Elizabeth Gilbert: "All the Way to the River" | Oprah's Book Club

Hey everybody, Elizabeth Gilbert!

The Elizabeth Gilbert!

Could y'all believe this book?

Whoa, huh?

Wow.

I said, Elizabeth, honey, chow.

What you been doing in there?

Hi, it is my delight and pleasure to be with you here on Oprah's Book Club presented by Starbucks.

And we are at the Starbucks Cafe inside their iconic headquarters here in Seattle.

We're actually just a few miles from the original Pike Place store where it all started.

And I think your neighborhood Starbucks is a great place to enjoy a good book and good coffee and good company.

And each month, Starbucks pairs one of their crafted drinks with my book club pick.

So listen to this.

Since it's fall, no surprise here.

My September book pairing is pumpkin spice latte.

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Fall is officially here when pumpkin spice latte is released with real pumpkin steamed milk and Starbucks signature espresso.

It's delicious whether you enjoy it hot, iced, or blended, and it goes perfectly with my 118th book club pick.

It was written by the brilliant Elizabeth Gilbert.

And it's called All the Way to the River.

All the Way to the River.

It's about love and loss and liberation.

And it may shock you with some of its surprising revelations and its raw honesty, but it will cause you to look deeply into your own psyche, your own consciousness, and examine why you do the things you do and why you've made the choices you've made.

That's how you know you've written a great memoir.

Because although it's about you and your life and your life with Rhea,

it also causes everybody to think about their own and the crazy-ass choices you might have made

along the way.

That's my job, Oprah, to make everybody think about the crazy-ass choices they've made along the way.

Many people have the idea that you have already eaten and prayed

and loved your way through

your demons, that you have it all figured out.

But this book is so revealing and gorgeously written.

It's an account of what happened after your second divorce, when you fell in love with your partner,

Rhea.

In 2016, Elizabeth announced to her followers on social media that she was ending her nine-year marriage to the man she met and fell in love with at the end of her best-selling memoir, Eat, Prey, Love.

Two months later, in another social media post, Elizabeth revealed she was in love with her best friend of 15 years, Rhea Elias.

At the time, Rhea was diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer.

Doctors told her she had six months to live.

In 2017, the couple celebrated with what Elizabeth calls a simple spontaneous ceremony of love.

Now, it may not be that long that I'm around,

but I will forever love you.

Raya died at the age of 57 in 2018.

It's so interesting because you talk in the beginning of the book about Rhea coming to visit you on your 54th birthday.

Tell us that.

Okay, yeah, we'll start with that.

So on the morning of my 54th birthday, I woke up and I felt that Raya was in the room with me.

This isn't going to be shocking to a lot of people who've had people that they love die.

Right.

I feel some nods in the room happening already.

Right.

Sometimes the line between death and life is very thin, these thin places.

And spirit comes through.

She'd come to you before, though.

She'd come to me before.

She'd been very deeply present in the immediate aftermath of her death.

I felt like we were in constant conversation.

I felt like she was living inside my head and the conversation had never ended.

And then as the years went by,

that was sort of lost, you know, and I couldn't feel her as much.

But I woke up and she was in the room and she was in the room with this very commanding energy.

And those of you who've read the book know that Rhea had a very commanding energy.

Yes.

And she was like, I've got something to tell you and it's extremely important.

And I grabbed...

My journal that's always by my bed and I started to transcribe what I was hearing.

And what she was saying was.

Okay, could you see her do you see the voice I can hear her okay and it's the same actually my relationship with God is very similar I don't see things but I hear I hear a voice that I know is God I heard a voice that I knew is Rhea you knew it was Rhea I knew it was Rhea and I just grabbed this notebook and as trying to keep up with her yeah started writing down which is the beginning first chapter of the book in which she says to me and at that point she'd been dead for five five and a half six years yes she said it's time for you to write this book it's time for you to tell this story.

It's time for you to tell the entire story.

Don't hold anything back.

Go, in her words, full punk rock with it.

Full punk rock.

Lay it all on the table.

Don't protect my dignity.

Don't protect your dignity.

It's time to write.

She said, Cause I don't need dignity.

She's because I'm dead.

I don't need dignity.

And she said, but you don't need it either.

Yeah.

And actually, it's going to help people.

And I knew it to be Rhea because when Rhea was in her right mind, when she was sober and clean, there was nobody who loved the truth more.

And there was nobody who was more willing to put the truth out on the table and say, let's just put this out on the table so that we can deal with it.

Cause we can't deal with it unless we see what it is, right?

That was her great talent was for deep truth.

And so I started writing the book that day.

And I didn't want to write the book.

I mean, there was a reason that six years had passed since her death and I had not written this book, despite a lot of people saying,

She wants you to tell the story, the love story about you and Ray.

I'm like, I don't know if you can handle the love story about me and Ray.

Yeah.

You know, like, if I'm going to put out there what actually occurred, it's very dark.

It doesn't reflect well on either one of us at multiple points.

And I also didn't want to relive the trauma.

You know, I was like, this was the most traumatic thing I ever went through.

I don't know how to talk about that.

I have to say, considering who you are in the world and the world's impression of who you are in the world, this is the bravest thing I've ever seen.

It's just the bravest thing

because you could have just...

kept this story to yourself and allowed people to think that you had eaten and prayed and loved and everything was was still just perfectly okay.

But instead, as I said, you have opened up your soul in such a way, this book is going to free so many people.

I think that what Rhea had said to you, like, write the shit out of this thing, that you actually did do that and did it in such a way that

I remember years ago on the Oprah show trying to explain what love addiction was.

And it's so hard to explain it to people because our culture tells us that's what we're supposed to be.

You're supposed to be in love and you're supposed to give all and you're supposed to do all of that stuff.

This audience has read the book and I hear you all devoured it.

So why did you love it?

Tawana?

Hello.

Well, I loved the book because I'm the daughter of a mother who struggles with the substance use disorder.

And I think it really

impressed upon me the importance of grace and how deserving everyone is, including those who struggle with the substance use disorder, how deserving they are of love, of deep love.

And there is a tendency to want to fix it.

