The Warm Vanilla Pudding Hum Of Well Being: A Conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert, Part I
On being love starved; gliding three inches above the carpet in a cloud of grace; loneliness, sadness, and anger; and signing up for Earth School
Intimate conversations with our greatest heart-centered minds.
What can one say about
that hasn’t yet been said? She’s wise. She’s funny as fuck. She’s kind-kind-kind. She’s deeply introspective and honest about herself in ways that leave me in open-mouthed awe. She’s forthright and generous and wants us all to be well and happy—but she also sees clearly the suffering swimming both inside and outside of each of us. When she has answers, she offers them. When she doesn’t, she tends to go on journeys—internal and external—to find the answers, and usually meets exceptionally interesting and badass people along the way. And she’s an interesting badass herself. Oh, and she loves animals, she loves love, she’s curious as can be. She recently shaved her head and looks incredible. She’s comfortable with the uncomfortableness of pushing through. She loves joy. She loves words. She loves being here on this planet. And, yet, sometimes she doesn’t love being here, at all. Her laugh is big and vibrant and frequent. I began by putting [laughter] notations every time Liz laughed but they were really adding up. So just imagine Liz laughing a lot. Like, a lot a lot. She’s warm and thoughtful and searingly true. I kind of fell in love with her. If you’re not yet, I think you will, as well!Liz wrote the wildly successful Eat Pray Love. She’s also written The Signature of All Things, City of Girls, Big Magic, Committed, and more. She’s the force behind the beautiful, tender, heart altering Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert here on Substack. And she’s the founder of The Onward Book Club.
Liz and I spoke for two hours and I had an impossible time whittling all that magnificence and brilliance down into a twenty minute read—so I’ve split the interview into two. You’re reading Part I. You can read Part II here. Both will be free for one week. I hope you enjoy and share them! Next week, I’ll be sharing a brilliant deep dive into writing advice from Liz (research, notecards, more research, more notecards, plot, story treatments, and a storytelling prompt that will change everything!) which will be paywalled. If you haven’t yet upgraded your subscription, now is a good time!
Note: I didn’t record the first twenty minutes of our talk, it felt too private. I met Rayya, Liz’s deceased wife, when I was nineteen and she stayed in my life until I was thirty-three. If you know anything about Rayya’s story—and I highly recommend her gorgeous memoir Harley Loco—you’ll know these were the years when Rayya was heavily in her addiction, so whilst she was best friends with my now ex-husband, our relationship was not an easy one. We later found each other again and made the peace, which is one of the most staggeringly healing things I’ve experienced. Liz and I talked about this and more. Liz thought I was recording and now I wish I had because it was a beautiful discussion of love and loss and forgiveness and the endurance of friendship—even complicated ones. I mention it here because in both Part I & II of the interview, Liz references the unrecorded portion so I wanted to provide context.
I hope you enjoy! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
You are so beloved. When people introduce you on podcasts and at talks—and it’s not just words but the sound of their voice—it’s almost like they’re introducing a high lama…
I just pictured a llama, with two l’s! And being introduced in that tone. It's like, “Oh, my God, look who we have here!” Trot, trot, trot on the little feet. “That's even better!”
What are you experiencing in your body when you hear people saying these words about you? What’s going through your head?
That's a really good question. It’s usually right before I'm about to go on stage. Talking, whether it's an interview or a speech, is an extremely comfortable place for me, especially when it's an audience of people who, on purpose, came to see me. That means that I know who they are in that audience.