I went to Bali in search of the Eat, Pray, Love experience after three years of trauma

I’ve always loathed the phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” as I find it patently false. Any tough times in my life have only weakened me. Besides, I would rather be happy than “strong”.

It’s been a tough couple of years, lowlights of which included a series of bereavements, the most shocking the death of my 58-year-old father-in-law from Covid in the terrifying early days of the pandemic. Then there was the horror of being scammed out of the entire deposit for our first home by a cyber criminal on the day of the big move. Add the general lockdown-era feeling of disconnection from family and friends and even after the first ostensibly “back to normal” year of 2022 I still felt brittle and broken.  

My hair fell out in clumps, sleep was fitful (playing PlusWord at 3am became a ritual) and tears were free-flowing. I certainly didn’t feel stronger, just depressed and anxious about the next blindsiding event.

The thing about trauma is that it can create a kind of mania. You are desperate to try anything to end the anguish. I rolled through all the classics: an intense exercise regime; subscribing to soothing horoscopes; comforting Amazon purchases, before finally turning to the self-help holiday. I was previously sceptical of this type of thing, judging it to be the preserve of entitled millennials reeling from microaggressions. But by this point I was ready to try anything for relief.

So off I went to Bali for a week of meditation, treks and (hopefully) personal growth. I was after that Eat, Pray, Love experience made famous by the noughties memoir, turned into a Julia Roberts film, where our heroine finds herself, both literally and figuratively, on the island. Although she also visits Rome and India, it’s Bali that remains most closely associated with the book and you’ll still find as many women searching for meaning there as you will Aussies searching for a boozy nightclub.

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