“Maybe you’re a woman in search of a word.” [Eat Pray Love]

“Maybe you’re a woman in search of a word.” [Eat Pray Love]

What’s in a word?

Recently, I revisited a quote from the movie Eat, Pray Love that made me stop and take the time to really reflect. In the movie, Julia Roberts, who plays Liz Gilbert (author of the book upon whom this story is truly based), struggles to find a word that represents who she is. The friends she’s made in Italy try to find words to represents themselves and the cities they’ve visited – London is “stuffy”, New York is “ambition” or “soot”, and Rome is “sex” – but all Liz can think of to define herself, is “writer”, which her companions point out, isn’t who she is, but what she does for a living. At the end of the book, after a satisfying journey of learning to let go of a nasty divorce and love herself again so she can start to love somebody else, Liz decides that her word is, in fact Attraversiamo, an Italian word meaning let’s cross over.

Gilbert’s journey throughout the movie helps bring her back to who she used to be by helping her to cross over to her old self; someone who was happy; someone who had the capability to give love and receive it; someone inspired who had the ability to inspire others, through actions and words – in her case, words written in the form of a book. The word Attraversiamo for Gilbert, was the perfect reflection of who she was at that particular moment in time. Continue reading ““Maybe you’re a woman in search of a word.” [Eat Pray Love]”

The Low-Down on Tall Women

The Low-Down on Tall Women

“Wow. You’re Tall”.

Forget the fact that I spent an hour on my hair, 20 minutes on my makeup, 30 minutes picking out an outfit and another 10 minutes changing until finally satisfied with the get-up de soir – this guy chose to focus on the one attribute I was actually trying to play down; my height.

No pun intended, my appreciation for heels has definitely hit its highs and lows. I kid you not, more than once, some guy strolled up to me in the bar and stared in awe, mumbling on about how tall I am – as if, by some miracle, this fact hadn’t formerly been brought to my attention. Now, the staring in awe part I didn’t mind so much, and more often than not this line was just an unfortunate – and unsuccessful – effort to pick me up (not literally – thank god), but once in a while I would come across someone who would decide to point it out – just for fun, and those were the times that as a woman pushing 6 feet, I wished I could cut myself off at the ankles and just blend in.

Continue reading “The Low-Down on Tall Women”