Elizabeth Gilbert

Summary

Podcast Summary: Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky

Episode: Elizabeth Gilbert
Date: September 9, 2025
Host: Monica Lewinsky
Guest: Elizabeth Gilbert

Episode Overview

In this episode, Monica Lewinsky speaks with renowned author Elizabeth Gilbert (not Wurtzel) about reclaiming one’s self, the complexities of female desire and identity, the meaning of friendship with oneself, and the ongoing journey of healing, grief, and spiritual growth. The conversation weaves between personal stories—especially from Gilbert’s new memoir, All the Way to the River—and broader cultural and spiritual reflections about womanhood, relationships, creativity, and discovering joy despite adversity.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Reclaiming Self: Friendship, Presence, and Solitude

• Starting Point—Living With vs. By Oneself
  Monica opens by quoting Gilbert:

  “I don’t live by myself, I live with myself.” (03:02)
  Touchstone for the episode: what it means to companion yourself rather than merely exist alone.

• Friendship with Self as a Practice
  Gilbert describes her journey from self-critique to “self-friendliness”:

  “Transforming [my harsh inner voice] into a voice of friendliness … has been a game changer.” (07:54)

• Aloneness vs. Loneliness
  Both discuss how solitude can be nourishing and how relationships can paradoxically amplify loneliness:

  “The loneliest I have ever been in my entire life ... sometimes two is far lonelier than one.” – Gilbert (09:16)
  “I've got the best roommate. Like, Liz is my roommate. We like all the same stuff.” – Gilbert (10:18)

• The Joy of Self-Partnership
  Gilbert shares benefits of celibacy and living alone, summarized in the freedom from having to “attune my energy to anybody else’s mood.” (17:57)

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2. Celibacy, Female Autonomy, and Changing Narratives

• Journey to Celibacy
  Gilbert reflects on three decades of relationships, then embracing celibacy as unfamiliar territory (“door B”):

  “Few women in history have been able to find out because it hasn’t been permitted.” (12:40)

• Celibacy for Freedom vs. Power
  Gilbert cites A History of Celibacy:

  “Men choose celibacy for power. Women choose celibacy for freedom.” (14:02)

• Energetics of Sex and Self-Protection
  Monica and Gilbert share about becoming more intentional about where they “give their energy,” acknowledging shifting views in themselves and society about sex and singlehood. (15:09 – 16:45)

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3. Female Desire, Overgiving, and Social Programming

• Double Standards & Cultural Critique
  Monica references an Elizabeth quote about societal outcomes for men vs. women:

  “Bill Clinton got a presidential library, and Monica Lewinsky got a punchline.” (18:49)
  Discussion follows on reclaiming narrative as a woman, and whether culture is progressing.

• Transforming Culture Individually
  Gilbert:

  “One woman at a time, we can transform this completely … I’m not going to wait for the culture to transform before I transform.” (20:13–21:02)

• The Cost of Overgiving
  Monica brings up Gilbert’s book chapter “A Brief History of Female Overgiving,” which looks at how women’s traditional roles drain their life force:

  “Married women live less long than single women…[there’s a] marriage benefit imbalance.” – Gilbert (30:58)

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4. Storytelling, Creation, and Legacy

• Writing as Progeny
  Gilbert likens her books to children, passing on cosmic “information”:

  “The books I write … this is my progeny … I’ve downloaded this information from the cosmos.” (35:49)

• Living with Creativity and Healing
  Both discuss “self-directed art therapy” and using creative processes as personal healing and contribution to the world. (35:54–37:45)

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5. Grief, Codependency, and Spiritual Transformation

• Core Narrative of All the Way to the River
  Elizabeth recounts leaving her marriage for her best friend Raya (diagnosed with terminal cancer), cycling through romantic joy, then the devastation of addiction, caregiving, and codependency:

  “For every depraved drug addict, there’s somebody who loves them dearly… I became the vampire’s assistant.” (27:24–27:26)

• Karmic Predicaments & Surrender
  The discussion broadens to universal lessons about facing collective and personal bottoming out:

  “There is nobody who will not at some point find themselves cornered in a karmic predicament.” (28:01)

• Recovery and Mercy
  Gilbert on recovery:

  “There’s nothing on earth that can save me from myself except a higher power.” (29:03)
  And the need to extend “the hand of friendship to somebody who is suffering,” including oneself. (61:24)

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6. Acceptance, Joy, and Reclaiming Vitality

• Making Peace with Plans Unraveling
  Monica and Gilbert bond over lives not turning out as intended, moving through disappointments with more wisdom each time:

  “Everyone I know could write a book called Not Exactly What I Planned.” – Gilbert (55:14)

• Finding Intimacy and Compassion in Hardness
  They discuss extending “mercy” to self/others, referencing Brene Brown and the Dalai Lama. (59:29–63:59)

• Current Reclamation Projects
  Gilbert shares about reclaiming physical vitality through rest and sabbatical. Monica reflects on reconnecting with excitement and joy, and the need to seek them proactively in hard times. (66:49–70:03)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “I’ve given myself permission … to use just absolutely hideous language in my inner voice. And so transforming that into a voice of friendliness has been a game changer.” – Gilbert (07:54)

• “You can not want to do something again and still appreciate that you did it.” – Gilbert (12:34)

• “Women give their lives, literally their life force, to whoever they love.” – Gilbert (32:53)

• “My only job is to replicate myself. But what that means is: what are you leaving behind?” – Gilbert (34:38–35:49)

