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- [00:00]
Molly McAleer
We want to send a big thank you to everyone who listened to Dying for Sex. On behalf of everyone on our team, we are so incredibly grateful that you've taken this journey with us. And now that you've reached the end of the show, there's another podcast we think you'd love, and it's called Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky. Both dive into powerful stories of self discovery and living boldly. Whether it's Molly embracing passion and pleasure after a diagnosis or Monica reclaiming her voice on her own terms, hear how courage, strength and vulnerability take center stage in both unforgettable series. I'm about to play you an episode of Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky, so stay tuned. Follow Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Wondery members can listen to new episodes of Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky early and ad free right now. If you don't already have a wondry membership, you can start your free trial by clicking the link in the episode description today.
- [01:04]
Monica Lewinsky
Hi, I'm Monica Lewinsky. Welcome to Reclaiming. And today's guest is going to be me. So as we've been standing up this show the last few months, a lot of the producers have asked questions at different times. And in fact, one of our producers was born the year after 1998, after I was in a global scandal. And I think that we just found over time that it made sense to sit down and explore what happened, how I basically, how I got to having this show of reclaiming, what why it's called reclaiming, and how my own journey, my own reclaiming story is in the bones of this show. One of our producers, Elna Baker, drew the short end of the stick, so she's here with me. And Elna is a writer and also worked on this American Life for over a decade. So hopefully if you're sitting there listening and you're wondering certain things, we might get to it because it's been 27 years since it happened.
- [02:32]
Elna Baker
Well, first off, I'll jump in and I'll say, you know, people have said you have to have been living under a rock or be in a coma to not know the Monica Lewinsky story. But, but I didn't know your story. And then in preparation for this, I watched, I binge watched Impeachment the last two days. And I personally, I just can't believe I'm like, this happened to my friend Monica.
- [02:54]
Monica Lewinsky
Like, I cannot believe I can't believe it either. There are many times that I, I think that I Feel, especially once you've. You've lived a story for a very long time.
- [03:06]
Elna Baker
Yeah.
- [03:08]
Monica Lewinsky
That sometimes I'm only reminded that it actually happened to me because after I've talked about it for a long time, I have all the kind of signs of having been triggered. So I get drained, I'm exhausted, I might be cranky. So it is often still mind boggling to me of the enormity of what happened. Um, and then also that I was able to survive.
- [03:40]
Elna Baker
Yes. No, that's actually why I'm most excited to talk to you, because after sort of absorbing your whole story in one sitting, I don't understand how you survived it. I'm curious if you think about, like, who you were before 98 and then who you are after. Like when we think about reclaiming, it's like something was taken, what was taken from you.
- [04:06]
Monica Lewinsky
You know, it's interesting because there's who I was before I went to Washington, there's who I became in the course of having this affair and the emotional impact of all of that and to be doing that at such a young age and in such high stakes and circumstances. So I think that there's. There's the part of me that I lost once I was in Washington.
- [04:37]
Elna Baker
Yeah. And can I ask, when you say that, who were you before?
- [04:40]
Monica Lewinsky
I mean, I was an insecure but friendly and bubbly, very caring person. I loved musical theater. I was a psychology major. I actually, my pilot plan had been to go to graduate school for I was going to get a PhD in forensic psychology. And I got derailed in a big way. So I think that really what I lost, in a sense, was coming out of 98, I lost my anonymity, I lost my future, I lost my sense of self. I think I lost my trusting myself in many ways. Strangely, I saw some of the worst in people, but also some of the best of humanity during the investigation.
- [05:48]
Elna Baker
So you have 98. And then I think really what I don't know about is also just the immediate aftermath of that. Will you just walk me through the immediate aftermath?
- [06:01]
Monica Lewinsky
Yeah. And I think too probably just to set the stage a little with clarity, is that I had gone to D.C. to do this White House internship. I had just graduated college in May, started the internship in July, and the plan was to finish the internship and retake the GREs and go to graduate school. And instead I sort of fell in love with D.C. and the White House and the job and the environment. And then very unfortunately, I fell in love with my boss, who was married and also the most powerful man in the world. You know, I think what followed was an inappropriate relationship that lasted for two years. You know, I, I think most of us, once you've sort of pass 40 and I'm 51, so I think once you pass that, there's a point where you start to recontextualize your younger years.
- [07:11]
Elna Baker
Yeah, of course.
- [07:11]
Monica Lewinsky
So I think that what I thought was happening in those two years in D.C. and what I thought this relationship was, I've come to understand it in different ways. So how do you understand it now? I think that it was something where there were real emotions involved, but I think I believed that there was a future. I think I believed that I mattered a lot more than I did. I think one of the things that's been interesting to me is that, and I've seen this with other public stories that happen, these collective stories, is the minute the kind of news camera turns off, you think the story's over. Right, right. And so in the anti bullying world, we talk about this a bit of like when you see a car crash and we all sort of strain to see what happened, but how many of us think five minutes, five days, five years later, what happened to that person? And so in many ways where I think people think the investigation ended, let alone that I had lost so much and I had been so branded. There was also this legal piece of it that kept going.
- [08:28]
Elna Baker
Oh, really?
