Mother Earth Profile: Elizabeth Gilbert “The Serial Monogamist”

Elizabeth Gilbert | Photo Credit: Jennifer Schatten

Elizabeth Gilbert is a beloved American essayist, short story writer, biographer, memoirist and novelist. An author of six books, she is best known for her memoir and New York Times Best Seller, Eat Pray Love, which was made into a movie of the same name. Since then, Ms. Gilbert has given two popular TED talks, re-married and written a book about it and published a novel, The Signature of All Things. Elizabeth and her husband, Jose live and run an import business in New Jersey. Ms. Gilbert is currently working on two books, one fiction and one non-fiction.

Growing up in the country on a Christmas tree farm in Connecticut, Gilbert spent much of her time in nature reading and writing along with her sister, also a novelist. In an interview, Gilbert said "I am a writer today because I learned to love reading as a child, and mostly on account of the "Oz" books..." She has said that Charles Dickens influenced her writing style and that Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is her favorite book on philosophy.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. 

Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

~ Marcus Aurelius

In answer to a question about how she landed her first book deal, Ms. Gilbert said, "I spent about six years sending my short stories out to magazines and collecting rejections. Then, one day Esquire bought one of my stories out of the slush pile and published it. It was through this publication that I found my agent (or, rather, that my agent found me). She then negotiated a book deal on my behalf. I had a collection of short stories written and ready to go, but I had to promise the publisher that I would deliver a novel, in order to seal the deal."

Working as a highly paid free lance writer, Gilbert enjoyed steady work as a journalist for popular magazines before becoming a published book author.  Gilbert's first book Pilgrims, a collection of short stories was followed by a novel, Stern Men and then by a biography of woodsman and naturalist, Eustace Conway in The Last American Man. After her divorce from her first husband, Gilbert spent two years traveling abroad, chronicled in her Eat Pray Love memoir about "One woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia". In 2007, Gilbert married Jose Nunes whom she had met in Bali. Committed, a sequel to Eat Pray Love, tells the continuation of their international love story and explores the continuingly developing story of the institution of marriage.

You have no idea how strong my love is!

~ Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

Mother Earth Presence: Love

Mother Earth elements hold the energy signature of love. Their presence on the planet is pure, unreserved and unconditional love. I refer to this personal element as "The Lover". They love life and people and animals and nature and their beloved Mother Earth. They will love you better and more completely and the most unconditionally than you have ever been loved in your life. Serial monogamous lovers, they fall in love repeatedly. Love addicts, they are in love with being in love. They will love until they fall out of love or fall into love with someone or something else. They love people the way they need to loved. They risk it all and sometimes lose it all for love. They break hearts, even their own and heal broken hearts, especially their own, with love.

As with any good writer, Gilbert writes what she knows and as a Mother Earth, she knows love. A journey of self-love through food and travel, healing through a connection with herself and partnerships with others and the romantic love story told in Eat Pray Love is one that only a Mother Earth could tell. The Mother Earth element is associated with the digestive and reproductive systems, so of course the memoirist's adventure would begin with nourishing herself through food while she honors her need for a short period of celibacy. For Mother Earth people, establishing spiritual connections with God and their Higher Self is sometimes an impromptu and at other times a well choreographed dance; and the ashram in India provided the perfect place to meet her Partner on the dance floor. Like any good "girl meets boy" story or journey in "search for everything", love, which is the primary emotion expressed, embodied and experienced by Mother Earth people is a predictable, yet satisfying ending that leaves the reader wishing the lovers well and in possession of their own happily ever after.

Mother Earth Life Center: Partnership & Marriage

Mother Earth elements need partnership. They love having one-on-one relationships with people, especially romantic ones. Combining that with their obsession with love, they tend to marry early and often. They devote themselves completely to one other person at a time. They provide partnership in their relationships and expect their lovers, friends and family to be just as naturally great at partnership as they are. Relationships are their forte, their grand adventure, their greatest challenge and achievement, their most sacred and memorable life experience. Everything in their lives is centered around or involves a relationship. In Eat Pray Love, Liz even talks about having a relationship with her pizza.

Gilbert's fifth book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage begins where Eat Pray Love left off. The book looks at the still popular custom of marriage from both historical and modern perspectives and addresses why people are so reluctant to get married. On writing about commitment and marriage, Gilbert says, "As any author can tell you, there are books that you want to write, and books that you need to write and Committed definitely falls in the latter category." Gilbert knows from personal experience, "Marriage is not a game for the young."  Read more in an interview about this book. In a video, Ms. Gilbert talks about what many Mother Earth people experience throughout their life as they make their excruciating and sublime love connections.

Mother Earth Completion Number: 2

The Mother Earth element is complete in partnership with one other person.  This makes them, what I call, a "two". For a "two", one really is the loneliest number.  Mother Earth people are always coupled up, always in a relationship with someone or something. In Eat Pray Love, Liz talks about not being single since the age of fifteen, which is very common for Mother Earth people. They are always in some stage of romantic love relationship. Their relationship status changes frequently from dating to committed and engaged to married. Connecting with one person at a time, they’re always in a partnership of some kind with the people in their lives.

Elizabeth Gilbert is a classic example of a Mother Earth. One of two siblings, she grew up in a two parent family. One of the reasons Gilbert gives for what turned out to be two years alone was to heal and connect with herself before falling in love and entering into another relationship between her two marriages.  Incidentally, the import store she and her husband, Jose own is called "Two Buttons".

Not wanting to have children might also be her personal expression of her completion number. The Mother Earth element represents the wife and mother in the family. She doesn't need to have children because as long as she is happily in love and in partnership with a lover or husband, energetically, she is complete. Her reproductive energy is fulfilled as she gestates and gives birth to beautiful works of creative writing.

Even her character, Alma Whittaker in her latest novel, The Signature of All Things is modeled after the author's own personality and completion number. Alma is depicted as a woman who is in a professional and familial partnership with her father. The beloved character finds a way to honor that important relationship dynamic without allowing it to keep her from her own adventures, discoveries, personal self-expression and unique contribution to the world in her field of interest and expertise.

Element in Nature: Mother Earth

Mother Earth elements are the personification of the receptive and nurturing Mother Earth. Just as the Earth is our home, Mother Earth people feel like home to the other personal elements. They enjoy providing the nutrient rich foundation for all living things to grow and thrive, from plants and animals to the people they love. Magnetically attracted to the rhythms of the earth, expressed through music, song, and dance, they are best served by "following their bliss". Their adventurous spirit and appetite for life takes them down many different yellow brick roads, as well as, roads less traveled. Their fertile minds let ideas germinate, take root and grow, producing thought-provoking concepts and imagery that are as intrinsically beautiful and life-sustaining as Mother Earth herself. They know, "there's no place like home", yet, not adverse to risk, they look forward to their next adventure, especially if it includes exploring the beauty and splendor of their beloved Mother Earth.

Elizabeth Gilbert shares her love for nature and the world in her latest work, The Signature of All Things.

You see, I have never felt the need to invent a world beyond this world, for this world has always seemed large and beautiful enough for me. I have wondered why it is not large and beautiful enough for others-- why they must dream up new and marvelous spheres, or long to live elsewhere, beyond this dominion... but that is not my business. We are all different, I suppose. All I ever wanted was to know this world. I can say now, as I reach my end, that I know quite a bit more of it than I knew when I arrived. Moreover, my little bit of knowledge has been added to all the other accumulated knowledge of history-- added to the great library, as it were. That is no small feat, sir. Anyone who can say such a thing has lived a fortunate life.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

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