• “The thing you want the least to happen is going to at some point … and when Rhea was diagnosed … my soul said … ‘make it worse.’ … There’s some treasure in here for me that I have not found.” – Gilbert (56:01–57:54)

• “Universal human compassion isn’t universal if it doesn’t include you.” – Gilbert (63:14)

• “God gives the brightest students the toughest assignments. ... I found God on the bathroom floor. I found God at my rock bottom. ... The fast way is through suffering.” – Gilbert (65:12–66:36)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment | |-------------|------------------------------------------------------| | 03:02 | Beginning: Living with oneself vs. by oneself | | 09:16 | On loneliness and self-partnership | | 12:40–14:30 | Celibacy for freedom vs. power | | 18:49 | Double standards: Desire, culture, and legacy | | 20:13–21:02 | Transforming culture as individual women | | 27:24–28:41 | The dark descent: Addiction, codependency, grief | | 30:58 | The marriage benefit imbalance for women | | 35:49–36:38 | Storytelling as legacy, urge to create | | 55:14 | Accepting unplanned life outcomes | | 59:29 | Mercy and self-acceptance (Brene Brown anecdote) | | 66:49 | Reclaiming vitality & sabbatical plan (Elizabeth) | | 68:41 | Monica: "What are you most excited about?" | | 70:06 | Closing reflections and gratitude |

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Tone & Language

The conversation is deeply candid, generous, and intellectually probing, blending humor with spiritual and emotional vulnerability. Monica interjects warmth and self-deprecating honesty; Elizabeth weaves in insight, compassion, and wit. Both provide memorable, sometimes raw, language—balancing the “messy” with the hopeful.

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For Listeners New to the Show

This episode embodies the spirit of Reclaiming: openhearted, digressive but focused on the big questions—how to be a friend to yourself, how to survive and transform grief, how art and service redeem pain, and how women can author their own destinies amid persistent cultural forces. It's an essential listen for anyone seeking honest discussion about the personal and collective process of reclaiming what trauma, time, or society may have taken away.

Transcript

[Monica Lewinsky]

Wondery subscribers can listen to Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky early and ad free right now. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I left my marriage to be with her and to be her partner through the end of her life. And we had a few months of this absolutely incredible soaring romantic joy even while she was facing terminal cancer because she had been very quietly in love with me for a long time too. So it was this finally we can be together kind of thing. And then the story took a very unexpected turn.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Reclaiming is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

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[Monica Lewinsky]

Well, Liz, welcome to God that we.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Stick by just talking about how the dead don't really leave and then we can launch right into talking about this book.

[Monica Lewinsky]

I actually have these two quotes of yours that I'm gonna mix around a little because I felt like in very different ways they sort of grounded the conversation that I loved of yours. Of I don't live by myself, I live with myself, which I really loved. And then Grief is a bill that always eventually needs to be paid. I wasn't ready to pay that bill. Bill up front.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Yeah.

[Monica Lewinsky]

And so I just.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Yeah. Yeah. Those are good places to start.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yes.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Which one do you want to start with? Should we unpack one of them?

[Monica Lewinsky]

I mean, either one. I mean, I was thinking about I Think Just wanted to say, you know, in this deep way that I'm sure you hear from so many Gen X women, that. Because you're also Gen X. Right. And so just that sense of, you know, I think hearing. You've obviously been writing for 20 years now. Almost 20 years. But, you know, for me, I was in graduate school, living in London, halfway through my master's program in social psychology, when Eat, Pray, Love came out. And so it was just such a. It was such a moment, I think, for me. And most of the women that I knew in my program were all much younger than me, so I. I think that that book helped me feel a little less alone in some of the places where I was in my life. Even though your experiences were so different, there was something about emotional truth that you really captured in that book that I think helps so many women that I know and myself express what we hadn't been able to express yet.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Thank you for saying that. And it makes sense that it would have made you feel a little better about where you were at what age, because I remember part of the thing that was so disorienting for me, the traveling that I did with Eat, Pray, Love was I was like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? I'm 34. You know what I mean? Like, this is something people do when they're 19 or 21. Like, why is my life. Here's how I saw it at the time. Why have I mismanaged my life so much that I'm, like, out here trying to find myself through travel at this inappropriate age when I should be home, married, in a home, raising a family. It's incredible to me how many years it has taken for me to unwind myself from that expectative narrative of women of, like, here's what you're supposed to be at this age, this incredibly limiting idea that you're supposed to be in a house with a husband and a child at a certain age, when that was never obviously my destiny. But I still had a lot of, I think, healing actually to do from the insistence that that's the only way that you can mark and make sure that you're in the right place at the right time. And I wasn't at that time. And I never have been. I've never been where I'm supposed to be.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Me either. You know, whether that's physically, spiritually, emotionally. So.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

But I'm. Oh, but to your point of the first quote that you said of, I live with myself, not by myself. Wherever I am, I'm with myself now. And that's, I think, what the evolution of my life has been all about, is learning how to be present to wherever I am, whether I think I'm supposed to be there or not. Like, well, here is where we are, dear.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Right.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You know, and I've got you.

[Monica Lewinsky]

That can be the hardest. I mean, it's so simple, but it is so difficult to do. I think of just the practice of. I don't wanna say being present with yourself. Cause that now feels a little sometimes overused in ways. But being connected to yourself in those moments, whether that is for me, I think a lot of the work doing right now feels that it's about recognizing which parts. Right. Who's here, what age is here, who are the different, you know, who needs.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Help and support right now.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah, exactly. And how do I do that? Or how do I, you know, maybe even quiet that part and try to let the present time more adult me drive the car?