- [08:29]
Monica Lewinsky
Yeah. So it was, I think people felt as if the Starr report came out the. Then the impeachment happened and that was over. I think it was the end of February, beginning of March of 99, and then this started to recede into the background, even legally. And it didn't because the office of the Independent Counsel had. They were looking into whether or not they were going to prosecute Bill after he got out of office. And so I wasn't totally aware of that until I was brought down to D.C. in December of 2000 and was questioned by the then independent prosecutor, this guy Robert Ray. And my lawyers and I all left this meeting thinking, oh, fuck, like they're gonna indict Bill and Vernon and Betty and I'm gonna have to be a witness again. And so there was that piece to it. Then there was another investigation that had been started by the Justice Department that was looking into the Independent Counsel's office behavior on January 16, 1998, which was this sting operation that they did against me. And so the short of what the investigation after was about was because I had had a lawyer going into the sting and they Wouldn't let me call my lawyer. And then there was that Linda Tripp was investigated in Maryland for having surreptitiously tape recorded me because it's illegal. It's two party state in Maryland. So both people have to know that they're being recorded and give consent, which I clearly did not give consent to being recorded for 20 hours, sounding like an idiot, talking about very personal things and essentially setting myself up and others up for 1998. So there was an investigation that happened there that I was a witness in. And then the other piece of it was then this final report that came out about the whole Whitewater incident that many people forgot. That's actually where this all started. Really. The legal piece for me was closed in December 2003. And that was when the three judge panel put out their. Made their decision and announced their decision about whether or not I could. And I guess there are others who applied also could be reimbursed for our legal fees. So there's this little slice of the Independent Counsel act that had to do with. If you were a government employee, if you were investigated by the Independent Counsel's office, you are not the target of the investigation and you are not found. I think it's like you're not found guilty. You are entitled to be reimbursed for your legal fees. And I ticked every box. And in fact, both Reagan and Bush were reimbursed their legal fees from Iran Contra.
- [11:47]
Elna Baker
Oh, interesting.
- [11:48]
Monica Lewinsky
And I think Bill was only reimbursed $13,000. Vernon Jordan, around the same. And I was nothing, nothing, nothing. So little. Over a million dollars in legal fees.
- [12:03]
Elna Baker
You spent.
- [12:05]
Monica Lewinsky
Yeah, my family, so. And well. And that was part of why I participated in an authorized biography at the time. So that was a devastating moment and another stripping of my sense of justice.
- [12:23]
Elna Baker
Yes, yeah.
- [12:24]
Monica Lewinsky
And the way the world works. And I think that I had really, I had lost so much of that during the investigation and to just feel, I think, I think there was just a sense of unfairness. You know, I had made mistakes and different things, but it felt as if there was one set of rules for most people and somehow I had to abide by a different set of rules during this period. I was out of legal jeopardy. So I got an immunity in August, in 98. So to avoid, you know, going to jail, being indicted and going to jail as every 24 year old wants to do, so once what felt like the investigation was over and the impeachment was over, I was now this public person trying to navigate a very new normal which was anything but.
- [13:24]
Elna Baker
What is it like that new normal? What's it like to be Monica Lewinsky in the world?
- [13:30]
Monica Lewinsky
I think there was a crash course that I had to take in becoming a public person in 1998. During that period of the investigation, for a very long time, I mean, months and months and months, there was press outside where I was staying. So whether I was. I lived at the Watergate, so whether I was at the Watergate with my mom, I lived with my mom and brother. My brother was at college. There was like a lot of press that was outside or if I was.
- [13:59]
Elna Baker
Like almost 24 7, they were just always at.
- [14:02]
Monica Lewinsky
Wow. And then when I went to la, if I stayed with my dad and stepmom, they were outside my dad's house. And so my movements were incredibly restricted at that point. You just start to learn all these new things about being a public person. Of, okay, you go to a restaurant and if you haven't ordered dessert and they come and tell you that they want to bring you a free dessert, they're bringing you dessert on the house. That often means they've called the press. And by the time you walk outside the restaurant, there'll be somebody there with a camera. That's crazy. You know, I couldn't sit outside of a restaurant for years. Years. Now I can sit outside.
- [14:46]
Elna Baker
You never think about, like, what you lose.
- [14:49]
Monica Lewinsky
You know, we think about, we think about privacy, we talk about privacy. But anonymity is not something you really ever think about losing most of the time. Because people are often choosing to become a public person.
- [15:04]
Elna Baker
Right.
- [15:05]
Monica Lewinsky
So it's something that they are building towards. It's a goal. It comes with, usually with some form of positive attention. It comes with financial resources. You have a team of people who help you move in and out of places and go. And I didn't have that well.
- [15:25]
Elna Baker
And you're also trying to be known.
- [15:27]
Monica Lewinsky
For some sort of talent or something.
- [15:29]
Elna Baker
Good that you're like, know me for this.
- [15:32]
Monica Lewinsky
Right, right. In those first few years, it was, you know, my therapist at the time, she always talked about trying to get me back on a normal developmental path. So what would someone who's 25 years old. What would a 25 year old girl. What were my friends doing at this point in time? And how do we keep trying to, you know, sort of pull me back onto this more normal path? What do those things look like? Being a public person, having so much trauma, it took a very long time to really understand the damage. I think in large part because I just had to plow through 98. Right. So the, you know, the Star report coming out, this 400 page report detailing every intimate moment that I had to share because I was under oath and had been given transactional immunity so that I couldn't go to jail, so that I wouldn't go to jail. So never in a million years imagining that that would all be made public. I was saying to someone recently, just even what's been a little bit hard about the podcast, like, one of the things that's been challenging for me is even just listening to an edit, because I had to listen to all 20 hours of tapes that Linda Tripp had made of our phone conversations that she turned over to the independent counsel's office. I had to authenticate as part of my immunity agreement. I had to sit in a fucking room listening to these tapes, worrying about them becoming public. And they were then also made public. So not only just in a transcript, but also they were aired live on TV for people to listen to.
- [17:25]
Elna Baker
And you say now, like, hearing your voice is triggering because what was it like to have to hear your voice for that long?
- [17:31]
Monica Lewinsky
I hated it. A. I didn't like the way my voice sounds to begin with, and the anxiety and the shame and the pain of listening to myself saying these things, thinking I was safe when I wasn't saying things about people like none of us ever thinks about, just the sort of detritus that we talk about in a regular conversation with friends and the sorts of things that we say, terrible things we say about people that we would lay down our life for. And so to be confronted with this worse version of myself and swearing and just. I mean, I swear all the time. There's nothing wrong with swearing, so I'm a big fucking swearer.
- [18:22]
Elna Baker
Great.
