The Warm Vanilla Pudding Hum Of Well Being: A Conversation with Liz Gilbert, Part II

How are you being you? Have you had to make adjustments? Are you keeping yourself together? Can you distinguish between what the world wants of you and what you want of yourself? The you that is a performer. The you that can come off-stage? Can you come off-stage? Are you OK with who you are when no-one is looking? Have you got any time to be who y

What if you’re wired not to be “liked” but to be loved, and not by many but by One? Could that explain why all the attention is never enough? Or why a kind of postpartum depression sets in after every “win,” every time you make it to the top of what you thought was the mountain of achievement? Why does winning leave you feeling so restless?

My guiding assumption was “Something is fundamentally wrong with me,” and I struggled to control and fix what felt like a basically flawed self. I drove myself in academics, was a fervent political activist and devoted myself to a very full social life. I avoided pain (and created more) with an addiction to food and a preoccupation with achievement