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You know, you said about how being present to yourself is almost overused. And I feel that too. And I also feel that about the sort of casual way that people say, you gotta learn to love yourself. As though that is a simple thing. But what I've landed on, and I feel like this is attainable for me is learning how to be a good friend to myself. And so self friendliness is what I aspire to. Because when I realized that I speak to myself sometimes in a voice that if a stranger spoke to me that way, I would call the police. Or if someone spoke about a friend of mine that way in front of me, I would end that relationship. Like, I'd be like, you are absolutely not allowed to speak about my friend that way. And yet I sort of have given myself permission over the years to use like just absolutely hideous language in my inner voice. And so transforming that into a voice of friendliness, which is like, this is my friend Liz, you know, and like, whoever people, everyone else can come and go and they will, you know, whether we want them to or not. Even people who don't want to leave have to leave because death takes people. Like, everyone will come, will come and go. Right. But this is my friend who I'm going to walk through this journey with. And that attitude of turning toward myself, recognizing myself as a friend and being friendly toward myself and no matter what I'm in has been a game changer. Yeah.

[Monica Lewinsky]

I mean, even sometimes I find trying to use more affectionate language of how I'm talking to my calling myself sweetheart, you know, it's so interesting, you're saying that about the being the friend. Because yesterday afternoon I was thinking about. And sounds so kind of like an almost obvious thought in some ways, but I hadn't thought it before of, you know, it would be really nice to have me as a friend.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Like, I'm a really good friend.

[Monica Lewinsky]

I'm a good person. I fuck up a lot. You know, try to take responsibility when I do. But I just thought, you know, like, I'm lucky with my friends, but that. Just that idea of, okay, you know, this is what I bring.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Yeah.

[Monica Lewinsky]

You know, I love that.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

What a beautiful realization. So how lucky you are that you're the person that you get to spend the most time with if that person is a good friend.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Right. Yes, I do. Thankfully, I live on my own for now, and so I do thankfully enjoy my own company. Though sometimes I think loneliness is there. I don't know what your experience with loneliness is.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I'll tell you my experience with loneliness. The loneliest I have ever been in my entire life. If I can think of the top three loneliest moments of my life, there was someone in the room. In fact, there was someone in the bed. Sometimes two is far lonelier than one. Wow. And there's an aching loneliness that I have experienced. Like, I don't even want to be here alive anymore. Loneliness that I have experienced when I am with someone who I am not connecting with. And I feel that absence of that connection. And that has been like, existential loneliness. There's no loneliness I've ever felt alone that can rival that. And actually, it's been a long time. I mean, I've been celibate and solitary for the last six years now. And I often say I've got the best roommate. Like, Liz is my roommate. We like all the same stuff.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah, exactly.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You know what I mean?

[Monica Lewinsky]

Don't have to fight over which. What you're gonna watch.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Oh, my God. You also want to sit in the bathtub and eat popcorn and watch the great British baking show, like, score. You know, like, we have all the same interests. We love all the same people. Like, there's this sort of gloriousness that I'm discovering of. Like, you know how it is when you've got a partner and there's some people in your life that they might not like. Like, I love. Like, I love all the people that I love. Yeah. And I. And I also love the. The great joy of not ever having to check in with somebody about anything that I want to do. So I was just in Costa Rica for two weeks. There Was no one I had to clear that with.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Right.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You know, like, there's no one. I had to be like, hey, would.

[Monica Lewinsky]

It be okay if.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Would it be okay if, like, I kind of almost never want to hear those words come out of my mouth again. Like, would it be okay if I. You know, it's just like, no, it's only I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do this now. And so, yeah, I found self partnership to be deeply gratifying.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah, it's really. I mean, this is one of the things I was really curious to talk to you about, sort of this. Your journey of celibacy in a way, because I think that I don't know if it's a function of age or a function of the times we're living in now. It's more of a conversation that I feel like people are having because I think people are. Well, I'm curious why you think maybe more people are looking into that and why it's changing. Cause I think there has been a stigma around that in the past, or at least that was my experience. Yeah, for sure.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Lots and lots of things to say about that. You know, first of all, I did enough research in that field, right. For 35 uninterrupted years of deep in the paint enmeshment and codependency with whoever I was with, often overlapping one person to another. Right. So like three and a half decades non stop in super intense sexual and romantic relationships, not one of which I would trade. And I can say that quite earnestly now because I've processed and learned from every single one of those, not one of which I would want to do again.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Right. Okay. That's a great way to put it.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You can not want to do something again and still appreciate that you did it. Right.

[Monica Lewinsky]

That's great. That's valuable.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Really. That's a key difference. But I'm deeply fascinated in having this experience now because it's almost like there's door A and door B, and door A is everything I've always done, that I've done a million times with a whole bunch of different people. And I know what I get in that. Like, there's a range, you know, there's a range of excitement to irritation, abandonment to despair, connection to, you know, like there's. I know all that is contained in there, and then there's door B and it's just this giant question mark that I'm walking through now. And I'm like, I actually don't know what's on the other side of this door. And few women in history have been able to find out because it hasn't been permitted. And actually, there's this amazing book called the History of Celibacy by a Canadian writer. Her last name is Abbott, and it's a history of celibacy of all kinds. And she explains something really interesting about the spiritual history of celibacy and the difference between that with women and men and where celibacy has been an important part of men's spirituality in certain. In certain spiritual practices. But it's always about the man conquering lust, and it's sort of like a proof of strength. It's like, I am so. Like, I'm a yogi who has completely managed to, like, defeat lust and desire, and therefore, I'm king yogi.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Okay.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Women choose celibacy for freedom. Men choose celibacy for power. Women choose celibacy for freedom. Women traditionally have entered into monastic settings so that they did not have. Have to be a wife and a mother, so that they did not have to be in sexual service to anybody, and so that they could be free to be educated, to be with. Around other women, to, you know, to be. Well. And before.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Even before contraception. Right. I mean, it's. It's sort of child.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

And also, childbirth was deadly.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You know, it's like, maybe I don't want to do this because maybe I want to actually survive.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Right, right. But also, there's. I think the spiritual part is really interesting, and I think that's something that I have thought more and more about in the last, you know, 10, 15 years, as I've. I think this kind of process of involution that. That I went through personally, of. Of integrating my experiences and. And healing, trying to heal all the things of that sense of. It is. Sex is an energetic exchange.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Yeah.

