Elizabeth Gilbert: On Love, Loss, and Breaking Free

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Em Marinelli: Hey y'all, what's up? So glad to have you here. What an honor. I'm so excited to talk to you and to talk to you about this incredible, incredible book. I do want to say we're not going to like start from the beginning of the book and go all the way through. We're not doing that, but we'll talk about like themes that are important that come up a lot, codependency, sex and love addiction, psychological things like that. And I guess I just want to also start by saying thank you because reading this book got me back into the rooms because I was out for about eight months from Al-Anon. I'm in Al-Anon. And your book helped me get back there and reminded me how important my recovery journey is and to get back in. So thank you.

Elizabeth (Liz) Gilbert: I did not expect you to begin with that. And that's so moving. I'm like, Em, we were just backstage. You didn't mention anything about that. We were talking about a chorus line. We were tap dancing.

Em: We were.

Liz: We were talking about Ghostbusters. We had a lot of really important stuff going on. We really did. So there wasn't time for that. There wasn't time for that. Well, I'm delighted. I am delighted. Thank you. I am delighted to hear that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I don't do well without regular recovery meetings. I just don't. So I get it. And I get how easy it is to drift away from it. And then how we remember like, oh, right. That's where we stay.

Em: That's where we go. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So some of y'all have probably read the book and some of y'all maybe haven't. So fun challenge, Liz, could you in one or two sentences, summarize this book? That should be really easy.

Liz: Girl meets girl goes crazy. Um, uh, the memoir tells the story of my long friendship and very short romantic relationship with the filmmaker, writer and musician, Rayya Elias, who was my very best friend in the entire world, who I slowly and secretly fell in love with, who was then diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer and given six months to live, at which point we confessed our love for each other, went on a bender of very exciting, passionate romance set against the clock ticking that she wasn't going to be here for very long. And then she actually went back into her drug addiction. She was a recovered heroin addict. Um, and she went back into her very deeply into her drug addiction at the end of her life. And I went very deep down into my co-dependence and enabling before she died. And the book is about me trying to do a forensic deep dive to figure out quite literally what happened and how we got there and what my role was. A really big important question that shows up in the rooms of recovery a lot is what is my role in the insanity in my life. And this book, I think is a real effort for me to try to figure out what that is. So it's also about healing and recovery. That's more than two sentences, but there we go.

Em: That was perfect.

Liz: But girl meets girl goes crazy covers it too.

Em: Yeah, that's beautiful. And it is it's about what is my role. What's my part. Codependency is a word that's thrown a lot around a lot. It's like you hear it on TikTok. You're like, Oh, everyone's codependent. What does codependency mean for you? And how has it some of the ways it's shown up for you?

Liz: Well, first of all, I want to say I came by it honestly, you know, I it was in my mother's milk. It's in the groundwater of the culture. I certainly not unlike many women and girls was raised to believe that I wasn't really of much value unless I could make myself be chosen. And the best way that I could make myself be chosen was to pour myself into somebody. A friend of mine calls it bad math, right? The idea behind my codependency is I've got this giant vacancy, this hollowness that I cannot this infinite hollowness. And maybe if I meet you, and I pour whatever I've got in me into you, so now I'm doubly hollow and empty, right? I started off pretty hollow and empty, but now I'm going to pour myself into you. I'm going to give you every single thing that you want. I'm going to morph into whatever you need me to be. And to make sure you never have an unmet desire. I'm like going to devote myself to you getting everything that you possibly need and want out of life. And then maybe, maybe, maybe I can get a crumb of love back. It's also called being a crumbaholic, right? I can just get like a tiny little crumb. Like I've given you everything and maybe you'll give me back like a teaspoon, and maybe that will take away this great ache. So it's this very misguided and innocent idea that by loving someone who in most cases can't even love and take care of themselves, by loving somebody who can't take care of themselves and taking care of them, then maybe that person who can't even take care of themselves will take care of me. Super innocent, super destructive, a really great way to avoid taking care of your own pain. And then there's a bunch of mottos that I love. My favorite is the codependent bumper sticker, you break it, we fix it. I think that's really good. I definitely learned that from every woman in my entire family. God bless them. Another one I love is because it also means I project a lot of anxiety, try to fix, manage, control, and soothe. I call myself the human Zamboni. I'm just going to try to make your life smooth, you know? And another expression of that is codependency is watching in horror as somebody else's life passes before your face, right? Your obsession with their life takes you out of any connection to your own. And then my very favorite definition, and this one really works for me, is my uncle Nick, who's the only other member of my family who's in 12-step recovery, gave me this one. He said the old joke in his rooms was, how do you kill a codependent? You lock them in a round, empty, windowless room and you tell them that there's somebody sitting in the corner suffering. And then you watch them run themselves to death trying to find the person they need to rescue, right? So like it's this unhealthy obsessive fixation on the other without ever having established any connection to the self. And then it's nice to meet an addict because then you can really have a project, right? Like the more fucked up they are, the more work there is for me and I love that. So you know, and then I can save them and then they'll love me forever and that's worked out great every single time.

Em: Every single time. Every single time. Yes. And.

Liz: Fail safe.

Em: Yeah, fail safe. And also what comes up a lot in this book, and I think probably a lot of you who have read it or will read it, will identify with sex and love addiction, which you might not even have known was a thing, right? It might just be like how you are in relationships. There's nothing weird or wrong about that unless you're using relationships and people in this certain way. And I really love how you talk about it in the book. Can you share a little bit more about it?