But I think this just gave some insider information to the depth of emotion and the ups and downs and consequence, but also joy and happiness that we sometimes can't understand because we're so busy trying to fix.

To fix it.

How about you, Cassidy?

Where's Cassidy?

Hi.

Hi.

I have to say, I didn't read books before this, and I have never felt so connected to a book as this one.

And I just wanted to say I myself have gone through journeys of addiction and love and grieving the loss right now and being able to understand really the truth of where I've been and how codependency really has shaped the way of where I'm at in life and how to embrace it.

But also, it's helped me understand how to put some boundaries in place and to embrace the fact that, yes, I.

understand my own addictions to love and sex and codependency and being able to see where I'm at today and walking with my inner child and showing her what's coming up next is very exciting.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So you'd been best friends with Rhea for many years.

She started out as your hairdresser.

Yes.

She was my hairdresser and then became a social friend and then became a neighbor and then became my best friend and then became something I no longer had words for because I didn't know.

I was slowly falling in love with her, but I was also slowly giving my power to her.

I was, you know, over time I came to...

But you wanted to in the beginning.

Oh, all I've ever wanted to do is give my power to somebody, Oprah.

Yes.

You know, all I've ever wanted to do is be like, who is, who is, who's got me?

You know, like, who I have to give this to so that they will take care of me completely so that I don't have to do it.

One of the headings in the book I love is, will you be my home?

Yeah.

Because remember Babe the Pig when he'd go up to all everybody and say, will you be my mom?

Will you be my mom?

Yeah.

And your, Will You Be My Home

is like the desperation

of babe the pig will you be my mom because you just want somebody to love who's gonna take care of me who's gonna take care right now here's the irony which some of you may also recognize in your own lives every single person I ever thought was going to take care of me I ended up taking care of but only 100% of the time right

Every woman in the room's like, yes, I know.

You know, I'm looking for like, who's the hero who's going to rescue me, right?

And then I give myself to them.

And then I end up having to take care of them.

And I end up empty because I've now emptied myself into somebody.

I have my friend Emma who's British says, it's bad maths, Liz.

It's bad maths.

The maths of codependency goes like this.

I'm going to take all the love and all the resources and everything that I have and everything I am.

And I'm going to pour it into you.

And then I'm going to stand outside of you.

like I'm standing outside a pawn shop, begging you to give me some of it back, right?

I'm going to beg you to give me some love.

Meanwhile, I've just emptied myself of all that I contain into you and now I'm gonna beg for scraps and and I've heard it called a crumbaholic too I'm gonna beg for crumbs I'm gonna beg for scraps now that's bad math right it's like what if we cut out the middleman and you just pour all of that love and resources into yourself right but I didn't know how to do that and I didn't think I was worthy of that and I was taught by my culture that what you do is you you go out and you know especially women are taught this yes you know you get love by pouring in and then you hope that you get some back.

That's right and and and you give up and give up and sacrifice and sacrifice for this person.

This is why you write later in the book that women who are married

end up being unhappier because they've given, given, given, given, given.

Where on the other hand, the men who are married are just fine because they are the ones who are being taken care of.

They are the ones who everybody is pouring everything into.

This is called the marriage benefit imbalance.

And marriage is a very good deal for men.

It's not a good deal for women.

I don't know what the statistics are in same-sex marriages because I don't think it's been studied.

But the question remains, who's playing the traditional role of the wife in this relationship, meaning who's overgiving, right?

Who is overgiving to somebody with the hope that they will maybe give love back to them?

And I think the reason that it's so hard that love addiction and sex addiction have not really gotten the prominence that alcohol and substance abuse is is because first of all it's really working for men.

Yeah.

It's like, it's really working for them.

Yeah.

You know, and so I think the stories that keep being fed to girls of like, you're going to find your prince and he's going to take care of you

continually keep pushing girls and women into this dream where the reality is you're probably very likely going to end up taking care of him.

Yes.

I thank you for joining my conversation with mega best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert.

I always love talking with Liz.

I hope you stay with us.

The pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks.

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The PSL, get it while it's hot, or iced, only at Starbucks.

Welcome back to Oprah's Book Club.

I'm talking with best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert about her new memoir that I think many women are going to relate to.

It's called All the Way to the River, Love, Loss, and Liberation.

Let's get back to the conversation.

Now, you write on page 35.

I've caused tremendous harm to myself and others through my decades of sex and love addiction.

Now we all know that there are amazing manifestations of how this shows up in everybody's life.

But for me, that sentence and the passage that follows is the fundamental reason for everything else that follows in this book.

And I wanted you to read the text passage for us on page 35.

It begins with, there are not a lot of women.

There are not a lot of women out there who will publicly admit to being sex and love addicts because it sounds pretty gnarly.

In fact, it is gnarly.

I won't get into salacious details here, but I will say that my addiction manifests as a sincere yet deeply misguided belief that somebody outside of myself will miraculously be able to heal me on the inside, thereby making me feel safe, cherished, and whole at last.

In real life terms, this translates as a desperate need to have my existence constantly authenticated and reauthenticated through a romantic partner's touch, eye contact, verbal reassurance, acts of love, or mere physical presence.

My desperation to be loved is certainly outsize, and it has caused me to act out in ways that are undeniably insane.

Yet I suspect that parts of my story may feel familiar to many of my readers, especially my female readers, who, like me, may have been socialized since birth to believe that they did not possess much inherent value, but were estimable only insofar as they were capable of making themselves attractive enough to be chosen.

Failing to succeed in this massively important project of proving yourself worthy of being chosen meant that you were a failure and that nothing else you ever manifested would have much significance in anybody's eyes.

Wow.

Yeah.

You believe that you suffer for what is known as process addiction.

So what is that?

Which is different than substance addiction, which is what Rhea was

afflicted with.

So substance addictions are addictions to chemicals that you take in through alcohol, through drugs,

nicotine.

You know, your body becomes dependent upon these substances and you physiologically need them, legal, illegal drugs.

Process addictions are addictions to certain behaviors.

But what happens is that your brain chemistry actually is changed by these behaviors.

