All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation

Gilbert addresses God in this poem. She imagines God visiting her unannounced and not blaming her for anything. She believes that God will teach her “inquiry, honesty, and faith” and steer her towards freedom and serenity (315). She equates God with love and imagines it as a merciful and reassuring presence.

In the year following Rayya’s death, Gilbert succumbed to her old habits of seeking sex and love for comfort and validation. Looking back, she feels some part of her knew that it was unhealthy, but she could not fight her impulses. Re-reading parts of Eat Pray Love, Gilbert cannot believe how her addiction was staring her in the face. In that book, she used addiction as a metaphor for her experience in relationships, while now, twenty years later, she realizes that it was actually “the absolute, bald-faced reality” (323). She admits that her dependency on romantic relationships has been a feature of her entire adult life. Her experience of pursuing new people after Rayya’s death ended the same way her other relationships did: in a breakdown. However, this time Gilbert had some awareness of her own patterns and knew she needed to return to rooms of recovery.

Gilbert returned to recovery meetings for people with love and sex addictions. She felt like she was turning herself in and giving up her decades-long commitment to her addiction. Gilbert recognized herself in everyone else’s stories. Gilbert was surprised by how much she could relate to almost everything that other people shared in the meetings, and she worked up the bravery to share about her own experiences and mistakes, too. She found it scary to be so exposed and vulnerable, especially since as a famous author she does not enjoy the same anonymity as everyone else. She was especially worried when two women recognized her and shared their love of her work. However, she convinced herself that her recovery was more important than her privacy. She continues to regularly participate in recovery room meetings.

Gilbert’s poem shares how flawed people can still communicate love and lessons from God. While at first she doubted how God could work through the difficult people she encountered in rooms of recovery, now that she has listened to people’s stories, she understands their incredible effect.

Gilbert’s sponsor and other people with addictions helped to coach her through her “detox” from love and sex addiction. She stopped all the romantic entanglements she was currently nurturing, blocking numbers, deleting messages and pictures, and avoiding certain music and other triggers. Now experiencing real solitude, Gilbert endured the awful loneliness and finally faced the childhood traumas which she believes are the root cause of her behaviors. She does not explain what these traumas are, only that she had long avoided thinking about “the trauma that lay hidden beneath all the pain” (334). While Gilbert found her withdrawal painful and felt listless and miserable, she was also surprised by her growing sense of boredom. Her sponsor told her that boredom is merely another manifestation of anxiety and an incapacity to simply be by oneself without constant drama and stimulation. When another person with an addiction advised Gilbert to focus on her program and trust that one day her intense cravings would end, Gilbert thought “This fool must be smoking roofing tar,” thereby giving this chapter its title (335). Nevertheless, she followed her sage advice.

While in withdrawal, Gilbert expresses her feelings of despair, and how the usual distractions fail to comfort her. She tries books, television, music, poetry, and more, but nothing fills the “hollow space” inside (338). She knows that she must learn to be comfortable with this void and simply sit and observe it, but she finds it lonely and frightening.

Gilbert continued going to meetings regularly. When love and sex recovery meetings were not available, she attended other rooms for other addictions, always finding inspiration and connection. It was difficult to not develop crushes on other people with addictions, since they often inspired Gilbert and she felt connected to them. However, she knew she had to stay strong and resist pursuing someone new just to smother her feelings of loneliness and sadness. She remembered Rayya’s stories of withdrawal and how she rebuilt her life after her devastating drug addictions, reminding herself that feeling upset or bored was part of the process. Over time, Gilbert began to feel truly “well” even if she didn’t always feel “good.” Earning sobriety “chips” by staying clean made Gilbert feel recognized, and she knew she had to keep going.

Gilbert grapples with her strange and unpredictable year, admitting that she is learning to live with uncertainty. While she used to vacillate between lust and grief, now she is calmer. She feels that God does not need to be worshipped, but simply wants her to continue with her work of recovery.

Gilbert was surprised that, as a part of her recovery from love and sex addiction, she felt strongly guided to stop drinking and using drugs. This was not a facet of her program, she simply felt that these substances were not helping her, and may have even been hindering her connection to God. Gilbert was happy that her commitment to recovery helped her easily give up her drinking habit, which had been a feature of her family for generations. Her use of psychedelic drugs was harder to give up, but nevertheless, Gilbert decided to embrace simply experiencing unaltered reality without running away from it.

