Wild Card with Rachel Martin: "Elizabeth Gilbert no longer believes she’s a bad person"

Released September 4, 2025 | NPR

Episode Overview

In this deeply openhearted episode, Rachel Martin sits down with Elizabeth Gilbert—author of the international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love—to discuss Gilbert’s new memoir, All the Way to the River. The conversation explores Gilbert’s journey through grief after the loss of her partner Rayya Elias, her own struggles and recovery from addiction, and major shifts in self-understanding, forgiveness, and the nature of God. Using Wild Card's signature deck of philosophical questions, the two travel through memory, vulnerability, and transformation, offering wisdom, laughter, and some hard-won truths.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. How Should One Be Judged? — The Mercy Card

• [00:50] Rachel Martin: “How do you think your life should be judged?”
• Elizabeth Gilbert: "I'd rather it wasn't. Mercifully. Mercifully. Mercifully."
• Openness to mercy—instead of judgment—sets the philosophical tone for the episode, both for the self and toward others.

2. Childhood Memories and Longing

• Sunday Breakfasts
  • Gilbert reminisces about elaborate family breakfasts on her childhood Christmas tree farm:
    [03:19] Elizabeth Gilbert: "Sunday breakfasts... massive... waffles and pancakes and sausages and eggs. Like multiple courses. ...My mom's an amazing farm woman. She knew how to can berries and make jams and make syrups. ...friends would come over and this was the payoff."
• Homesickness as Longing, Not Place
  • [05:48] Elizabeth Gilbert: "I have always felt a deep longing that feels like homesickness for me, for where I came from, what created me and who I really am. ...It's not for a place. I've experienced the opposite, feeling oppressed and trapped in a home."
  • Rachel and Elizabeth riff on the restlessness versus the depth of commitment that marriage can call forth, and how “finding euphoria by standing still” is sometimes its own adventure.
    [08:46] Rachel Martin: "The same amount of spaciousness, vastness... in one place rather than all the places."

3. Transitions, Movement, and ‘Leaving’

• Gilbert describes her tendency to leave, even after investing deeply:
  [10:26] Elizabeth Gilbert: "A friend of mine came and said, after all you've put into this house and how beautiful it is, you can never leave. And I was like, you have no idea what I'm capable of leaving. ...three years later, I was like, I don't want this anymore."

4. The New Memoir: Grief, Addiction, and Honest Reckoning

• Life After Rayya:
  • The memoir tells the story of Gilbert’s relationship with Rayya Elias—her best friend turned partner—who died from cancer. Rayya’s battle with addiction deeply shaped the experience.
  • [14:07] Elizabeth Gilbert: "What we both thought was going to be a... devastating and beautiful love story turned out to be very devastating. ...Rayya was a heroin and cocaine addict... picked up her addiction again at the end of her life. ...If I had written that book right after she died... it would have been the story of a very nice me and a terrible thing that happened to me. ...there is no story that is quite as simple as I'm a really nice person and a bad thing happened to me."
  • A Masterclass in Self-Accountability: Glennon Doyle, upon reading, described the book as “a masterclass in self accountability.”
  • Addiction and Enabling: Gilbert bravely discusses the realization that her own patterns of ‘enabling’ and ‘love addiction’ were as much a focus as her partner’s substance use.
• Courageous Honesty:
  • [17:14] Rachel Martin: "I would get angry at you, Elizabeth. ...So many red flags in front of you."
  • Gilbert acknowledges, laughingly:
    [18:06] Elizabeth Gilbert: "Whenever I see red flags, I think it's a parade in my honor and I run toward it."

5. The Call to Write & Relationship with the Dead

• Gilbert credits her late partner Rayya with the push to tell the full story—no protective editing.
  • [18:51] Elizabeth Gilbert: "Rayya told me to do it. ...She was somebody who was incredibly candid about her own life. ...On the morning of my 54th birthday, Rayya visited me... 'Dude, sit down. Write that book. Go full punk rock with it. Don't worry about protecting my dignity, I'm dead. ...It's time to do that now.'"
• On Afterlife Presence:
  • Gilbert describes “hearing” (not seeing) the dead, feeling Rayya’s “vivid” presence after her death, and how letting go of that presence is part of healing and ending codependence. [22:09] Elizabeth Gilbert: "She was absolutely available to me. ...Now that's faded, which is a little heartbreaking, but also... she can see I can do my life now without making somebody else into my higher power."

The Wild Card Questions

Insights

• What’s Something You Thought About Yourself You Had to Unlearn?

  • [22:32] Rachel Martin: "What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn?"
  • [22:40] Elizabeth Gilbert: "I'm afraid I'm not a good person... that I'm fundamentally a bad person. ...That's a thing I used to believe about myself, that I was bad and wrong, and I don't believe that anymore. ...Even when I do things that fall short... there's a way that I can now speak to myself very lovingly and be like, 'You are not bad and wrong.'"

