Monica Lewinsky details her 'dark decade' and moving past public shame
Monica Lewinsky is reflecting on her experience with shame and how she was able to overcome it.
During a recent episode of her podcast, "Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky," the 52-year-old activist spoke with actress Jamie Lynn Sigler about her memoir, "And So It Is...: A Memoir of Acceptance and Hope," with Lewinsky telling her the title resonated with her.
"It's such a big part of reclaiming, actually. You really can't move through all the steps until you've had acceptance," she said. "A lot of my progress during my dark decade really came about from integration and being able to integrate like, 'OK, I couldn't leave Monica Lewinsky the White House intern in the past,' like I had to find a way to not be ashamed and bring her with me, all the things. And so you can't integrate until you've accepted."
She said there was "so much work" that went into her journey of self-acceptance and integrating the two versions of herself, noting, "It's hard enough out there. How do I make it not so hard in here?"
Lewinsky entered the public eye in 1998 when it was revealed she had a sexual relationship with the president of the United States at the time, Bill Clinton, when she was a 22-year-old White House intern. This led her to receive intense media scrutiny and public ridicule for many years.
Having experienced such intense scrutiny in the public eye, she can "appreciate" when her friends approach her "when they're in a state and need connection and need to be heard and that it doesn't feel like a burden."
"I have to remind myself because I feel those things so often, and I think, especially in my kind of dark decade, it was really hard because I felt like there was no … it wasn't a wave like, 'Oh, I'm in this bad place, but now this good thing happened.' And that sort of it just felt like it was always bad. And when you thought it couldn't get worse, it got worse."
Looking back, Lewinsky said what she experienced is still "pretty miraculous" to her and leads her to think about "awful things" that happen to people "and how we hold them and what they end up being able to provide."
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"Pre-'98, I was a really good disassociater," she explained. "I had a really rich fantasy life. Not that I fantasized making things up, you know what happened, which people accused me of for a while, but it's those things saved me."
When speaking with Fox News Digital in May, Lewinsky bluntly admitted, "There have been some very dark moments," and that she wouldn't "sugarcoat" her experiences.
She went on to say that she "was severely impacted by having billions of strangers thinking negatively about me," and that part of her healing journey involved "energy work."
"I've done an enormous amount of energy work for 20 years, which, if there are any woo-woo people in the room or anybody who saw 'The Secret,' you remember about this idea of energy coming toward you and negative thoughts being ... energy coming toward you," Lewinsky said.
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The scandal led to Clinton's impeachment in December 1998 on the grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. He was acquitted two months later.