Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, is back in the public eye with her new memoir All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation. In the memoir, she reflects on her relationship with musician and author Rayya Elias, whose terminal illness and eventual death influenced Gilbert’s life.
The book has also rekindled interest in Gilbert’s separation from her second husband, Jose Nunes, who was a prominent figure in Gilbert’s life as it was reflected in her bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love.
Gilbert encountered Jose Nunes, a Brazilian entrepreneur, during her trip to Italy, India, and Indonesia while navigating her post-divorce journey, as she wrote about in Eat, Pray, Love (2006).
The story of their love in Bali was captured in the memoir and in the movie released in 2010 starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem. Gilbert and Nunes married in 2007 as Gilbert needed to be married to keep Nunes in the United States after an unexpected visa issue.
Their union lasted for nearly ten years and the couple appeared to live out the happily ever after conclusion of Gilbert’s classic memoir. However, in 2016, Gilbert surprised the public by announcing that she and Jose Nunes had separated.
Elizabeth Gilbert leaves Jose Nunes for Rayya Elias
Gilbert explained that she had developed a romantic attraction to her best friend, Rayya Elias, a musician, author, and hairstylist she had been friends with for 15 years. Elias was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer around the same time which had Gilbert processing her emotions.
"I need to live my life in truth and transparency, even more than I need privacy, or good publicity, or prudence, or other people's approval or understanding, or just about anything else," Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in her book, Big Magic.
She emphasized that her separation from Nunes was not due to a crisis but a pledge. Gilbert and Elias got into a relationship soon after, and Gilbert stayed with Elias until she died in 2018.
In Gilbert's recent memoir, she holds nothing back in her description of their relationship, specifically the experiences of addiction, codependency, and coping with extreme emotions. She refers to herself as "a love addict" and "a blackout codependent" and describes how her own enabling behavior during Elias' drug relapse drove her to her own breaking point.
"I was trying to fix it and control it and manage it and I was breaking and she was breaking. And there was no possibility of an intervention because how do you have an intervention with a drug addict who's got a terminal cancer diagnosis and is in hospice?" Elizabeth Gilbert said in an interview with NPR.
Elizabeth Gilbert believes it was important to disclose, despite the overwhelming sadness, that writing these painful stories was hugely relevant to telling the truth about their love and loss.
Seven years after Elias' death, Gilbert stated that she now feels prepared to tell the story. While some family members of Elias disagreed with some of the details in the account, Gilbert attested she was only ever trying to depict the events as honestly as possible, and in the most respectful manner possible.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Image via Instagram/@elizabeth_gilbert_writer)