• Relationship to Pain

  • [25:57] Elizabeth Gilbert: "Not a fan. 0 out of 5 stars is my review. ...Pain avoidant... emotionally as well. ...But the very things that I have most not wanted to feel are the portals through which I have grown and evolved."

• Are You Good at Forgiveness?

  • [27:22] Rachel Martin: "Are you good at forgiveness?"
  • [27:26] Elizabeth Gilbert: "Depends. ...A word I like better than forgiveness is mercy... I would rather sit with somebody in a shared space of mercy... a recognition of what a difficult thing it is to be a human being and how much mercy is needed... Mercy feels like it's two souls looking at each other... not an easy assignment to be embodied on this planet. I get it."

Beliefs

• How Have Your Feelings About God Changed Over Time?

  • [32:07] Elizabeth Gilbert: "I've always loved God... I see nothing but evidence of it... But I never, ever, ever, ever, ever trusted God. ...At best, I felt like we were colleagues... What’s changed is a deepening of trust that perhaps there may be an intelligence in the universe greater than mine."
  • Rachel shares about the longing for a connection with God despite her religious upbringing:
    [34:06] Rachel Martin: "I play fast and loose with the term God... I know there's something bigger than me... It is a work in progress for me."
  • [34:34] Elizabeth Gilbert (on living with mystery, quoting Rob Bell): "Life is not a mystery to be solved, but a mystery to be lived in."

• When Do You Feel Most Connected to the People You’ve Lost?

  • [36:19] Elizabeth Gilbert: "When I'm in my integrity. ...Like, when I feel like they would approve. ...The Buddhists talk about skilled and unskilled choices, rather than right and wrong. ...When I've managed to get through a day and remain relatively skilled... that's when I feel them. ...It’s like this council, who are like, 'Good job, Lizzie. You're doing good. It's hard and you're doing good.'"

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Enabling and Addiction:
  "Why do I keep pouring myself into people and then blaming them for leaving me feeling empty? What is this?"
  —Elizabeth Gilbert, [15:22]

• On Recovery and Self-Compassion:
  "It's taken me years to learn how to find that tenderness and compassion toward myself."
  —Elizabeth Gilbert, [25:21]

• On Mercy, Not Just Forgiveness:
  "Mercy feels like it's two souls looking at each other and being like: Not an easy assignment to be embodied on this planet. I get it."
  —Elizabeth Gilbert, [28:00]

• On Changing God-relationship:
  "At best, I felt like we were colleagues. What's changed is a deepening of trust that perhaps there may be an intelligence in the universe greater than mine."
  —Elizabeth Gilbert, [33:04]

• On Red Flags:
  "Whenever I see red flags, I think it's a parade in my honor and I run toward it."
  —Elizabeth Gilbert, [18:06]

Time Machine: One Moment to Linger In

• Gilbert recalls dinner at her grandparents' home:
  [38:16] Elizabeth Gilbert: “I would go back to 1978... my grandparents’ home in upstate New York... All the men in my family at that point, still active, alcoholics. ...Those nights were so wild. Those guys were so wild. ...There was something spectacular about it.”
  • She explains that these wild family gatherings—the chaos, laughter, and lack of boundaries—influenced her lifelong comfort with “wild” people and places, for better and worse.

Episode Tone

Open, unguarded, and at times gently funny, the conversation is marked by mutual warmth and a strong sense of reflection. Gilbert is radically honest about both pain and joy, never shying from her own flaws or the complexity of healing. The host’s curiosity is met with gratitude, and even the heaviest topics are handled with grace, humility, and just enough levity.

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:50 – How life should be judged: "Mercifully."
• 03:19 – Sunday breakfast memories
• 05:48 – Existential homesickness
• 14:07 – Writing the memoir and the complexity of grief and addiction
• 18:51 – The ‘call’ from Rayya to write honestly
• 22:40 – Unlearning the belief of being a ‘bad person’
• 25:57 – Relationship to pain
• 27:26 – The difference between forgiveness and mercy
• 32:07 – Changes in belief about God
• 36:19 – Connection to people lost: living with integrity
• 38:16 – Memory time machine: wild family dinners

In Summary

This is an episode about moving past self-judgment into self-acceptance, about the messiness of love, loss, and codependency, and about learning to trust—in oneself, in others, and perhaps even in God. Through her candor and willingness to inhabit the full spectrum of life’s questions, Gilbert offers listeners a model for mercy, accountability, and, ultimately, hope.

Recommended for anyone interested in memoir, recovery, spiritual exploration, and the art of being human.