Eat Pray Love

I finished reading Eat, Pray, Love last week. Caroline bought it for me a few weeks ago while we were out at dinner at The Cheesecake Factory in the IE (as in the Inland Empire, not Ireland) and afterwards she walked me over to the bookstore and bought me the book and said "Read it, she's you."

It was quite inspiring for me because as it turns out I am very similar to Elizabeth Gilbert and her viewpoints on life and children and travelling and priorities. She takes a different course than the usual on her path of self-discovery, leaving her home after a painful divorce and travelling to Italy, India and Indonesia on a journey of self-recovery, very similar to my trip to Ireland and I found myself laughing, crying, smiling and relating to so many things that she went through on her journey.

It reminded me that I am not alone, not the only one who wasn't jumping to have children and settle down but instead wanted to travel and explore, not the only one who needed to heal from a lifetime of heartbreak, not the only one who loves and lives her life in her own unique way a bit off the beaten path, not conforming to everything that society says I should be as a woman... and by that I mean being 32 and not being a wife or a mother, with a house and a white picket fence who cooks every meal and cleans after her children and has a very routine life that revolves around these roles in her life.

Not that there is anything wrong with those who choose the role of wife or mother or both in any way shape or form. In fact, I admire those that choose the role of mother and have the discipline to do so even more because of my inability to be that committed to that lifestyle. It's just not been of my greatest desires to do so myself, and I've never felt that "biological time clock" that most women talk about and at this point I don't know if I ever will have that overwhelming desire to be a mother.

Strangely enough, I would love being married as long as I felt I was marrying the "right" person for me, not a perfect person but my perfect companion. I enjoy the idea of the love and companionship and sharing that would come with marriage and maybe then my viewpoint on children would change. But that's not the only thing the book is about, just one of the first of many things I related to while reading... and so all that said, read the book, it's fantastic!