Liz: Yeah, so and this is just my own experience and definitely I want to keep saying that. Like please take everything that I say with a grain of salt. It's not prescriptive to anybody but me. And sex and love addiction and certainly sex and love rooms of recovery, it's a subtle program where people have to find their own definition of what emotional sobriety looks like for them. And that can be very different from person to person. So but in my case, the way I identify as a sex and love addict is that I use people the way other people use substances. So I've used substances too, but like I don't really need them because I will get high and stoned and drunk on you, right? And like so what I do is like what I have done my whole life is that because I have not traditionally been able to stabilize my own nervous system and I haven't been able to take care of myself, I need to find somebody who will whose presence will alter my mood or mind. And so what that means is that there have been people in my life who I've used as stimulants and there have been people in my life who I've used as sedatives, often different people at the same time, right? Like I need this person because they're stimulating and I need this person because they're sedating. As with all addicts and all addictions, and I think I can say this pretty freely, one of the heartbreaking things about behaving in an addictive and compulsive way is that it takes you very far away from your true nature. And my true nature is to actually be very loving and kind and compassionate. My nature when my addiction is stimulated is to be a vampire and a predator actually, you know? Like and to use like to objectify people and to use them because to get something that I have not been able to source within myself. And that's very much in contrast to my actual integrity and my actual sense of decency and compassion. And it's led me into just such incredible spirals of shame because it's caused harm to me and it's also caused harm to other people. There's no, there's no, but if you were to lay out my entire romantic and sexual history for my whole life, starting from a heartbreakingly young age and going up into a heartbreakingly old age without much variation, you know, you would just see overlapping relationship, relationship, relationship, engagement, like desperate breakups, you know, just drama and trauma and drama and trauma. And there's nobody who would look at that timeline and say that's an emotionally healthy person who's doing well, you know, like nobody. I used to kind of call it being a free spirit, but there was no freedom in it. There was no freedom in it because I had no power over it. I couldn't stop myself. So I acted out like that for years. It cost me a lot. And one of the things I write about in the book is that I do believe that sex and love addiction is one of the leading causes of death in women. I mean, certainly women being harmed by their partners is incredibly common. People killing themselves and each other because of romantic splits and crimes of the heart and passion and jealousy is horrifically common. And these behaviors in me have brought me closer to suicide than anything else in my life. And they've also brought me closer to homicide than anything else in my life. So I take it really seriously. A lot of women don't make it out of sex and love addiction alive. And I was lucky enough to have a friend who had an intervention for me about six years ago who knew the 12-step rooms really well and was like, what you are is an addict. And there are rooms for that. And I'm taking you to a meeting. And I was deeply offended because I was like, I'm an influencer. I'm a thought leader. I know Oprah. I'm like, have you seen my work? People come to me. I do not need to go sit in a church basement unfolding chairs talking about how unmanageable my life is. I 100% need to sit in a church basement unfolding chairs talking about how unmanageable my life is. And that program transformed my life in the way that nothing else has ever been able to. And I put down drugs and alcohol at the same time because I come from a long line of just very unwell. And I use the word innocent again and again, innocent, innocent people using whatever they can use to not have to feel. And I don't belong anywhere where substances are because it doesn't end well for me. So that's what sobriety looks for me in terms of physical sobriety. And then in emotional sobriety, a sober day for me is any day where I'm not using another person in any way to change my mood or mind where I'm taking full accountability for the stewardship of my own being.

Em: And thank you. That's amazing. Yeah, well, and I think emotional sobriety is another one of those terms that people hear and they're like, what? That's a thing. And it is and it's about taking responsibility for control, manipulation, and also how you are regulating your emotions when you're not using a substance. How are you showing up? How are you showing up and interpersonally with people?

Liz: And who are you blaming your life on today? Is a really good question. That I like if I find myself drifting into the realms of blaming or shaming, there's like a tremendous, there's a there's an abdication of my own power when I do that. And this doesn't mean that I haven't been harmed. And I listen, I know exactly why I'm a sex and love addict. I know what happened. I know why I reacted this way. I sat in the rooms of therapist office my whole life. I always knew there was something very wrong with the way that I was engaging. I could have written a doctoral thesis by the time I was 30 called Why I act like this, essentially, Eat Pray Love and Committed are those doctoral theses, right. And, but it didn't stop me from acting that way. You know, it didn't stop like it couldn't interrupt, I needed to have an awakening of consciousness and a transformation in that like the sort of at the cellular level of the way that I was. And one of the things that I found very challenging when I first came into recovery was that in the relationship rooms of the 12 step universe, and I do want to say that 12 step recovery is not the only game in town when it comes to recovery at all. I mean, it's it doesn't work for everybody. So if it hasn't worked for you, find something that does because you deserve recovery, and it's not the only way to get it. It just happens to have worked for me. But when I first came into those rooms in those relationship rooms, Al-Anon and ACA, and, and SLA and coda, codependence anonymous, all of these, you know, the emphasis is on you have to learn how to take care of yourself. And that enraged me when I first came in, because I was like, that's what I was told the day I was born, you know, I was basically told, like, why don't you have an apartment? Like, go to like, we're not here to take care of you, like you take care of you. Like, so I've been looking my whole life, like that little creature in the Dr. Seuss book, who is like, are you my mother? Are you my mother? Are you my mother? Like looking for somebody who would take responsibility for me. And that's what my lowest part of my spirit wants, is it wants to abandon myself and make somebody else take care of me. And when I came into the rooms, like my fellows in the rooms were like, how's that been working out for you? How's that been working out for you going from person to person to person? And then how enraged do you become when they fail? Right. And so the stewardship is the word that I continually use, like, do I or do I not take full stewardship of this soul that I was entrusted with, and choose to be the person who shows up for this person? That's what emotional sobriety looks like for me.

