Attraversiamo.Someone enrolled in Italian might be able to tell you this beautiful foreign phrase means “Let’s cross over,” and someone who’s read Eat, Pray, Love might be able to tell you it’s the perfect word to summarize Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey to finding one, essential thing: herself.
As Elon collegiettes™, finding ourselves usually consists of declaring a major, deciding who to live with, and what outfits to wear on the weekends. Fast forward fifteen years and Elizabeth Gilbert has to find herself in much different ways than the girls of Elon.
In Gilbert’s case, she was practically a missing person. At thirty-one years old she had the marriage, the career, and the life that most women only dream of. But that was just how it seemed on the outside. On the inside, she was fading, literally sobbing on her bathroom floor night after night. At one point she says, “I just wanted to get out of there. I felt like if I didn’t, I would die.” Her candid honesty about her struggles and her flaws are one of the book’s many strengths, making her writing raw, real, and beautiful. She never tries to be something she’s not, and she simultaneously encourages the reader to do the same.
If one thing’s for sure, Elizabeth Gilbert was not happy. Rather than loving her life, she felt suffocated by it, and in turn, refused to accept the conventional lifestyle pushed upon today’s women: get a job, get married, get pregnant. She wanted more. Restless, Gilbert made a life altering decision that included leaving her husband (upon which a messy divorce followed), entangling herself in a post-marriage affair (upon which a messy break-up followed), and then, ultimately, leaving it all behind (upon which something beautiful unfolded).
Gilbert’s concept in rebuilding her life was this: travel to three places to find a piece of herself. First, to Italy where she rediscovered pleasure; second, to India where she chased devotion; and third, to Indonesia where she fought to find a balance between the two.
As a travel junkie (which I’m sure many Elon collegiettes™ are, too), I absolutely adored each section of Gilbert’s book. She supplements quality writing and compelling metaphors with solid research, composing images, and vivid scenes and characters that you don’t feel like you’re sitting in your pajamas in your dorm room—you’re eating pizza in Rome with Luca Spaghetti, you’re scrubbing the floors of an Indian ashram, and you’re catching the eye of an attractive Brazilian named Felipe.
Gilbert’s decision to begin this year-long journey took courage, strength, and most notably, a faith that she can only describe as “walking face-first and full-speed into the dark.” Although she knows not all her readers will have the ability to travel like she did, in an interview with Oprah she encouraged women to embark on their own spiritual journey in other ways.
“Start a journal and answer this question every morning: What do I really, really, really want?You have to say really, really, really three times or else you don’t believe it. And answer it truthfully and do it again the next day and the next and the next,” she says. “Because you can’t set your journey if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”
So why not figure out what you’re looking for? With the beautiful spring semester ahead, what better way to spend free time than curling up to a book that’s also an inspiration.