And so people who like me may have a very insecure attachment disorder or may have had traumatic incidences in their childhood that led them to have a lot of trouble knowing where boundaries are or knowing who to trust or knowing how to find safety.

It's been estimated that people with process addictions get approximately 10 times amount of the hit off of various activities that other people do.

So gambling is a process addiction, shopping, spending money, overeating is a process addiction, sex and intimacy and deep need for connection is a process addiction.

So where you, a normal person, whatever that is, might feel some warmth and some tenderness when you have physical touch with somebody, I get high off it.

Like I get a dump of oxytocin into my blood system that is so high that my system then kind of acclimates to that and then it needs it again.

And then it needs it again.

And then it needs, just like any addiction, it needs a higher and higher connection.

That's what you mean by your need to be loved is so outsized.

So outsized.

Yeah.

And falling in love for you is like a drug, because you said on page 38, I don't need alcohol and drugs drugs to alter my consciousness that other people might experience pleasurable sensations.

I get wasted.

I get wasted.

And I lose my judgment.

I lose my dignity.

And very soon it will end up with me begging, right?

I'm begging like, and I need you to look at me the way you used to look at me.

I need you to touch me the way you used to touch me.

I need to get high off of that.

And I will do anything to stimulate that.

I'll do anything.

So I will give you all my money.

I'll buy you presents.

I'll abandon my responsibilities for you.

I will throw my entire life away completely and immediately, right?

So quickly, like so quickly, I will disappear and I'll be looking into your face.

What do you need me to be?

Who do you need me to be?

So that you will give me back what I just gave to you, which is all my power.

Were you this way in your relationship with the man you married at the end of Eat Prey Love?

A little bit, but

I want to be careful not to talk about that marriage just out of respect to somebody who I still love so dearly.

But it didn't get triggered as hard.

It mostly and more gets triggered by unavailable people.

And there's a...

Let the church say

the church winning.

I can only really get high off someone who will probably destroy me, right?

Like that's a little bit of.

But there's a reason for that.

And I was taught this when I when I first came into recovery a very wise older woman said and you can all play this game at home

list five adjectives to describe your childhood

so I you know I'll throw out creative fascinating cold

difficult withholding

now if I meet somebody

who is the description of those five things, that smells like home cooking to me.

That's home.

There's something in my nervous system that's like, oh, that's home.

Oh, somebody's withholding, you are going to be drawn to that home.

A hundred percent.

Creative, interesting, dangerous.

Yeah.

That's, that just feels like home.

And I think karmically what it is, to use a word, or maybe there's a psychological reason for this.

What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to recreate home, but this time it works.

Yeah.

Right?

So this time it's really going to be different.

And this time is the two favorite words of an addict.

You know, well, this time it's going to be different because this time, like this time, and what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to control a trauma response, right?

So it's like, if I can find somebody to play that out with who is brilliant and creative and dangerous and withholding and scary and exciting, now I, as adult, I'm like, well, my child self is like, well, let's now do this, but this time we're going to figure out a way that they're going to love us.

So then when they do, it's like the child is healed until they don't.

Until they don't.

And then we relive that trauma all over again.

The reason why all the way to the river was such a shock to me and i'm assuming you all too is because we thought you of all people had it all figured out me too

we thought you had it all figured out i know and then to come to find out not only did you not have it all figured out that

no but even when the okay so let's talk about this for a moment talk about this this when fame hits you like that because eat pray love was this phenomenon.

It really was.

And Julia Roberts is playing you in the film, and the checks are coming from the book and the movie.

And all of a sudden, you have all of this money.

What did that do?

The fact that you couldn't receive it and accept it.

Tell us the story that you share in the book about going down the street giving away your money.

Okay, so here's what I want to say about Yit Pré Love.

I was 34.

Okay.

That's young, right?

But I was precocious, but I did at the end of Y Pray Love feel that I had healed, that I had landed on a bunch of things.

But also look what I did.

I left a man for another man.

Yeah.

And then I was heartbroken by that.

And then I went out in the world and I had a few adventures and then I met another man.

Yeah.

You know, so when I watch Y Pray Love now, and I love the movie and I thought they did, and of course we love Julia.

Yeah.

I look at that film and I'm like, look at this woman.

It's two hours long.

She's with three different men.

Right?

Look what you're doing.

I told you about that part.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right?

Uh-huh.

The answer that I, the best solution I could always come up with was find somebody better, find somebody different.

Who's the person who's going to, who are you going to take care of me now, right?

So

some of the people that I chose for that role in my life were better at it than others.

The man who I married was very good at loving me.

So that kept me sort of sedated for a while.

But that didn't mean that my central core wound was healed, right?

I feel like I was being nicely sedated by somebody being very kind and loving.

But you asked your question.

The addiction was always there.

An addict is an addict is an addict, right?

The addiction was always there.

And the deep, what they call in the rooms, the God-sized hole, was always there.

It's a hole that is so big that it doesn't matter what you put into it, it won't fill it.

So

you can pour fame into it.

It's going to go right out the back.

You can pour money into it.

It's going to go right back.

You can pour somebody's true love into it.

It's going to go right at the back.

There's a hole.

The only thing that's going to fill it is God.

Yes.

The only thing that can fill an infinite hole is an infinite source.

Right.

So we'll get to that later.

I presume.

Yes.

Yes, yes.

You know, but I suddenly became really rich and I had such a low sense of self-worth that I was like, well, this is a karmic accident.

I'm not, I was never supposed to be somebody who was rich.

I was supposed to be a starving artist.

I can't even hold this money without feeling deeply uncomfortable with it.

It's not mine.

Like the feeling I had was, it's not mine.

It's coming to me, but it's not mine.

It's for whoever wants it, which is also how I've always felt about my body.

Wow.

It's not mine.

It's for whoever wants it.

So you opened yourself up to that.

So the incident that you are discussing is that I walked down the streets of my small town in New Jersey.

and started just giving money to people.

I started walking into local businesses.

It was after 2008, after the stock market crashed.

And I was like, oh, these people need.

Like wherever there was need, I was like, oh, they need it.

You know, and there is a, I believe I am a deeply generous person, but this was crazy.

