"The Terrorist Who Lives Inside My Mind"

I think I’ve always been a little bit in love with Liz Gilbert—in a parasocial, she knows me better than I know myself, “Are you my twin flame?” way—innocent and meaningless but probably best kept to myself (whoops!)

It started, as it does with everyone and Liz, with reading Eat Pray Love, when I, too, was recovering from a harrowing divorce, my forehead pressed to the cold tile of the bathroom floor. I read that book and felt absolved of my crime (if getting divorced before I turned 30 was one, which, in my mind, it absolutely was). Maybe I could eat and travel my way out of this discomfort, too? Author’s note: turns out I couldn’t, but I could drink a lot.

Years later, when Liz Gilbert announced her relationship with a woman, on the heels of my other Gen-X heroine Glennon Doyle revealing her own homosexuality, I, too, had a “WAIT — maybe I am a closet lesbian too” moment. Didn’t we all? No. Ok, anyways…

And then, one magical fall day at a conference in Chicago for women in recovery, the one and only Liz Gilbert came to give the keynote presentation, and she yet again blew me away with her stories. The way she could take my feelings and arrange them into a work of art, like a word charcuterie board.

I’m a married heterosexual woman, but I would be anything for Liz.

Or maybe I’m just a love addict.

Or so Liz would have me believe as I read her new book All The Way to the River, a book I believed was about her self-described soulmate Raya and their devastating love affair a half dozen years ago. But at its core, this book is not a memoir or a love story. It’s a book about addiction and recovery.

You didn’t know Liz Gilbert was an addict? Well, she is. She really, really is. And I hate that she spends so much time in the book determined to prove it to her readers, because Liz… I believe you.

Yet I imagine Liz has had to spend most of her writing career post Eat Pray Love having to prove herself. She had to prove her hit book wasn’t a one-off with every book she’s written since. She had to prove her marriage was the happy ending she’d promised her readers with her book Committed. And now, she shares through countless mentions of stories from “the rooms” of 12-step meetings and recovery vernacular that she is one of us. An addict. Powerless. A friend of Bill.