Preloading

Elizabeth Gilbert: Give Yourself Permission to Honor Your Life

Season 5 Episode 527
Aired on 10/05/2014 | CC tv-14
At 31, Elizabeth Gilbert seemed to have it all: a beautiful home, a thriving career and a happy marriage. Underneath her success, however, she was filled with despair. Desperate to free herself from a life she felt was not her own, she divorced her husband and set off on a spiritual quest that took her to Italy, India and Bali. That transformative experience became her best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love. With more than 15 million copies in 46 languages, Elizabeth has inspired a generation of women around the world.

Elizabeth says people come up to her every day to share how her story changed their lives. "For some reason, and this just boggles my imagination, there are still just huge swaths of women who never got the memo that their lives belong to them," she says. "I feel like, in a way, Eat, Pray, Love kind of was a permission slip from the principal's office that said you are allowed to ask yourself some really important questions about your life." Find out why Elizabeth says it's okay to stop catering to others and honor your own life.

More from this episode