Today we have a guest post from Alexis!

The new life, love and relationship go-too girl, Elizabeth Gilbert has inspired women everywhere so much so they made a movie out of one of her books featuring one of the biggest stars in the world, Julia Roberts. So there must be something to this guru of self-discovery and after reading a few interviews with Gilbert, I learned that love can be better the second time around.

Gilberts advice to those in desparate straits in their life and relationships:

The only thing I can say is, I have a feeling that you know already what you need to do, but you haven’t found it yet. I bet if you take a diary and sit down every single day and ask yourself, What should I do, and you start writing and you do it every day and you write the answer, even if the answer is, I have no idea, I don’t know, I don’t know—ask again the next day. Ask again. You have to keep asking.

And when asked if a broken heart can lead to a fuller heart, Gilbert says:

There’s a line from Leonard Cohen, and he has this wonderful song that says, “There’s a crack in everything—that’s where the light gets in.” And I think that’s the probably best encapsulation of how a broken heart can lead to a bigger heart. The light causes the expansion.

How inspiring and extraordinarily hopeful for anyone who has found love. Gilbert has a fantastic way of simplifying the overthought and it is contagious.

When asked her second marriage, Gilbert replies:

Our marriage has all these luxurious qualities that a lot of other people’s marriages don’t have. Suddenly, I’m very wealthy. The household is very wealthy. All those arguments about money are erased. And we don’t have kids.” Gilbert goes on to say, still, there is certain “wife” behavior that she avoids. “There was this sense in my first marriage that as soon as he walked into the house, my obligation was to be with him, in partnership, every moment that he was awake, and so I would put my work away and whatever I was doing away. I won’t do that now.

I find this fascinating. Everything that we as women are taught that do and don’t matter, Gilbert has disregarded the second time around and has made it work. Advice like “More money, more problems”, “Kids complete a family” and “To put family before work”, for example, Gilbert has refused to buy into what society has deemed a woman should do and be.

Gilbert goes on to say: “And it’s the community we’re part of, and the people who rely on us and the companionship I don’t want to lose and my own character I want to uphold in terms of my own self-regard.”

Divorce, it appears, has made her a better, happier, more committed wife and although second marriages have an increasingly higher risk of divorcing again, Gilbert makes no apologies for doing marriage “her way” this time.

Gilbert also explains:

Reality has taught us that no woman can build an honest life without sacrificing something along the way. Deciding what will be sacrificed is not easy. But the good news is this: increasingly, that decision is ours.

The “you can have it all” misconception that seemingly started in the eighties has been predominantly reinvented by Gilbert in admitting that we can not have it all, but we can have what we want if we are willing to sacrifice.

Brilliant.

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at the First in Education site, researching areas of accredited online degrees. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

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