Yeah.

Like, this is crazy.

I was walking up to strange people.

I think I'm a generous person, too, but I'm not that.

You know, I think responsibility comes with general.

You have to be able to give money to people who know what to do with that money, and they're going to use that money.

How am I going to know how to do that?

Okay, right.

How am I going to know how to do that?

So you're just walking down the street and going to the city.

Whoever, whatever, anybody.

Anybody need any money?

Does anybody need anything from me?

You know, and then Time Magazine's like, we're going to name you as one of the hundred most influential people in the world.

And I'm like, okay, now everybody needs me.

Right.

So I'm just going to show up as the giver because that's part of my, like, that's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to overgive.

That's all I know how to do.

I'm going to overgive of my love, of my heart, of my life.

And I would think when you just give people money and you say, here, take this.

People would be happy about it.

But you ended up in lawsuits.

You ended up with people being upset that they didn't a mess.

A mess.

A stew of resentments and problems and issues.

And, you know, some of those people I'm still friends with, but those were the people who loved me before I had money.

They loved me anyway.

I was just throwing money at them because I have a psychosis, right?

But like they were just like, they loved me anyway.

Some of those people cross the street when they see me coming, you know, because we got into such resentment and difficulty and codependency.

One of my favorite lines of the book is my definitions of codependency.

And one of them is the codependence motto, you break it, we fix it, right?

And so if you give a codependent a ton of money, you know, all I'm going to do is try to use it to fix everything.

Because if I can fix the world and make the world okay, then I'll be okay.

Okay.

And the same bad math as if I can love you so much, then you'll love me and then I'll be okay.

And meanwhile, someone in here is not getting taken care of at all.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Oprah's Book Club.

When we come back, more of my conversation with All the Way to the River author Elizabeth Gilbert.

Stay with us.

Welcome back, listener.

I'm in the beautiful city of Seattle with an audience of readers, and we're talking with author Elizabeth Gilbert about her new memoir.

We all remember Eat, Pray, Love.

The new memoir is called All the Way to the River.

Let's get back to our conversation.

Listen in.

Starbucks, it's a great day for coffee.

So let's get to Rhea's cancer diagnosis and what happened after that.

So she's diagnosed with cancer.

Yeah, so she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer and given six months to live.

By that point, she was firmly established in my consciousness as the most important person in my life.

My ground of being, my foundation.

I now see I had made her into my higher power.

And I've heard addiction described as false worship.

Right?

You make something into your God.

You make the alcohol into your God.

You make the drug into your God.

I made her into my God.

So now I'm losing my God.

Like, it's not just that she's dying and my friend is dying.

It's like, I won't, the feeling I had was, I will not survive this.

This is a world not living in without Rhea in it.

I don't know how to take care of myself.

She's the one who makes me feel like I'm taken care of.

And in the aftermath of that,

I finally found a word for what it was that I was feeling for.

It's like, oh, I'm in love with this person.

And I can't let her.

And I still see that there was no other way this was going to go, given who we we were and what the realities of our spirits were.

I couldn't let her die without letting her know that you are not just my friend, you are the love of my life.

Right.

And so you told her?

Yeah, I told my husband first.

Yes, good.

But I told her, and very quickly, my husband and I separated, and I went to be with Rhea.

She had moved into your house by that time.

I had a couple houses, and she was living in one of them.

Yes, she was living in the church house.

Yeah.

Okay.

So here's an interesting thing because I thought, you know, so many of us do this.

You know, I live by this principle of intention, understanding that whatever you intend is actually going to determine the outcome.

So I love this moment where you've invited her to come to stay at the house and you've invited her for nine months and then that time is up.

You want her to continue to stay.

So you offer her the opportunity to write her own book.

You make her an offer that she cannot refuse.

Yeah.

Because who's going to turn down that?

And if you stay here, you can just live here.

You can just live here for free.

Who's going to turn down that?

But the real reason you were doing it, your real intention was you had a fear of losing her.

Yeah.

And that I'm going to hold you to this contract of writing a book.

And it's going to look like if you're writing a book, but really it's keeping you in my life.

That's a consumption.

I'm too afraid to lose you.

And that was when we were just friends.

Yes.

So she had come out and lived at this church that I had that I was offering to people to use as an artist residency for nine months.

And at the end of that nine months, I had realized who she was.

And what it did to my nervous system when she walked in to the room was that I calmed down when Rhea was there.

I felt this absence of something that I'd felt my whole life, which was this low-grade terror that I've always had of everyone in the room.

Because Raya handled people so well that when she came into the room, I felt deeply safe.

And that sense of safety that I could not provide for myself, that she was able to provide, made me completely dependent on her.

And what I did when I said, why don't you stay, was a little something we call manipulation.

Yes.

And I feel like this is the part of the book where perhaps I most reveal the parts of myself I don't want anybody to know about me.

But it was like, I can't live without you.

I don't know how to take care of myself.

I'm terrified of the world.

Your presence makes me feel like the world isn't scary.

What am I going to have to do to make sure that you don't leave?

And you're not my romantic partner and I'm married.

right?

So I was like, oh, I'm going to generously offer you a writing grant

just so that you can stay.

And this is me pulling the strings of somebody else's life to get what I want, which is what addicts do, right?

You lose your integrity and you start manipulating people, places, and things to get the drug that you need.

Because at that point, I was using her as a sedative.

Okay.

When she starts to drink the bitters or take the bitters, and you look the other way,

and you realize, oh, the bitters are like what?

47% alcohol.

47% alcohol.

She's not supposed to be taking alcohol or drinking alcohol.

And she tells you, comes to you and says, babe, do you mind if I have a glass of wine?

Because other friends of mine have said that I should.

have some wine.

