NEED TO KNOW<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Gilbert has a new memoir coming out Sept. 9, All the Way to the River<\/a> It took seven years for Elizabeth Gilbert<\/a> to write about the events surrounding the death of her partner, Rayya Elias, in 2018<\/a>. Her new memoir, All the Way to the River<\/a> (out Sept. 9 from Riverhead Books), is a delicious mashup of narrative that\u2019s by turns harrowing and healing; prayers and poems that serve as road markers along the way; and Gilbert\u2019s own sketches, to give readers a moment to stop, breathe and take a break from the intensity.\n<\/p>\n For years, Gilbert tried to write about her and Rayya. But it wasn\u2019t until she received what she calls a \u201cvisitation\u201d from her late partner on her 54th birthday that she was able to really knuckle down and write the story with the level of truth it needed.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \u201cShe was like, ‘Bitch, write that book,’ \u201d Gilbert says, of the woman whom she loved for \u201csailing her ship straight into the teeth of the gale of the truth.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Gilbert called that visitation from Rayya \u201cthe impetus and the permission that I needed\u201d to, as she writes in the book, \u201cgo full punk rock with it.\u201d And boy, does she ever. Gilbert pulls no punches, not even on herself, and that\u2019s an intentional choice \u2014 one she now feels \u201creally buoyant and joyful\u201d about, especially if it can help someone who finds themselves at their own lowest point.\n<\/p>\n Elizabeth Gilbert.<\/p>\n Deborah Lopez<\/p>\n \u201cYou’ve got to hold nothing back because otherwise, how could this story be of service to anybody if I didn’t reveal so many things about myself that I might not want people to know, and so many things about her that I might not want people to know?\u201d Gilbert says. \u201cHow in the world could we be of service unless we let ourselves be seen?\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now<\/a>!\n<\/p>\n Gilbert was Rayya\u2019s caretaker as she thrashed through her last months, dying of \u201cstage one million\u201d liver and pancreatic cancer, as her doctor once put it. When Rayya slipped back into active addiction \u2014 \u201cto let the dragon run one more time,\u201d as Gilbert puts it, the pair became locked in a spiral that could only end in death \u2014 one way or another.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n That\u2019s when Gilbert, in what she calls one of her bottoms as a sex and love addict, decided to kill Rayya herself. “As I say in the book, I’m the nice lady who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, and I was plotting a hit.”\n<\/p>\n Elizabeth Gilbert and Rayya Elias in 20214.<\/p>\n Noam Galai\/Getty<\/p>\n \u201c[Rayya] was just the most depraved version of herself,\u201d Gilbert explains. \u201cShe was vicious and cruel and self-centered and manipulative, and all of the things that she wasn’t when she was sober.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n As her caregiver, Gilbert felt powerless as Rayya\u2019s addiction took over. Soon enough, Rayya was defying all expectations, \u201cliving on cigarettes, cocaine, fentanyl, morphine, steroids like Ambien Xanax \u2026 just like handfuls of drugs and alcohol.\u201d And Gilbert was far past the end of her rope.\n<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you threaten a hospice patient with saying, \u2018If you continue to use these drugs, you’re going to die\u2019 when they’re already dying? She really felt like she could do whatever she wanted and it was killing me,\u201d she explains.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \u201cShe was wreaking absolute havoc on my life, and I got so sleep-deprived and kind of cornered by this, and I felt so entrapped,\u201d Gilbert continues. \u201cAnd one day, in total exhaustion, I was like, I have a really good idea. I think I’ll kill her. She’s dying anyway, and we’ve got all these drugs in the house, including all these Fentanyl patches, and if I can just figure out how to get her to take a handful of sleeping pills, I can knock her out, and then I can put these Fentanyl patches on and kill her. It just, to me, felt like a fantastic solution.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Take PEOPLE with you!\u00a0Subscribe to PEOPLE magazine<\/a>\u00a0to get the latest details on celebrity news, exclusive royal updates, how-it-happened true crime stories and more \u2014 right to your mailbox.\n<\/p>\n But, as Gilbert wryly points out, \u201cIf you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re plotting to either kill yourself or someone else, you’ve reached the end of your power and it’s probably a good idea that you ask for help.\u201d\n<\/p>\n ‘All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation’ by Elizabeth Gilbert.<\/p>\n Riverhead Books<\/p>\n Not long after, Gilbert did just that (and, it may go without saying, did not go through with murdering Rayya). She called in reinforcements, including Rayya\u2019s ex Stacy, who became her primary caregiver (the \u201cgayest thing I was ever involved in,\u201d Gilbert cracks). Over the years that followed Rayya\u2019s passing, she began working the steps for her sex and love addiction, a process that bears its similarities to writing All the Way to the River<\/a>.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Chief among them? Realizing and coming to terms with her own role in Rayya\u2019s life and death.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe crazy thing about it is once you’re in that process, I find there’s no shame left,\u201d she reflects. \u201cThe stuff that I would have wanted to hide and conceal about myself, because I felt it was so shameful, it just is what it is.”\n<\/p>\n That hard-won perspective has brought Gilbert into a kind of lightness and a way of seeing the world that permeates her book, shining through three kinds of artistic communication. It\u2019s a primer, of sorts, for what Gilbert calls \u201cEarth school,\u201d a framing she borrows in part from Buddhist philosophy.\n<\/p>\n \u201cYou’re here to have these experiences and to learn from them, and we cannot know what we don’t know until we know it,\u201d she explains. \u201cThat is the innocence right there. And I needed to wrap myself in a cloak of innocence in order to be able to live. And I need to do that with others, because I’ve had to do that with myself as well.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Never miss a story \u2014 sign up for\u00a0PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter<\/a>\u00a0to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer , from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\nIt follows Gilbert and Rayya Elias’ life together, as well as the end of Rayya’s, and the author’s coming to terms with her sex and love addiction
\n\u201cHow in the world could we be of service unless we let ourselves be seen?\u201d\u00a0says Gilbert, of the book’s deeply personal subject matter<\/p>\n