- [18:23]
Monica Lewinsky
But I think that that process of hearing myself talk about this relationship, that was private. And even though I blabbed to all my friends, and I still blab to all my friends at 51, it's girl code. There's just girl code of there's. What you say within the confines of a private conversation is not what you talk about publicly. And so I think to be confronted with this tsunami of information, seeing this worse version of myself, really hearing everything that was there, and then knowing it might become public, did you lose the.
- [19:08]
Elna Baker
Ability to freely see, speak without being in your head censoring yourself, thinking, how does that sound? What does that sound like?
- [19:16]
Monica Lewinsky
I think that I still to today have a filter that is constantly looking out for, have I said the wrong thing? And saying the wrong thing. Is. Is this a bad headline? Have I miscontextualized something? You know, I think one of the things where I was really lucky was my friendship with Linda Tripp was, like, such an anomaly. And my other friendships, my real friendships, the people my own age, were so strong. I think that those. That those friendships, my real friends and my family, who just continually reflected my true self back to me, that helped keep me moored to my true self and not losing all of me in what had happened, because it was a. I just. I mean, I look back on it now, and I really. I don't understand. I think. I don't understand how I survived. And I think my therapist will, who's a trauma psychiatrist, sometimes she'll say to me now, little bit jokingly, because it usually has to do with a boy, but this sense of these skills that I had developed from some childhood traumas and this ability to dissociate, this ability to kind of always look for the next leap pad of hope, whatever the alchemy of all these things and who I am as a person and how I was raised and how you coped. Right, exactly. Everything, it sort of was all. It allowed me to survive. But I wasn't. I don't know that I was really, truly taking in just how humiliated I was on so many levels every day. And just sitting here talking about it, and it's like. It's sort of this. The visual for me is like one of those big knives, you know, and it's just these cutting me. Just cutting off pieces of me, of myself. But I. I couldn't actually, even in order to take the next breath, in order to take the next step. I couldn't actually even process what was happening.
- [21:59]
Elna Baker
Yes, yes.
- [22:00]
Monica Lewinsky
And how much I was losing, how much I had been betrayed, how much I was shamed, how mortified I was, what I had done to my family, what this had done to my family.
- [22:11]
Elna Baker
What they did to your sexuality. Yeah, that one. Like, I feel like I can relate to that one just a little because I was Mormon. If you did anything sexual, you had to confess to a much older man, a bishop. But that's me alone in a room with a church clergy member or whatever.
- [22:30]
Monica Lewinsky
I had to do a. We called it the sex deposition because after I had testified before the grand jury, because of the way Bill had testified, we. I had to go back and do a deposition under oath. Literally going. Moments.
- [22:50]
Elna Baker
Just the sex details.
- [22:52]
Monica Lewinsky
Yes. But everything of the case was the lens. Everything in this case was lensed through sex. And so that also Impacted how my narrative was shaped, how the stories were told. Yeah.
- [23:11]
Elna Baker
So can I ask what that was like for you? Like, what did it feel like to have that happen to you?
- [23:17]
Monica Lewinsky
I think all I really can remember was a sense of wanting to fold into myself, you know, almost. I mean, this is a silly analogy, but. You know those bags that kind of fold up into the pocket? Yeah.
- [23:31]
Elna Baker
Bagu bag.
- [23:31]
Monica Lewinsky
Yeah. Like, that's. I just wanted. I just wanted to not exist. To fold inside and be in that way. And it was. I think it was just a lot of dissociation.
- [23:51]
Elna Baker
Yeah.
- [23:52]
Monica Lewinsky
Yeah.
- [23:52]
Elna Baker
Were there moments that you actually really did not want to exist? Yeah, there were.
- [23:57]
Monica Lewinsky
There were a number of moments. And interestingly, I think what surprised me almost the most was that some of the hardest times and the times that I came closest to not wanting to be here anymore were in the aftermath.
- [24:21]
Elna Baker
Oh, really? Why do you think that was?
- [24:24]
Monica Lewinsky
Because I didn't realize. I didn't realize how much I had lost. And so I think that when I came to realize how much I had lost, when I came into my anger, when I came into this period of my life where I could not move forward. I could not move forward in my personal life in the ways that all of my friends were. I couldn't move forward professionally. I couldn't move forward in many ways. And even in the kind of healing I was doing that, it was just so I couldn't see a future. And the future that I could see was continuing to wear this hair shirt of shame. And because the outside world had quieted, in some ways, it allowed those kinds of thoughts to fester more, you know.
- [25:30]
Elna Baker
Like, I'll never get my life back.
- [25:32]
Monica Lewinsky
Yeah. And I mean, I just remember, you know, like, going to bed at night and sobbing and just. I don't really pray, but praying that I just. I just didn't want to wake up. I just didn't want to wake up. So I think there was a long period of trying. Like, I just kept trying. And I think one of the things that has felt valuable to me about, and I'm so grateful for, of the last 10 years of my life changing and having a purpose and people getting to know me for my true self and all of these things is there are not a lot of times that we see so much devastation in a life and someone's able to move forward totally. It took a long time to see the map of my trauma. And that, you know, that only happened as I started trying to move through the world.
- [26:52]
Elna Baker
And what is the map of your trauma? That's a really interesting concept.
- [26:56]
Monica Lewinsky
What do you see at the time when it started to come into focus? It was the pieces of what had happened to me in 98, what I had lost. So this narrative that I was a bimbo when I was in graduate school, I had so much anxiety around an imposter syndrome that, like, I was. That I had gotten into the London School of Economics as a. As a mistake, and that somebody was gonna see that and go, oh, we thought you could hack it here, but you're too stupid. And so the. I think there was that piece. There was the, you know, the shaming of my sexuality. And connected to that, I think, was how people talked about me physically. So that I was called the portly pepper pot on page six. That, you know, all the cartoons drawn were so hideous. You know, there was this period of trying to lean into a new normal. I started a handbag company. And in 98, my stepmom got me into knitting as a way to. Basically, for my mental health, as a way to have. It's not self efficacy, it's basically whatever the word is of being able to be in charge of agency. It was like as a sense of agency, because I could actually see progress. I couldn't do anything out in the world. I couldn't change the investigation happening, but I could knit and purl, you know, 20, 20 rows, and I would see I had accomplished something, I had done something. And so I was trying to. I was just trying everything. Trying to move forward. Yeah. I mean, and. And in the first few years, it. It started to become clear that me being a public person wasn't working.
