Viral Article Book Club: Elizabeth Gilbert and the Messiness of Memoir

Summary

Glamorous Trash: Viral Article Book Club — Elizabeth Gilbert and the Messiness of Memoir

Podcast: Glamorous Trash: A Celebrity Memoir Podcast
Host: Tracy Thomas (with guest Nora McInerney)
Air Date: September 12, 2025
Episode: Viral Article Book Club: Elizabeth Gilbert and the Messiness of Memoir

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Overview

In this episode, host Tracy Thomas is joined by writer and podcaster Nora McInerney to dissect the viral Cut excerpt from Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, All the Way to the River. The conversation explores the messiness of writing memoirs about grief, addiction, and privilege, touching on issues of self-help culture, the ethics of memoir-writing, and the intersection of wealth, love, and illness. The hosts also reference Gia Tolentino’s sharp New Yorker critique of Gilbert and the modern memoir’s influence on social media self-narratives.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Memoir Context, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Legacy, and Privilege

• Intro to the Article and Book: The article, an excerpt titled “My Once in a Million Years Love Story,” details Gilbert’s transition from friendship to romance with her best friend Raya, after Raya is diagnosed with terminal cancer. It’s a portrait of passionate love, addiction relapse, and messy caregiver boundaries. (03:48)
• Gilbert’s Influence on Memoir: Tracy frames Elizabeth Gilbert as a pioneer of the ordinary-woman memoir, “the reason we have Substack,” and someone who made women’s everyday stories and self-reflection into a cultural juggernaut, paving the way for writers like Glennon Doyle. (05:34)
• Privilege and Wealth: The hosts repeatedly stress how Gilbert’s ample financial resources color every experience — from penthouse apartments to buying drugs and producing art — creating an unrelatable and privileged narrative. Producer Christina reminds the audience that Gilbert received a $200,000 advance for Eat, Pray, Love alone. (10:09, 10:27)

2. The Love Affair Amid Terminal Illness

• Depiction of Love: The excerpt describes love as an intoxicating drug, likened to endorphin highs and relentless physical chemistry even in the shadow of death. Nora points out, “that is what it feels like to fall in love. In my experience, whether or not someone is dying.” (08:30)
• Relatability Gap: Nora emphasizes that most people facing terminal illness are crushed by financial stress, not swept away on passionate adventures. She shares her own experience, reflecting, “My husband... had a brain tumor. His main concern: ‘I don’t know how I’m going to pay for this.’” (10:08)

3. Addiction, Relapse, and Caregiving

• Drug Use Escalates: As the story unfolds, Gilbert and Raya move from drinking and weed to mushrooms, MDMA, and eventually prescription drugs and street drugs like cocaine and heroin — partly enabled by the lack of financial constraints. (13:18, 13:40)
• Question of Sobriety: Tracy speculates on the slippery slope: “At what point is the sobriety lost? When she started drinking? When she hid it?” Nora underscores that secrecy and supply are signals of addiction and potential codependence. (22:02–23:56)
• Codependence and Caregiver Role: Gilbert describes registering as an “active intravenous drug user” to get clean needles for Raya. Tracy and Nora highlight how this blurs boundaries from loving support into codependency. Tracy: “If you don’t know this is codependence, we are in trouble.” (23:10–24:13)

4. Memoir and White Privilege

• Illegality Without Consequence: Tracy is sharply critical of the privileged nonchalance with which Gilbert recounts buying and administering drugs, noting: “There are people in prison for the rest of their lives for half less than this… and we were having so much fun. White woman at work.” (24:13)
• Public Versus Private Suffering: Both hosts reflect on how Gilbert’s memoir renders deeply private moments—especially of Raya’s decline—into public consumption and debate the ethics of doing so posthumously. (29:19–30:11)

5. Memoir Structure, Boundaries, and the Self-Helpification of Suffering

• Ultimatums and Boundaries: The hosts are critical of how Gilbert frames her exit from caregiving as “setting boundaries,” without regard for the context or gradualism real relationships usually require. Tracy: “If the thing that you say to Raya is, ‘I want to be with you until the end,’ sure, you don’t have to stay till the end, but you have to try.” (36:48)
• The Problem with Memoir as Universal Life Lesson: They caution against framing messy, privileged, extremely rare experiences as universal. Nora: “To romanticize somebody’s end of life is a dangerous thing… It’s just not the point. Like, the point is not like, ‘Oh, we’re all right.’ We’re actually not.” (39:11)

6. Al Anon & Support Groups: Memoirist Irony

• Elizabeth’s Dislike of Support Meetings: Gilbert dislikes Al Anon and sex-addiction meetings because, ironically, “people in the room were just talking about themselves...about their own issues” — which the hosts find hilarious coming from a memoirist. (31:18–32:30)
• Refusal of the Lesson: Gilbert first dismisses community wisdom, then (according to Tracy and Nora’s predictions) will use parts of it as a springboard for the next stage of her memoir, moving further into self-realization tropes. (33:34–34:39)

7. The Ethics and Limits of Memoir Writing

• Who Tells Whose Story: Both acknowledge the pitfalls of memoir: Gilbert has reframed Raya’s decline through her own journey, rendering Raya almost voiceless in these crisis scenes, which feels unsettling from both a craft and ethical standpoint. (40:05)
• Self-Realization Performed: The hosts discuss how modern memoir has become intertwined with social media performance, with revelations and “growth” as the ultimate product. Nora: “It’s the performance of growth that you don’t want.” (45:16)
• Nora’s Lived Experience: Nora reflects on her own experience with her late husband’s illness: “I didn’t lose any of myself... If you’re going to count the cost at the end of somebody’s life, then it’s not love. You’re doing math, a transaction.” (45:59–46:30)

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Notable Quotes

• On Gilbert’s Influence:
  “She sort of invented this thing that, like, anybody could write a book about their life. And all of our lives as women are interesting and compelling.”
  — Tracy Thomas [05:33]

• On the Reality of Illness:
  “Most of the time in America, what doesn’t kill you ruins you financially first before it kills you.”
  — Nora McInerney [08:30]

• On Privilege:
  “Elizabeth Gilbert is just telling us all the illegal shit she is doing in this piece. … And I’m just sitting there going, white lady. White lady, White lady.”
  — Tracy Thomas [24:01]

• On Memoir Ethics:
  “It is a holy thing to love somebody. It is a holy thing to be there for the end of their life. And there are parts of that experience that feel like they should just be for you.”
  — Nora McInerney [28:19]

• On Boundaries and Obligation:
  “If the thing that you say to Raya is, ‘I want to be with you until the end’… you have to try to stay with her ‘till the end. You can’t just come back and say, this is hard, you’re hurting my feelings… I gotta go.”
  — Tracy Thomas [37:00]

• On the Self-Help Memoir Trap:
  “There is this tendency to turn memoir into kind of like life lessons drawn from, like, your own tiny experience that can just be painted over anybody’s. And it’s like, that’s actually not the point.”
  — Nora McInerney [39:36]

• On the Performance of Growth:
  “It’s the performance of growth that you don’t want.”
  — Tracy Thomas [45:16]

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Notable Moments & Timestamps