Another huge change was Gilbert’s approach to her finances. Her sponsor insightfully told her that overgiving money was a facet of her addiction. As such, Gilbert had to become “money sober” and no longer give away funds in a codependent way. Moreover, Gilbert had to stop her habit of rescuing others as a means of avoiding her own pain and needs. Eager to find healthier coping strategies, Gilbert began to draw and write poetry. Over time, Gilbert focused more on the fulfilling hobbies in her life, like cooking, nature walks, yoga, and gardening. When the pandemic shut down so much of the world, Gilbert saw it as an opportunity to continue working on herself, and was happily surprised to find herself 300 days “clean” and enjoying a creative phase.

Gilbert’s new interest in life helps her appreciate the winter months that she used to dread. While walking on a snowy day, Gilbert sees a beautiful fox and stops to appreciate it. She realizes that she can love others from a healthy distance.

Gilbert celebrates that she is now five years “clean” from her love and sex addiction. She feels much more at peace and content with herself. She acknowledges that she has felt this way before, such as when she lived in India and adopted spiritual practices. She now knows that being well isn’t a realization, it’s a commitment to taking care of oneself, and she hopes to continue her hard-earned good habits. She has changed her approach to certain parts of her life. For instance, she keeps her head shaved and does not use Botox or makeup anymore. This practice keeps Gilbert from worrying about pleasing others with her looks or trying to be attractive to men.

Gilbert reflects on how, like all people with addictions, she faces temptation regularly. She recalls how, while working as a speaker at a retreat, she felt attracted to a “spiritual teacher” there. She carefully avoided this man but could not stop thinking about him and longed to impress him. When he sent her a late-night text complimenting her and inviting her for drinks on the beach with him, Gilbert immediately got out of bed to go see him. However, she stopped at the door, remembering advice from another person with an addiction to always check her reaction. Angry and annoyed, Gilbert asked God what to do and begrudgingly went back to bed. Months passed, and Gilbert continued to think about her missed chance of connection until the man sent a photo of his wife and newborn child to the speakers’ group chat. Gilbert realized what a good decision she had made by avoiding a romantic entanglement with this married man. This incident reminded her that she must remain aware of temptations and needs support, a dating plan, and her connection to God.

Gilbert tells God that addiction is “misplaced worship” and expresses gratitude for God’s understanding and love. She feels that God always returns to her, full of mercy, after her mistakes, and gives her back her life when she gets off track.

Gilbert’s journey of recovery and introspection has helped her reconnect with her child self. For so long, she resented her child self for being so needy and afraid. However, now she can see that her younger self only felt this way because she often felt unsafe. She recognizes that her child self always had the good qualities that make her who she is. Rather than running from her child self, or her own needs and fears, Gilbert tries to understand them and take responsibility for them. In hindsight, she can see that she worshiped Rayya and wanted her to protect her and her vulnerable child self. Gilbert feels that through her recovery she has been “slowly restored to sanity,” recognizing her child self and healing her relationship with Rayya, even after her death (376). Now, she considers Rayya her best friend and appreciates all her wonderful qualities and lessons without idealizing her or over-relying on her. Gilbert feels grateful that after all her mistakes she has not lost everything: she still has “my creativity, my curiosity, my career, my friendships, my faith, and that precious little child within” (379). Moreover, she feels hopeful for the future and ready to take a small step by establishing a new kind of relationship: getting a dog.

Gilbert writes a poem to Rayya, remembering how they both struggled with their different fates, as Rayya had to accept dying and Gilbert had to accept living. Gilbert feels that her story with addiction echoes Rayya’s, but Rayya completed her time of learning on earth before Gilbert did.

Gilbert writes in verse, imagining Rayya’s response to her storytelling. Rayya praises Gilbert for sharing their story, reassuring her that she is allowed to talk about it. Rayya feels like she is floating dreamily on a lake, and Gilbert’s words give her a gentle bump, waking her up. Their love continues.