- [28:59]
Elna Baker
Why not?
- [29:01]
Monica Lewinsky
I think in large part, the world wasn't ready to see me as my true self. Because this is a collective story. It never was just about me and never will be just about one person or it's not just about Bill. This is a collective story. What happened in 98 is a reflection of our world. The world hadn't shifted in some ways. Abuse of power was something that was very narrowly defined. Power differentials, not really something we thought about. We didn't even have words like slut shaming and fat shaming back then. So I think that there was this external piece of it, but more of it was the internal piece. You know, that sense of. I was so broken on the inside and so depleted on the inside that my external, as much as I hoped it and as much as I tried, my external world was. Was not going to reflect a change. I had forgotten that I had thought I would Go to law school at some point. So I studied to take the lsat and I had a whole plan of, okay, you have to take these. You take these tests in a room with other people. In the old days, I think now maybe everything's online. But this was in this period. It was definitely after 2001, but before 2005. So at some point here I come up with a plan of, okay, I'm a public person, I'm recognizable. How am I going to go take the lsat? So, okay, I'm going to get to the class, get to the room early. I'm going to make sure I get a seat in the front row so that I can have my head down when people are coming in, but no one's looking around me, the whole thing. Very nervous about taking this test. I studied very hard. And everybody's in their seats and the proctor says, okay, take out your driver's licenses and take your driver's license and go to the back of the room. We're now gonna seat people where they are. Give us your driver's license, whatever that is. Calling names out. Oh, no. So I'm standing up against this wall of people and we're all nervous to take this test. And he calls my name out. And the. There's all this tittering that happens. And so I keep trying to get back into my game place, you know, as one does. And I did. Okay, enough on the multiple choice part. But when it came to writing the essay, I just. I froze. And I got so wrapped up in. Someone's gonna read this essay and my name is on it, and there's an expectation. I literally. I probably wrote something better in kindergarten. It was such an awful, awful experience. And I still see this in myself. I try to anticipate. It's like you're trying to take care of yourself. So you try and anticipate. What are the things that could go wrong in this scenario? How do I set myself up for success? How do I make this easier for myself? This, this and this. And then it's like invariably, because that's how life fucking works. You know, the plan would go awry and, you know, there was not a lot of future that I saw in this. Leaning into being a public person time period. One of the moments that were really low for me in 98 was Joyce Brothers was on the Today show and I was topic for some whatever, because that's what people talked about back then. And she said, can you imagine someone bringing Monica Lewinsky home to meet their parents and saying, I'm going to marry Monica Lewinsky. And so that was like, what did.
- [33:00]
Elna Baker
That do to you?
- [33:03]
Monica Lewinsky
Basically it was Xanax or death, you know, and so.
- [33:09]
Elna Baker
Because it also, I mean that's so specific to like the longings of your heart. Like, I want to find love, I want to get married, I want to find a family. And basically someone saying, you are worthless, no one will ever want you.
- [33:22]
Monica Lewinsky
I think just the way I was branded and then that's what we do to women. So I think this kind of period of time eventually led to me deciding to go to graduate school.
- [33:46]
Elna Baker
How old were you?
- [33:48]
Monica Lewinsky
32, I think. Uh huh, yeah, 32. You know, and even then my therapist at the time taught me something that I try to remember now all the time because I was always so future oriented and worrying about what the next steps were and what to do. I was stuck in trauma, but I couldn't move forward in deciding where to apply. So I was going through this whole thing of, but do I want to go here, do I want to this, do I want to. This whole thing. And did I even want to go to graduate school? I'm sorry, that's where it really started was this thing of, well, should I go to graduate school, should I not, where should I go, what should I do, blah, blah, blah, blah, the whole thing. And finally she had said to me, she said, why don't you just apply and once you get in then we can make a decision. And so it was so simple. But this idea, and it's something I struggle with, I don't know why, but I struggle with all the time of just create as many options as possible and then make the decision when it's time for the decision. I don't have to make the decision before the options are there and think through what does it mean to have that option. It's such a simple thing and yet it's. It was, but I imagine has to.
- [35:02]
Elna Baker
Do that because, you know, you made a mistake in the past and the mistake had, you know, and so you, you get like.
- [35:08]
Monica Lewinsky
Well, I, I will say mistakes are. My mistakes have been very costly in my Life.
- [35:13]
Elna Baker
So it's 2005, you go back to grad school.
- [35:16]
Monica Lewinsky
I think I, I thought that I was leaving Monica Lewinsky, you know, with the beret back in the States and that I would be Monica Lewinsky, the graduate student in London. I left the country, moved to England and I think that that period was very marked for me by too much change at once. But I really thought that I would be able to exchange identities. And instead I was adding a new identity. And it was, you know, I would get an email from the press person at the school saying, oh, we've gotten these inquiries about you, or just to let you know there's going to be this and that on campus that. My classmates and professors were all amazing. But I think, you know, when I got there, I had an incident with a friend of a friend who had had too much to drink one night, and I had just met this woman, and our mutual friend had gone upstairs to check on his kids, and she said to me, I was saying something about taxis and how it was a lot harder to get a taxi this trip than it had been before. And she bas started saying that it was personal to me. And something. She's like, no, it's you. And I said, because I'm American, they can't tell I'm American. And she's like, no, it's you. And then went on to tell me that she had friends in high places and I wasn't wanted there in that country, and I should go home. And so that was sort of. The entry into graduate school was rocky.
- [36:56]
Elna Baker
Even as you talk, I'm like, God, it bleeds into, like, the tiniest movements of your life. Like, nothing can be not. I guess, sort of, I guess, poisoned by this trauma.
- [37:09]
Monica Lewinsky
Well, exactly. And also, I think it just continues to breed more and more hyper vigilance and so. Which is exhausting.
