Liz Gilbert came into my life like a mushroom. Actually, like mycelium.

Lots of things come into my life that way.

Maybe that’s the way life works for everyone, and if we aren’t paying attention, the mushroom fruits, drops its spores, and rots back away into the darkness. So very easy to miss.

My BFF — who, incidentally I didn’t meet until we were 38 years old — often talked about Liz Gilbert.

Honestly, for awhile, it seemed like everyone was talking about Liz Gilbert.

From the time Eat, Pray, Love (the book) came out in 2006, her name was on articles, best-seller lists, and on magazine covers, and without having read her book, I was over her.

I had read enough headlines to *know* what she was all about.

Wasn’t her book, essentially, the same story as Under the Tuscan Sun? For some reason, I always conflated the two stories, without having read Eat, Pray, Love.

Under the Tuscan Sun was a movie I adored (secretly, because, gag me, sentimental rom com about a middle-aged lady who loses it all and finds herself on a romantic tour of a European village? No one must know I loved it.)

That was a movie I watched alone, in my misery, after cancer, after my breakup. It was — of course — too good to be true, and mostly one of those feel-good recovery-from-heartbreak stories that don’t happen in real life. (In fact, Under the Tuscan Sun is a work of fiction, based loosely on the real-life experience of a couple who purchased a dilapidated Italian villa).

Eat, Pray, Love, on the other hand, is a memoir. It also features Italy, and romance.

I just didn’t need more of that insufferable shit clogging up my shelves, or adding to that ugly internal voice telling me I was not living my best life.

I was not going to be that woman, and I certainly wouldn’t pray for it, hope for it, or expect it. I don’t know which part of Under the Tuscan Sun I was most jealous of: Frances’ freedom to adventure, Frances’ ability to be creative, Frances’ love story?

Eat, Pray, Love had that same “freedom” vibe: here’s a woman who has enough money and freedom to travel, to create, and enough beauty and charm to fall in love with someone amazing, even after heartbreak. What’s your excuse?

I’m sure part of me was jealous that there were even MORE amazing women out there making cool art, adventuring, and falling in love, while I was limping along in my challenging marriage/farm/family/health life, trying to get back to a life of creativity, and failing.

I just did not need more of it in my face. Also, for awhile, I avoided anything on Oprah’s list, because it felt too mainstream, too popular. What is that instinct to shun popular culture? Maybe more jealousy?

I did eventually watch the movie Eat, Pray, Love, (which came out in 2010), many years after it was released. I remember grudgingly liking it. Of course.

Still, I hadn’t read the book, and Liz Gilbert was faceless for me.

Just last year, BFF asked me if I’d join her in Ottawa to see Liz Gilbert in person. I think it seemed unlikely for me at the time, and Liz wasn’t on my list of must-see personalities.

Time passed.

Creativity stagnated.

For years, I put all my energy into my farm, my kids, my marriage, with little forays into my creative attic in stolen moments, or at moments of upheaval when I would blame everyone else in my life (at least secretly) for keeping me away from my craft. At those times, I’d go and buy a new planner, hang a whiteboard, announce to everyone that I was going to make time for writing, and then…. and then….

In 2021, I reached a new level of frustration with — what? — with my life? my partner? my job? — to the point where I did the thing I never wanted to do: I said I wanted a separation.

Following the path of a large percentage of women writers: get married, stop writing, get frustrated, get a divorce, start writing again. Except, except — was *he* really keeping me from writing? Or was *I* keeping me from writing?

At the time, I was also reading Glennon Doyle’s memoir “Untamed.”

I’m sure mine wasn’t the only marriage to be affected by that work.

It’s a great book; for many women, it provided some powerful, gasp-worthy insights about how we end up where we do.

Over time, and additional readings, I’ve come to realize that it is less about dropping our respective life choices and more about digging in and figuring out who you really are, learning to know yourself, and stand up for yourself, in spite of your external circumstances.

After several months of soul-searching, writing, and sleeping on the couch, I decided he wasn’t the problem. My family, my lifestyle, my past: none of these were the problem.

I was my own obstacle.

We made some changes, and dug back in to our marriage; I worked to know myself better, to build in writing and reading time around my work and parenting and relationship, with some improvements, but still plenty of creative hangups.

Fast forward to 2024: Big Magic finds me

The mycelial mass that had been incubating under my feet, silently, secretly for all those years finally mushroomed in early March.

A creative friend from 30+ years ago — Kate –popped back into my life this past October. She had been on my Facebook friends list for years, but we had barely shared two words since the 1990s.

In October, Kate reached out with a question about a lion’s mane mushroom that had appeared on a large tree in her back yard.

This began a creative interaction that we’ve been enjoying for six months now — chatting weekly, catching up, exploring ideas and especially sharing insights and discussing growth.

On March 9, she sent me a message with a link to Liz Gilbert’s 2015 best-seller Big Magic. “You should try this next,” she said. “It was written for you.”

No disrespect to anyone who had shared and suggested this work to me before Kate (I know of at least two of you!), but within a few weeks of renewing our connection, it was clear to me that when Kate suggested I check something out, I needed to listen.

I attribute my avoidance of it to that old adage: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

The student was ready.

Not only did the first read speak to me on a profound level, so did the second, and third visits. In the past month, I’ve listened to the audiobook, re-listened to several sections, purchased the paperback, tabbed multiple pages, copied quotations into my planner, and generally begun to rethink and revise my prior thoughts of Liz Gilbert.

Oddly enough, at my new market, in our new part of Ontario, far from the insanity that had begun to grip our family in Kingston, I made a new friend a few months ago who is a writer, and who is in the process of seeing her screenplay become a movie.

We were chatting a couple of weeks ago about her efforts in recent years to get away from social media, and to develop her writing practice, when I said that if she hadn’t already read it, she should think about reading Big Magic.

She gave me a funny look, and said, “Hang on, I think that’s the name of the book someone else recently suggested.” She pulled up an email from a person involved in the development of her current project, and sure enough, there was the recommendation. “If you haven’t read it, you really need to read Big Magic, by Liz Gilbert.”

Coincidence? Or Big Magic?