Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It (6 page)

—

Eran Sudds

I
remember this moment vividly. It was, after all, my
Eat Pray Love
moment. I was twenty-seven years old and curled up on the kitchen floor, uncontrollably bawling my eyes out because I couldn't face the fact that my dishwasher needed to be unloaded again.

Yes, you read that right. I was sobbing my heart out on the floor all because this miraculous modern-day machine had produced yet another batch of perfectly clean dishes and I was going to have to unload them and put them away. Again.

I know—complete First World problems.

Yet my dishwasher seemed to perfectly personify the meaninglessness, repetitiveness and utter emptiness that was my life at the time.

Sure, I looked good on paper. I had a decent job doing something I was really good at. I had a cute little house, an ambitious,
handsome and supportive husband, two cats and the aforementioned dishwasher. But I was empty.

Shortly after my dishwasher-induced meltdown, I picked up my dog-eared, well-loved copy of my own personal bible,
Eat Pray Love
, and started reading it again. Except this time, it was different. This time, I tingled in anticipation. You see, I knew a change was brewing and that it was all going to start when I stopped living my life for other people and started living for me.

Within a matter of days, I had given two weeks' notice at my job, even though I had absolutely no other plans besides hopping on a plane to Australia with my husband to visit friends. My coworkers were shocked. Why was I quitting? Didn't we need the income? Had I found another job?

•   •   •

I
had no answers for them. All I knew was that I wasn't happy, I had a billion things I wanted to try and time was ticking.

But after five years of intense soul-searching, self-discovery and career exploration, I still felt lost. My husband and I were starting to feel the pressure to start a family (neither of us was getting any younger), but I just didn't feel comfortable taking that leap yet. I had one last, BIG dream I wanted to fulfill.

A few years prior, my husband and I had taken a three-week road trip through France. I had always felt like a piece of me belonged to this country, and this road trip in our peppy little Fiat only solidified the feeling. When we stopped in Bordeaux for a night, I knew immediately that one day I would return. And ever since, my heart longed to go back. I wanted to be enveloped in the language and the culture, and I wanted to feel like
I knew that city the way it seemed to know me. I knew that if I could go back there, by myself, I would be able to figure everything out.

I also knew that once I had a baby, the likelihood of me going back, especially by myself, was incredibly slim. So I booked a flight to Bordeaux and planned a four-week-long hiatus from my life and everyone in it.

I rented a quaint French apartment with perfect French windows. I systematically devoured all the self-help books and became one with my copy of
Eat Pray Love.
I drank copious amounts of cheap French wine and ate an embarrassing amount of chocolate croissants. And when I left that gorgeous city, I was completely certain of Who I Was. I totally had my shit together, and I was cocky as all get-out about that fact.

Soon after returning from that trip, I launched a new photography business. I had very little photographic experience and was practically clueless as to how to work a camera, but I knew in my heart that I could take a great photo. I also knew that taking a photograph of someone and making that person feel beautiful was something I wanted to experience as much as I possibly could.

So at thirty-two years old, I was set. I knew myself inside and out. I had figured out my career path (finally!). It was time to start Phase 2: Making Babies.

Everyone always says, you're never really 100 percent ready to be a mother. But, like I said, I was feeling pretty cocky. After all, I had just spent the last five years in deep self-exploration. I had had my
Eat Pray Love
moment on the kitchen tiles. I had taken my
Eat Pray Love
trip to Bordeaux. I was pretty confident that nothing could shake this rock-solid identity of mine.

And then motherhood, hand-in-hand with postpartum depression, hit me like a truck. A giant, red, 18-wheeler truck. Head-on. With thunder and lightning bolts. And a sound track of depressing, angry, heavy metal music, screaming, YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO BE A MOTHER!

I was completely unrecognizable to myself. Gone was the girl from Bordeaux with the big plans and even bigger dreams. Gone was the cockiness and self-awareness.

In its place was a giant, gaping hole. With a cute, frustrated baby in the middle who just wanted to be loved by his mama.

In the months that followed my son's birth, I would think back to my
Eat Pray Love
days in Bordeaux, and it felt like a dream. I didn't know what to do to get back to the way I was or how to possibly reconcile this new life of motherhood with that past life of self-awareness and joy.