- [37:18]
Elna Baker
Yeah.
- [37:20]
Monica Lewinsky
But the hope with graduate school was really to kind of build, like, building a. A new scaffolding that I could now try and move onto what I thought was my life, you know? Okay, now it's all gonna start. I mean, my best friend from college jokes. She joked then, and still jokes. She's like, well, I always knew it was gonna be hard for you to find a husband, even if 98 hadn't happened. And she's, you know, but she would say, I always thought it would happen at work. Not the way it happened at work, but so I think this idea of, you know, again. Once again trying to get back on a developmental path. And I got a master's in social psychology, and the plan was to start job hunting. And so. And that's what I did. Except even job hunting was then a whole new way. It's a whole new process, a whole new thinking about potential consequences. And.
- [38:21]
Elna Baker
And do you have to think through, okay, they're gonna interview, and they'll see Monica Lewinsky on the resume. Like, yeah, what is job hunting as Monica Lewinsky?
- [38:30]
Monica Lewinsky
Like, it was Trying to find places that did the work that I was interested to do and then try and see if I knew people who were. I knew people who knew people there so that I could have an in. I wasn't going in cold. So I don't think I interviewed anywhere where I just sent my resume, you know, that I saw, oh, person wanted, and I sent in a cv, but even my cv, just thinking about, okay, do I put down the White House internship? Do I not? You know, it's. So there were a lot of iterations there, but it's. I think, unfortunately, what happened was when I came out of graduate school and I think I interviewed at maybe 50 different places, and it became clear I wasn't going to get a job. That I think was really a. That was the beginning of the pivot into the. That was harder and darker than 1998 that I was talking about before. So I think this. Because I did all the things that were on the plan of trying to move forward in this way where there is no roadmap, there is no field guide to surviving a scandal. And so I think my family and I were all at a loss of what to do and how to do it. I remember, you know, it's like aunts and uncle and cousins and my brother and mom, and we all sort of convened in a hotel room one time to just all try to brainstorm about what could I actually do.
- [40:27]
Elna Baker
Wait, what was that like? What was that conversation?
- [40:32]
Monica Lewinsky
It was hard because I could feel. It's like this boomerang of pain. I could feel my family holding my pain and feeling my pain, and that made me feel more pain that they had to do that. And I think there was just really this feeling that there wasn't much to do.
- [40:51]
Elna Baker
Yeah, there's like a dead end.
- [40:52]
Monica Lewinsky
It was dead.
- [40:53]
Elna Baker
You followed everything all the way to the end.
- [40:54]
Monica Lewinsky
Yeah. So it was a. I think this. I kind of entered into this period where I was trying to be an entrepreneur and. And that didn't work. So I'm laughing because I'm just thinking about, I have some good qualities, but some of my not so good qualities, like being indecisive in ways.
- [41:16]
Elna Baker
Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be.
- [41:17]
Monica Lewinsky
Yeah. Makes it very hard of, do I get a patent? Do I not get a patent? If I get a patent? You know, that whole thing. So it was just very. I think that as this hopeful plan and graduate school had been hard for me, I had made great friends, but it had been. There was a lot of emotional darkness for me. In that period. And I think that coming out, it not working to move forward.
- [41:46]
Elna Baker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [41:47]
Monica Lewinsky
I really ended up just tumbling more and more into a darker, darker period. And this was the belly of the dark decade and having no purpose. And there was. I had. I think it was like a year or two ago at some point during the pandemic, I was going to somewhere out near Pasadena and I went on this strip of the freeway that I hadn't been on in almost a decade and remembered I used to drive it so often because I had no. I would drive out to Pasadena to do things and just to sort of while away the day just to, you know, to go do Target returns because it would take up more of the day. And it was.
- [42:40]
Elna Baker
Well, that makes me so sad.
- [42:41]
Monica Lewinsky
Oh, it was so heartbreaking. It was so.
- [42:44]
Elna Baker
Well, it also makes me sad to think about, like, you know, obviously you were a really ambitious young woman to have even gotten to the White House. Like, you had these people, big dreams for yourself. And then, you know, you have like, on. On the one hand you have Joyce saying, like, okay, this is someone who. Who would want to bring home Monica Lewinsky. Then you get, well, who would want to hire Monica Lewinsky? And you're in this sort of like, okay, I tried everything and yeah, I'm just stuck.
- [43:16]
Monica Lewinsky
Yeah. And I think eventually the beginning of this pivot back towards a more public life, you know, happened. Coincided in some ways. One, because I had no other choice. I was always getting offers to do public things. They weren't things I wanted to do necessarily, and I didn't want to be a public person. I think that so much of going to graduate school was around trying to run away from the Monica Lewinsky that had been. That I had become and had been constructed by the world. And ultimately, through all of the personal work that I did during the dark decade, I really came to see and realized that I couldn't leave that behind. I had to integrate that. And so that was really a big drive towards how I had to think about things to re. Enter the world. But.
- [44:20]
Elna Baker
And can I ask. Cause I'm a person who, like, is into therapy and I, you know, but for anyone who isn't like, I think that's a really interesting concept you're describing. Right. I can't leave that behind. I have to integrate that. What does that mean?
- [44:34]
Monica Lewinsky
It means instead of trying to have a plan or thinking about. Trying to think about my future and. And mapping out step by step what I might do to arrive somewhere and that that all be Connected to something different than what my history is, and trying to become something different than.
- [45:02]
Elna Baker
Who.
- [45:02]
Monica Lewinsky
I actually was, who I am, because this did happen to me. And so I think that in part by trying to run away from it, it was also trying to turn my back on the shame, to turn my. And the pain. And, you know, there was. I think there ultimately ended up being this sort of a maelstrom of things that came together and happened the same time that began this shift towards really doing deep healing work. And I came to understand once I had been doing several years of work with someone who does resonance, vibrational resonance work. I call it my energy work, because for a long time, people didn't really understand when you talk about resonance and vibration and shifting that and vertical and horizontal, all of that. I came to understand from that work that my. You know, we have these. I think it's seven energy bodies that are these fields that are outside our physical body. And mine had so many holes in them. They were so damaged by all the negativity that had come towards me that I wasn't ready to get, that I wasn't ready to receive, that I hadn't chosen to receive either. And so a lot of the initial healing had to be around, like, essentially closing those holes so that energy so opportunities, experiences, didn't just fall through. Does that make sense?
- [46:43]
Elna Baker
It does. I mean, I think it's interesting because it's like, I know when. When a person's trying to heal, and I know this from my own experience. Like, you try all these different things, and then eventually you find what works for you. And I'm curious, were you skeptical of energy work at first? Were you like, oh, or were you just like, I'll try anything?
- [47:06]
Monica Lewinsky
I think it was, I'll try anything. I went in. I didn't really know what I was going into. I remember calling my mom and saying, I don't know. I did this thing today. I don't really know how to explain it. This guy somehow was able to pinpoint that the two biggest blockages for me right now are fear and lack and that. And it just resonated. The work resonated with me. And I said, he wants to, you know, start to talk about doing this protocol work. And I said, I don't know. Something feels right about it. And so my mom said, okay. And it was, you know, I think one of the things I saw not only in my work with Ken, in this healing process, but I've seen with other practitioners and helpers and other aspects of my life is Just this. It's this tilted spiral. You know, it's not linear. It's not like you step into a. It's not like when you get a cut, you know, you get a cut, it hurts. You can see it. You put some Neosporin on and a band aid, and voila, it's gone. The process of healing, so much deep trauma. I would think I was getting better and have an expectation of what was gonna happen, and that thing didn't happen. And so then I would feel defeated, but ultimately I kept going, and I would always end up coming to see how. My mom will say, rejection is protection. So it was like some version of. You know, some version of the. It having been for the. Like, it having been the right step. It having been that the disappointment was. The disappointment was necessary, and the disappointment led to something that was better and more reflective of me in present time. And.
- [49:15]
Elna Baker
Well, it sounds very intuitive, right? Like, how does Monica Lewinsky heal from being Monica Lewinsky? It sounds like you enter this period where you're like, it's gotten so low that you finally just face it, turn towards it, and.
- [49:33]
Monica Lewinsky
That'S the way. I wish I could say that's accurate, because then that's the roadmap. The roadmap is you turn around and you face it. And it's not that or it wasn't that for me. And I also think, too, one of the things that was complicated is that it's not like this went away. People still made jokes. My name was still pulled into. It was still called the Lewinsky scandal. And so my name was pulled into articles all the time. So there was no. There was no closing the book on that story. Right. So I think, for me, what happened is I didn't. I had an intuitive sense about doing the work, but it was only as. Only as I've gone through these cycles more and more that I've come to understand it and I've come to. I have more intuition around it. But I had stopped traditional therapy for quite a few years, and this was really the first work that I stepped back into. And after, I think it was around five years or so of doing the work, we were eventually able to stop the kind of. It's not like the healing of the past was done, but the sort of the triage that needed to happen in order to try to move forward, that. That had shifted, that enough had healed in me to be able to. To shift that and move towards that.
- [51:12]
Elna Baker
If you're thinking of a movie montage before, like, you know, Batman, like, I'm thinking of that movie in particular, but, like, he has to heal and he has to go train with some sort of Jedi Master. And then there's this sort of like, looking inward.
- [51:30]
Monica Lewinsky
Yes.
- [51:31]
Elna Baker
And going deep.
- [51:32]
Monica Lewinsky
Yes.
- [51:33]
Elna Baker
And then once he's done all that inner work, he can like, you know, go back to Gotham City.
- [51:39]
Monica Lewinsky
Right. I think what's amazing about those kinds of stories is that we get to watch that transformation happen in a vacuum. And in real life, it doesn't work that way. You rarely get to just leave the world. Leave the world and focus on your healing. And instead it's. It can often be you don't even realize how much you've changed or how much you've healed until you bump up against a situation that, thank God, you happen to recognize, oh, that's different. That's different than what I would have done before, you know, and it may be something. I think one of the first ones for me was so small and sounds so stupid, but it was really. It was monumental for me. And it was. I had a. In the apartment I was living in at the time, it was two bedroom apartment. I was supposed to have my office in there for the work that I had nothing to do, but whatever. It had a lot of boxes from storage and a whole bunch of stuff and a treadmill. And I tripped and I fell. And I realized that my reaction was, oh, thank God I didn't hurt myself instead of, you fucking idiot. Like. And that was a small thing, you know, I had a. I was almost carjacked. And it was not going to get into the whole long story, but it was a whole bunch of guys and I was very lucky. Windows up, drove away. The whole thing was pretty terrifying. And I had gone to my brother's and that night, within a few hours of having had this experience, and instead of sort of falling into the deepest of traumas, I wondered what was going on in these men's lives that they felt it necessary to do something like this and tried to step into compassion in a way that was not something I would have done before. You know, trying to see so many of life's different experiences from. Through a lens of compassion. I think for me, the healing work, working with Ken, I started to do eft. Tapping, tapping work which, you know, everything built on top of each other, which was nice. So that because I was doing this spiritual work, the tapping came very easily to me and I was able to sort of heal faster because I could see. I could see certain mess, like, see information coming, see things that I Needed to understand about what was happening to get to a nugget faster. So there was that. I then started with a trauma psychiatrist. So there are those people. I started doing work. Even the decluttering work that I did was actually really psychologically important for me. And so.
- [54:39]
Elna Baker
So were there things from 98 that you decluttered?
