The Kindest Thing

an essay From Elizabeth Gilbert

Dear Corner-dwellers,

Today I have a treat for you from another Nadia-is-on-her-Honeymoon-so-her-friends-are-taking-over-The-Corners writers!

The one and only

Elizabeth Gilbert

! Yes, THAT Liz Gilbert. The one who hosts

Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert

, the one who wrote such books as Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love.

Enjoy!

Hello to Nadia’s beautiful community!

I want to tell you the story about the kindest thing anyone ever did for me, and how it changed my life.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a thirty-year-old woman going through my darkest night of the soul. I won’t get into the details because anyone who has ever read or seen EAT PRAY LOVE already knows what happened, but the general outline of the matter was this: I had obediently done exactly what my family and culture had always told me to do (got married young, settled down in the suburbs, bought a house, and was planning to start a family) but instead of making me happy, the life I was living made me want to die.

My misery was not an easy thing for me to admit, because this is the life you’re supposed to want — this is the life that is supposed to fulfill you —but eventually I told the truth and left my marriage, and then my worst nightmare came true: Many people in my life were furious at me and disappointed in me. I am the sort of person for whom nothing is worse than the disapproval of others, and so I felt, all over again, like I was going to die. I was depressed and anxious, confused and ashamed. How had I failed so miserably at life? Why couldn’t I just want what I was supposed to want, instead of longing to run away and be free? Why didn’t I want a husband? Why didn’t I want a baby? Why had I let everyone down? What was the matter with me?

During this time, I was a magazine journalist, and I got sent to Indonesia to write a story. I decided to extend my visit for a few weeks, because some deep inner voice was telling me very specifically that I needed to go to the furthest away place in the world, far from everyone I knew, and that I needed to be in absolute silence for 10 days — to try to find some peace from my shame and from the voices in my head that told me I was a loser and a failure and a selfish monster.  So I heard about this little island called Gili Meno, off the coast of Lombok, and I took two ferries, several long drives, and a fishing boat to get there.

I haven’t been to Gili Meno in twenty-five years and I’m sure it’s changed, but back then it was a remote and dusty little fishing island, inhabited by impoverished Muslims who lived off whatever they could pull from the sea. There was no electricity, and tiny, starved-looking horses pulled carts that served as transportation—but mostly, everyone just walked. I rented a little cabin on the beach for 15 dollars a day, and there, I sat in silence with myself, hoping that I just stopped talking and moving, I would find peace. But peace was elusive, because I was really a mess.

I spent those 10 days alternating between weeping and meditating, praying and listening. I barely ate—sometimes only have one egg a day—and never said a word the whole time. I hadn’t brought any books or paper, either, because this inner voice had told me I needed to be absolutely alone. I was trying so hard to hear the voice of God, and to find some sort of ANSWER, but mostly I just suffered in torments of the mind. But every day I would go for two walks — circumnavigating the island once at sunrise, and once at sunset. I never spoke to anyone, and people left me alone. I was skinny and weird and I think I threw off a strange vibe.

But there was one woman who I saw every day—on the other side of the island from me. She lived in a small hut, and the sign outside her door said she took in laundry. Every morning and every evening when I did my walks, I would find her standing outside her door-less shack, smiling at me as if she had been waiting for me. Always wearing the same dress and headscarf, with her little naked toddler boy at her feet. We would smile and bow to each other, and that was pretty much the only human contact I had the whole time.

On my 8^th day on the island, I got sick. Ferociously sick. To this day, I don’t know what it was. It could hardly have been food poisoning because I was barely eating, but the water might have been bad, or perhaps I caught something from a mosquito. It felt like I had malaria. I felt like I was dying. Vomiting and diarrhea, shaking one moment and freezing the next, teeth chattering, the worst headache of my life. All I could do was crawl back and forth from the bed to the toilet. I ran out of bottled water and didn’t have the strength to leave my cabin and find more. I passed the night in misery, and the next day, too — unable to move or call for help. I thought, “I’m going to die here, and nobody even knows who I am.”

Of course I did not go for my walks while I was ill. But on the second night of my sickness, I heard a knock at the door. I literally crawled to the door and opened it. It was the woman—my silent friend from across the island. She had come looking for me, and I could see by her face that she was worried.

How had she known? How had she known that I needed help? Was it because I had looked so sick already? Was it because she thought it suspicious that I hadn’t gone walking that day? How had she known where to find? It was an hour walk from her house to the place I was staying…who was watching her child, while she went out in the dark to see if I was alright?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, because we were both in silence and we didn’t speak a word of each other’s language. All I know is that she held up one finger — the international signal for “wait right here” — and then she disappeared into the night. When she returned an hour later, she brought me bottles of fresh water, a plate of rice, some sort of herbs. She came into the cabin and held me against her body while she offered me this water, this food, these medicinal plants. I wept and wept in her arms, and she held me and rocked as if I were her child, even though we were probably the same age. She stayed with me until I stopped weeping, and then brought me more water and went home for the night.

The next morning, I was well again. And the next night— my final night on the island — I went out I sat under the stars to meditate. I sat in silence for over an hour, just listening to the wind and the water. Then the most extraordinary thing happened: As I sat in stillness, I felt a presence arise within me. A divine being entered my consciousness. It was a woman, a kind woman, with a scarf around her head. She came right into my heart and said to me, “Bring me all your pain and fear and shame, so I can heal it.”

One story at a time, I told this woman in my heart every single painful and fearful and shameful thing I had ever done. Each tale was like a small orphaned child, head bent in hunger and loneliness. And she welcomed each and every one of those children into my heart, saying, “Come in, come in, we have beds for you.” She did this for hours, until I had admitted to every single bit of my suffering. Then she smiled at me from my heart and said, “I have room for all of them. We will always have room for them here. Each one of these children is welcome here. There is nothing they could ever do to lose my love.”