And you say yes, but inside yourself, you know that that's not the right answer.

or do you

i i was pretty i'm pretty good at compartmentalizing

you know i often think i don't know if you all have this but like i think there's things that some parts of us don't allow other parts of us to know yet because we can't handle it yeah so raya was an addict in recovery she had at that point 17 years sober she was a heroine and drug addict in the rooms of 12-step recovery it is an acknowledged truth that there is no difference between substances when it comes to addiction and although she she was a drug addict she should not be drinking alcohol because that is also a mind-altering substance and sobriety is i do not take mind-altering substances right so when she suddenly said that she wanted to start drinking you know there was like a little part of me that was like is that a good idea for somebody who like lived on this like a low-bottom addict like

jails institutions debt like it's not a good idea you know but she was also very convincing that it was fine and the bottom line was i i say in the book, I overlooked it rather than looking it over because I couldn't have there be any flaws with my God.

Yes.

Because by this time you've made her into a God.

Yes.

I love what you say early on in the book, page nine.

What we commonly call an addict, I believe, is just an exaggerated version of all of us, just a person so desperately in search of relief.

from the sting of life that they will use anything or anyone to soothe it.

I hope for your own sake that you have never fallen quite as low as Rhea and I fell at some points during our journey together.

But even if your wills have never fully come off, I suspect at some level that I might be you and that you might be me, and that all of us might be Rhea.

Can you expand on what an addict is

just an exaggerated version of all of us?

It's extremely uncomfortable being a spirit in human form.

Yes.

I don't personally believe that we come from this planet.

I think we visit here.

And I think we make this decision to come to what I call and many people call Earth School.

Yeah.

I believe that too.

And I believe it is the toughest curriculum in the, it is a highly accredited school.

I don't care how privileged you were.

You know this.

And I know this.

There's nobody who moves through the experience of Earth School without trauma.

And

then there are these magical substances that you can take that ease that pain.

And then there are these amazing people you can meet who seem to be able to ease that pain.

There are these activities that you can do that can make you numb out.

There's ways that you can escape your curriculum.

And I think addiction is what happens when the escape that first, it always feels good at first, right?

It's like, okay, here's relief.

When the relief becomes a problem.

During Rhea's last year of life, award-winning filmmaker Mark J.

Francis followed Liz and Rhea through some extraordinary moments of love, loss, and their search for meaning.

I'm just asking for a little grace,

a little mercy.

So

please help me.

Okay.

I like a chick that likes to keep me drugged up.

That's me.

Little Miss Connie Socks.

The film titled Here I Am will be released in 2026.

For more information, go to www.speakit.org.

So how soon after she moved in and you all were together did it start to spiral?

I'm pretty good at holding things together,

but I would say that I became aware pretty early on that,

oh God, it's like it's, I'm watching my mind go back and forth between denial and realization, denial and realization, denial and realization.

I mean, any of you who've ever been in a difficult relationship would also probably find that question hard to answer.

When did you know?

Well, you kind of always knew, but then you also kind of never knew.

I don't know.

Like, it's almost like having a head injury.

Like, honestly, you know, it's like, what was I doing?

But, but I will say this, very quickly, she became somebody who I was deeply reliant upon.

And very quickly, that reliance started to create anxiety in me.

Like, what am I going to do if she goes?

Like, what am I going to do if I leave?

And was the diagnosis still six months?

You're still working on a six months.

Oh, or we're talking about right after she was.

Yeah.

Oh, oh, sorry.

So right after she was diagnosed with cancer,

very quickly I left my marriage to go and be with her.

The diagnosis was six months.

And we kind of went on a bender together.

I mean, there was also, there was the trauma and the drama of you've got six months to live, but there was also,

we've been in love with each other for a long time and we've both been keeping our hands to ourselves and been very good.

You know, she had also been in love with me during that time, as it turned out.

And so we had all the heady excitement and joy of being newly in love at the same time as the terror and the trauma of death.

So it was a very heightened time.

Something I've learned a lot about in recovery is addiction to excitement

and addiction to drama.

And when you have an unregulated nervous system and you don't know how to soothe yourself,

addiction to drama can be a way that you act out.

And what I've learned now is that I was always afraid of being bored.

So I've always had a very high drama, high octane, high excitement life.

But somebody in the rooms explained it to me that

excitement and boredom are just two sides of the same coin.

And that coin is actually called anxiety.

Yeah.

So when serenity is not on the menu,

when you don't know how to regulate yourself, when you don't know how to feel well, when you don't know how to be okay, and you feel the anxiety that comes with that, you've got two choices.

You can feel restless, irritable, and discontent, bored, or you can go override the feeling of anxiety by piling on a whole bunch of excitement, adrenaline addiction, cortisol addiction.

If you grow up with a lot of drama and trauma, your body actually gets used to very high levels of cortisol and adrenaline, and that also feels like home.

That's right.

So we went on an adrenaline ride.

That's why some people just thrive in chaos.

Yes.

Seemingly.

They thrive in chaos.

Yes.

There is a point in your relationship where you write that you were trapped in hell.

Yeah.

Right.

And you said you could see no way out.

The apartment that you were renting became a dungeon of misery and danger and degradation.

This was like in New York City, a two-bedroom fencing.

I had a beautiful apartment I rented for my partner so she would be happy in the last months of her life.

And then she started taking all the opioids for the pain, for the cancer.

And then that just triggered fully an addiction that I think had been getting triggered for a long time since she'd started drinking.

She added cocaine.

She added cigarettes.

She added trazodone.

She added methadone.

She added, I mean, suddenly there was like a cocktail of drugs in her and she became a full-on junkie.

Do it.

And she wasn't a very nice one.

Her nephew at one point said to me, I wish Auntie Ray was a nicer drug addict.

But she wasn't.

She was a really mean drug addict.

What kinds of things would she say to you?

She's abusive.

She was abusive and degrading and demanding and entitled.

And, you know, I'm a little good little codependent.

So, you know, you start abusing me, I'm going to work harder to make you happy.

And so we got into that cycle really, really quickly.

At one point, you were going to the free clinic for needles.

Oh, yeah.

And I got recognized there, Oprah.

I went to the free clinic to get needles for my drug addict partner down in Chinatown at a New York City needle exchange.

And I walked in, and the woman went, oh my God, it's like, and then she remembered it's an anonymous program.

You're not supposed to be like, I know you, when people come in to get needles for their drug addiction.

She hands me a clipboard and I fill it out that I'm a heroin addict.

And the whole time she's looking at me like, I love your books, you know, and I'm like, I'm a heroin addict and I need some needles.