Em: Oh, hell yeah. It's amazing. Yes. Yeah. And in some of the programs, like in ACA, for example, they say, the goal is to become your own loving parent. Like it's all about you. It's all about us. The focus can't be outward. We can't be looking for it. You talk in the book about this, I love a good acronym. Do you all love acronyms? In the book, you have an acronym LAVA, which I hadn't heard before. Can you tell us about LAVA and how it's connected to all the things you're talking about around sex and love addiction?

Liz: Yeah. So LAVA stands for Love, Attention, Validation, and Approval. LAVA, Love, Attention, Validation, and Approval. That's actually my drug of choice. Right? So it's not even so much that I'm addicted to a person. It feels like I'm addicted to a person, but what I'm addicted to is the LAVA that their presence creates in me. Right? I'm addicted to that substance. I'm addicted to getting love, attention, validation, and approval from them. And it's amazing if I can, like, be in a situation where I'm getting that. Incredible. If that tap turns off, and I have such a severe attachment wound that if that tap even turns off a little, like, I'm already not okay. You know? And if that is removed from me, like, I will go into withdrawal. And that is the closest I've ever come to taking my own life, is when the LAVA is removed. And whatever, and if I feel like it's being removed, I will do traditionally whatever I have to do to get it back, no matter what cost to my dignity, no matter what cost to my life, no matter what literal cost. Like, but that's the thing that I'm getting high on, is the LAVA. And so learning how to reparent yourself, and learning how to find the one. You know, I'll give you this example that I, when I was newly in recovery, like, very newly, I had a work situation on Zoom with somebody, and we instantly had this spark, like, I could feel it, this instant spark of deep attraction, fast attraction to each other. And that's my drug, right? Like, that is my drug. And actually, I can tell that that's that person's drug, too. And now I know that feeling that I used to call love at first sight is actually code for run. You know? Run, Gilbert, this is not going to end well for you, right? You're already getting high, right? You're already getting high. So we got high in this conversation, and I knew that this person was going to, I knew they were going to contact me, and they did. They contacted me the next day. Now, this is a fully married person, fully married person with two kids. Like, this is not an available person, which is also a drug for me. Like, unavailable people are a drug for me, because if I can get an unavailable person to love me, then I must be something very special, right? So it was this amazing thing, because I was newly in recovery, where I could feel, I was actually charting what it was doing to my body. So people who have process addictions, gambling, shopping, skin picking, like, these behaviors, right, that are less about a substance and more about a behavior, like, we have, like, our dopamine supply chain in our brain is very wonky, right? So, like, I get wildly high on a very tiny amount of attention. So I woke up that morning, and I was like, oh, I'm high on this half-hour conversation I had with this person. Checked my phone, and they had indeed contacted me, and they left a very love-addicty message, like, what we call love bombing, you know, where they were like, I kind of want to run away with you, and I'm like, that's funny, because you introduced me to your wife at the beginning of our conversation, right? But, like, that's the kind of thing I could get very easily pulled into. And I actually just sat there, and I didn't move, I just watched the cortisol run through my body, I watched the dopamine, I was like, you are wasted on this fantasy of this person, like, it's incredible. And I watched this young part of me want to run to them, like, just want to run to them, and I've never been able to resist that in my life, which is how I've gotten myself in so much trouble for so long. It's like, I watch myself drive over a cliff into somebody, but on that day, I just sat and I watched her, and it was like, it was like I felt this division in my body of her trying to get out to run to them, and when I, and I just put my hand in my heart, and I said, I see you, right? I see you, and I was like, honey, I know exactly what you think you're going to get out of this. I know exactly why you think this is going to be great. I know everything that you have already decided this person can give you. I know that you don't have very much reason to trust me. Like, I was saying this out loud to myself, this is reparenting. I was like, I've been a bad parent. I've thrown you away a million times. Like, you haven't had a good, steady, reliable parent, and I know you don't really trust me, and you have reason not to, but I'm asking you to believe me when I promise you I can take better care of you than that married man with two kids can. I hundred. Trust and believe, as shitty a parent as I am, I'm going to be better for you than that, right? Like, give me a chance to show you the life that I can give you, but you have to trust me, and you have to put this down. Like, this is not going to go well for you, or those kids, or that woman. I love women. I don't want to be somebody's other, you know what I mean? Like, this is not going to go well for anybody. And then that part that was pulling and straining broke down and just wept, and then I was like, I got you. Like, this is what it's all about. There's a grief in here of how you want to be loved and how you want to be seen, but that's not where you're going to get it, you know? Like, no matter what they're promising after that half-hour conversation, like, they don't have it for you, but I do, and what are we going to do today to look after you, right? And then you have to go, then I had to go through a little withdrawal, like a little mini withdrawal. Like, whenever I put a fantasy down, I have to go through a withdrawal, because I can get high on a fantasy so quick, you guys. I remember, and I write about this in the book, I have a friend who is a recovering cocaine addict, and she said that when she got out of rehab, her sponsor in rehab sat her down and said, listen, I want to break this down for you very clearly. The day is going to come when you are in a room with cocaine in it. That is not an if, that is a when. That is going to happen. When that happens, you will have 30 seconds to save your life. Run. Because after 30 seconds, your addict brain is going to kick in and take over, and then you will have no more agency. You have to get your, she's like, collect your purse and leave the premises, right? And I super identify with that, because that's how quickly I can fall into a person in 30 seconds. You know? It does the same thing to my nervous system that a bunch of rails of cocaine would do to a cocaine addict. And I know that now. And so I can't let myself linger.

Em: And imagine it's really hard. It's really hard because you are meeting amazing, sexy people all the time. Like, people that you are attracted to. This is like something that you might not be in the room with cocaine, but you are in rooms with cocaine every day. Right? It's cocaine rooms.

