When Caregiving Becomes Codependency: A Conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Everything Happens Studios

Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When someone you love is in pain—whether they’re sick, addicted, or falling apart—you show up. Again and again and again. You make the calls. You hold the line. You carry what you can. But what happens when love, loyalty, and devotion blur into something harder to name? When care turns into codependency, and compassion starts to erase your sense of self?

Kate sits down with best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love; Big Magic) to talk about the toll and the tenderness of caregiving. Liz’s new memoir, All the Way to the River, chronicles her years caring for someone she loved deeply through addiction and illness—and what it meant to finally let go.

Together, they explore:

What it means to walk someone you love to the edge of life
How codependence disguises itself as devotion
The permission we need to be more than someone’s lifeline

This conversation is for anyone who has ever loved to the point of exhaustion. Who wonders if love is meant to cost this much. Who needs a blessing for the moment when helping means losing yourself.

🧡 Listen with care. Leave with permission.

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Books by Elizabeth Gilbert

All the Way to the River – A raw memoir of caregiving, addiction, and release
Big Magic – On creativity, inspiration, and the discipline of making
Eat, Pray, Love – A bestselling memoir on desire, spirituality, and selfhood
The Signature of All Things – A novel of science, wonder, and the search for understanding

Resources + Mentions

TED Talk: Your Elusive Creative Genius – Liz’s viral TED talk on creative brilliance
Alcoholics Anonymous – A spiritual practice of surrender discussed in the episode
Sky Cave Retreats – Where Liz spent five days in total darkness

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:35.3	the first two episodes premiere on Thursday, August 21st.
0:44.5	When someone you love is in pain, whether they're sick or addicted or falling apart, you show up.
0:51.6	You show up. You bring the ice chips. You plan the meal train. You make the calls.
0:58.1	You stay late. You go without. Because that's what love does, right? But sometimes caregiving,
1:05.6	especially when it's constant or codependent or entwined with addiction often costs more than we realize.
1:14.6	It asks for everything and then it asks for more.
1:20.4	This is a story about when a good thing, love, loyalty, care becomes something else.
1:27.4	When helping turns into losing yourself.
1:30.8	I'm Kate Bowler, and this is Everything Happens. It's a podcast where we ask what it means to live
1:36.8	wisely and love well, even when it costs us more than we expected. You probably know my guest today from Eat, Pray, Love, or my very
1:46.8	favorite book on creativity that's ever been created called Big Magic, or maybe her TED Talk,
1:52.0	which has been watched more than 20 million times. Elizabeth Gilbert has written novels and memoirs
1:58.2	and essays and stories, and her words have found their way into more than
2:01.7	50 languages. But what I just love about her, isn't it just her spectacular talent?
2:09.1	Though yes, she's been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Penn slash Hemingway,
	...

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