[Monica Lewinsky]

You know, and so it is. Who do you want to give your energy to? Who do you want to mix your energy with? Who do you want to let inside your temple? All of those things? And so I. It's just been interesting for me to. To hear, because I remember probably, maybe it was like 15, 20 years ago, was probably the first time I met someone who said, oh, I haven't had sex for 10 years. And I remember thinking a lot of not great things about what that meant.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Oh, yeah, I would have. Ten years ago. Yeah.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah. And so it was, you know, of just, what's wrong with her? Why doesn't anyone want her? I mean, like, all the awful programming, you know, and so I think that what has been really interesting for me to see, you know, sex and energy and celibacy and those choices. And as we were saying before about how the conversation has been changing, I think it's interesting to observe in myself, like, how I see it differently and understand it differently and think about the periods where that's happened intentionally, unintentionally, where that feels different to me, and how. I like the word you used, unwinding. But how we're still kind of unwinding around just the programming. Socialization.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Yeah. I mean, there have. Women have not had any choices for all of history. So it takes a minute. We don't have centuries and centuries of completely liberated female ancestors to look to, to see how did you do that? Because they were doing what they could within where they had to be.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Right.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You know, where they had no choice but to be. And so we've got all these choices, which is also sometimes overwhelming. But right now, this is a choice that I'm loving, and I'm loving that my energy is so deeply attuned to whoever is in the room. And I instantly start serving. Instantly. I instantly start compromising, and I instantly start serving, and I instantly start pleasing. Those are the things that I do in any relationship when somebody is in the room. And so there's the fact that I get to live by myself, means I don't have to attune my energy to anybody else's mood ever, until I step out of the house and into the world. But I do have those multiple hours a day where the only person I need to attune to is myself. And that's radically new for me.

[Monica Lewinsky]

And I want to be mindful of the distinction. Like, it's a privilege to be able to do that. Not necessarily. In some ways, one can be. Have to be privileged to be able to do it, but it is also. It's a privilege to be able to, you know, recognize that and so. And be able to do it. I was, you know, I listened to this quote that was great of yours that I'm gonna go to because it felt like it was this whole thing of the cost of female desire. And there was this amazing place you were. I think you were talking about from your novel City of Girls. And there was. I'm gonna go to it, and how female desire that doesn't end in female ruin. And you actually referenced me and you said Bill Clinton got a presidential library and Monica Lewinsky got a punchline, which is very. Which was very accurate. And so I'm curious of, like, how you See, you know, like, to tell me more, how do you see that changing now? Is it changing, I mean, in our world today?

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Yeah, I think your face and the expression that it just made.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah, I know. I'm like, maybe I'm just grappling for.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Hope, you know, I'm.

[Monica Lewinsky]

I mean, for me personally, it's different. I'm not just a punchline anymore.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Exactly. Not. You know, and you. And you have done that. So I think that the fact that you have done that, that you have taken your name back and created, through your own intelligence and your own compassion and your own courage, an entirely different association.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Thank you.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You know, and that could not have been easy, you know, and you also didn't have to do that, but you chose to do that, and you elected to do that, and you continue to do that. Which leads me to my answer about, is it getting better? If I look at the culture at this moment, certainly in the United States, no, obviously not. We're taking a million steps back with what's going on in the culture right now. You know, gains are just being swallowed and ripped up and thrown away. And, like, the patriarchy isn't even pretending that it doesn't want to be the patriarchy anymore. You know, and there's a way that women are supposed to look if they're Republican now. Like, there's this whole.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Like, there's this and the trad.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Wife, the whole thing. Right. And so that can be very despairing. However, one woman at a time, we can transform this completely. Your life, you made. Right. My life, I made. Nobody modeled this for us. There was nobody who came before you who could have told you how to handle what you had to go through. And there is not a single woman in my family whose life looks remotely like my life. And so, one at a time, we can say the most powerful five words that a woman can speak, which is, this is not working for me. Like, this isn't working for me. This isn't working for me. And I'm not going to wait for the culture to transform before I transform.

[Monica Lewinsky]

It's really interesting.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I'm going to transform. The culture can catch up with me or not, but here's what I'm doing. And when you do that, and when you step out on that, as you have done, then suddenly, as has happened with you, there's this wave of women following you, saying, wait a minute. Leaning in, being like, how did you just do that? How did you just do that? And am I allowed also to do this?

[Monica Lewinsky]

What's interesting to me about what you're saying specifically with my story is I have this really firm belief around collective stories, that people who get seared in the minds of collective consciousness, that there is kind of this dance that you can only. It's like you can only shift if somewhere there's an opening in the collective to be able to receive it. And you can only shift in some ways as much as the collective is ready. I mean, there's the personal work you do. But I, you know, I found that with all of the different ways of. Like, I was a producer on Ryan Murphy's American crime story on impeachment, you know, we can get as far in telling that story. The process is gonna end up with something that the collective's ready for.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Right.

