This Friday I have the very good fortune to see one of my heroes. Elizabeth Gilbert is coming to Halifax for a speaking event called Make Big Magic. I am excited and truly relishing the anticipation.
I came late to the exciting world of Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling book, Eat, Pray, Love. I only read it earlier this year after hearing her on Rob Bell’s podcast. But it launched a renewed season of my healing journey! I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and the experience was so traumatic and confusing that my brain hid the memories from me until I was 30 years old. For the last 13 years have been reckoning with the fall-out from this life-sucking awareness. I have been on a healing journey, experiencing the highs and lows of post-trauma anxiety and grief. Even as I healed, grew, and became, there were barriers I could not cross. I have felt like an intruder in my own life. Belonging and worthiness eluded me, despite my brave face and courageous wrestling with demons of the past.
When I read Eat, Pray, Love, (I believe the Universe saved it for me until it would have the impact I needed) I felt a beckoning, an invitation, a welcome. In sharing her journey so vulnerably, Elizabeth Gilbert gifted me permission to enter my own life as the hero. She inspired me to re-connect with my body – a feeling I hadn’t experienced since before the abuse. I truly didn’t even realize my soul-body relationship was so broken. These days I relish each opportunity to live as both body and soul, eating delicious food, being moved by music, and simply exploring the ways the tangible world meets my intangible experience of it. This is my Italy. I welcome this time of re-learning and connecting with physical pleasure and joy.
However, shame has a way of growing inside each cell of a being – becoming indistinguishable from the person herself. I could no more rip out the shame and hurt of my past than I could remove my skin in one piece. Eat, Pray, Love taught me to be patient with myself. In the Pray section of her book, Elizabeth Gilbert beckoned me to the long journey – not with gritted teeth or steeled endurance, but with joy and restfulness. The forgiveness I am finding for myself is more exhilarating than any breath-taking view. Indeed, forgiveness and love for myself is my own Everest. The joy is in the climb. And someday when I find myself at the top, the flag of my own True Self planted firmly at the summit, I will be grateful, not only for the view, but for the journey that led me there.
The third section, Love, is less clear to me. I’ve always known I was loved by God. It’s interesting – Richard Rohr says we find God only through great love or great suffering – I have never questioned either the existence or the goodness of God. Perhaps this is a gift of suffering. The Great Presence so imprinted on my soul that even when I didn’t remember the events themselves, I knew I have never been alone. I always knew I was loved in that deep, secure way that God loves. The knowledge that God was with me during the most horrible and confusing moments of my life does not make me angry that God didn’t act. I’m fascinated by the fact that I was held, even then, even there. The mystery of this God who suffers and stays is my one great mysterious love affair. In the long, dark tunnel of healing from trauma, love can be a difficult concept. But I am passionately pursued. My entire being leaps within me at the tender wooing of…who? God, Divine Presence, Creator, Mystery, Spirit. Whoever this is, my soul responds from a place of security and deep peace.
And so, right in the middle of my own Eat, Pray, Love journey, I am thankful to see, in person, one of my guideposts. How is your journey, friends? Have you encountered guides along the way, sometimes in unlikely places? Lean in, open your hands to receive, because mysteries and miracles are falling around us like rain! Now go out there and jump in some puddles.
Something Deeper 
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