost all function in the part of her brain that distinguishes "self" from "other". She lost the ability to tell where she began and the rest of the world ended. There were no boundaries, no borders. All she could see was pure molecular energy. While she was recovering in the hospital, doctors and nurses would walk in and out of her room all day, and the only thing she could distinguish about them was their energy — the anger, or grace, or kindness, or resentment that each person brought into her presence. Some of that energy was healing and helpful, obviously…some of it was decidedly not. When Jill recovered enough to do so, she asked for a sign to be written, to hang outside her room: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ENERGY THAT YOU BRING INTO THIS SPACE.

Oprah told this story the other night at The Life You Want Tour, and I loved it.

You've heard me talk before about BRINGING THE LIGHT to any and every situation. That's what it's all about. This is the same deal. That's what the bus driver understood that day on 10th Ave — that the crosstown midtown bus was HIS SPACE, and that he needed to take responsibility for its energy. So he turned that energy around, and managed to transform people's gloom into pure grace.

Wherever you work, wherever you live, wherever you shop, exercise, study, travel — wherever you go — take note of the energy that you bring. Pause before you enter into any space (from the dentist's office, to your cousin's house, to a cathedral) and ask yourself what you're bringing in there.

Identify your energy, and take responsibility for it.

Whatever needs to be thrown in the river, by all means: toss it.

And if you have good examples of watching people BRING THE LIGHT, share them here!

ONWARD,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall