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Here’s a little back-story on how the Duchess came to be who she is today:

If you’re anything like me, you loved Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. And I mean love, love, loved! But my initial reaction to and experience with Elizabeth was much like my first encounter with most of the ladies that ended up becoming my best girl friends.

I didn’t like it.

Blasphemy I know. I should say that differently. I didn’t try to like it.

In an effort to be totally authentic I’m going to reveal an ugly side to me. I saw the title of that book, and went, “Uck! Gag! It sounds like some middle-aged search for the meaning of life crap-o-la, that’s going to use lots of words like ‘wellness’ and ‘empowerment’.” In short, it made me nauseous.

Eat, Pray, Love. Oh, okay, no problem. It’s like those bumper stickers. “Visualize World Peace,” says the pious Prius in front of me (who, like me is stuck in gridlock traffic on I-10, and, who like me, is not participating in a ride share). Or is he asking? I’m not sure which.

“Okay,” is my cynical reply, “I visualized it.” Check. Wow – what a difference.

I should probably disclose right here and now, that while I’m striving to become a happy, optimistic enlightened being, I have historically been a bit cynical and more of the “half-empty” persuasion. I know we’re all supposed to run around acting like we’re happy all the time and nothing gets us down, but the truth is, that’s not real. Maybe for some, actually I know for some, there is a guy at my work who I am totally convinced is TRULY that happy all the time. And I love that in him. But that’s not me. I get grumpy (particularly if I’m not provided with meals, sleep, and love on a regular basis) and bitchy and just down right unhappy sometimes. So now you know.

So if you’re saving Tibet, visualizing world peace or able to coexist with all the symbols of religion and race (personally, I think it would be interesting to see how many coexist bumper stickers have been sold to motorists in Baghdad lately, but hey, that’s just me, again – cynical) then you keep on keeping on. Because I think it’s great someone out there is trying to do it. Just know that I will be mocking you. But deep down I encourage and admire your optimism, so ignore me, I’m one jaded girl.

But I digress . . .

So I saw Eat, Pray, Love for the first time when a girlfriend gave it to me for Christmas 2006. I had just finished my last semester of college, was in a lonely marriage, and was generally not too happy.

“I think you’ll get a lot out of this book,” my girlfriend wrote sweetly on the Christmas card.

“Uh-huh. Looks like some hippie, new aged, crap.” I thought to myself. And promptly filed it away, until about four months later, when I wrapped it up without having ever cracked it open, and gave it to a girlfriend for her Birthday. That’s right. I regifted. I told you I’m a bad person, let’s continue.

The next month after passing it along, I celebrated my own birthday. And low and behold if my sister doesn’t send me that damn book again.

“Seriously?” I ask myself, questioning my sister’s sanity, “What about me screams I’d like to read this thing?” And it was promptly put into the back of my closet.

Queue the summer of 2007. My husband was once again away on business and after a few months of being alone I had learned to get creative with ways to entertain myself. I decided, since I wasn’t working, and my husband was always on my case for all the books I had, I would clear out the absolutely non-essential ones and sell them to the local used bookstore. As I gathered up the wounded and old, placing them in a brown paper sack, I saw it sitting there staring back at me. Oh – that one is going for sure! And Ms. Gilbert joined the ranks of the newly departed. The bookstore clerk couldn’t possibly understand why I was reselling it and why it was in pristine condition.

Let’s progress further forward another couple of months. My husband, in an attempt to reconcile our rocky marriage (I had since moved out and gotten my own place) offered a trip for two to Argentina. Okay. God knows I loved that man. I really did. For all the loneliness and other stuff, I loved him to pieces. So I packed my bags and we flew down to the southern hemisphere. I brought along a good book, as I always do, and we landed in Bariloche about 30 hours later. The weather in Barliloche in late September is very conducive with reading. It was not cold enough to snow, and not warm enough to melt the snow already there, so we wandered through the next five days in a sleeting, incessant freezing rain that ran straight to the bone. The weather, combined with the siesta, and the late night eating (the Argentineans don’t go for dinner until about 10pm earliest, and that’s like the equivalent of the senior special time back in the States) left a lot of time in our hotel reading and napping. It was very relaxing, but I quickly powered through my book. So as we traveled to San Martin de Los Andes and on to Mendoza and then on to Buenos Aires, I had very little to read. So you can imagine how happy I was, when, sitting in the airy and bright café of the lobby of our hotel, a woman approached me and asked, “Are you American?”

“Yes,” I smiled back.

“Oh I’m so happy,” she said in relief. “I heard you speaking English and I hoped you were. My boyfriend thinks I’m crazy,” she looked over her shoulder as she said it, assumingly at her boyfriend smiling back from a table in the back corner of the café, “I’ve been on a search for a woman that speaks English for the last few days to give this book. He told me to just leave it, but it’s so good, and I wanted to give it away to someone and this morning we’re checking out and I thought, ‘oh well’ but then I overheard you on your way in and I was so excited! Do you read?”

“Yes,” I liked this girl already. I was about five days with no book and desperately needing material.

“Oh great, well I’ll grab it.”

“Thanks!” I was stoked about this girl – yea new book!

She came back, all smiles, a few minutes later and handed me the book saying, “You’ll love it! It’s seriously one of the best books I’ve read, have you read it already?”

And she handed over a copy of Eat, Pray, Love.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I thought. “No,” I said, “I haven’t read it.”

“Well enjoy it, I’m so glad I met you,” she beamed back.

“Thanks again,” I said a little less enthusiastically.

As she walked away, I could see the smile spreading across my husband’s face. He knew how many times I had been given that book, and how many times I’d given it away.

“What is it with this book?” I asked him, almost angry. “Seriously, everyone keeps giving me this damn book.”

The rest of my trip to Argentina passed. I packed the book away in my suitcase, not wanting to toss it out this time (it was getting eerie how many times it had been given to me – I couldn’t even escape it as a total stranger in a foreign country) but still resisted reading it. It may be helpful here to mention I am an uber-Taurus. Stubborn? Me? Never. Determined to be sure, but not stubborn.

Another month or so went by at home. My husband packed his bags in December and headed out for an assignment in Pakistan and I was once again alone. Wondering what to do, stay or go? Stay or go? Stay or go? Until one day I turned on the TV and the only thing on was an Oprah re-run. And like any good American woman I love me my Oprah. So I sat down with a tub of popcorn and watched. Her guest? Oh I think you KNOW it was Elizabeth Gilbert. But this time I watched. I stopped resisting this book and this woman that kept being thrown at me by every woman I knew (and some I didn’t!).

I had just finished up college the last year and in my senior thesis class read a book called, The Last American Man. It was a fantastic book – so good I bought a few copies outside of class and gave it to some friends. I loved the way the writer had written about this mountain man, you loved him and kind of pitied him and hated him sometimes. Whoever wrote it had a great style I totally identified with and loved.

While I’m watching this Oprah they mention that Elizabeth Gilbert is, of course, the writer of this Eat, Pray, Love book. But it’s also mentioned she wrote several other books including The Last American Man.

“That’s the same writer?” I yelled out loud, astonished. I loved that writer! And then as I watched the show I loved her even more. When it was over I ran down to the basement, found my stored away suitcase, and unzipped the outermost pocket where I was sure I left the book from Buenos Aires. Sure enough it was still there.

And then I finally read it. And like every other woman who had read and recommended it, and tried to enlighten me, I loved it. I laughed and sympathized and related and (gasp! sin of all sins!) cried with this beautiful writer over and over. It is such a real tale, and having been to Italy, and Indo, and traveled to the Gili Islands myself in years past, I could see and taste and touch all the experiences I was reading about and enjoying. This book changed my life. It gave me the courage to realize I wasn’t crazy for wanting to be happy and for walking away from a lonely relationship. It gave me the courage to want something of my own, to want a life, and an identity and a meaning beyond being Mrs. my Husband. It also helped me to realize that I could still love my husband, and think he was a wonderful person, and know he was a great man, and still not want to stay.

And that is how I ended up here. In L.A. Or as I like to call it, “LA – la land.” Six months after picking up that book I’ve started my own journey. Far less glamorous and interesting, but my journey just the same.

So this is the point of Duchess. I want to share my experience, my advice, my triumph, my struggle. I want to hear and learn and gain knowledge from others out there. And give my own in exchange. I want to create a platform for enlightenment, at its most basic and primitive and small level, for simpletons like me, who have been cynics, but want to believe. For those of us on an Eat, Pray, Love journey, but who don’t have the luxury to take a year off from family, kids, dogs, income, etc. to experience it. I think we can create our own journey here, just as grand, just as helpful, and in the same spirit and vein as Ms. Gilbert’s exploration into self, spirituality, love and balance.

Emily Dickenson once wrote, “I dwell in possibility.”

And that is the purpose of Duchess. I want to dwell in the possibility that I can help and be helped. That I can find love, balance and success. And hopefully, like Robert Frost’s two paths diverging in the woods, I will blindly push ahead down the road less traveled. And that will make all the difference.

–Jill Brown, June 2008