- [54:44]
Monica Lewinsky
I think it had more to do with the trauma that came from 98. So this, like, I kept every article I read from my master's thesis, not sure why. And eventually, once after I'd written the Vanity Fair article and things had started to change and people were seeing me in more present time in one of my next rounds of decluttering, I was ready to let them go. And it's like these certain landmarks that come along the way that allow you to see the healing work you've done. But even then, that process, I think, you know, it was interesting when I was interviewed for Rolling Stone, that the interviewer had asked me if I had felt some of the earlier projects I had done in the first few years after 98 had been the beginning of my reclaiming journey. And I hadn't really thought about it that way because they hadn't been successful. And so it's interesting, I mean, I think that like everybody else in the world, all I really wanted was to be seen as my true self, you know, And I think that even getting to the place where things really started to change and, you know, cooking with gas, there were stops and starts along the way and enormous. My kind of going. My 39th year was really hard. It was one of those years where I had moments that I wasn't sure I'd get through.
- [56:19]
Elna Baker
Why was it so hard?
- [56:21]
Monica Lewinsky
Because I had once again gotten on. I mapped out a plan. Now I had decided I was gonna. I had to lean into being a public person. I had no choice. Couldn't get a job, wasn't successful trying to start my own business by myself. So I, you know, there's just a point where I had to become self sufficient financially and I had to have a purpose. I had to try to find some way to have purpose. So suffice it to say it was yet again another few steps back, another, you know, a few steps forward and another big step back. And so a lot of the things that I thought I was building up and building towards going into, going into turning 40 all fell apart. But ultimately where things went, I had, after everything kind of fell apart again. Right before my 40th birthday, I had the occasion of having dinner with the guy who would now be my editor at Vanity Fair. And he was talking to me about my cultural observations. Just from our dinner conversation. He's like, you should be writing for us. And I thought, well, I can't do that. And I can't do that, because what if I fail at that? And I've put my toe back in the water and I fail? I don't even have any money from doing it. I haven't even set myself up for financial success. And the path forward kept slapping me in the face, and I just kept not being able to accept that was a path forward. But ultimately, David and I. David Friend, my editor and I went and met with Greg Carter and talked about just the sort of the difficulty I had had in moving forward. And that I wanted, at this point, I had now accepted. I had had this experience with my mom and Tyler Clementi that I talk about in the TED Talk. And so we talked about me writing a first person essay. And Graydon had said, well, if it's good enough, we can print it. If not, maybe we do an interview. And I was so determined to not do an interview. I did not want to be seen through someone else's lens yet again. Of course, I did not want to cede control to how I was being portrayed, even if intentions were good. And so I worked my ass off and had two editors. I needed two editors for it, but who were great and really helped me, I think, really helped me find my voice as a writer, really pushed me in the right ways. And Vanity Fair and Graydon took a risk with that essay because it could have been a loud chorus of, why are you trying to give this person another 15 minutes of fame? And instead it landed in a new world, in a new world with a younger generation who was not coming to the story, having lived through the brainwashing of the news and the creation of Monica the Monster, and were looking at the facts and they insisted on. On reevaluating this story. And that was the beginning of, like, my life really changing. And from there, I was asked to give a Talk at Forbes 30 under 30. And I didn't want to make a fool of myself, so I went to London and worked with this incredible guy who's sadly no longer here, Anthony Gordon Lennox and his company, agl. They help people find their public voice. And so for some of those people, it's writing speeches and shaping things in the right way. And I knew for me, I didn't want someone to write a speech for me. I wanted someone to help pull a speech out of me and that I didn't want to be scripted, and I still don't want to be scripted. We dubbed it my Pygmalion trip because it was like I went in not knowing how to do public speaking, having no idea what the fuck I was going to say at this Forbes conference. And I came out with a speech, and having been trained, and he was amazing, he sent one of his employees all the way to Philadelphia to be there for the talk. Cause this was, you know, I had had this first of the first article, and now I had this first public speech, and I joined Twitter that day, and it. Which was another step of using my voice.
- [61:00]
Elna Baker
And you're so funny on Twitter.
- [61:02]
Monica Lewinsky
Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. I mean, it's. I'm not on it as much as I used to be, but I love to make people laugh. I love to laugh. And probably the best currency someone can have with me is making me laugh, so. Thanks.
- [61:21]
Elna Baker
What I think about. When I think about your finding your voice again and putting your voice out there, what I think was so moving to me about. When I read the Vanity Fair piece, it felt to me like you were putting yourself out there. Also, on behalf of anyone who was shamed, you were basically saying, hey, this is what it's like, and this is how you can get through it. And it felt like you were doing it not just for yourself, but, like, to protect other people.
- [61:55]
Monica Lewinsky
I think it became that. I mean, I'm so glad you felt that from that first piece. I think became that I didn't know what was gonna happen with that. I really, truly jumped in without any idea of where I was gonna land with that piece. And I think I felt that more by the time. I mean, Ant helped me find that. I think he helped me see my own experiences through a different lens. He gave me a lot of confidence in myself of, you know, that I had something interesting to say. And he reflected a lot of what my editor was saying. I'm just boasting about myself now. I'm very interesting. I. Very interesting cultural observations, people who are listening to this. But I. You know, I think that it. By the time I was doing the Forbes talk and my TED Talk, I think by my TED Talk, that felt really important to me, that if all I could ever be was a poster child to people who were suffering from shame, that you can get through it. Great to experience giving a purpose to my past, to experience other people finding solace in my sharing my experiences has been one of the most extraordinary gifts of My life.
- [63:22]
Elna Baker
Well, what I find so phenomenal about you is how vulnerable you are.
- [63:29]
Monica Lewinsky
You know, it's one of the ways I'm really lucky. And I could have so easily ended up a bitter person, so easily and shut down. And that I'm not is why do.
- [63:45]
Elna Baker
You think you aren't?
- [63:47]
Monica Lewinsky
I don't know. I don't know. I've had periods of my life where I have become bitter and, you know, those have abated, usually with working on myself, you know, or something shifting or changing. But I think that there was I just lucky that way. I mean, I've worked hard on myself and I probably in many ways it's because I have such extraordinary people in my life, you know, I'm so lucky that way. I don't have a group of friends. I always wanted a group like the Big Chill, but my friendships have been, you know, more I thou in that sense. And so I'm really lucky that way. And I. I love. And it's really so much of what drives the heart of this show is I love connection. I love a moment of vulnerability of somebody like this idea that someone feels safe to share something and open up in a way. Either they do with other people, but very few people, or it's self discovery in conversation. Because that's what happens to me. You know, I have had those. Those gifts of those kinds of moments with some of my friendships or in my healing work. And so that's where I think the magic of life is, you know, is in all the ways that we're different. And when we come together and connect in safe ways and safe spaces, that's where the magic happens.