And she's like, okay.

But I didn't want Ray to have to go down there because that would have been shameful for her.

So I'll do it.

Like, that's how good an enabler I am.

I'll do that for you.

I will go get your needles.

Did you, what did you feel when the woman recognized you and you were there to get it?

It turned it into a funny story.

Actually, it is funny.

I mean, it is, it is objectively a funny story.

I mean, she, she looked at me and she was like, oh my God, Elizabeth Libert.

And then she was like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry.

And then

there's no like playbook for what do you do when you're at a needle exchange getting,

you know, and you're like a best-selling author and like somebody meets their hero and it's you, but you're picking up needles for heroin.

Like there's no, so this is how I handled it.

I just went,

what is that?

I'm like, what am I even telling her?

Like, I'm like a little wink, like a little kid's, hey.

I'm like, I don't even know what this means or why I'm doing this, but I'm like, hey, we're just, you know, doing this.

Yeah, and I was paying for her cocaine and I was taking, you know, I was giving her whatever she wanted so that she would love me again.

Thank you for joining us for Oprah's Book Club presented by Starbucks.

Stay with us for some great insights from my conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert.

The pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks.

Crafted with our signature espresso and real pumpkin sauce, then topped with whipped cream, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

The PSL, get it while it's hot, or iced, only at Starbucks.

Welcome back to Over's Book Club, presented by Starbucks.

Let's get back to the conversation with mega best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert.

Over 13 million of you read her first memoir, Eat, Pray, Love.

Now her vulnerable new memoir, All the Way to the River, Love, Loss, and Liberation, is my latest book club selection.

When I got to the chapter title Plotting, weren't you all just like, I thought, whoa, what is going on here?

You reached a point where you actually thought about murdering her.

Yep.

And also killing yourself or murdering her.

First, I was going to kill her,

and then I realized I couldn't because she was too cunning.

She kind of smelled it in the air.

And then I was like, oh, oh, I could just again cut out the middleman and I could just kill me.

And that was my rock bottom.

Did you read the beginning of this chapter for us?

Yes.

I say in the book, I'm the nice lady who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, and I was going to murder.

I was actually going to murder.

It was in July of 2017 that I came up with a really good idea for what would save me from the nightmare that I was now trapped in with Rhea.

I decided I would kill her.

So how low had it gotten at that point?

That's how low it had gotten, you know.

And I hadn't slept in weeks.

I was absolutely in the lowest of my degradation of codependency, enabling, like my life had become sort of sit-and-nancy, nancy you know just this this I was acting in ways and doing things that I never imagined I could have done but that wasn't why I was upset I was upset because she was being mean to me I was upset because the person who I had created as my God who would take care of me was being abusive and had taken her love for me which I was now the end game always of codependency begging her begging a junkie to give me right so we were both in begging the junkie to give you and to be nice to me begging a heroin addict who was shooting cocaine between her toes and into her neck to give me safety, nourishment, and love.

This person is going to give me safety, nourishment, and love.

Wow.

Right.

That's where we had gotten to.

And there's a moment where...

You know, when I tried to kill her and then she kind of figured out I was trying to kill her and she was like, don't you start plotting against me?

I mean, she was a street smart survival.

Nobody was going to kill Rhea.

Yeah.

But there was a divine moment of intervention there where I heard God's voice.

And I was very far from God at that point.

When you're deep in addiction, you're very, very far from being able to hear God's voice.

But God's voice penetrated that insanity.

Tell us what God's voice was.

And God said, if you have reached a point in your life where you are seriously considering killing yourself or somebody else, you have very likely reached the end of your power.

That being the case, perhaps you should call somebody and ask for help.

And you did.

And I did.

And I spent the rest of that day sobbing, sitting in a dog park in New York City, calling person after person, anybody who had experience with drug addiction, and just pulling wisdom down.

And what was really interesting was that I was trying to get them to figure out how to help me get Rhea off drugs.

But what they were saying to me was, you have a problem.

Somebody said you had...

It hadn't occurred to you that you had a problem?

No.

No.

I had a problem.

Her name was Rhea.

I had to fix her.

Yeah.

You know, but I didn't have a problem.

I'm the person who takes care of everybody and fixes them.

So what I was being told, and what a friend of mine very gently said, was, I've watched you now, Liz, for 30 years do this.

And I think you really need a different kind of help.

And there's a program, there's a 12-step program for people who have sex and love addiction.

And I think you might want to go check it out.

So then did you decide that day that you heard the voice from God that I'm going to now go back and tell Rhea that I can no longer be a part of this story?

Tell us about that.

I actually ended up leaving and going and staying with a friend for a few weeks because I was so out of my mind.

I mean, I was also so sleepted.

I was so far from myself.

I was so completely lost.

She's been awesome.

And she's in such a rage that I just couldn't do it anymore.

And other people have had to step in and take care of her and just said, look, I'm living in my sister's apartment 10 minutes away.

My phone is always on.

And whatever you need is taken care of.

Chalky's needs are taken care of.

Like I'm still 100% providing for you in every way.

I mean whatever you want to do and she was like, I don't want to see you.

I started going to 12-step meetings during that time for codependency, for you know, people who are family, Al-Anon, people who are family members of addicts, sex and love addiction.

Like I started, I got what they call smart feet in the rooms where I started taking myself to a couple meetings.

Had it occurred to you that you had a sex and love addiction up until this point?

I mean, I knew I was a little, I mean, no one's going to look at my relationship history and say, that is an emotionally stable person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like, if I, if I laid it all out and I.

That's why I think the book is going to be so freeing, liberating for so many women who are going to recognize themselves in your story.

Yes.

They're going to say, oh, I've done that or I do that.

I've gone from boyfriend to boyfriend or partner to partner, girlfriend to girlfriend, and haven't.

really assessed it.

You're just like looking for the right person.

And culture's telling you keep looking.

And culture's telling you to keep looking.

Right.

And all the movies are telling you like, he's out there.

She's out there.

You're going to find it.

Your magical love story.

Right.

So we're being sold this at the same time.