[Monica Lewinsky]

I'm EPing a project that's coming out soon on Amanda Knox, and she's also an EP on the show. We've been able to go farther in. How are we telling a story? What part of the show are we, you know, what part of the story do we get to tell in the show? It's a reflection of some part of the collective culture.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

And, Monica, you took a chainsaw and cut a doorway into that wall.

[Monica Lewinsky]

I think that feels. That's hard for me to take in.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

So that's how I see you.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Okay, well, thank you.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

But that's what I see. That opening also, you made.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah. I think sometimes it's very complicated for me to take in some of the positive things, I think, because I became a public person from something so negative, and it hurt so much. Hurt not only myself and changed the trajectory of my life, but hurt a lot of people, you know, and caused a lot of complications for the country, A lot of complications in a number of different families and pain in those families. And so it's something I continue to work on. I've had to work on it really hard, too, around even just as a woman and of like, I have a right to earn an income, you know, even. Even if it's coming from things that happened from before. Like, it. This is where I am. I have a right to earn an income. I have a right to support myself or, you know, the value there. It's so hard for women, I think, in. In many ways, you know, and there's.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Nothing more honorable than a woman supporting herself.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yes, that is. That's a really interesting statement, I think. So you mentioned something else, too, a little, like, a few minutes ago about the kind of, I don't know, people pleasing is that. But you have in your new book, which I haven't even mentioned yet. All the Way to the River. Right?

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You got it. Yeah.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Okay. Where was it? It was. Oh, Savannah Guthrie, actually, we did in this studio. And I kept saying the name of her book wrong. I was like, okay, but you have a chapter in your new book on the. It's called A Brief History of Female Over Giving.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Yeah.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Right. And that is. And we were touching on that before. And I'm just so curious, like, to hear more from you on how this chapter came about. I know that this is in service to this bigger story that you tell that we'll get into. And I want to hear more on With Raya.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

So, yeah, I can talk about that in the context of. Of the book. So all the Way to the river is. And you got the title right in one. Nailed it.

[Monica Lewinsky]

And also, I want you to. I'm just going to give you all the things, like, tell us why it's titled that, too. So give me the spiel.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I'll give you the spiel. So I fell in love with my best friend. And I was married to a man who I loved very deeply. And my best friend was this woman named Raya Elias, who I knew for almost 20 years. And very, very, very slowly, over the years, that relationship transformed from colleagues to friends, to social friends, to neighbors, to dear friends, to best friend, to this is my person to I can't live without you. To, oh, my God, what am I going to do? I'm married, and I want to be with you. And that happened very, very, very slowly. And then she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer and given six months to live, at which point it was no longer possible for me to hide that information about how the way that I loved her from myself, from my husband, or from her or from the world. And I had been hiding that, compartmentalizing that very tidily up until that point. And then, like, the bottom blew out of it. And so I left my marriage to be with her and to be her partner through the end of her life. And we had a few months of this absolutely incredible, soaring, romantic joy, even while she was facing terminal cancer, because she had been very quietly in love with me for a long time, too. So it was this finally, we can be together kind of thing. And then the story took a very unexpected turn, which, now that I look back on it, and in many ways, this book is a forensic exploration of, like, how did we get here? How did this happen? Where this love story went to such a dark place. But she was a cocaine and heroin addict in recovery who went back into active drug addiction during the time of her cancer. And I went into. And this is what I couldn't see at the time, but what I can see now, the same level of degradation and darkness that she descended to in active addiction, I descended to in active codependency. Because for everybody depraved drug addict, there's somebody who loves them dearly and wants to. Ideally a woman, ideally a cancerian who's like.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Or a cusper, you know, I will.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Move heaven and earth to, you know, to make sure that every single one of your needs is met as somebody becomes a vampire and I become the vampire's assistant, essentially. And it's not the first time in my life that I have done that, and it wasn't the last time in my life that I did that. And so the book tells the story of our love story, the beautiful parts of our love story, the dark parts of our love story. And me really trying to figure out, like, how in the world did I end up in such a dramatic and traumatic story.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Cause she went back into her addictions fully. Yeah, like, fully.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

And she was not a nice addict. I remember her nephew at the time saying, I wish Raya was a nicer drug addict. She was not. And it was brutal. It was absolutely brutal. And it was like one of these karmic traps that you get into in your life. Ram Dass always spoke about the karmic predicaments that we find ourselves in. And there is nobody who will not, at some point, find themselves cornered in a karmic predicament. And this one was, how do I get my dying drug addict clean? Because she's also dying. And so she has no motive to get clean. Like, there's. She's. She's a hospice patient. Why in the world should she give up cocaine?