• [05:34] — Tracy acknowledges Gilbert’s radical impact on memoir and contemporary women’s self-narration.
• [10:08] / [10:27] — Deep dive into how money enables Gilbert’s story: “Breaking news… the advance was $200,000.”
• [13:18–14:21] — Stunned over the wildness and privilege of how drugs and art are casually consumed.
• [15:25] — Gia Tolentino’s razor-sharp description of self-help memoir voice: “Many of the most chaotic and emotionally lawless people you’ve ever known are… posting about having achieved inner peace.”
• [23:10–24:13] — Tracy and Nora dissect Gilbert’s codependence as caregiver-turned-enabler.
• [28:19–30:11] — Ethics of memoir; the private versus public face of death and addiction.
• [31:18–32:30] — Irony: Gilbert’s frustration with meetings all about “talking about themselves.”
• [34:22–34:43] — The climactic confrontation between Gilbert and Raya; reflections on what real love and loyalty demand.
• [36:48–39:11] — Critique of the memoir-into-life-lesson genre; not every experience is universal.
• [45:59–47:36] — Nora on “losing yourself” in caregiving, “I’d give it a million times again for anyone I love… If you’re going to count the cost at the end of somebody’s life, then it’s not love.”

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Click Lit Quiz — Rapid Fire Review

• Was the article well written?
  Both agree: Yes, Gilbert is compelling — “Elizabeth Gilbert is a beautiful writer. Like, just pulls you right through.” [49:56]
• Did it make you want to scream about it?
  Yes, absolutely. “I had multiple group chats going.” [50:30]
• Did it deepen your thinking?
  For Tracy: Yes, especially around addiction, end-of-life care, and the ethics of memoir. Nora: Not as much, since she “thinks about this stuff all the time anyway.” [50:53]

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Predictions and Final Thoughts

• Both hosts predict the book launches into 12-step programs and life-lessons, with a likely reconciliation between Gilbert and Raya before Raya’s death, softening some of the moral messiness. [43:03–43:11]
• The conversation closes with a heartfelt reflection on the limits of memoir, the dangers of using others’ trauma for personal growth, and a plea for more privacy and less self-mythologizing, especially for the ultra-privileged. [44:34–47:36]

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Tone & Style

The episode is bold, irreverent, and thoughtful. Both Tracy and Nora blend humor, sharp critique, and genuine vulnerability, especially when Nora draws on her own experiences with grief and loss.

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For Further Discussion

Listeners are encouraged to join the conversation in the Patreon group or on Nora’s podcast, Thanks for Asking.

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This summary skips all commercial breaks, sponsor content, and podcast administrative notes, focusing solely on content-rich discussion and analysis.

Transcript

[Nora McInerney]

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[Tracy Thomas]

UnitedHealthcare Nurse Crystal checked in on a patient. We do a routine call after surgery and I could tell in her voice that she was struggling. Crystal knew she needed help. I knew that this is very serious. This is like septic, this is life threatening. And she knew just what to do. And I called the hospital and said she's coming in, here are her labs and got her the help she needed. I see my role at UnitedHealthcare as a life saving role. Hear more stories like [e-mail] benefits, features and or devices vary by plan. Area limitation and exclusions apply.

[Nora McInerney]

Foreign.

[Tracy Thomas]

Welcome to Glamorous Trash. This is a podcast that book clubs, viral articles, celebrity memoirs and trashy discourse to elevate your life. I'm your host, Tracy Thomas. I am the host of the book podcast the Stacks. It's a weekly podcast where I interview authors about their brand new books and I host a monthly book club. Today's episode is part of our viral article series where we recap and discuss articles that go wild on the Internet. Today we're discussing the Elizabeth Gilbert piece that ran in the Cut, which is an excerpt from her brand new memoir, all the Way to the river, which came out on September 9th. The excerpt is called My Once in a Million Years Love Story. When my best friend was diagnosed with cancer, I promised to be there until the end. Then all hell broke loose. Throughout today's episode, we also reference Gia Tolentino's review of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir which ran in the New Yorker and is titled Elizabeth Gilbert's Latest Epiphanies.

[Nora McInerney]

Hey, Glamorous Trash producer Christina here. Just a quick trigger warning. We do talk about substance use in this episode and we use language around addiction and recovery that reflects the terms used in the article. So always take care while listening.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay, let's dive in. All right everybody. Today I am joined by truly one of my favorite people to talk about all the chaos of the world with it is Nora McInerney. Nora is the author of several funny books about sad things, including the recent essay collection Bad Vibes Only. She's also the host of the podcast, thanks for asking. And I don't know if I said this. She's my friend, Nora. Welcome to Glamorous Trash viral article, Tracy Thomas, Takeover.

[Nora McInerney]

Oh, I'm so ready to be here. And you know what? I have a special skill to add to my resume and to my bio, which is that my husband died of cancer. So if you're wondering why I was selected for this episode.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes.

[Nora McInerney]

Special skill set. Special skill set right here. Spoiler.

[Tracy Thomas]

Do you want to know how good of a friend that I am? Is that when I read this article, I immediately thought of you. But it was not until yesterday, when I was preparing my notes that I was like, oh, wait, I bet Nora will have something to say about this because her husband died of cancer. I just thought Nora will have something to say about this because Elizabeth Gilbert is crazy.

[Nora McInerney]

That's how I want you to think of me. I just want you to always think Nora will have something to say about this, because that is true. And it might not even be. Typically, I would say it will be an uninformed, sweeping, broad generalization, but in.

[Tracy Thomas]

This case, you're sort of, like, uniquely equipped for this conversation.

[Nora McInerney]

A little bit.

[Tracy Thomas]

A little bit. Okay, so today we are reading Elizabeth Gilbert's excerpt from the Cut. You guys probably know her from her Eat, Pray, Love fame, but now Elizabeth is back with a new memoir, and this piece from the Cut is an excerpt from the memoir. And here's what it's about. She finds out that her best friend, Raya Elias, is dying of terminal cancer. She breaks up with her husband, tells Raya, I cannot live without you. I love you so much. Let's dedicate the rest of your life to being lovers and not friends. The piece goes on to talk about passionate love affair. Then Raya, who's a former addict, relapses, starting with pain pills, leads to heroin, cocaine, and then it just gets, like, pretty fucking yikes from there. So that's where we're gonna start. We're gonna work our way through. Did you read Eat, Pray Love?

[Nora McInerney]

Oh, I read Eat, Pray Love. I read Eat, Pray Love, and I thought, wow, I should do this. However, I have no money at all. But, yeah, I was one of the millions of women who were like, yeah, man, you just gotta eat. Braylove.

[Tracy Thomas]

I didn't read it. I was an early hater. I just said, you know what? This looks stupid to me. I'm just never getting into this.

[Nora McInerney]

I think about that often. I think I have to have more Tracy Thomas energy because it's a shock to me that I have not been recruited into or accepted into a cult. Because my first default is, okay, yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Here'S what I'll say. So I had never read Elizabeth Gilbert until this excerpt. She's an incredibly compelling writer.