I don't want to blame culture for myself, but it's also part of it.

You know, I mean, if I had been acting out with alcohol and cocaine and heroin, the way I acted out in relationships, my friends would have had an intervention for me years ago.

I mean, they kind of did.

You know, but I wasn't going to listen to anybody.

You know, I mean, people were always saying, do you want to take a break?

Do you want to to pause before you go into the next, this seems a little sudden.

Do you really want to get married?

You just met this person.

I was like, yes, I'm a, I'm a passionate person.

Yes.

You know, and I am a passionate person.

Um, but I was abandoning myself again and again and again.

And for me, what emotional sobriety looks like is no abandonment of self.

That's my definition of emotional sobriety for me.

No abandonment of self.

And I was constantly abandoning myself and undermining myself and selling myself short.

What did Rhea do when you said I can no longer be a part of the story?

She went back home to Michigan.

So the day came where I finally did say

I can't be in this story anymore.

It's too degrading.

And she, an old friend, helped her to get clean and she got off all the illegal drugs miraculously.

She was a hospice patient.

She had no motive.

I mean, that was part of the reason I couldn't threaten her because how do you threaten a hospice patient?

Well, if you keep doing these drugs, you're going to die.

She's like, I'm already dying, bitch.

I can do whatever I want.

You know, like, she had a full past.

Like, she got a big case of what they call in the rooms the fuckets right she got a big case of the fuckets she was like I can do whatever I want because I'm dying anyway in six months and and I was sort of like I can do prognosis was six months how long how long a year and a half because she was made out of titanium and she lived on drugs and alcohol and like ring dings and hot dogs the whole time it wasn't like she was like doing anything nutritious you know but but she was really tough you can't even pancreatic cancer had a tough time killing raya wow she was tough so she went she got clean um she got clean.

And so we never got back to the intimacy we had had.

But I did get to have a sober Rhea at the end of her life.

And she did die clean.

And we were able to have a conversation about what had happened and a little bit of reconciliation.

Well, I have to say, you write extensively about your own recovery journey.

I really want people to read the book to find out how you did it.

It's a long process.

Yeah.

It's always ongoing, right?

Yeah.

You're entirely now off of any mood-altering substances.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And for me, of course, that's people.

Which means you're still celibate, too.

Can I say that?

Yeah.

And that is not a requirement of recovery in my program.

But for me, my higher power.

A lot of times when people come into the recovery program I came into, it's suggested that you do

90 days of no contact with anybody you're involved with or a year of celibacy.

A year of celibacy in 90 days is nothing for somebody who's been deep in the paint and this addiction for 35 uninterrupted years.

I have been abandoning myself into other people from the minute I could, right?

I have never given myself, with the exception of nine months of y pre-love, when I was on my own, that's the only time in my life I had ever been on my own.

Before I met a man who then showered love on me, I was like, okay, I'll marry you.

But never had I been on my own.

Always enmeshed and entangled in one person after another.

So for me, I put it down when I came into the rooms.

I was like,

this is a living amends to all those younger versions of myself who never had the opportunity to know who they were, to learn how to thrive.

So for me, this has been the period of my life where I've been in this blooming, you know, like there was a stunted emotional growth.

If you're constantly in relationship with other people, you never get to learn how to provide for yourself

in a deep emotional and spiritual way.

And that's what my journey has been.

What do you want to say to anyone who may be listening or watching us who may be feeling powerless or certainly ashamed?

I think, first of all, you read this book, you will not be ashamed anymore

to admit whatever is going on with you because you have poured out your soul and showed us that there is love for yourself on the other side.

So what do you want to say to those people who are in a situation right now?

Obviously, there are people who are watching us and listening to us who are in an unimaginable situation.

Yeah.

What do you want to say?

Well, first of all, you aren't alone.

And part of the reason that I think I wanted to write a book that was so raw and so honest was it's like, look, I'm the Ypray love lady.

And look what I got into.

You know what I mean?

Like, I'm the Ypray love lady with 20 years of a spiritual journey behind me, 30 years of therapy behind me, all the resources in the entire world, the admiration of the entire world.

And look what I got into, right?

So it's okay.

We all end up at various times in our life very, very far away from ourselves.

It can happen to anybody.

So that's the first thing that I would want to say: is you are my sister.

I see you.

I see you.

I know you.

I am you.

You know?

So come and hang out with me, like if you're feeling ashamed.

And the second thing I want to say is that

there is a

dignity

that awaits you.

when you put all the things that you've been using to not have to feel, when you put those things down and you sit with yourself through the worst feelings of your entire journey and you lay comfort upon yourself and you be with yourself and you say to yourself the words that you always so deeply wished that somebody else would say to you, right?

That's what I started doing is writing myself these letters from love, from unconditional love, where I would pour into me what I have always wanted to hear.

I knew what I needed to hear because I've been trying to manipulate people into saying it to me forever.

What I want you to say to me, but I started to say it to me, was, I will never leave you.

That is the primary thing.

I will never leave you.

I am not going anywhere.

I have got you.

I am with you.

You don't even have to get well, and I will never leave you.

I see you.

I know everything you've done.

And I love you, and I will never leave you.

I believe now, I've come to believe that God, what I call God, higher power, the great mystery, gave me this spirit to steward through life, this soul, this being.

And I like to believe that it was given to me because God believed I could take care of it.

If God didn't think I could take care of it, they wouldn't have given it to me.

Absolutely.

They gave me me.

And I don't think I'd ever fully taken responsibility for me.

And when I was first told in the rooms of recovery that you have to take responsibility for yourself, I was so angry because I've like, I've been told that since the day I was born.

I want someone else to take responsibility for me.

And they were like, okay, go back out there and try that again.

Try that again.

See how it works.

Or you can pick up that child and say, you're mine.

I've got you.

And I'm going to walk through the rest of this journey with you.

And that's what I'm doing.

That's the relationship that I'm in right now.

So the reversal of obsession, obsession is that person comes first.

I come second.

God comes last.

That's what love addiction looks like.

The healing properties for me is you reverse that.

God first, me second, everybody else.

Right?

That's now the

name into that.

And the hair?

Wow.