Liz: It's cocaine rooms left, right, and center. But you know what, Em? Every addiction is hard. You know? Food addicts have to be around food everywhere. Like, alcoholics, alcohol is everywhere. Like, drugs are everywhere. If you are an addict, the thing you love, you've got your porn addicts, you've got your phone right there. You know, gambling addicts, you've got your phone right there. Like, it's not nobody's wins in terms of how hard it is. That said, I will say that a lot of people I know who are drug addicts and alcoholics in recovery who go to SLAA and CODA say that at the very bottom, underneath the alcoholism and underneath the drug addiction was the great harrowing vacancy void of love addiction. That that's what they were covering up with all the other usages and that putting down the fantasy to somebody who they may have been using who was bad for them was harder for them than putting down heroin. I've heard that multiple, multiple, multiple times in the room. I think love addiction could, one could argue is at the bottom of every other addiction. That's what we're trying to fill the hole with.

Em: It reminds me of Gabor Mate talking about the hungry ghost and just like this insatiable boy with a tiny mouth that's just never going to be filled no matter what you do. It's like that. It reminds me, so my favorite part of the book is the second part when shit got real, real. You know what I'm talking about. You almost didn't write it. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and what made you get there, what helped you to get there?

Liz: So somebody asked me recently, why did you want to write this book? And I was like, bitch, I did not want to write this book. I can talk about why I wanted to write all my other books, but I did not want to write this book. I didn't want to write this book. I tried really hard not to write this book. I wrote a whole bunch of other books so I wouldn't have to write this book. I waited till seven years after Rayya died thinking that maybe this story would just go away. I wrote a fictional version of this book about a year after she died that was a novella called Nobody Leaves that was a ghost story and it was fiction. It was like disguised fictional versions of me and Rayya because I was like, I'll write around it by writing about it as fiction and also nobody will know it as us. Everybody would 100% know that it was us. And I knew that wasn't it. And then I wrote a version of it that was just poetry that was also, it was like a little bit more emotionally honest, but I was writing about the experiences of addiction and grief, but I wasn't writing about what happened. I was just writing about what it felt like with no context as to what happened. The reason I didn't want to write this book is because there was a part of me who still didn't want this to be what the story was. When I fell in love with Rayya and we had this very short time together, I'm smiling because some of you may have had this experience. I thought it was going to be a really different love story than it was. And I wanted it to be a really different love story than it was. And for a while it was this, like, and it was also, we'd known each other for 17 years at that point. This was not some stranger. This was the person I knew more deeply and intimately than anyone else in the world. The person I, like we had earned trust. We had deeply earned intimacy, deeply earned trust. This was the most foundational person in my entire life whose integrity was unflappable, whose honesty was like my shelter. And then it went off the rails, you know? And the roof caved in and the floor went out. And it kind of reminds me of the Zen adage that says, first they pull the carpet out from under your feet, and then they pull the floor out from under the carpet, and then they pull the ground out from under the floor, and you're standing over the void and now you're ready to begin your spiritual journey. Right? What happened was that when Rayya went back to her act of addiction, something was released in her who was a person I had never met. And something was released in me who was a person I never wanted to see again. And we both went to the lowest and most degraded versions of myself. So after she died, I was like, I don't even want to think about that. Right? But the story wouldn't go away. Like the story, and many of you who are creators know this, like there are certain things that call us that are like, I'm not going to go away till you deal with me. You know? And Rayya used to have an adage that she said all the time that was her most famous quote that she said, the truth has legs. It's the only thing that stands. The truth stands after all the bullshit and all the dissembling and all the lying and all the distractions and all the manipulations. You know, at the end of the day, the truth is still standing there. She said it can't move. It's a good thing to remember in these days and these times. The truth, you can do whatever you want around it. The truth remains the truth. It stands. It doesn't move until you are ready to acknowledge it. They say, there's a line I love that trauma moves through a family until somebody is brave enough to feel it. I think addiction moves through us until you are courageous enough or have had enough to finally be like, okay, I'm going to start telling the truth. Right? And so it's so, it's just so curious and paradoxical to me that Rayya was the great teacher of truth in my life and I did not want to tell the truth about this story. And it really wasn't until she came to me in spirit. I mean, we're in San Francisco so I think I can freely talk about this. But she fully haunted me and came to me in spirit and was like, bitch, write this book. Write this book and leave nothing out because that's how Rayya always was. Whenever she was in a conflict with somebody, she would say, look, the truth is where we're going to end up anyway, eventually. So why don't we just start with it? Right? Just lead with it. Like put it on the table. She was so fearless in the face of truth, even when it made her look bad, even when it was painful. And so that's why I ended up writing it. And then once I decided to do that, to really obey that edict and to tell the story, at that point it was obvious, like if you are going to do this, you have got to do it. And if you're going to do it, you have got to be just as revealing of your own pathologies and your own manipulations and your own darkness as you are of the more obvious drug addict. Right? Because there was a reason that we were so drawn to each other. There was a reason, right? And I was every bit as complicit and involved in the ninth circle of hellscape that we ended up in as she was. It just took me a bunch of recovery to be able to find out what that was and then have the courage to say it. I'm glad you liked that part of the book. My uncle, Nick, who I talk about a lot, when I gave it to him, he sent me a note back saying, I absolutely love your appalling new book. And it's like, that is an appalling thing to read, like where we went to in our darkness.

Em: I know it's the journey and it's the truth of the journey. And I think that's what's so powerful, is that people, we need to see our experiences reflected that way, in a real way, without holding back. She came to you and told you this, there's so much beautiful moments of spiritual divinity, synchronicities that are like, y'all, synchronicities in this book. Whoa. They're incredible. And also, possession, some visitation, some spiritual things. So I wanted to know if you could speak a little bit about that. And also, have you always had that, your whole life? Have you had access to those transpersonal realms?