[Nora McInerney]

She's such a good writer.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, I was reading this piece, being like, this is fucking nuts. I probably have to read the whole book now, right? And I don't wanna read Elizabeth Gilbert. As I mentioned, I did not read Eat, Pray Love on principle. Like, I'm not trying to read Elizabeth Gilbert. And now here we are. For people who don't know, she was sort of one of the first, if not the first, to kind of turn regular degular women story into memoir and kind of open the door for a lot of other women, like a Glennon Doyle, a Brene Brown. She maybe is the reason we have substack. Like, she sort of invented this thing that, like, anybody could write a book about their life. And all of our lives as women are interesting and compelling. And she sort of.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Oh, yeah.

[Nora McInerney]

And I mean, I feel like she and Cheryl Strayed's books were sort of companion pieces. And even though I think Eat, Pray Love came out, I think Eat Pray.

[Tracy Thomas]

Love is first first.

[Nora McInerney]

Like, maybe even significantly first. But they felt like companion pieces. By the way, I believe everyone's interesting. Like, I really do. I think you can find something interesting about anybody. And I think that's what I liked about Eat, Pray Love as a book was like, oh, this is a woman who's unhappy. I was also very depressed at the time, does not like her life, and is going to make this big change. What I didn't realize, because not always a critical thinker, I didn't realize that, you know, the eating and the praying and the loving were made possible by a book advance.

[Tracy Thomas]

I didn't know that.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah. She pitched a book that was like, I'm gonna do these three things and I'm gonna write about it. And. And I remember reading that and being like, oh, well, yeah, okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay. That was a good idea. That was a business decision.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah. Yeah. I guess it would be easier if you had, like, you know, in advance to just fuck off and leave your life.

[Tracy Thomas]

Take pray and love.

[Nora McInerney]

Who amongst us has not wanted to just cut the leash and leave?

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I could just be eating and I wouldn't be praying, but I could be eating and loving, like, in the next 15 minutes, if you gave me A plane ticket. Like, I could be at LAX asaptually. Let's get into the article because it is long. We got a lot to get through. So basically, the article starts with Raya, the best friend cancer diagnosis. Immediately, Elizabeth Gilbert tells us, I love her. I'm gonna leave my husband. I want to spend the rest of my life with her. And then we get very quickly into the highs of loving someone who's dying. We have this quote where she says, we were sky high on drugs from the internal pharmacy. Endorphins, oxytocin, adrenaline. We couldn't take our eyes off each other. We couldn't take our hands off each other. It is just. We're having sex, you guys. We're having a lot of it, and it's good and it's excessive, and it's the best thing that's ever happened to Elizabeth Gilbert.

[Nora McInerney]

I think that might not be everybody's experience, simply because most of the time in America, what doesn't kill you ruins you financially first before it kills you. So most people are probably experiencing that more as, like, a stressful situation where you're wondering how you're gonna pay for everything, anything. What does it all mean? But I love her depictions of falling in love. And I know that we're gonna reference the Gia Tolentino piece as well, from the New Yorker, which is like, that's how she wrote about her first husband in Eat, Pray Love. That's how she wrote about her second husband. Also an Eat Pray Love. Like, that is what it feels like to fall in love. In my experience, whether or not someone is dying, you're like, oh, man, I never been this good like that. That is me after a good second date.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, that's me after meeting someone. That's literally me after meeting you. I was like, oh, we're in love.

[Nora McInerney]

Texting?

[Tracy Thomas]

No, getting a tattoo. Like, Nora, you bring up a good point. And I meant to bring this up earlier. One of the most important things for people to remember as we go through this story is Elizabet Gilbert is fucking rich. Okay? She is so deeply rich off of what has happened with Eat, Pray, Love, the movie, the book. People are still reading it. It's everywhere. So the amount of money that she is navigating this whole situation with, sometimes it gets brought up, but mostly it's just there. And I feel like that's the piece of this story that makes it completely unrelatable and also just, like, a level of white lady privilege that we just cannot touch regular people.

[Nora McInerney]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Breaking news. Speaking of the money Producer Christina just popped in and said the advance was $200,000. So before she even makes all the money that she's now living on, she gets $200,000 to go on this trip. But the money is sort of not talked about in this whole story. But it's crucial.

[Nora McInerney]

It's crucial because that's people's main concern in life, is money, and especially when somebody is sick. I am gonna bum people out so many times throughout this conversation. But my husband, he was not yet my husband. He was my boyfriend. I proposed to him the night that he found out that he had a brain tumor. And he was in the hospital. He had had a seizure at work, and we're laying in a hospital bed, and he goes, I don't know how I'm gonna pay for this main concern. Not that you have a brain tumor growing in your skull, but, like, how am I going to pay for this? So, you know, the magic of love is it is a drug. It's as Kesha said, your love is my drug. And when you don't have to worry about, like, the basics of life, I do think that life feels more magical.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, well. And you're like, there's a part where they're talking about how, you know, they're spending all the money. They're going on all these dinners and trips, and, you know, they rent out a theater to produce Rhea's work, and they do all this stuff. And I think it's like Rhea's cousin or nephew and references this back to Elizabeth Gilbert and is like, that was such a crazy time. You guys were just showing us how to pursue art and love and live. And I'm like, yeah, because they were trying to spend money. Raya says, I want to spend all our money. Like, they don't fucking care about nurses. And, like, they're not worried about the hospice bill or whatever. I don't even know what the bills are, but whatever the bills are, I.

[Nora McInerney]

Mean, I don't remember. I just would, like, get them and be like, whoops, that's a problem for the future.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. And also at this point in the story, Raya is not doing treatment. She says, no chemo, no radiation, no surgery, no hospitals. I don't mind dying of cancer, but I refuse to be a cancer patient for the rest of my life. So at this moment in the story, there are some bills, but they are not piling up yet. And also at this time, Elizabeth Gilbert rents a penthouse apartment on Raya's favorite block in the East Village with, quote, floor to Ceiling, windows and a terrace and sweeping views so we could live there together until she died. And this is in 2015, 16. So it's not a thousand dollars rent. People. Like, this is modern day New York. Okay. The East Village is not what it used to be. Okay. We're not talking rent. Okay. So then we start to hear a little bit about Reyes drug addiction. She has been sober for more than a decade from heroin. She had started drinking occasionally a few years earlier. And now in their, quote, libertine frenzy, they're drinking a lot. They're smoking a little weed because of the cancer diagnosis. They're doing Xanax, Ambien. We're starting to get into some using of substance.

[Nora McInerney]

Who is their doctor? Mine is so, so stingy.

[Tracy Thomas]

But again, the money, they're doing mushrooms, they're doing mdma. Like, they're just, they're using drugs. And so this sort of is floated out in the article. At this point in the article, do you remember what you were thinking at.

