"Eat Pray Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert revealed she’s in love with her best friend, a woman, just months after announcing her divorce to her husband Jose Nunes.
The author took to Facebook to say that she realized that she was in love with Rayya Elias, also an author, after she was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic and liver cancer.
“She's my best friend, yes, but it's always been bigger than that. She's my role model, my traveling companion, my most reliable source of light, my fortitude, my most trusted confidante. In short, she is my PERSON,” Gilbert wrote. “But something happened to my heart and mind in the days and weeks following Rayya's diagnosis. Death — or the prospect of death — has a way of clearing away everything that is not real, and in that space of stark and utter realness, I was faced with this truth: I do not merely love Rayya; I am in love with Rayya.”
Those feelings, she said, led to Gilbert’s divorce from Nunes, whom she described falling for at the end of her best-selling memoir.
Gilbert said she is making her relationship with Elias public because such "truth and transparency" make her life easier and more ethical.
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“Here is where we stand now: Rayya and I are together. I love her, and she loves me. I'm walking through this cancer journey with her, not only as her friend, but as her partner. I am exactly where I need to be — the only place I can be,” she wrote on Facebook.
The posting was confirmed by Gilbert's publicist at Riverhead Books, Jynne Martin.
She asked her readers for their love.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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