Our Eat, Pray, Love Journey
Eat, Pray, Love, otherwise known as HBTT’s Bible
An ode to Elizabeth Gilbert, author and life-liver of Eat, Pray, Love the memoir and film
We must-have an additional honorable mention for Julia Roberts’ incredible acting & portrayal of Elizabeth Gilbert.
Big Sur, California
With a couple other friends, the both of us roadtripped up from Orange County to Big Sur, California for Halie’s birthday camping trip. We stayed in Big Sur’s State Park for a few nights and upon our return we were exhausted from how much fun we had. We drove the grueling eight hours home after two nights sleep of switching between one sleeping pad for two of us. Yes, this means one of us slept on the ground on either night. We’re ~minimalists~.
Picture us getting home, running to the shower, and then running to be horizontal for the next 18 hours until Breezy flew home to Detroit. At this point in our lives, we had no travel agency, no travel plans, full-time jobs, and a huge bucket list of destinations we both needed to see. We were slowly checking places and experiences off the list, however, this experience drastically changed our urgency.
We start the movie; both of us never having seen it but hearing good things. 30 minutes in and we are not only hooked but physically upset at everyone in our lives for not telling us to watch this movie. That moment it became our favorite film and the roadmap to our lives & business. Horizontality continued throughout the night as we thought about what just happened to us.
The Aftermath
It’s time to separate and move forward from camping, we both go back to work and have intrusive thoughts about quitting our jobs. So much so, that I decided to quit my job 2 weeks later upon personal matters, go see family, and hit the road to Europe solo after a girls trip to Greece. I head overseas and have the most lifechanging time of my entire life thus far, full with unspeakable amounts of growth, fun, and exploration. We both continued to watch the movie multiple times in eachothers absence. I truly lived Eat, Pray, Love in every moment including all of the eating, praying, and loving I could. All three are necessary steps in the EPL journey.
I start looking into what a travel agency would be like as my friends begged me to start up one to continue planning their travels. Breezy is still employed with the CDC at this point, taking travel opportunities wherever possible. On month two, I get a call from Breezy saying the CDC lost funding and she’s getting laid off! Not only this, but she had seen a similar travel agent business and we decided to team up and start our own. At first Halie had called the business HB after her first and last name, but tell us that’s not fate? HBTT had been reborn.
At this point, we are still both watching Eat, Pray, Love weekly if not multiple times per week. Halie heads back to Detroit for the holidays, catches up with Breezy, and we decided to take the first comped trip as travel agents. We flew down to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and hopped on the Caribbean Princess ship for a week-long cruise to the Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, Jamiaca, and the Dominican. It was such a leisure trip with no expectations; we loved every second of our first cruise experience. It gave us the motivation and encouragement we needed to actually get fires under our arse.
We head back home and get to work on HBTT basically forgetting to apply for full-time jobs that we went to college for. Business is booming! So much in fact, we go on another comped cruise - this time a trans-atlantic from Ft. Lauderdale to London. We extended our stay in London to hangout with friends we met on the cruise and pop over to Amsterdam while the Tulip Festival was beginning.
During this month long journey, we unintentionally lived a full EPL movie, eating all the best food - from the pizza on Princess Cruises, to tapas in Spain, pastel de natas in Portugal, and bougie oysters in London. We prayed, grounded, and manifested in the most stunning locations. Yet, above all, we reconnected with love for ourselves, our lives, our friends, our family, and found new love for all the wonderful people and places we found along the way.
It was and still is the time of our lives, an irreplaceable bonding moment we’ll forever remember, cherish, and honor.
We’ve watched Eat, Pray, Love millions of time since Halie’s 26th birthday, many times together and even more apart. HBTT is thriving and we continue to grow using our new morals enstilled in us by our friend, Liz Gilbert.
“And the rest is still unwritten” - Natasha Bedingfield