[Nora McInerney]

This point in the article? I'm like, these are two double income, no kids, women.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Nora McInerney]

So my first thought, I'm like, well, okay, this is. I guess you could do this. I guess you could do this if you truly did not have to worry about any kind of responsibilities. And I do think that if I were diagnosed today with what, you know, my husband had been diagnosed with, which is like such a grim diagnosis and the treatment is so grim. And like Raya saying, I don't want to be a cancer patient for the rest of my life. And I honestly probably would just, like rent a beach house in Mexico with my family and just like, hang out till I died, but I probably wouldn't be doing mushrooms and mdma. But also, what I'm also thinking while I'm reading this, Tracy, I'm thinking about the New Yorker article and how Gia Tolentino also pointed out, like, that this woman is like a self help guru.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. Yes, there. So here's the quote from Gia Tolentino. It's my favorite quote in the whole piece. So she's talking about, like, how Elizabeth Gilbert has become pervasive online. And like, her most pervasive influence online can be found in, quote, the breathless, Having just finally realized tone that dizzying numbers of women who narrate their lives on the Internet have adopted on social media. Many of the most chaotic and emotionally lawless people you've ever known are posting on a regular basis about having at long last achieved inner peace. I screamed when I read that line. Yes. So I read The Gilbert excerpt in the cut. I read the Elizabeth Gilbert thing first. Then I read the Gia Tolentino because I knew they had both dropped the same week, and I had to save them for the weekend. So Friday night, got out my computer, and I did one after the other. So when I read that sentence, I was like, gia Tolentino is a genius, because that's exactly what it is. She is the most chaotic and emotionally lawless person, probably for everyone she knows, and yet somehow she spun her, like, living large Craziness.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Into telling other people how to live their lives.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah. This is not an experience that literally anyone else on the planet has had or ever will have.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. It's, like, the least relatable thing. It's when people, like, want Meghan Markle to be relatable. Like, she's a princess, babe.

[Nora McInerney]

Can't be. And also, I don't want her to be relatable. I want her saying, I wake up early and I sprinkle flowers on my kid's breakfast cereal.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes.

[Nora McInerney]

And that's how I want her. I don't want her in Target clothing.

[Tracy Thomas]

I don't. This is how I feel about Oprah. This is how I feel about the Obamas. I'm like, you are better than me. Act like it. Okay.

[Nora McInerney]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Act like it.

[Nora McInerney]

Be better than me. Be better than me. Tell me this crazy story, which, by the way, many, many male writers get to live, especially historically, get to live just debaucherous, unhinged lives and that, like, we were conditioned to believe. Oh, my God. That's, like, so romantic. Right? Like the Fitzgeralds. You're like, wow, just like mental illness, addiction. What a love story. And so I guess, you know, why not also let Elizabeth Gilbert have the same thing?

[Tracy Thomas]

Have the same thing.

[Nora McInerney]

The last glass ceiling.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. We finally done it. We're not gonna have a woman president anytime soon, but we are gonna have Elizabeth Gilbert drunk and high with her dying best friend. So at this point in the article, first of all, I have to just mention this. We get a photograph of Rhea, like, with her head on Elizabeth Gilbert with her eyes closed, and Elizabeth Gilbert, like, looking fabulous into the camera. And I just thought, you know, if I die and one of you guys posts a fucking picture of me looking like that when you look so hot, I will haunt you from the grave, babe. I don't even believe in ghosts, but I will be up your shit. I will be moving your jewelry. I will be hiding your favorite clothes in the closet. I will be sweating, sprinkling nasty fucking pepper in your hot tea. Like if you post that of me after I have died on the Internet, you're fucking next.

[Nora McInerney]

100 million percent.

[Tracy Thomas]

If your tribute to me is me passed out, it's a ghost murder coming your way. It's a guarantee. It's a guarantee.

[Nora McInerney]

You actually can't watch out because I will be a specter right behind you.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's final destination ghost murder. Okay, I'm coming for you people. All right, so now we get to what I've been lovingly calling the crash out.

[Nora McInerney]

Okay, this feels like a good time to take a quick break. It's so weird to say this, but I thought a lot about what I was going to wear on set as I am shooting my film. Because when you're on set, it's a lot of walking, a lot of squatting, a lot of sweating. But then also you want to look professional and you really want to be comfortable because it's really long days. I found my perfect look Fall wardrobe at Quint. My favorite favorite thing are their ultra stretch pont super wide leg pants. They are really elevated but also comfy. And they have this super wide leg fit which I think looks really chic but is also super comfortable. Quint has all kinds of elevated essentials like mongolian cashmere from $50 or washable silk tops and skirts. And here's how they do it. By partnering directly with ethical top tier factories and cutting out the middlemen, Quince cuts them out to deliver super luxury quality pieces at half the price of similar brands. Keep it classic and cozy this fall with long lasting staples from quince. Go to quince.com glamorous for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com glamorous to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com glamorous.

[Tracy Thomas]

This episode is brought to you by FXX and Hulu. Futurama returns on September 15. Blending heartfelt moments with razor sharp humor while accidentally saving the day. The Planet Express crew is back, defying gravity and common sense.

[Nora McInerney]

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[Tracy Thomas]

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[Nora McInerney]

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[Tracy Thomas]

Don't miss the all new season of Futurama returning September 15th at 8pm Watch it on FXX or streaming on Hulu tonight. Turn down the noise of the day.

[Nora McInerney]

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[Tracy Thomas]

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[Nora McInerney]

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[Tracy Thomas]

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[Nora McInerney]

Minerals in amounts supported by research. And no melatonin. Helping you wake feeling restless, wind down. Rest up with Agz. Learn [e-mail] okay, let's dive back into the episode.

[Tracy Thomas]

Elizabeth Gilbert says, how high can you fly before you crash? How long can you stay intoxicated beyond all recognition? How long can you sustain a buzz? A bender, a peak experience? A magic carpet ride? A hot burning flame of mania? A trip to Venus on a pink cloud? Well, Elizabeth, not very long, turns out for you guys. So after the we're not doing treatment, we're just fucking and spending money. Raya's family gets to her. Her friends get to her. They say, we want you to live longer. Please. Raya says, fine. I love you guys. Three months of chemo. That's it. Three months. She starts to feel the pain. She starts to get prescription drugs. Elizabeth starts to get tired. Raya won't let other people help things. People are getting resentful, people are getting upset. Then morphine comes into the picture. Why not? She's gonna die. Who cares? I have thought about this a lot, about people who have addiction, who get in these situations where they need medicine. And I've always been of the mind. Like, if you're dying, whatever. I like, it doesn't matter. Yeah, this piece maybe changing my mind.

[Nora McInerney]

It really did for me, too.

[Tracy Thomas]

It really did for me. Everybody could have told me this. I just basically didn't ask or read up. I just made an opinion and I went with it.

[Nora McInerney]

So that's my favorite way to do it.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. So I was wrong.

[Nora McInerney]

How bad can it be?

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, exactly. Turns out after she starts doing these prescription drugs, she then starts adding a little cocaine to the mix of her morphine. I'm not one to judge. I don't do drugs. So I don't know. But it sounds like a crazy cocktail to me. Morphine and cocaine.

[Nora McInerney]

I mean, one's illegal, one's very controlled. I wouldn't probably recommend it. But also, if somebody else was better at drugs than me and they said it was fine, I honestly would say, okay, I trust you.

[Tracy Thomas]

Again, going into this, if I was Elizabeth Gilbert, I would have been on the mindset like, okay, whatever, you're dying, you're dying. Like, we've already been doing all these other drugs also, like, I just listed off 75 other drugs they were doing. So I don't think that I'd even be thinking of her sobriety in any way.