Liz: Kind of. You know, I've been in the world for kind of, you know, like a little, I mean, I, you know, I'm an artist and a creator, so like I spend a lot of time in other realms anyway. I mean, certainly as a novelist, I have always felt very much that my characters speak to me and through me when I was writing The Signature of All Things every morning, I would say to Alma Whitaker, tell me what you want the people to know about you. You know, and I would, she would tell me and I would write it down. Like, I have this deep, like, real connection with these characters. But I think something happened around the trauma of Rayya's death. Trauma can be a great shattering, egoic shattering, which is often, creates the cracks where other ways of thinking and feeling and believing can come through. But I write in the book about how Rayya had, you know, I'm going to tell both of these stories. So the way that Rayya did get clean after years of being a low bottom, street living, prison inhabiting, jails, institutions, like a real sick and suffering drug addict, for years, like a lost cause, the way that she finally got sober, interestingly enough, was from a visitation from her mother. I'm only really putting this together now. Her mother had died years earlier before it when Rayya was still using. And Rayya had sick of herself and she had decided to end her life with a heroin overdose and in her description, took enough heroin to kill an elephant. I had since seen how many drugs Rayya could do and not die. So I think she might have under, you know, under, underdosed. She was a titanium rhinoceros. But anyway, she didn't die, but she had a vision and in the vision, she rose above her own body. So she's probably had a near death experience. And she saw herself from above, which is usually the first step of an NDA. And, but she saw herself through the eyes of her own mother, who was a really loving and compassionate person who loved her dearly. And she heard her mother looking down at this drug addict in a shooting gallery on the Lower East Side. And just she felt her mother's pain and compassion of no child of mine, no child of anyone should ever have to be this degraded. And when she woke up out of that with that compassion, it was like with that compassion toward herself, it was, it was what gave her what she needed to get clean. And so her mom, I think is a good, is a really, is really good at reaching people. Because her mother reached her. Some people apparently have a talent for it. And, and when Rayya, like a week before Rayya was diagnosed with cancer, it was her 56th birthday. And we were celebrating together. And all of a sudden, I was like, Oh, Rayya, your mom's in the room. I mean, as much as you are in the room. I was like, your mom's here. I had like full chills. And I just started weeping with mother love. I was seeing Rayya through the eyes of her mother. And I was we I just started crying. And I was like, she loves you so much. She's so proud of you. She is so proud of you. And she's so happy that you're celebrating your birthday. And she just came because she wants to tell you that she loves you. And a week later, Rayya was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And I feel as though her mom came at the beginning of that journey to be with both of us through that. Because there were a number of times throughout Rayya's sickness where her mom came to me, as she had that day, and brought guidance or love for her daughter through me. And then after Rayya died, Rayya came through like crazy, like, constantly, like we were in full conversation so easily. I was like, Rayya is more accessible in depth than most people are in life. Like she was bossy. She was opinionated. She was funny. You know, like I could ask her any question, the answer would drop right into my mind. And what I think is that she had told me, I'm not going to leave until we're both ready. And I'm not going to leave. This is before she died. She said, I'm not going to leave until we're both ready for me to die. And I'm not going to leave until I know that you're standing on your own two feet in every circumstance of your life, because I relied on her so much. So when she died, she didn't leave. Because we weren't both ready. And I wasn't standing on my own two feet. And as I've gotten sober, and as I've taken that stewardship, and as I've learned how to set boundaries, even internal boundaries, like not allowing my addiction to act out, and like, as I've gotten more and more well, and as I've like, become this radically newly defined person who actually does take pretty close to full responsibility for herself, Rayya's voice has diminished. And I was asking my higher power about that. And God was like, she needs to rest. She's tired. And she has work to do, her soul, and her spirit have work to do. And I've been getting messages from people saying that they come to her, you know, like some very touching stories that people are telling about being in a lot of trouble and feeling Rayya, like people who don't know me, you know, saying like, I'm, you know, she's, she's become my like, otherworldly sponsor. Like, she's guiding, she guided me back to the rooms, like, she's helping me to get sober. So when God said to me, she's got her own work to do, I think that might be the work that she's doing. And I also have my work to do in this realm. And part of the grief that I felt after Rayya died was like, I wanted us to be in the same realm. And the reality is we aren't, you know, she's on the other side, and I'm here. And that's not an accident. She's where she's supposed to be. And I'm where I'm supposed to be. I don't know if I answered your question. I totally forgot what it was.

Em: Yes, you did. It was amazing.

Liz: I do go on, I do go on.

Em: No, it's wonderful. In terms of your relationship with spirit and higher power, I'm wondering if you can talk about how that has moved or transformed for you, maybe even since Eat Pray Love or through this process and where you are now in relationship to it in the program.

Liz: I'm so happy to answer that. If you will tell me if you have a tattoo of a mailbox with tacos in it.

Em: I do. And it's really.

Liz: I am so sorry, but like, I'm really going to need to know a little bit about that. That is, I'm like, are those tacos coming out of a mailbox?

Em: They really are tacos in a mailbox. And it's from a skit from an old sketch comedy show called The State. Anyone know The State? It's my favorite one about tacos in a mailbox.

Liz: I can now focus on higher power, but that's incredible.

Em: I'll say one more thing. Whenever my partner and I, shout out to my partner who's here, whenever our mail doesn't come, we just say to each other, it's tacos. Tacos. We didn’t get mail.

