Ready to Eat, Pray, Love?

My favorite book of last year is coming to the big screen this weekend when Julia Roberts shows us all how to eat, pray and love. In honor of the book’s theme, falling back in love with your own life, I’m going to make a few suggestions for the upcoming week to get you pumped for opening night.


1. Eat. Since the book is really a feast of words, and since some of those words are about food, it’s time to embrace food as a sixth sense. Eat a dessert this week. No, Oreos are not a dessert. They are chalky, greasy things that we reach for when we’ve had a long day of work, and we are looking for a bit of comfort in all the wrong cupboards. A candy bar doesn’t count either, even if you’re like me and you’ve been off sweets for so long that you actually think that a chocolate bar is the equivalent of really great sex (or, if you’re a mother, a really long soak in a bath tub.)

Go into a store that still has a bell on the door and where you are greeted with smells that you haven’t sniffed since you were at your grandmother’s house on her baking day. Choose a sweet that is displayed behind a shiny glass case on silver trays and served on a doily. Only then have you met the essential requirements of this task. Don’t worry, this bit of indulgence will not send you into a diabetic coma—no matter what Jillian Michaels tells you. Once you’re finished with your dessert, call all your girlfriends and arrange to go to the best restaurant you can afford before the movie. You want a restaurant that evokes the imagery of the book, “The mushrooms here are like big thick sexy tongues, and the prosciutto drapes over pizzas like fine lace veil draping over a fancy lady’s hat. And of course there is the Bolognese sauce, which laughs disdainfully at any other idea of ragu.” And this time, enjoy the food—no showing your girlfriends how committed you are to your diet.

2. Pray. When I think back to my life prior to a husband, children and just adult responsibilities in general, the thing I miss most is the quiet. Now my life has no space between noises. I wake to the cat mewing to be let out, followed by the sound of my husband’s shower. Next comes the blow-dryer and the morning news, kids asking for missing shoes and the sound of my horn as I signal for the bus to wait for us. Then it’s the radio to work, phone calls and conversations, television and homework, baths and bedtime stories. Finally I fall into bed and drift asleep to the nature sounds playing on my alarm clock.

This is our week for empty space. If this means that we “go to the bathroom” for 45 minutes, then so be it, but for a few minutes this week we are going to listen to nothing, worry about nothing, and think of nothing. I’m not going to kid you. This is the toughest assignment of the week. You will have monkey-brain, your thoughts will jump around in no particular direction and you will be powerless to stop it. You’ll think of grocery lists, and appointments, you’ll wonder if you should paint the wall you’re staring at while you’re trying to enjoy silence. Elizabeth had the same problem. “Going into that meditation cave every day is supposed to be this time of divine communion, but I’ve been walking in there lately flinching in the way my dog used to flinch when she walked into the vet’s office (knowing that no matter how friendly everybody might be acting now, this whole thing was going to end with a sharp poke with a medical instrument.)” She overcame the problem in the same way you’re going to. Tell yourself, “Listen—I understand you’re a little frightened. But I promise, I’m not trying to annihilate you. I’m just trying to give you a place to rest. I love you.”

Enjoy your newfound moments of peace this week. My bet is that there won’t be too many of them.

3. Love. If you know anything about the book we’re celebrating it’s that we need to find balance in our lives. We can’t run around like a bunch of addicts, chasing our next high if we hope to stay off mood-altering medication. But we sometimes do just that. When we diet we restrict our food so much that we actually begin to believe that rice cakes don’t taste like sawdust, and strawberries are essentially little red balls of sugar. Or we are really, really good at the diet for about two days and then we dive into ding-dongs with the abandon of a child in a swimming pool. Then we beat ourselves up, running reel-to-reel tapes of how sad and pathetic we are. We work long hours, and go home with mom-guilt crushing our bones so much that we drag our children to the toy store without them even asking. Balance is tricky—and usually only achieved by those stout little Olympic gymnasts that can also spin like a top.

But this week we are going to try for a little balance. No beating ourselves up for flaws that are, in reality, minor and not life altering. You will work hard, but then you will allow yourself some down time. I will too. And then, we will all proceed to the movie theater where I hope to find balance crammed into a theater seat, next to my wonderful friends, sipping my first Coke in two weeks.

Thank you Elizabeth Gilbert

Millions of women read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love and fell madly out of love with their own lives—myself included. I walked around for days in a funk. How indulgent to take a year and rediscover myself while traveling. Heck, on my budget I’d have to pick Omaha, Billings, and Phoenix but that could work I suppose. Wait a second. Never mind. I forgot that summer’s almost here and that means my kids have swim lessons, scout camp and the need to see every blockbuster to hit the big-screen. I don’t have the budget for reconnecting with myself. I’ll have to put that on my “things I want to do once my kids finally leave home” list. It’s a long list and, since I adhered to the new tradition of having my children later in life, I’m hoping the nursing home can read my handwriting.

Like Elizabeth, my life is missing something. I just can’t put my finger on it. I pondered on this for the five or so minutes I have to myself in the shower each morning before I had to get kids to school and daycare. Thankfully, while many families were dealing with job loss, my husband and I had never been busier. He was working out of town, I was working through my own busy season and my kids were hitting the home stretch heading to the end of school. I knew that my life was missing something but I didn’t have time to figure out what it was. And I felt guilty complaining about it because my life is good. I love my family and I’m reasonably happy with my job. My kids are sort of self-sufficient, in that they can pour their own juice but they normally drip all over the floor, and my husband still likes to come home from work. So, while riding a mule across Mexico or running in the Hawaiian Iron Man would be adventurous, I’m not ready to scrap my life on the chance that I might rediscover—something. Besides, what if I rediscovered that I am boring and shallow? Then I’d be enlightened, undate-able and alone. If I was going on a quest to find myself, I’d have to squeeze it in between soccer practice and meetings with clients—I just didn’t have the energy. Enter summer and a new, and unexpected schedule. I was moving to part-time because of a lack of work. This meant more—time. And less money, but that’s life.

Thanks to Elizabeth I took the time to think about what I wanted to do this summer and I realized that I didn’t have a clue. I made lists of stuff. Finally print the last six years of photos off the computer and put them in scrapbooks. Clean out the storage room. Learn to make jewelry. Actually plan at least one meal every week instead of making up a dish using all the leftovers in the fridge. Garden—the kind that grows something other than weeds and squash. Exercise for more than a week straight. Break my addiction to peanut butter cups. Redecorate the kitchen. As it turned out, I had lots of things I could do with my time and nothing that I really wanted to spend any time on. And that’s when it dawned on me—I don’t know what I like.

I’ve heard that people who go through a long period of illness learn a lot about themselves because they are forced to examine their lives and eliminate the unimportant. Elizabeth had to find a way to close the door on her old life and move into a new one because of a painful divorce. Both methods led to rediscovery, but I didn’t want my life to have to crash down around me in order to step back and figure out how to be truly happy. The only question is can it be done?

This is the answer to that question. I am turning this into the summer of awareness and I’m writing about it. I will discover 100 things I truly love, while still keeping my family in clean clothes and going to the grocery store. In the end I hope to emerge genuinely happy. That is my purpose this summer. Wish me luck.