[Nora McInerney]

I would not either. I'D say, why does it matter?

[Tracy Thomas]

That's when Elizabeth Gilbert asks us, when was it that she officially lost her sobriety and her sanity?

[Nora McInerney]

Oh, I would say long ago.

[Tracy Thomas]

I would say when she started drinking alcohol, like, years ago.

[Nora McInerney]

What she said also was that she had sort of started drinking not in secret, but kind of in secret. Like, it wasn't openly known. And I think when you're hiding something, it's a problem.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I definitely think that. Yes, I think so. And I think there's, like, a lot of judgment when you come out as sober.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

And then years later, you go back to, like, some substances. So I understand wanting to do it in secret. I certainly think getting cocaine, that's gonna. I'm gonna go ahead and say, for sure there. For sure, yes.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

There were.

[Nora McInerney]

There were moments where it's like, well, maybe, maybe. And then it's like, definitely there. Like, if we're doing a little graph, we're saying, yes, warmer, warmer, hot.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. Point of no return. And then Elizabeth Gilbert asks us, when did she become codependent? And here's a paragraph that she writes. She lists a few other things. A few other things that maybe is when she became codependent. But this paragraph said to me, alert, alert. If you don't know, this is codependence, we are in trouble. She says, quote, was it the morning I walked down to the Harm Reduction Agency in Chinatown and registered myself as an active intravenous drug user so I could get clean needles for Raya because I was determined to keep her safe and free from infection. And even as she was dying of cancer and shooting cocaine and opioids into the veins of her feet, her hands, her neck. It's the. Her neck.

[Nora McInerney]

Honestly, I keep my eyes closed when they take my blood, and they're like, are you okay? I'm like, I'm fine. I just don't want to know about it.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm also like, Elizabeth Gilbert is just telling us all the illegal shit she is doing in this piece. And to me, I'm just sitting there going, white lady. White lady, White lady.

[Nora McInerney]

Yes. There are people in prison for the rest of their lives for half less than this. Way less for doing far less than this.

[Tracy Thomas]

And she's just sitting at her little Carrie Bradshaw computer like, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. I'm like, this is like, basically a fucking murder here. And you are like. And we were having so much fun. And I'm reading this going, alert, alert. White woman at work. White woman at work. I just cannot it's true.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah. No, no fear.

[Tracy Thomas]

And Ray is like, here, take this money. Get me this much cocaine. It's what I'm gonna need to get through to the end of my life. And then like two days later, she's like, take this money. Get me some more cocaine. And Elizabeth's like, totally fine. I'm also like, elizabeth, get a fucking task, rabbit. Babe. You're too famous to get caught buying drugs on the street.

[Nora McInerney]

But wasn't afraid.

[Tracy Thomas]

Wasn't afraid. No fear.

[Nora McInerney]

Wasn't afraid.

[Tracy Thomas]

So then we find out they're going to lose the penthouse. My God. The beautiful penthouse on Raya's favorite block. Two bedroom terrace, you know, devastating. She tries to throw money at it, and the guy who owns the penthouse is like, I sold it, babe. Like, you could give me your money. But it's gone. I sold it. And then Elizabeth, you know, she's feeling bad because she's not sleeping. Ray is doing a lot of drugs. She's recognizing maybe too many. I think she's finally dawning on her perhaps this has gone a little further than she thought. The abusive language starts from Rhea. She starts calling her like a baby. And whatever Elizabeth calls her most wise friends. She goes to the park, she calls her friends. One says, hey, a lot of people get cancer who are addicts. They don't relapse. If Raya wants to be sober, she can work the steps. She can get clean. It's possible. Friend number two says, hey, Elizabeth, there's actually a 12 step fellowship for people who love other people with addiction. It's like al anon, you know, like, you could go, you could talk to other people. This happens.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

And then someone else is like, hey, Lizzie. There's also a 12 step fellowship for people with sex and love addiction. Feel like maybe you need some help. What would you do if your friends said this to you?

[Nora McInerney]

I'd be really annoyed and defensive. And I would say, you have no idea what I'm going through because your girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband is alive and will be alive. So what I really just need you to do, and this is how you get your friends to say what you want them to say. You say, I need you to tell me. I'm right. Before you say anything, I need you to listen and I need you to say that I'm correct and that everything is fine. But if I called three very smart people and they all said that this was a problem that needed to be fixed, I mean, when would you fix it? Is the thing. This person only has a few months to live. We've already gone this far. Am I really going to be going to like 12 step meetings? Two different, different ones of them?

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I think I would be extremely defensive. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I would be like, you have no idea. This is so hard. I would be resistant. When your husband was dying, did you feel like you were being defensive with people and being like, you have no idea, like, whenever people would offer things or did you feel like, yeah, everyone.

[Nora McInerney]

Loves to give you advice. That's the thing. Everyone wants to give you advice when you don't ask for it. In this case, she did ask for it. But everybody wants to give you advice. And everybody knows, like in their mind what they would do in this situation. And everyone's a first timer, you know what I mean? Aaron had never died before. Raya had never died before. Elizabeth Gilbert had never, you know, left her second husband for her best friend who had just been diagnosed and then relapsed. And then like, we're all doing this for the first time. And there's some predictability to dying. People have studied it. And there's also the unpredictability of the human experience.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Nora McInerney]

And how every single person will go through it. You know, Aaron was a perfect. I mean, kind of like a perfect person.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right. Sorry, everyone else.

[Nora McInerney]

Sorry, everyone else. Sorry. It's like I really never did get mad at him. Like, I got annoyed with him over, like two things that I can remember. I did not want to hear advice from people and I did not want to hear that I was doing it wrong or that he was doing it wrong. And also, dying is so personal that actually reading this was difficult for me because I do think that it is a holy experience. And there are things that I experienced with Aaron that would never make it into a book because they're not for everybody. And I do have that feeling for Rhea, too. She did not know when she was going through this that it would be a multi million selling book. It will be.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's an Oprah Book Club pick.

[Nora McInerney]

And this is how she'll be remembered. And like, that's very tragic to me too. And that's the problem of, like, being a memoirist. Not everybody is going to like what you write about them. But I think that when a person is dead, I don't think you have to, like, protect all of their secrets and if they mistreated you and blah, blah, blah. There will always be people who are like, well, do we have to protect abusers? No, that's not what I'm saying. And it's a holy thing to love somebody. It is a holy thing to be there for the end of their life. And there are parts of that experience that feel like they should just be for you.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Nora McInerney]

And that's how I felt reading a lot of this. I shouldn't know this. I shouldn't be in that room.

[Tracy Thomas]

That's such a good point. And I think I felt that, too, in a lot of ways, because the way that this excerpt is, it sort of pits Rhea against Elizabeth Gilbert, and she's sort of asking us to choose a side. And I think there's probably another way to write this where it is the story of what happened, but Rhea is not up against Elizabeth Gilbert, but it's something that they're going through together. And in that framing, it might have felt less like exposing sort of this private thing. Like, there is ways to talk about people that you love who have died, who have had addiction. That doesn't feel like, she was ruining my life, and I went and got help, and, like, can you believe she was putting it in her neck? You know, like, maybe the. Her neck part isn't necessary. I don't know. Because that's really sticking with me, maybe for the rest of my life.