Liz: Thank you for allowing me. And now we'll go back to talking about higher power. Incredible tattoos. I have a lot more questions too, but we'll talk later about that. I'm going to share this amazing thing. So I've always had the God gene. I don't know why I grew up. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up in a religious family. I grew up going to church, but it didn't really mean anything to anybody. It was more like a social thing. Very light on the God stuff. Like, I found that myself. Like, I found that myself in childhood. I felt, I always felt it. I always believed in God. I always loved God. I never trusted God. I never trusted anybody really, and fully. And so I guess I felt more like we were colleagues. You know? It's like we were colleagues with a good working relationship. You know, it's like, but I, but turn my life over to the care of a higher power. No, thank you. I will keep a firm white knuckled grip on my own life. And when I first came into recovery and I got to steps two and three in the 12-step universe, that that's like came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity and made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of a power greater than ourselves. These are the parts of the 12 steps that make it not a self-help program. Because I've done every single self-help program that there is, but this is the part where it's not a self-help program. This is a part where it's like, you're like, I can't help myself, actually. I'm powerless over this. I'm like, I can't stop doing what I keep doing. And I do need a higher power to help me. And I'm willing to turn my life and my will over to that higher power of my own understanding, which is the beautiful and pretty sophisticated opening that the original founders of AA created for you get to decide what that higher power is, and you get to have your own understanding of what that is. So my sponsor gave me this amazing exercise, and I'm going to pass it along because it's quite joyful and kind of wild and super radical. And she was like, I want you to write a job description of what you're looking for in a higher power. Like in the same way that people write what you're looking for in a partner or what you're looking like on your vision board, what you're looking for in a home. Like write down what, and I was like, you don't get to do that, right? And she's like, you don't? What do you have to accept a God someone taught you about? That doesn't make sense, right? Like this is your higher power. This is your individual relationship with what you understand higher power to be. So what would a higher power have to be for you to believe in it, Liz? And I'm like, well, I already believe in God. And she's like, for you to turn your life over to it. You know, like you who are so controlling, what would it have to be? So I got to like build a bear, my own higher power. And it was so much fun. And I was like, what would it have to be, you know? And so the first item of the list was, has to absolutely unconditionally love me. And I cannot have a judgmental God. I cannot have what James Joyce called the hangman God. I have that living in my head already. Like I have a terrorist inside my head who judges and criticizes me at every single moment of the day. I don't need an external deity to do it. Like I've got that down, right? Like I've got that down. That's already in there, right? So I need an absolutely endlessly loving God. And I need, and the next thing I wrote was must have good sense of humor, good with kids and dogs, must be, must think that my character defects are adorable, right? Like adorable, must be like, look at you acting out and wrecking your life. Like, you're so cute, right? Like it's got to be like, it's got to be, it's just like, can't take me too seriously. Like has to think that I am absolutely adorable and precious and has to be 100% available. No office hours, no blackout dates, you know? Like I don't care, like whatever else is going on in the world. Like you have to make time for me. Like you got to make time for me. Like if I have a petty problem and I need my higher power, I need a higher power who's like, I set the whole week aside for you, you know? And that's when I created that, she was like, why can't that be your God? Like who's to say it isn't, you know? And also why wouldn't a deeply loving God show up in whatever form a suffering addict needed, right? Like why, and why would it have to be prescribed by somebody else? And so the relationship that I started to create with that loving being, with that loving voice became what I turned my will and my life over to every day.

Em: Beautiful, thank you.

Liz: You guys can borrow my higher power if you want one.

Em: I mean, I want this, I want this build-a-bear situation. I mean, it's so beautiful because I think one of the things that, and you mentioned it before, there's not just 12-step, there's harm reduction programs, there's other kind of community, you know, ways in which you can work through and get support with different addiction stuff. But I think one of the things that comes up for me like in my clinical work with folks that I work with is like, they're like, I don't want to go to 12-step because of all that God stuff. I mean, it's the biggest thing I think that gets in the way. And so something like that, being able to speak to something like how you can create that for yourself, if that's the right thing for you and that's not for everybody, is wonderful. And is there anything else you would say to that person who would be like, I need this, I want to go, but all that God stuff?

Liz: I would respect what they say, you know, like I believe them. Like I kind of, I believe them, you know, like, and I trust people with their own lives. And there are other programs, you know, and it's like, the problem is, it's a spiritual program, you know what I mean? Like it's not a secular program, it's a spiritual program. And the people who founded it had spiritual and religious experiences that got them sober, you know, like, and so they built the program based on this idea of surrender to a higher power. So if you hate that shit, you're going to run into it every five seconds in those rooms, you know, and it's going to be really confronting and really chafing. And like, I'm not here to try to sell a God on anybody, you know what I mean? Like that's, we have plenty of people in our culture doing that, you know? And I would just say, like, I hope that you find the help that you need, and please don't stop till you do. You know, like, please don't stop till you do. And you don't need to get well the way I got well. I don't think any one thing works for every person. It just happens, like, I really dig God, right? Like, so that's like, but I also always say, like, I also have deep respect, like deep respect for anybody who's an atheist or an agnostic. I think it's actually a very sensible response to most religious teaching, right? It's like, especially if you were harmed in your spiritual background, especially if you were abused, especially if you were taught an abusive God, it's like, yeah, that's a wise thing to do. And like, it's a wise thing to pull away from that. It makes a lot of sense to me. So I, I mean, I always say to my atheistic and agnostic friends, like, whatever God you don't believe in, I also don't believe in that God, so we're good. And, and whatever God anybody believes in, I, believe in that God too. Like, we're good. I get, I'm good with everybody, so we're fine. There's a beautiful prayer that I love that's this Celtic prayer of approach that I think is, like, I try to do this with my sponsees. I try to do this with new friends, with new fellows, like, try to remember these words, because I think it's like the most respectful way to engage with anybody. And it's, I, I will, I will drink from your well. I think the first line is, I will honor your gods. It's such a, like, what a great way to begin a relationship with anybody. And I would add, or lack of, right? I will honor your gods, or lack of. I will drink from your well. I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place. I am not capable of disappointment, and I have no cherished outcome. Like, isn't that beautiful? Like, if you could embody that of, like, and my friends and I say this to each other all the time, I have no cherished outcome. I have no cherished outcome. And when I start to, sometimes I have one and didn't know it till I didn't get it. Like, one of the ways that I find out that I had a cherished outcome is if I don't get it, and then I'm like, oh, I had a cherished outcome. And now I have to do an inventory on my resentments, because I now have a resentment. But that's not anyone's fault. I had a cherished outcome, and that's a great way to end up with a resentment.

