Free Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It by Elizabeth Gilbert

mustering to recover from late-stage Lyme disease and its life-threatening complications had finally drained from me like water from a cracked bucket. But shortly after the last doctor delivered the last words of defeat, a new opportunity blew those doors wide open. I was accepted into an experimental stem cell treatment program in a tiny clinic in Delhi, India.
    India!
    Having read
Eat Pray Love
along with the rest of the world, I had already smelled each smell with Elizabeth, tasted each taste and become enchanted by the exotic country of India.
Eat Pray Love
entertained me, allowing me to escape my own impossible life. Now, it would help me find the courage to try to save it.
    At first, I was terrified of going. My doctors were against it, and I had no idea if this radical treatment would kill me or cure me. This was quite literally a last-ditch effort as there were no other options left. Then I thought of Elizabeth’s colorful stories and transformed them into a landscape for what could be my own crazy adventure. Before
Eat Pray Love
, I knew almost nothing about India. But Liz’s own bravery made accessible the idea of a woman traveling alone to a country like India. It wasn’t yet popular, but it was definitely possible. On December 9, 2007, I boarded a plane for New Delhi.
    How I Ate
    Why oh why can’t this be in China? That was my honest-to-goodness first thought about the location of this new treatment. I was dying, and all I wanted was Chinese food! In fact, there was no food on earth I disliked more than Indian food. My first meals at the hospital were saucy, earth-toned globs that had “no name, ma’am” when I asked what they were.
    The wafting smells, the pungent taste and the mixed textures of curry were too much for my delicate digestion. Often unable to keep any food down at all, I worried about the consequences for my already underweight body.
    At about the three-week mark of my stay, though, something happened. The smells that used to nauseate me started to feel like a comfort. I began having cravings for my favorite “green chicken,” delighting the hospital cook to no end. I started to embrace mutton and ghee and all the foods I had resisted. My body started to long for each plate, and sometimes I asked for seconds and even thirds.
    By the time I returned home, I had a new favorite cuisine and an extra twenty pounds of healthy body weight to show for it.
    How I Prayed
    During my first few days in India, my doctor sent a colleague of hers from another hospital to visit me. She arrived one afternoon during my nap, explaining little about who she was or what she was doing. She carried a huge purse, had long silky hair and wore intricately patterned Indian attire. She felt closer to a presence than a person. She was a perfect swirly blend of intellect and spirit, all wrapped in a sari.
    As she sat with me, she began speaking of her Buddhist practice called
daimoku
—chanting with specific words that reveal one’s state of inner Buddhahood. She told me the story of how several years earlier it had brought her husband back to life. I took a deep interest in Dr. M.’s practice and became her student. She invited me to her home, and as we chanted, I felt the energy shift around me and a palpable change in my own body.
    Her gift became my new ritual. I fell asleep every single night staring at the bright blue wall in my hospital room and chanting, the day fading with each repetition.
    How I Loved
    The physiotherapy room was adorned with yellow curtains and always filled with music that was much too loud for my taste. That’s where I saw her—thick, dark, curly hair hiding under a baseball hat and a giant smile that opened up to the world. Charlotte had come to visit her mother who was being treated at thehospital for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). ALS is a fatal disease involving the nerve cells and has a life expectancy of two to five years from the