[Nora McInerney]

And just the five stages of grief were not written for, you know, the bystanders. They were written for the dying. And I've never died. You know, I've never been dying. And I thought about that, you know, with every experience where I've been with a dying person, like, I've never done this. This is, like, your experience, and I am here having my version of it. But it's not uncommon for a dying person to be deeply unkind. And again, thank you, Erin. Sweet. Sweet to the last drop. Like, nice to you, but everything. Yeah. Like, I definitely have known people where it was, like, it was scary at the end, you know, or it was like, it was scary as, like, a. A disease is taking over your body and, like, robbing you of who you are. Like, that is scary. So I don't. I just. I wonder how her family's gonna feel, Rhea's family. I really do. I wonder how Rhea's family's gonna feel.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I do, too. Especially because while they had a long friendship, their relationship, the romance was so much shorter.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

That it also feels like, who lives.

[Nora McInerney]

Who dies, who tells your story. Okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay. Thank you. Lynn Manuel Miranda. So what does Elizabeth Gilbert do after she gets this advice? She goes to an Al Anon meeting, and she goes to sex addiction meeting.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Here's what she has to say about the Al Anon meeting. I hated the support meeting for the family and friends of addicts. She says, I went there expecting to hear people share really useful advice about how to get other people clean and sober. But the people in the room were just talking about themselves, about their own issues with anxiety, codependency, and over control. When to me, which I said, of course. This is like, so hilarious coming from a fucking memoirist. Like, how dare you? Like, they're only talking about themselves.

[Nora McInerney]

Hello.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm like, I am 20 minutes into this excerpt. The book is a 10 hour audiobook. Like, we are going deep. But I didn't know that. So I didn't know that Al Anon. Like, the number one thing of Al Anon is not to get your loved one sober. It's like, to accept that they have addiction. I think she went in probably in the same way that many people do, where they just go in and they're like, great. How can I support my person getting sober? And really, like, you can't. You have to love them without any attachment for the rest of your life. Good luck. So that's a hard one. Then she goes to the sex addiction meeting. She says, I hated it because the people were super messed up. They had histories with romantic dysfunction and sexual degradation. And who wants to hear about that? These people were obviously really sick and I felt sorry for them.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah, I love that.

[Tracy Thomas]

I mean, that's very honest. I get it.

[Nora McInerney]

Not me. I love that.

[Tracy Thomas]

I love that. But then she also goes on to be like. But also, like, they would read things out loud and I'd see myself in it. And we find out that she keeps going. For whatever reason, she keeps going. As we get to the end of the piece, she decides she has to talk to Rhea. So we get this sort of tete a tete. She goes to the apartment. She's like, I need you to do whatever you need to do to be able to be with me while I say these things to you for the next five to 10 minutes. Raya goes into the bathroom. We don't know what she does, but Elizabeth Gilbert suggests that maybe she takes drugs again. One of those moments that's like, you don't have to say that.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

You could just say she freshens up.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, you could be generous there.

[Nora McInerney]

Okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. She says to her, basically, like, sorry for not being honest about my feelings in the before. Sorry for, like, springing this on you when you get cancer. Sorry for making you my higher power. I've been selfish. She Says, quote, all I've been thinking about is what I can get from you, how much love, how much reassurance, how much of your time and attention. And then she says, but listen, you're in trouble with addiction, and I'm not going to stick around for it. You would not let anyone treat me, Elizabeth Gilbert, the way that you, Raya, have been treating me. You need to get out of this apartment one way or the other, I think, meaning dying or finding another place. That's how I read that, but I wasn't sure. And she says, I'm staying with my friends. And she says, quote, I wanted to walk all the way to the river with you, but that might not be possible for us anymore because I can't survive the way you're living. It's too costly for me. It's too degrading to my soul. And then Raya says, are we good?

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Which obviously I love.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

This moment in the piece for me made me hate Elizabeth Gilbert. It is deeply unflattering to her. So the line, I want to walk all the way to the river with you. That's the title of the memoir, all the Way to the River. What did you make of this scene?

[Nora McInerney]

I mean, this was a rough one. People are really mad online and saying, like, oh, you just can't abandon somebody who is, like, sick and dying. I would like to point out it happens all the time. Mostly men do it.

[Tracy Thomas]

Mostly men do it to their wives.

[Nora McInerney]

Men do it to their wives all the time and face no repercussions, like, no pushback. People are like, yeah, that's hard. And we do expect women to stay in difficult situations much longer than we expect men, too.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Nora McInerney]

And it is hard for me to hear how much somebody loves a person. You know, they're not married. Right. But, like, one thing that you say, like, when you marry a person and, like, they've never had, like, such a big soul bond, Right. They're in something that's, like, bigger than a marriage. Is, like, this commitment to sickness and health better or worse? Literally tell death do you part? And, like, I think love is a responsibility to another person, and you cannot just abdicate your responsibility, especially in a moment like that.

[Tracy Thomas]

So, okay, this is what I'm gonna jump in and say, because for me, you're getting a thing that I think is what. I couldn't quite articulate what it was, but I think you're getting at it. And to me, part of the problem in this story is that Elizabeth Gilbert has dived into each of These things headfirst all the way. And one of the things about addiction, and I think also like end of life and what happens and the emotions and all of that, is that generally there are boundaries. There are conversations that lead up to ultimatums. And in this case, we go from. And obviously we don't know the whole story, but what we've been given from her is everything's great. She starts using drugs. She becomes mean. I'm not sleeping. I hate it here. I leave and go stay with my friends. I get this advice, I come back and I tell her all or nothing. And to me, that piece of it feels extremely unfair, given what you're saying. If the thing that you say to Raya is, I want to be with you until the end, sure, you don't have to stay with her till the end, but you have to try to stay with her till the end. You can't just come back and say, this is hard. You're hurting my feelings. I don't like how I'm being treated. I gotta go.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah, you can.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm sorry, I shouldn't say you can't. You can do that. But that is what's unsettling to me because I like you. I'm an extremely loyal person. I'm pretty good at setting boundaries. I'm pretty good at being like, this is not going to work for me. But I'm also going to do everything I can to stick by the people I love in whatever way I can. And the whole thing of, like, you have to get out one way or another and sort of like, it's too degrading for me. I'm going to go. Yeah, good luck. That piece of it is like, you have all this money. Why don't you tell her, let me get you an apartment. You know, I'm happy to pay for the hospice care and the things that you need. I can't be there with you if you're using, but I still want to support you and love you in the ways that I can. Until, like, there are ways to say, I'm out, but I'm still going to love you in the ways that I can. And I think that part of it of, like, this, like, boundary ultimatum does speak to sort of the self helpification of our lives that she pioneered.

[Nora McInerney]

That's the connection right there, which is that it's self above all. And so you made somebody else your higher power. But it's just as dangerous to make yourself your higher power and to put yourself at, like, the center of every situation. And Yourself at the center of the universe. To romanticize somebody is. End of life is a dangerous thing. Right. Like, somebody coming to terms with their mortality conceptually is different than coming to terms with it in reality.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right.

