entertainment

The podcast all fans of 'Eat Pray Love' need to listen to.

Any woman over the age of 30 will remember the first time they read Eat Pray Love. When Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-helpy memoir was published in 2006, it became a bible for women everywhere who felt a little bit lost, a bit disconnected, wondering, ‘Does anyone feel the same way I do?’ Book clubs couldn’t get enough of it. Oprah was jumping on couches over it. Gilbert said what a lot of women were thinking but could never put into words. In writing Eat Pray Love, she gave us an unprecedented look at the life of an ordinary woman who couldn’t help but ask, ‘Is there anything more than this?’ LISTEN: Jessie Stephens recommends the podcast you need to be listening to. (Post continues…) Now there’s a podcast that’ll give you exactly the same feels. It’s called Alone: A Love Story and it’s a memoir about lust, love, heartbreak and slowly learning to be OK on your own. The 10-episode series is written and narrated by Michelle Parise, a CBC producer, and the story is edited by Veronica Simmonds, a CBC audio artist, from their hometown of Toronto. Throughout the podcast, Michelle tells her own story of love, loss and loneliness, and in doing so, taps into wider themes of loneliness and the kind of despair we all feel at different times in our lives.

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Michelle’s story is not uncommon. Actually, you’ve probably heard it countless times before. Girl meets guy, they fall in lust, girl’s unsure whether guy is the right one for her, but before she knows it they’re getting married. Fast forward a few years and they’re having the baby she’s not sure she ever really wanted in the first place. Fast forward a few more years and the marriage has disintegrated, and the woman is learning how to be alone for the first time in her life. It’s not an uncommon story, but it is a universal one. Every woman has felt, or will feel the way Michelle describes feeling in the podcast. We’ve all faced loss, and overwhelming waves of grief, that at the time we think we’ll never survive. But we do. And that’s the real beauty of Alone: A Love Story, in telling one woman’s story, it tells a million more. Listen to the full episode of Mamamia Out Loud below. All 10 episodes of Alone: A Love Story are available on iTunes now.  To read more from Keryn Donnelly, follow her on Facebook