[Monica Lewinsky]

I mean, that was kind of the thought I had.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

That's the thought I had when she started using cocaine, which is why I bought cocaine for her. You know what I mean? I was like, I get it. You know, like, go ride or die. Like, go out.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah. And who. Like the amount of energy and time, you know, that one has to spend, I think, trying to sometimes battle against our darker natures. Right.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

She didn't have. And also, when I think back on it, I remember that for years. I mean, she was. There are different kinds of addicts in recovery. And now that I'm in recovery myself, I see there are people who do experience the miracle of a higher power taking that thing from them. So that it is just no longer even something that they have the slightest interest in. Raya was not that kind of addict. In recovery, she never stopped missing heroin, and she never stopped missing cocaine. And she never stopped longing for it. And she used to. She didn't do it because she knew it would kill her. But she used to say to me long before she had a terminal cancer diagnosis, if I ever get a terminal cancer diagnosis, I'm gonna get the biggest speedball in the entire world and shoot it in my arm. And she was like, I'm just gonna go out. And she did do that, but she didn't die. And she ended up living for an additional six months in this state of absolute depravity that I also was pulled into. So the book is about how do we find ourselves in these situations where we are so lost to ourselves and how do we find our way back home to. This is my friend Liz, and I'm with her on this journey. And so when I turned the book in. And it's also about love addiction and sex addiction and drug addiction and recovery and the spiritual remedies for all of these things. Because I do think that that's where I found my remedy, is that it's gotta be a spiritual remedy. There's nothing on earth that can save me from myself except a higher power. But when I turned it in, my editor asked me, going back to your question about that chapter about a brief history of womanly over giving, she said, is there a way that you can kind of expand this out of your story and talk about how women in general do this? And that was a very easy chapter for me to write because I had researched it from my book Committed. That's about marriage. And it's quite disturbing when you look at the sociological data about the impact that marriage and intense relationships have on women. So, right.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Isn't it that men who are married live longer, but women, I think, don't?

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

So it's quite simply the exchange is equal the amount of extra years that a man gets for being married to a woman. And no studies, by the way, to my knowledge, have been done on same sex relationships and how that implies. But what I say in my book is I think the thing you need to look at is who's playing the traditional role of the woman in this story. Because the traditional role of the woman is I will take care of you, right? I will take care of your every need. I will take care of the every need of everybody in your family. I will take care of the every need of everybody in this family. And I will always, always, always come last. And so men benefit tremendously from that. It's called the marriage benefit imbalance. It's a sociological fact. The very best thing that a man can do for himself is to marry a woman. He will make more money, he will live longer. He'll be physically healthier, he'll be happier. He'll be less likely to commit suicide. He'll be less likely to suffer from drug addiction. He'll own more property. There's. There's like, no measure at which he does not benefit. And the exact opposite to the exact same degree is true against women getting married. And so married women live less long than single women. Married women have less money than single women. Married women have more illnesses, physical, mental, and spiritual than single women. More likely to commit suicide, more likely to die of homicide, most likely at the hands of their partner, less likely to own property, less likely to advance in their careers, less likely to report themselves as unstressed. You know, it's grim, and there are ways to mitigate that. The older you are when you get married, the more education that you have, the longer you wait to have children. All of those things will narrow those differences, but those differences are stubbornly still in place. And what we can conclude from this is that women give their lives, literally their life force, to whoever they love. And that has traditionally been the job of a woman. Right, right.

[Monica Lewinsky]

I mean, it's complicated because there is, you know, if you sort of believe in a Darwinian evolutionary perspective. Right. There's that sense of we do make the being in our body, and that's part of our. Both our purpose in some ways or how it's been defined. But if you. From that bigger picture of how does this species keep going? Right. And so. But I wonder if it's not this. I took a class in graduate school called culture and cognition, not that I remember much from it, but that idea of where, like, where these things clash, and it's interesting because it's hearing all that makes you think there was kind of a chink that happened somewhere in the path. Right. On the cultural part of how did we go from not just creating and giving life and nurturing that to nurturing everybody around us.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Right. Cause you did not give birth to your husband.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah, exactly. Yes.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Gosh. If you're like me, you treat it like a giant baby that you have, you know, like, I mean, I baby everybody who is around me. It's like I am the mother of all the things, you know, like whoever.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Needs Me, I'm pretty maternal too, I think. I mean, I've had Mother's Day is sometimes hard for me. Cause I don't have kids and I always wanted kids.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

And.

[Monica Lewinsky]

And a number of my friends have often reached out to me and just said, but remember this maternal instinct you have that you helped birth this in me, or birth, you know, which is really. Which is. So I have amazing friends. I'm very lucky. I had an anomaly of a very bad one a long time ago. So I'm lucky that way.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Yeah. And it's what you talked about, about replicating the species, like from a biological standpoint, from a mere physical animal standpoint. Our only job is to replicate ourselves. Right. That's a biological thing. That is true of every living thing. Your job is to pass on the genetic code so that this species can continue. Given the state of the earth right now, it's debatable whether it's essential for humans to keep doing that or there's other ways. But also, I think I take that at a more sort of spiritual and broader question for myself, which is what that essentially means is what are you leaving behind? What information are you. Have you downloaded that you can pass along? Right. Because genetic code is just information. It's just like data that gets mixed and blended and then passed along. And so for me, the books that I write and the work that I do in the world is this is my progeny. I've downloaded this information from the cosmos, I've assembled it and I'm handing it on because this is how I'm perpetuating and making sure that when I leave, that information remains Right.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Well, and that.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Right.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Isn't that at the core and the heart of creativity?

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Exactly.

[Monica Lewinsky]

I was really interested in reading the part where you were talking about how you've started. I call it self directed art therapy. But there's kind of in the book that you. Because that's sort of a. I think there's. I started doing that a couple years ago and just the sense both of having a creative activity. Right. But then also what's coming through me in this different way of a different creative channel to writing or, you know, singing in the shower or, you know, those. Or making children or, you know, or cooking. I don't cook.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

So, you know, the other thing is like the creative urge is a more recent download to the human brain in terms of evolution.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Oh, really?