Em: Yes, yes. You're so good. Yeah. I want to ask you about Earth School. Tell us about Earth School. And yeah, tell us about Earth School. That's the thing first.

Liz: Okay, first of all, I always loved school. So I love the Earth School model. This is not something that I invented by any means. This is actually a pretty widespread kind of view, and it's certainly very common in Eastern philosophies, in Eastern religions, this concept that Earth is a school for souls. What is happening here? Is that you chose to come here. You signed up for Earth Academy. It's the most difficult school in the universe, maybe the only one. We've been looking around the universe real hard and haven't found anything that looks like this, right? Something very unusual is going on. We can at least agree that something very unusual is going on on this planet, and something very unusual is going on with consciousness. And the concept is that souls choose to incarnate, to take form, to be born into form, which is weird because you're taking this infinite thing and compressing it into this apparently finite, this is my Earth School spacesuit that I'm wearing, but I get super identified with the spacesuit and I think I'm the spacesuit, but I'm not the spacesuit. I'm just in the spacesuit or located kind of in the vicinity of the spacesuit, right? So you get dropped into this spacesuit, but the idea of Earth School is that before you were born, you had a sort of conference with a bunch of other souls, and this is often called an interlife review. Different cultures think of this differently, but you made a bunch of decisions about what you needed to experience here in Earth School so that you're still at the best possible capacity for evolution and growth, right? And that is a really helpful model that I have used when there's a shit tornado happening in my life. I'm like, why did I sign up for this class, right? I went to Rayya School, I went to Rayya School and graduated with honors, but holy moly, that was a tough school, right? And I was like, you know, and then you forget that you signed up for it. My friend Martha Beck often puts it this way, like, why did I design the video game this way? Like, why did I design, why did I put the software in for this? Who is this person to me? Why did we decide to meet here? Like, what are we offering each other? And sometimes, and the way I've got a friend named Barb Morrison who describes their version of Earth School is like, there's like, they call it greetings from the boardroom, that there's like this giant boardroom before you begin and all the souls are there and somebody's like, okay, I really want to escalate my ascension and my compassion and my understanding and my growth in this lifetime. I'm going to need some real challenges. Who will volunteer to be my alcoholic abusive parent? You know? And like, at the back of the room, someone's like, I'll do it. And they're like, it's going to be a shitty fucking incarnation for me. But I'll do it because I love you so much. I will give you those experiences. Who's going to be the lover who breaks my heart? I'll do it. Like, who's going to be the kid who disappoints me? I'll do it. You know, like, and like, we take these assignments out of love, right? Because there's something you can't learn any other way.

Em: Yeah, and I think that it's like, in psychology, we call it like repetition compulsion. Like, you do this thing, find those people, you do what you need to do, you go through it again in an effort to heal or an effort to have a different outcome. When I was reading it, though, I was thinking about things like, like trauma, though, and like abusive relationships or like genocide, for example. And it's like, how do you situate that in Earth School in terms of like the predetermination of things?

Liz: I don't inflict Earth School on anybody else. Right? So I don't see somebody suffering in Darfur. And I'm like, Earth School, you know what I mean? Like, they picked a funny incarnate, like, no, you know, nor would I say to a friend of mine who was in any pain, like, it's interesting why you designed the video game that way, you know, like, that's called being a dick. And I am not a dick. Right?

Em: Dickish.

