Gilbert leaves these messages whenever she wants to “talk to her, laugh with her, cry with her,” she wrote. “Talking to her in this way brings her near to me.” She has recorded dozens of these since springtime, she said.

Her other methods of coping with the agony of living without the woman she has called “my love, my heart… my surprise, my gift, my comet, my liberator” include asking Elias to pick a song, hitting shuffle and dancing to whatever music comes on. “Sometimes it’s AC/DC,” she wrote, “sometimes it’s Mozart. It’s always perfect. This is how I get to dance with her, and dance out my grief.” She’s also writing to her, reams and reams of messages on her laptop typed out after uttering the words: “I need you Rayya.”

For Gilbert, creativity and creation is not only the response to grief, but its solution, too. “If ever there is a circumstance in life in which we NEED imagination,” she explains, “it is while we are grieving. Never have I needed my creativity more than as I navigate this devastating loss.”

“For anyone who is suffering loss, I encourage you: Be creative. Be INVENTIVE. Be strange. Demand union. Find ways. This is the art form that I am mastering right now: The art of eternal connection. Nothing matters more. You can do this, too. Love wants you to reach out. Your beloved is RIGHT THERE. Keep them near. Create, create, create.”

Elizabeth Gilbert on how she’s handling the grief of losing her soulmate