To be honest, I was mad at
Eat Pray Love
. I was mad that Elizabeth Gilbert had tricked me into creating a life I loved. I was mad that I had had a taste of perfection and then it was all shattered by the arrival of this tiny human being. I was mad that I hadn't chosen Liz's life of no children. But I was also mad that I loved my son so hard and that there was no way I was giving him up.

I was MAD at
Eat Pray Love
.

But I picked it up again anyway. I picked it up because I felt like I had nowhere else to turn. I flipped to all those dog-eared pages I had loved so deeply and I found that the words no longer spoke to me. The passages I had underlined no longer gave me those old feelings of hope and anticipation. They felt dead.

So, I started at the beginning. I read that first page, “Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth,” and suddenly I knew
what I needed to do. I needed help. I needed to be honest with myself and all the people who loved me. I needed to start living my life for myself again.
Eat Pray Love
had shown me the way once before, when I needed it most. There was no reason it couldn't now.

What I did next wasn't a huge, life-altering act. I didn't run away. I didn't leave my husband or my baby. I picked up the phone and called a postpartum depression help line. And I told the truth.

Two years later, on this past Mother's Day, I held a photography-based fund-raiser for the Pacific Post Partum Support Society, the organization that helped me get back on my feet. I offered photo sessions to moms and their kids, with all proceeds going back to the organization. A total of 108 mothers participated, and all of the moms were given the opportunity to pose with their beautiful children and hold a sign with a message like, “You are a good mother,” or “You deserve to be celebrated.” I called it the Good Mother Project.

The mothers who participated started talking to me. Some told me stories of how they had struggled with postpartum depression; others told me about their isolating experiences with a colicky baby or a sick child. They wanted to tell their stories. They wanted to share their experiences so that other mothers would feel less alone.

So, I created a website and a blog. Here, I shared the photos from the Mother's Day sessions and started connecting women through their stories about this sacred, common ground of motherhood. Every day on the Good Mother Project blog, another mama gets to tell her truth. She gets to see her beauty and
strength reflected back through her own words, and through the comments and support of the other women who read her story.

I thought my
Eat Pray Love
journey started on that kitchen floor and ended in Bordeaux. But it is so far from over. Sometimes, I think it's just beginning.

—

Aimee Halfpenny

I
t was the summer of 2010, and my unworn wedding dress was in the backseat of my Volvo. I had been driving around with it for two weeks. The dress rode with me to work, to the grocery store, to Zumba. It was a silent passenger I couldn't bring myself to get rid of.

I first read
Eat Pray Love
in 2007. I came to it hesitantly. I distinctly remember seeing the book displayed in stores and dismissing it. Another story about someone who figured it all out, magically got her happy ending, and would tell me what to do in just five easy steps? No thank you. But a friend confessed she thought of me when the author described her depression. Intrigued, I bought the book.

I found, to my surprise, that I related to this broken woman who was desperately uncomfortable in her own skin. Like her, my thirst for travel was intense and I understood the need to run through fields and explore ruins. I had reforested hills in
Oaxaca and worked with the rural poor in Nicaragua. My world cracked open, and I received far more from the beautiful souls I met on my adventures than they ever did from me. They taught me that the act of giving isn't a by-product of material wealth, it's a way of life and a daily practice.

So I plowed through Italy and India and then something happened—I got stuck. I was stuck for about three years. I'm not completely sure why I couldn't continue, but my best guess is this: the heart cannot absorb what it's not ready for.

It wasn't until I was suffering through my broken engagement, driving around with that dress in my car and feeling like my spirit had been pushed off a cliff that I returned to
Eat Pray Love
. This time, I took it in like a rescued fledgling being fed by an eyedropper. My entire life, I had wanted to be chosen. And then I was. And then I wasn't. My fiancé changed his mind three months before our wedding, and the very public nature of calling it off meant everyone—all the people I loved and the cake baker besides—now knew what I suspected my whole life: I was unlovable.

I needed the rest of Liz's story. It was time to get out of India and make my passage to Bali.

