Elizabeth Gilbert had 18 months with the love of her life. Here’s what she knows about grief. – Mamamia

"It's a really, really daring question and I would never assign anybody to ask that, because I think that people have to walk through their grief in their own way. But that's the challenge that I laid out to myself."

For Elizabeth, this was the answer:

"There are strengths that I'm discovering that I would have never discovered because I was so dependent on her. I was so emotionally dependent on her; she was my anchor, she was the ground under my feet, she was my first phone call in a moment of disaster... I've had to find that in myself."

"There's a level at which you could ask the question, 'Would you rather have this life or that that life?' But those questions are moot because you don't get that choice it's not available. Whenever I hear anybody say, 'I wouldn't trade my life for anything,' I was like, 'Was it offered?'

"It wasn't offered to me that Rayya would live. And the less I rebel against that and the more I flexibly lean into that, the better my life after Rayya becomes."

"In the empirical, non-mystical, post-Enlightenment West, there's an idea about grieving that says that you're not going to be well until you've 'let the person go'. That is so mean. And it's also something that literally no other culture believes...

"I think it makes people feel a lot of shame when they haven't and can't let go.

"I don't think you should have, that you're supposed to, that you were ever supposed to. I think the one thing in the world that you never ever, ever have to let go of is love. Everything else goes.

"They took [Rayya]; they took her body. She's never going to walk into this house again, and I'm never going to be able to put my arms around her again; there's no negotiating that. But I know exactly where she lives in the universe. She is embedded it in my heart and she's incredibly present in my consciousness.

"I meet Rayya a room in my consciousness called imagination... We used to say 'tuckled in' like 'come into my arms and tuckle in' and she lives tuckled, tuckled, tuckled very safely in my heart. There's that level at which I never will and never have to lose her."

Feature Image: Instagram.

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Elizabeth Gilbert had 18 months with the love of her life. Here's what she knows about grief. - Mamamia