[Nora McInerney]

And yeah, I think that is what made it so difficult, is there are people who can't opt out who are in very dire straits.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Nora McInerney]

And who did, like, walk their person all the way to the river, whether or not it was, you know, the healthiest thing for them or the best use of their time, whether or not it was degrading or difficult or whatever it was. And Gia mentioned this too, that in the broader book, she says, like, oh, I suspect we're all kind of like this. Like, you're all kind of like me, and we're all kind of like Rhea. And that's not true.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Nora McInerney]

Like, it's just not true. I cannot imagine a situation where I would ever write another memoir. Like, any other extraordinary thing could happen to me. And I just don't want to do that because there is this tendency to turn memoir into kind of like life lessons drawn from, like, your own tiny experience that can just be painted over anybody's. And it's like, that's actually not the point. Like, the point is not like, oh, we're all right. We're actually not.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. One of the biggest nonfiction tropes that I hate the most is memoir to life lesson. I'm just like, just tell me your story. Let me decide if I think your life is a lesson for me or not. Like, I don't need it. But the other piece of this is. And you're a writer, so you know, the other piece of this section that I found interesting from, like, a craft perspective is how little of Rhea we hear in this scene. She has these one lines that are like, okay, man, I hear you. So I guess that's it then.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

But are we good, babe? Like, it's like these little. And maybe that is exactly how it happened. I don't believe this was only a 10 minute conversation. I just. I know how these things go. Like, I mean, I'm guessing. I'm speculating there was more, but either way, the way that Rhea is rendered on the page in a storytelling way also felt so specific to me. For whatever else Elizabeth Gilbert is doing in the book, like, whatever else this whole story leads to in the rest of the book. She's setting it up in this section. This breakup is. I think. I haven't read the book, but if I had to guess, this breakup is the thing that compels the rest of the book. And it's important that Rhea is not speaking because this is the Elizabeth Gilbert story. This is her hero's journey, and, like, it can't be muddied by this secondary character who is now dead. And I think that's part of the other reason that I felt like this part was so kind of icky to me, just from, like a craft writing, storytelling perspective. Which leads me to my next question. I mean, Gia Tolentino sort of gives it away a little bit in her review, but where do you think the book goes? This is a 300 and something page book. What do we think Elizabeth Gilbert gets to? What is the whole point of this? It's a 400 page book. Excuse me? It's a 400 page book that's not short for a memoir.

[Nora McInerney]

I ain't reading on that. So congratulations or sorry that happened.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I think I am going to read it. I think I have to. I think I have to just know.

[Nora McInerney]

I'll listen to your episode about it and that will be my reading it. I will read. I will read your podcast episode, and that will get me through it. I'm imagining she goes through this. I'm gonna guess Rhea dies at, like, the first third.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Nora McInerney]

And then it's going to two different 12 step programs and addressing codependence and love addiction and life lessons for all of us. Because the line that I think Gia wrote about in her piece that bothered me is like, oh, we're all reaching for something. It's like, you know, I don't think that's true. I just don't think that's true. I think there are people who are just. Just experiencing their lives and not believing that that makes them, like, the main character of the world.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. Gia Tolentino also mentions that Elizabeth Gilbert was, like, raised on a Christmas tree farm like Taylor Swift. And she said, does being raised on the Christmas tree farm make you some sort of, like, have main character energy syndrome?

[Nora McInerney]

They sprinkle, like, Hallmark dust over you and they're like, there's never been a girl like you.

[Tracy Thomas]

There's something in that white spray they spray on the trees.

[Nora McInerney]

You don't even know how beautiful you are.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay.

[Nora McInerney]

You're not like other girls. You have glasses.

[Tracy Thomas]

My prediction is that she definitely goes into treatment for her sex and love addictions. And I think that's a lot of the book. But I also think that she and Rhea make up. Oh, I think there's like a beautiful.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

You know, sort of coming back together. Of, like, Rhea gets the help she needs. Elizabeth Gilbert can come back. They can be together in the end.

[Nora McInerney]

You know what? That's gotta be true. Cause I remember Rhea dying on Instagram.

[Tracy Thomas]

Oh, okay. Well, I feel like there were the pictures and the piece where they're like, holding hands in the hospital bed. And I think Gia Tolentino mentioned something along those lines. But also, like, Elizabeth Gilbert has, like, dedicated books. It just feels like they're. Plus, it makes all the icky stuff she says feel slightly less icky if she gets to have another whole moment where she sums up the love story as this beautiful thing. And we had to go through all this horrible to realize, you know?

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah. When I read stuff like this, I'm 42, I don't want to be scrambling for like, you know, or like, just digging for, like, meaningful, like, truffles of life lessons when I'm 52.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Nora McInerney]

I don't want to learn any. Any hard, like, hard won truths. I don't want to have. I don't want to, like, be like, redefining myself and who I am. Like, I literally.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Nora McInerney]

And this is maybe why I'm never gonna write another memoir again. It's like, I just wanna, like, exist and live my life, you know?

[Tracy Thomas]

Unfortunately, I think we're gonna learn more lessons if we live long enough.

[Nora McInerney]

But, you know, But I don't know. I don't know how to explain.

[Tracy Thomas]

No, I get it. Like, in 10 years, you don't wanna be publicly revealing some major, like, life update or life change that you discovered that maybe or maybe not. You didn't discover and probably knew all along. Not that you don't wanna learn a lesson.

[Nora McInerney]

G made this connection between the Instagram, our writing and like, the connection with that to, like, the way memoir is written and like. Guilty. Guilty. Yeah, guilty. The Internet is filled with, you know, my own, like, revelations and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, I think at a certain point, when you hit a certain level of income, success, self awareness that you're presenting to other people, you should be able to learn these lessons. Not on a dying person, not on another person. You should be coming to these realizations maybe even by just looking at, like, your past patterns.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right. It's the performance of growth that you don't want.

[Nora McInerney]

That's what I don't wanna do.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, that's what I wanna do.

[Nora McInerney]

I don't wanna be looking through my life like, oh, what if I looked? Yeah, I don't know. I just.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I get it. I don't want to.

[Nora McInerney]

I don't want to. Like, I will never. I will never sell 100 million books for this reason.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, I just.

[Nora McInerney]

I just won't.

[Tracy Thomas]

I just won't, you know, can't do. Can't do what it takes. Don't have what it takes.

[Nora McInerney]

I can't. I don't have what it takes. I don't have what it takes.

[Tracy Thomas]

I want to ask you a sort of personal question, if it's okay, about your experience with Aaron, which is how much did you feel like you gave up of yourself or got caught up in the dying of it all? Because that's something that Elizabeth Gilbert talks about early. She talks about like, Raya had no future, but I did. And I was sort of throwing it away. Like, oh my God.

[Nora McInerney]

And that bothers me so much. Like, I didn't lose any of myself.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay?

[Nora McInerney]

I didn't lose any of myself. Like, you know, like, that gives you.

[Tracy Thomas]

That's where you find out who you are.

[Nora McInerney]

That's like how you get yourself. I didn't give anything that I didn't get back a million times over. And I'd give it. I'd give it a million times again for anyone I love. And I think if you can't do that, you can't say that you loved someone, you know. Like, I think if you're going to count the cost at the end of somebody's life, then it's not love. You're. You're doing math, you're doing a transaction.