The engagement had ended dramatically, but the process of severing the relationship was slow.

I finished the book and, as if divinely scheduled, the movie of
Eat Pray Love
hit theaters ten days after my ex and I finally called it quits. I wept through the entire film. Shortly thereafter I made a trip to Sedona, Arizona. I spent my days climbing red rocks in the sun. I visited the Chapel of the Holy Cross, an architectural masterpiece built into the side of a hill. In a daze, I made my way around the chapel's gift shop, full of books and trinkets.
I came across a display of medals of patron saints and started picking up different ones, pressing their raised surfaces against my thumb. I wondered if these icons could actually deliver peace.

The last one I held was “Divine Mercy.” Yes, this is the one, I thought. I hung it around my neck, believing it would stay there indefinitely.

•   •   •

W
hen I was fifteen, I fell in love with Ireland. I think it was those bookstore calendars, all the mossy castles and rolling hills. Then I discovered there was a Halfpenny Bridge in Dublin, and that cemented it. This was clearly my land; these were my people. I decided that before I was married I would go to Ireland and stand as a Halfpenny on the Halfpenny Bridge.

I took my self-proclaimed spiritual pilgrimage very seriously and boasted to others about it. The thing is, I really did feel as if part of my heart was waiting for me on that bridge, and I had to travel to Ireland if I ever wanted to claim it.

Eat Pray Love
resurrected that old dream of mine. It occurred to me that I would have been married without ever standing on that bridge. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe that piece of my heart was still there, still waiting for me. Maybe the person I was meant to choose was myself.

My teenage promise became a call to action. I had to get to Ireland—and I was hell-bent on going alone. Even so, it took a village to get me there. I was dirt-poor, working for a nonprofit where I had been in a salary freeze for eighteen months. Supportive friends stepped up, offering rides, travel guides and advice. My best friend, Kelli, loaned me the money for my plane
ticket until my tax return came and I could pay her back. I told her, somewhat waveringly, of my plan. We cried together in her bathroom, and she whispered, “You have to do this, Aimee. You have to.”

I arrived in Dublin on an unusually warm day in late February. I wandered the city taking in the Georgian architecture and trying to understand the heavy Irish accents. I visited Dublin Castle and the Chester Beatty Library, which houses some of the world's rarest and earliest religious texts. Finally, after settling into my apartment, I knew it was time. I looked out over the rooftops and took a deep breath. I asked God to make me brave, and the tiny voice inside me said, “Be present. That's what I want for you in this, to be present.”

Having a peaceful or meaningful moment on the Halfpenny Bridge, it turns out, is a little like finding Zen in the Lincoln Tunnel. The bridge connects a bustling business district of Dublin to the pub mecca of Temple Bar and is always packed with people. I made my way through the crowd and then I was finally doing it—I was really standing there, a Halfpenny on the Halfpenny Bridge. I asked a passing man to take a picture of me and smiled joyfully. I brought two pennies with me to cast over the side. Penny prayers. One of gratitude and one of hope.

I spent the next two weeks traveling around the country. The first week was mostly occupied with resting, reading and sobbing, and the second with dancing all night to “Galway Girl” and drinking pints of Guinness. I visited castles and cliffs and watched rugby, slipped into churches and walked cities.

My last night in Ireland, in a pub in Galway, I met a young man who toured me around his city, showing me the Spanish Arch and ushering me into Irish music sessions. We talked about
life, love and heartbreak. We talked about what it meant to be
strong
, which I was labeled ad nauseam during the collapse of my engagement. I told him I was not strong—in fact, I was full of fear and still processing my loss. What's more, I would have married a man I shouldn't have. I showed him the saint medal I had purchased in Sedona, still around my neck, and shared that I wore it to get me through.

At the end of the night, before we parted ways, he said, “I have a gift for you.” I was taken aback—a present for me? The kindness of this stranger surprised me.

He handed me a small medal of Saint Patrick. It seemed like a gift from God. I slipped it on and removed my Divine Mercy medal, thanking it for its service and acknowledging that someday I might need it again.

I wear Saint Patrick now as a symbol of a new time in my life. One of hope, one of peace and, for the first time, one of Halfpenny.