Liz: Like, no, no, like, no, you respond with compassion, you do you come to serve, you do whatever you can to help you fight for the rights of people. You don't like no, absolutely not. However, for me, where I use the Earth School model is to pull myself out of the mire of my own perceived victimization. Mine. Not like not I'm not putting this on anybody else. Right? So it's my it's a model that works really well for me. Right? And like, and I'll give you this example, when Rayya started using again, and and like, it like you've probably had time, some of you may be in something like this right now, there's these chapters of your life where it's like raining hammers, you're like, oh my god, and then this happened, like, so we had this week where Rayya was like, death spiraling into massive cocaine addiction. My we were renting this apartment where the lamb landlord I had written to the landlord, six months earlier and said, my partner's dying of cancer, she's in hospice, I'm not trying to be emotionally manipulative. But it would be amazing if we didn't have to move at the end of the six month lease, I'm happy to pay you more money for us to stay because like moving hospice cancer patient would be really hard right now. This isn't your problem. But if you were wondering, like, could we renew the lease now or double it like it just be fantastic if it works for you. And he was like, no problem. You guys have been great. I've got you. Don't worry about it. We'll renew the lease. And when that time came, which was the same week that Rayya was spiraling into cocaine, he sent a message and said, I'm selling the apartment, you have to leave. And I was like, I have to move my cocaine addict hospice patient, who's super paranoid and abusive? I have to move, you know, like, that's happening. And then the bank called and they were like, Russian hackers took all your money. And I was like, huh, you know, that's a lot in a day. Like those three, you know, and, and I was sleep deprived. And I remember just going out, I used to just I would walk into the apartment, take a look at Rayya, I say three things to her and just walk out and leave because I was like, I can't handle this. And I remember I was walking down East Sixth Street, feeling very sorry for myself, very panicked. And I and I heard a voice say, pray. And I looked up at the sky and this prayer came out of me that was the most radical prayer that I have ever prayed in my entire life. And I said, God, make it worse. Make it worse. And I was like, boo, boo, and I like tried to grab the words and like, I didn't say that, you know, but I was like, no, make it worse because I actually fundamentally believe in a friendly universe. And I fundamentally believe that there's something in here that is toward my benefit. And I just cannot find what it is. And I'm trapped in my own self pity right now. And I'm trapped in blame. And I'm trapped in resentment and rage and fear. But like, I know there's something for me here. I just can't see it. I'm not skilled enough to see it. So take the gloves off and like really bring it down on me. Like if you're trying to like shatter me, you're doing a pretty good job, but do it even more so that I can be totally broken and I'll have the opportunity to grow on the other side of that into whatever the thing is that I'm supposed to be on the other side of that. Let's go. Let's do let's fucking do this. Because like, I know, like, do it. And God obliged and things got a lot worse. And I was still like, I'm still not seeing it. Like, I'm sorry, I have might have to repeat this grade six more times. Because I do not understand how this is happening to me. And it wasn't until a year and a half after Rayya died after I had thrown myself into another relationship where I was pouring myself completely into another person and had gotten and was back down on my face in a pile of snot and tears on the bathroom floor, which is where many of you met me the first time 20 years earlier. And my friend took me aside and had the intervention and said, you're a sex and love addict. That I was like, Oh, I see. Like, I see. And one of the really good ways to diagnose addiction that I was taught to is that you take step one and you backwards engineer it. So step one is came to believe we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. Right? backwards engineer it has your life become unmanageable? Is your life unmanageable right now? Then there's something that you're powerless over that you're trying to hold power over. Right? Like, what are you trying to control? What are you trying to have power over that you're powerless over? And one of the reasons my life was totally unmanageable at that point was that I was trying to have power over Rayya and over her addiction. And I was trying to control a person who was absolutely out of control. Right? And that was making my life unmanageable. And it was also unmanageable because I had like practically bankrupted myself trying to give her every single thing she could ever want so that she would love me and that was making my life unmanageable. Right? Like, and so of course all the all the dominoes were falling and everything was falling apart. So yeah, I use it for me. But I don't inflict the Earth's gold model on anybody else. You're free to borrow it if it's helpful. But if it feels abusive to you, and definitely don't inflict it on anybody else. It's just a personal thing that I like.

Em: Thank you. I like it too. I think we have to go to our last question somehow. I don't know how that's possible because everything went so fast. I want to read a quote that I love. Many of them I love. Also, sidebar, I really love the way that you put poetry and art and like how you just sprinkled this beautiful, you're all of your artistry in the memoir. So I just wanted to say that.

Liz: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Em: It's really wonderful to read.

Liz: Thank you. I was really lucky. My publisher let me do this. I mean, I didn't tell them about it as I was writing the book. But I saw it as kind of like an art project. And it felt like it made my inner children super excited to put it together like an album. You know, there was like there's photos of me and Rayya and there's poetry that I was writing during recovery. There's prayers that I kind of downloaded from the God of my understanding. And I was piling all of these things together and I kept visualizing certain images going with certain parts of the book and certain stories being associated with certain poems.

Em: It’s gorgeous.

Liz: And so when I turned in the book, I went through a lot of trouble to print it kind of exactly the way I saw it. And instead of turning the book over digitally, very much like the over eager third grader who I truly am, I brought it to my publisher's office in person. And I was like, I don't want to send this to you digitally. I want it. I have to kind of show it to you. And I put it down at her desk. And then I was like this. Well, that poor woman had to like page. I'm like, do you like it? Do you like that picture? Do you like that picture? Do you like that poem? Do you like that picture? And I was like, can I do it? Can I do it that way? Can I do it that way? And she was like, we'll see. But they did it. They did it. And I'm so happy because I feel like there's some emotions that are best expressed through poetry and some sort of concepts that are best expressed through drawings.

Em: And it's all there.

Liz: And I wanted pictures of Rayya in there too.

Em: Yeah, it's gorgeous. We have to go to the Q&A. So this answer has to be so tiny and short, even though it's a question. You say, “I finally learned that I cannot be abandoned by anybody. I can only abandon myself. And as long as I don't do that, as long as I don't throw Lizzie away, I will always be all right no matter what anybody else does or does not do.” My question to you is, how is your little inner Lizzie right now?

Liz: Oh, man, she's just humming. She's humming because she finally has what she's needed her whole life, which is a safe, sober, available adult to make sure that she's all right. And she's quiet now because she doesn't have to act out to get attention. And she also sees me doing things I have never done before in my entire life. She sees me saying no. She sees me setting boundaries. She sees me setting radical boundaries, like groundbreaking, earth-shaking, family-changing boundaries, you know? No, I'm not going to that family event because that's not a safe place. I wouldn't let my seven-year-old be in there. I'm not going to let my 56-year-old be in there. And she's like, Mom's a badass. The more I make sure that I can create a safe environment for her, then she gets to be the creative, vibrant, spiritual, inventive, curious being who she is, which fuels all my artistry and actually is like, she's the artist.

Em: Oh, I love that. Can we give this some love? Liz, some love.

Liz: Oh.

Em: Thank you for that. Let's give so much love for the incredible, amazing. Best blazer ever.

Liz: Em, you are awesome. Thank you so much. I love you all we love you and thank you Em for that beautiful conversation. Thank you.

Em: A singular sensation.

Liz: Thank you. We love you.

 

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

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