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

So the biological urge to replicate is true of any one celled creature also has that. You know what I mean? So this is like that Replication, reproduction. Thing is sort of at the very bottom of what we're, you know, like what we're here for. And then in the last at least a hundred thousand years, there's been this tremendous transformation of the human brain and this frontal cortex and the changing of our whole biology to accommodate all this intelligence that includes this urge to create and this urge to make something more beautiful than it needs to be, which is my favorite definition of art. To make something that nobody needs. Like why? I mean, we need chairs. But somebody gave thought about why this color, why this shape? Why? Because it's pleasing, it's comfortable. Like this desire to adorn and to transform the world and to leave a different kind of a mark. And I feel like we're on this cusp of this next. If we can survive ourselves, this next level of spiritual evolution of how do we live together and how do we survive these minds that have this much capacity to create and destroy.

[Monica Lewinsky]

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[Monica Lewinsky]

I don't know if you are hearing this. I feel like in my sort of spiritual circles, you know, that we're at a real spiritual crucible.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Yeah.

[Monica Lewinsky]

You know, and I think that that's some of what we're seeing in our world today, of what's being reflected to us is, you know, this is the task. The task at hand is usually not easy.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

No, it's objectively a very interesting time to choose to be born. Yes.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Who is it? One of friend sent me a meme the other day. I love this whole new trend of, like, sending memes all the time.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I know it's a love language. It is. It is.

[Monica Lewinsky]

And it's a favorite one of mine. But it was something about. I don't remember the first part. It was like, so I never fucking come back to Earth again. I'm like, yes. No, thank you. No, thank you.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I've said that for years. And everyone I know says that they're like, I'm not coming back. I'm done. Something has shifted in me just in the last year where I'm like, happy to come back. Wow. If I can be of service.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Thank you.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

There's something that's happening where it's like, I think because there's a transformation of my own internal consciousness where I'm really understanding what it means to be of service and wanting to be of service, which I think is very different from being a servant, which is what women's lives have traditionally been. And I think, again, going back to withdrawing from traditional romantic and marital relationship and family relationship to a certain extent, so that I can come into myself. I'm now like, okay, now I'm ready to serve and happy to help where I can. And so that's why I feel like, yeah, if I die, I'll come back. If I can help. If I can be. Wow.

[Monica Lewinsky]

It's very impressive.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Cause there's probably. Somebody's gonna need some help.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah. As you said, if we're still the.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Direction that it's going in. I mean, we certainly need it now.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah. It's interesting. I've always been really lucky to have people in my world who are sort of spiritually ahead of me, who, you know, when they're sharing things. And at first I'm like, that's fucking crazy. You know?

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

And then two weeks later, you're like, I kind of want to try that.

[Monica Lewinsky]

More like two years. But it's interesting because what you're saying about the of service part, what came up for me was I was mentioning my friend Kat, who passed away. I have two cats in my life, so one with the C, who's still here, and one with the K who's gone. But this one time, like, Kat, we were making mandalas or something, or I don't. We were doing something, and it was about, you know, what we want. And I'm like, money and romance and, you know, this bag and all. Yeah, real spiritual here. And her whole thing was about, you know, or her birthday wishes would be whatever's for my highest good and for those that I love. And I was like, I could never do that. I could never, you know, because when I unpacked it, it was actually about trust, right? So there's that deep level of trust in. To sort of just release and think, wow, whatever is coming to me is actually what is best for me for my highest good, for the good of.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Others, which can only mean everyone. And it's, you know, I'll share. I can't remember if I wrote this in the book or it's just something that I've been thinking about, But I'm less and less interested in what I want because I have a long history of wanting things that turned out to be very bad for me. And actually, it's apparently true of most humans. We're not good at knowing what's gonna make us happy. We think we know, and then we're fucking sure we know. And then we're like, I'm gonna manifest that. This is why I think manifestation theology can be dangerous. It's like, be careful, because I've manifested a lot of stuff in my life. I've made a lot of stuff in my life happen because it was my chief's heart desire. And I was like, I'm gonna get this. I'm gonna go after this. I'm gonna have this. And then I got it. And God was like, I'm gonna let you have that. I'm gonna let you have that.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Because this is gonna be a really interesting experience for you. I'm gonna let you have that.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Right.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

And then I'm like, please take this away from me. You know?

[Monica Lewinsky]

Right. Well, there's that. That whole thing of get me out of here.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Like, what have I just done? You know? So that's why now I don't pray anymore for anything that I want.

[Monica Lewinsky]

