Author of Eat, Pray, Love Visits Dallas

There are only a few books that have truly changed my life. The Bible, let me know that I will always have questions and that I must look within for the answers. Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird made me want to be a writer, and a little girl again. Eat, Pray, Love rounds out the trifecta with its cleverly written words that helped me better understand my own spirituality, and gave me the courage to quit my day job to take charge of what is most important - family.

I saw the fair skinned blonde locked author, Elizabeth Gilbert, beaming on Oprah more than a year ago, just a few weeks after I had given birth to my son. I caught the end of the show and was drawn to the thirty-something writer talking about her travels to Italy, India and Indonesia (the basis of her recent book). I ordered it online partly out of envy. My son was eating every three hours so I barely had time to go to the grocery store in between breast feedings, much less take a sojourn to another country. An entire year passed before I had the opportunity to open the book.

Gilbert is brutally honest about how her divorce nearly led her to commit suicide, and the path she took to transform herself. Her wisdom on life is indispensable, encouraging and inspiring. When asked how she finds the courage to write about the extremely personal details of her life, she stated she didn't feel it was courageous, but more pathological. "I showed the book to a few friends and they said, 'Wow, there's some really personal stuff in here,' and I thought, really?" she laughed. "It's just who I am."

Other tidbits of wisdom from her discussion included:

• To thine own self be kind (rather than true - how can one be true to when they aren't sure of their own truth?)
• Silence is a precious commodity - even rich people don't have it.
• This thing (referring to her body) is better equipped for life than this thing (pointing to her head). If you fall down and break your femur, the biggest bone in your body, you can have a doctor put a cast on it and be good as new in six weeks. However, if someone calls you stupid or ugly, 30 years later it still hurts.