[Tracy Thomas]

But yeah, it's a hard question to ask. Cause it's like, I'm sure there were times where you felt like, obviously unsure or like, lost in it or like.

[Nora McInerney]

Oh, I felt like I was an idiot. You know, I was like, I had like a post it that was like morphine. How much?

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, like, and I was like, here's.

[Nora McInerney]

How I'll keep track of it.

[Tracy Thomas]

But you never felt like you lost yourself?

[Nora McInerney]

No, no, it's like, no, it's, you know, no, I have said before, but it's like those three years were the hardest years of my life and the happiest years of my life because I was so present and we were so present and the future was uncertain and the future was finite. The future was finite. And I didn't drink at that period of my life. And so I was like, very mentally present as well. And so I don't think, like, you know, probably doing like mushrooms and stuff like that really, like, helps you maybe. I don't know. But, you know, I didn't, I didn't have that experience, I just was, like, sober, going through this with somebody, and, like, my life was normal. So I have to say that, too. I think this excerpt is so, like, affecting for me. Cause I'm like, most people have to have, like, a normal life.

[Tracy Thomas]

You know what I mean?

[Nora McInerney]

Like, I still went to work, still brought my kid to daycare. Aaron went to work till the day he died. You know, like. And you took, like, two weeks off at the end. Lol.

[Tracy Thomas]

Hospital. Yeah, I say two weeks off. It's like. Like, really an interesting way to frame the last two weeks of your life. Just gonna take. Can I just get some pto. Take two weeks off. Oh, my God.

[Nora McInerney]

It's true. But, you know, it's like, most of the time, for 99.9999% of people, like, this is your normal life. It has to fit into your normal life. You haven't decided to, like, tell all your friends and family that you'll see them, like, later at another time. And even if you have. You have bills to pay and things to do and you have to go get groceries and you have to sweep your floor. Like, you have to still live with, like, the mundanity of life while the circle of life is ending.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right.

[Nora McInerney]

And with all the help in the world, all the money in the world. I don't know. Like, that was hard for me to, like, write. It was like, yeah, you lost yourself. Like you could, you know, and she doesn't want anyone but you. It's like, well, yeah, like, I don't know. She loves you. And also, like, she's on fucking heroin, though. I don't know how to explain it. Like, we had. We had a night nurse for, like, maybe, like, four nights or whatever. And I would wake up and go in there anyways, because, like, it's the end. I don't know. It's just. It's. That part is hard to read, hard to swallow. Because I just know that for most people, there's not an escape hatch.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right.

[Nora McInerney]

And most of us wouldn't take it.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right. Right. I have to say, Nora, you have been a perfect guest for this conversation. And I'm sort of embarrassed that I didn't think of it more related to your. Like, I literally was just like, nora will have funny things to say about Elizabeth Gilbert. I mean, I think I text you before I even knew we were doing this. Being like, did you read this?

[Nora McInerney]

I was like, I. But I'm gonna. I think I might go read Eat, Pray, Love Again is what I'm gonna do.

[Tracy Thomas]

Oh, you are. Okay, well, I'll read the other one and then we can book club it together. We'll get Chelsea to read one of the other books and the three of us, it'll be a nine hour episode before we get out of here. At the end of these viral article episodes, we do the click lit quiz where you're gonna answer. We're gonna answer these questions. So the three questions, here they are. First one, was this article well written?

[Nora McInerney]

Yes. Yes. She's a beautiful, like, Elizabeth Gilbert is a beautiful writer. Like, just pulls you right through, I.

[Tracy Thomas]

Think that was so well written, though. Gia Tolentino, in her article, takes some quips about sort of the, like, shortness, the style of the writing in the book. She kind of talks about how it's.

[Nora McInerney]

Like, again, Instagram captioning.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, Instagram. It's sort of like Elizabeth Gilbert has memeified Elizabeth Gilbert. And it's like this weird concentric circle of like, Elizabeth Gilbert. Or like, not the center circle, the like, infinity sign where she's like eating her own tail. Okay, number two is, did reading this article make you want to scream about it to someone?

[Nora McInerney]

Yes, yes, I think I did.

[Tracy Thomas]

I did. I had multiple group chats going. Like I was reading it. I was live reading it with two friends who had already read it, sending them texts. As I got to sections, I was like, mdma. And they were like, just wait, girl. It's like. It's like needles. The whole thing is not great. Okay, number three, did reading this article deepen your thinking on the subject?

[Nora McInerney]

I don't know.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm gonna say yes, it did, because it deepened my reading on different parts of it. It deepened my thinking about addiction and end of life. It really helped me to change my thinking on that. It also deepened my thinking about memoir. Like the part I was talking about at the end about, like, how she's framing this for the bigger part of the memoir. I don't know if it deepened my thinking about Elizabeth Gilbert. Cause I don't really think about her, but. But since reading this, I have thought about her almost every day. So I'm gonna say yes, it did deepen my thinking on many of the subjects.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah, yeah. I've never. I don't know, maybe a little bit. I feel like I just think about this stuff all the time anyways. So. Yeah, you know.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I feel like you got a different perspective going in. Okay, cookies, my dear, cookies at home, please tell us what you think of the article. I know you all already have been in it in the viral Article chat on the Patreon. But let's talk about this episode. Let's talk about this article. I want to hear from you guys. I know Chelsea's keeping tabs on you, so she's reading the comments too. She wants to know what you think. So please leave us some thoughts and feelings. And then, Nora, can you tell people where they can find you and follow you and all the things you're doing and if you've got anything extra special we need to know about?

[Nora McInerney]

Oh, I don't have anything. I don't think. I don't think I'll ever write another book. I don't know if I'll ever write another book.

[Tracy Thomas]

Honestly, I'm not. I have no plans to write a book.

[Nora McInerney]

I don't know if I ever will, maybe, but I. Oh, God. I'm Nora Borealis on Instagram. I have a substack and a podcast called thanks for asking and you can call in and talk about anything you want to talk about. We could talk about this article. Okay, so call in and share your opinions.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm going to call in and be like, hey, I thought of some other things to talk about. Thank you everyone, so much for listening. I'm sorry. Tracy Thomas, host of the Sax. You can find me on Instagram.

[Nora McInerney]

Yeah, you Google it. You'd probably Google it. Okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

And thanks everybody, for listening in. Nora, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Nora McInerney]

A big thank you to our senior managing producer, Christina Lopez, our executive producer, Jordan Moncada, our sound engineer, Marcus Hamm, and our amazing associate producer, Jaron Padre. I also want to give a huge thank you to our incredible partners over at Thrive Cosmetics and every plate. We will link to those brands in the show notes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Go check them out.

[Nora McInerney]

Everything else we discussed is also linked in the show notes. And if you have questions, thoughts, comments, go to the Patreon sign up. There's a free tier you can join. Leave a comment, chat with your fellow cookies. We will keep the book club continuing over the A.

[Tracy Thomas]

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[Nora McInerney]

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[Tracy Thomas]

This is electric performance redefined. The fully electric Audi Q6E Tron.