- [65:28]
Elna Baker
And why do you think you specifically wanted to make a show about Reclaiming?
- [65:34]
Monica Lewinsky
I think that it was an idea that had been percolating for me as a concept of something for me to do something with. And the podcast was a way to do that where it's about other people and myself, not just me. So if I had maybe written a book called Reclaiming as a Memoir, it would have been just my experiences. And this was a way to open up the idea. And I think even it's interesting to me, even the ideas that I had that were very clear from the beginning of pitching the show and writing the pitch and to how it's come into being and it lives and exists, it keeps evolving. And while I find that unbelievably frustrating, I also. There's a beauty in it too, because it's. It's reflecting the reclaiming process, it's reflecting life in that way of what it means to set out to find something that was lost, you know. So, yeah, I think the, you know, this last decade for me has really been. Has been what I consider my own reclaiming, you know, of finding my voice, of being able to have purpose, of being able to use my very unique lens to impact projects or be part of projects. Impact feels a little grandy. I impacted the. But. But to be able to create. And I've been so lucky in many ways. I mean, giving a TED Talk and getting to be involved with anti bullying organizations and feeling like I could be an activist, not feeling like I am an activist. I don't do enough, I think. But I've loved doing these anti bullying PSA campaigns. And the beauty of that is that that's kind of what I wanted to do coming out of graduate school and I couldn't get hired in. So to get to do those kinds of campaigns in ways that are birthed from these awful experiences from the past, it's a really. It's been a wonderful thing for me. So I think all of those. And then getting into production and doing this eping a documentary called 15 Minutes of Shame, where we were, you know, really trying to unpack and ask these questions of, like, how the fuck did we get here? And where the fuck are we going with the Internet world and I guess the world online and being a producer on Ryan Murphy's impeachment and now on the Amanda Knox story, telling stories through different mediums. But all that have been. I think my contributions have been shaped by all of my experiences, by all of me. And even being in a reformation campaign to get out the vote, you know, was very far outside my comfort zone, but was an extraordinary.
- [69:06]
Elna Baker
And you modeled.
- [69:06]
Monica Lewinsky
You had to model, right? I modeled their workwear line in a get out the vote campaign. I had to have a lot of people hold my hand during that process because I was terrified. I thought people would make fun of me.
- [69:23]
Elna Baker
Well, you're also somebody who is so ashamed for your body.
- [69:26]
Monica Lewinsky
Yeah.
- [69:27]
Elna Baker
So to step to the side of actually being literally a model, I think would be a very strange experience.
- [69:34]
Monica Lewinsky
Yes. And thankfully, they made the very smart decision of bringing on a movement coach for the shoot. And so that took a lot of pressure off of me and allowed me to really bring the best version of myself, you know?
- [69:52]
Elna Baker
You know what I'm thinking as you talk, because you're so lit up and you're so, like, you have so much enthusiasm and, like, a sense of purpose, and I'm just like, Reflecting back to you during that most hopeless period and what you thought, I have no future. If you think back, like, would that girl even believe that you're here?
- [70:14]
Monica Lewinsky
No, not in a million years. I'm very, very grateful. I've worked really hard, but I'm grateful in what it means that my family can. I mean, my family's always proud of me, of who I am as a person. But to move through the world and have other people say kind things to them about the work I'm doing is really. It's all really meaningful. And, you know, I just. I. This is the next step. Doing the podcast has been so much harder than I thought it would be. I'm a great dinner guest, and I just thought, oh, this will. I'll be up. I'll be great at this. And so I hope people will give me some grace and keep coming back. I promise to work harder, get better.
- [71:00]
Elna Baker
I have this very solid theory about you is why I was so excited to work on this show. And I don't know where I read it. I think it have been like Joseph Campbell, hero's journey. But there's this concept, basically, that in a society, there's the figure that's the outcast, like the Hester Prynne, and that actually the key to that society's salvation is that that outcast has the elixir that they can give to the society to help them heal. And I feel like, because you had to heal yourself from so much hate and shame, like, you have so much to teach us. And, I mean, I know you're gonna say no. I know. I know how you're gonna respond to that.
- [71:43]
Monica Lewinsky
Thank you. I mean, that's an extraordinary opportunity. If that's true. It's an extraordinary opportunity. And, you know, I just. I believe there's something that we can bring to people in the conversations that are going to happen on the show. And I'm just grateful for the opportunity and all the people listening. Yeah. Thank you for listening. Please come back. Okay.
- [72:17]
Elna Baker
All right.
- [72:18]
Monica Lewinsky
Are we done? We did it.
- [72:19]
Elna Baker
We did it.
- [72:25]
Monica Lewinsky
So if you're listening to this, I hope you'll click on whatever the little link is, wherever it is, and listen to some more of the conversations. They're different than this. That's more of the show. I don't talk as much, but I really hope you'll join us there. Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky is hosted and executive produced by me, Monica Lewinsky production services by Wood UTF Media Studios. Our theme song is by Ben Benjamin, and our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez. Our story producer is Elna Baker and our Senior producer is Megan Donis. For Wondery, Eliza Mills is the Development producer. Our Managing Producer is Taylor Sniffin. Nick Ryan is our Senior Managing producer. Senior producers are Candace Manriquez, Wren and Emily Feldbrake and Executive producers are Dave Easton, Erin o' Flaherty and Marshall Louie.
- [73:24]
Molly McAleer
With Wondry. Plus you can listen to the remaining episodes before anyone else and ad free. Click the link in the episode description to start your free trial today. Unlock premium listening with early access, exclusive content and so much more. All ad free with wondryplus.