The hair was, I've been dreaming about doing this for years.

I think it's really cool when women have shaved heads.

And

I was always like, I can't do it.

I'm a public figure.

I've got to look a certain way.

I've got to be media ready.

I have to, and I also am a love addict.

I'm trying to get people to love me.

So I'm always trying to look pretty.

Yeah.

Right.

And somewhere about three years into being celibate and being on my own, I was like, I just want to do this.

Like, I just want to do this.

And the final moment of it that made me do it was that I was at an event in New York City, a media event with a lot of people around my age, RH.

And I looked around the room and every single one of the men had buzzed hair or they were bald or they were graying, short, short, short hair.

They all had natural faces and they were all wearing comfortable clothes.

And every single one of the women had some kind of pretty girl hair that I know how much it costs.

I can price it out.

Like, I know how much it costs to get get that straightened to get that blow, because I used to do all that stuff.

Colored.

Colored trains.

They all had very expensive hair.

They had very expensive faces.

Like I could see what they were doing to their faces.

And I know, because I did all that too, and they were wearing very uncomfortable clothes.

And I had this moment of rage where I looked around the room and I'm like, why are men allowed to be comfortable?

Why are men allowed to age naturally?

And why are men just allowed to be at ease?

And then I was like, well, I could just sit here complaining about unfair beauty standards or I can just claim that entitlement for myself and just say, I'm not going to wait for the culture to change.

I'm going to be as comfortable as a man.

And so I just went to CVS and got some clippers and I buzzed my hair.

And at that point, the decision I made was like, I'm going to be post-beauty.

I don't care.

I just don't care.

I just want to be comfortable.

I want to jump into oceans and lakes and rivers.

I want to be free.

Because so much of my sobriety, my emotional sobriety, my recovery is about this growing feeling of freedom, like this lack of dependency.

I'm like, I just want to celebrate this freedom.

I don't even care if it's ugly.

And then I shaved off and I was like, I think it looks good.

I think it looks good.

Like, I have You have the head shape for it.

You have the head shape for it.

Well, every single woman I have met when I talk about my hair says, I don't have the head shape for it.

Is that true?

Do we all have weird-shaped heads?

Or have we all been told that there's, even in this regard, something fundamentally wrong with us?

Right?

Maybe I do have the head shape.

I'm just saying.

Because I also for years didn't do it because I was like, I don't have the right head shape for it.

And now I can guarantee, I can count down.

What happens is a a woman will say, Oh my God, that must be amazing.

You look so free.

And then I hear five, four, three, two, I don't have the right head shape.

I don't have the right head shape for it.

And it's like, you have been told that every single part of you is wrong.

From head to toe, every single part of you.

Yes.

So let me ask you this.

Do you feel cured or those urges still show up if you were to meet somebody?

Oh, how, how?

I'm an addict, Oprah.

Don't get me wrong.

You know what I mean?

Like, I've had, I just for today, let's just stay in 12-step recovery language.

Just for today, I'm doing really well.

You know, like I have a deep respect for my addiction and the power of it.

And that's why I go to a 12-step meeting every single day in various fellowships that I belong to.

I sponsor people.

That helps me stay sober.

I have a sponsor.

I turn things over in the rooms that I don't want people to know about me.

Like, I work a program and I work a very, very disciplined program.

But the main thing that I do is that every single morning when I wake up, I open my notebook and I do this thing that's called two-way prayer that the original founders of AA actually said was the most important thing that an addict in recovery can have is a direct communion with the higher power of their understanding.

And they gave a lot of liberal concept to what your understanding is, whatever that needs to be.

But I open up my notebook and I write these words, dear God, what would you have me know today?

And then I download from my higher power what I need for the day.

I like my life has become, and I know you get this, all I want to do is be of service.

So if I stay well and I stay sober and I don't throw my life into somebody else's life and I communicate with my higher power every day, then I have the opportunity every single day to be of service.

And in this morning's two-way prayer, God was like, You're going to go talk to the nice lady.

That's what God calls you.

You're going to go talk to the nice lady.

Thank you, God.

Yeah.

God said, you're going going to go talk to the nice lady, and I just want you to answer the questions.

This isn't about you.

This interview isn't for you.

It's for whoever is listening.

So whatever questions arise, I want you to tell the truth, and that's how you'll serve me today.

I thank you so much.

I thank you.

I thank you so much.

I thank you for this book, All the Way to the River.

And I love the way the title was chosen about who's going to be the friend that walks with you all the way to the river and not just to 34th Street, but all the way to the river.

I hope you all have all the way to the river friends.

It's about love and loss and liberation.

And it is your soul on the pages as an act of service to everyone who reads it.

Thank you so much.

So you did that thing, Elizabeth.

Thank you.

You did that thing.

It's available wherever books are sold.

Audience, thank you so much.

Thank you, everybody.

I love you.

Before we go, I want to share a quick quick thing with all of you readers.

I recently published something I'm excited about.

It's called The Book Lover's Journal.

And here's what's great.

It has over 100 prompts, like the first book that made you feel seen and the book that reminded you of what matters most, all designed to enhance your reading experience.

It's a great gift for book lovers.

And I hear book clubs are using it when they meet, which makes me so happy.

I write about some of my favorite books in first sentences.

And it is available anywhere you buy books.

And audience, you're all going home with a copy.

We can journal all your favorite quotes.

And I have, here you have a giveaway of your own.

What is it?

So

I make these stickers.

I designed them with my friend Margaret.

And the designer is a young woman named Michelle Musley, who just graduated from design school.

Says, you are loved.

I make them in thousands, and I give them away to everybody I meet.

Any human I encounter anywhere, I hand them to them.

So I brought one for all of you today.

So these will be in your bags as well.

I think

my part-time job is a writer, my full-time job is handing stickers out that say you are loved

to everybody in the world because I think that's what we all so desperately need to hear.

Well, thanks to our phenomenal partner, Starbucks, for welcoming us here to Starbucks headquarters today.

What better place to enjoy good books, good coffee, and good company?

The pairing this month is the pumpkin spice latte.

Perfect for fall.

Go well, everybody.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

so much