That's really interesting.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I pray to be in alignment with the will of the universe. Like, let me be in flow of the dao.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Did you have a moment where you arrived at that? I Find sometimes for myself, it's only in hindsight that I'll see, oh, that's different. Or, oh, something shifted.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I would say that one thing that I can think of, where I really did say to what I call God, I'm giving you my life, you know, like, I'm giving you back what was never really mine anyway was that after Rhea died, so Raya died, she was in hospice, and she had these boxes and boxes. They'd give boxes and boxes of fentanyl patches that were there for her cancer pain. And after she died, the day she died, I just very quietly took them and I put them in my suitcase. She died in Detroit. And when I flew back to New York, I flew back with, I don't know, six, seven boxes of fentanyl patches, multiple. I mean, the highest level of fentanyl, because it was for a dying cancer patient in a lot of pain. I was like, I'm gonna take these. Yeah. And I took them home and I put them in my safe. And I thought I was a genius because I was like, if I'm ever in unbearable physical or emotional pain, I can go really easily with these. This is a really good, really easy way out. Because the doctors had explained to the hospice people, had explained that if she needs to go, like, she can put some of these on and she'll just go to sleep and it'll be. And I'm like, my little brain took that and was like, I want to control. I want to control the means of my death. And I don't ever want to be hopeless. I don't ever want to be helpless. I don't ever want to be in unbearable pain. So I've got my little backup plan here. And then I came into 12 step recovery, and I came in for sex and love addiction and codependency. But once I was in there, I put down all substances within six months because I was like, oh, I see what it means to be sober. What it means is there's no escape plan. You just are here for this experience, right? Like, whoa, this is like, this is yikes, right? But I want to do this. I want to do this with my life. And I think I was two years into sobriety and I was having a really bad day, and I was lying on my bed and I just thought, you know, those fentanyl patches are just like, right over there. And I sat up and I thought, oh, shit. I wonder if this is the kind of thing you're supposed to tell your sponsor. Uh huh.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Cause I'm like, well, it's. Well, it's suicidal ideation.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You know what I mean? It's like, should I tell? So I called my sponsor, and I was crying, and I was like, I don't want to tell you this, because I don't want to lose this thing, but. And I told her about it, and I said, I'm afraid you're going to tell me that I have to throw them away. And she said, it still makes me cry when I said it. But she said, sweetheart, I am so proud of you for calling me. That's called intimacy. You're letting yourself be seen. You're letting somebody see you. This is what intimacy is. And I said, are you gonna make me throw them away? And she said, no, I'm never gonna make you do anything. I'm not here to control you. But I love that you trusted somebody enough to call them and tell them about the fact that you have those. And then I was like, I think I need to throw them away. And she's like, that's okay. It's up to you. And there's a CVS around the corner that had, like, a mailbox that you could, no questions asked, just put any drugs or substances in. And I'd seen it many times and thought about it, but I was like.

[Monica Lewinsky]

I've never even noticed.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I'm like, I'm not getting rid of my Fentanyl, you know? And. You know, and I was like, I should probably let you know I have enough Fentanyl to kill everyone in this building, you know? And she's like, okay, so why don't you do what you feel like you need to do? So I walked over there with her on the phone, and I was weeping because I felt like I now have no power. Like that gave me this illusion of control. And while we were on the phone, she said, can I just ask you one question? Did it ever occur to you that if you were in unbearable mental or physical pain, somebody would help you? And I said, no, it never crossed my mind. And she said, I will help you if you're in unbearable physical or emotional pain. And a lot of other people will, too, if you tell us that you are. And that's also intimacy, you know? And I was like, oh, I didn't know that. And. And when I threw the. The fentanyl way, and I walked away and got off the phone, I said to God, okay, my. I'm giving you my life. My life is in your hands, and the moment of my death is in your hands. And I felt, this is Something I felt a lot of times. I mean, I have this great rollicking cosmic laughter. As God said, honey, it always was. Right, Right. It always was, sweetheart. Like, life and death are in my hands, not in your hands. And it's like, oh, right. I just am so scared of life and I'm so scared of death that I wanted to control those things. So surrender is the opposite of that need to control.

[Monica Lewinsky]

It's interesting because this has come up for me a couple times in the conversation of just thinking about that we're having this conversation the week Andrea Gibson passed. And to see. I think it's one of the beauties of social media. They're not that many, but you sort of see across this wide landscape someone whose life and work touched so many different people. And I think there's. That it is a reminder of how little control we have of when it happens. And it is up to someone else. And those moments of, you know, what does it sort of say? You know, what does the moment say?

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

And Andrea showed us that. Cause Andrea didn't want to die. I mean, no one wanted to live more than Andrea Gibson. And nobody was living more in the last months of their life than Andrea Gibson. Like, right to the very end, they did not want to go. Like, that was somebody who is fighting to live and at the same time dancing with mortality in a really interesting and creative way. So you can not want something and at the same time accept it. And not just accept it, but look for the most creative possible way to engage with it. And it's something that I felt. I mean, I feel like this is something each one of us will face in our Earth school curriculum. Is that the thing you want the least to happen is going to at some point or maybe multiple times. And when Rhea was diagnosed and I heard six months to live, and the negotiating that I was doing with God was like, no, not this. No, not this one. Like, you don't. I have a long list of other people.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Who I can add to yours.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You know, if you'd like some feedback on a couple notes. Couple notes, like, you know, what really might benefit humanity? There's a bunch of other people here who maybe you want to give pancreatic cancer to, you know, like. But not this one. I can't live without this one. This is the one I can't live without. This is the person I cannot live without. How very interesting that that's the one who was taken. So clearly something in the universe did not believe me when I said, I cannot live without this Person, my friend Martha Beck. She has this great game that she plays where she takes the most codependent song titles and then adds little parentheses to them. And my favorite one is I can't live if living is without you. And then in parentheses it says, yet here I sit eating a sandwich.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Like writing the song.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Or here I sit, like, clearly I'm like, you know, like, yet here I sit eating a sandwich. Like I said, I can't live without this person. Yet here we are. And so something I had to find in me a whole different direction for my life that instructed me on how indeed do you live without the person that you can't live without?

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah, I found in my life, what's been really interesting for me is when I'm able to. I go through something difficult and then this sort of pattern comes back again. But some part of me actually learn. Gained something from what happened before. And I do it differently, and it's then easier. And I may not necessarily see that at the time, you know, of just sort of. But I observe it after, you know, so. And I had that a few years ago of just, you know, I think part of how I ended up really stepping into actually beginning to reclaim my narrative was around. I'd had a whole plan, and I had, you know, I was gonna do this and then I was gonna do that. And of course it kept falling apart. And so finally it was, okay, I'm gonna write this Vanity Fair essay. I've no fucking idea where I'm gonna land. Like, how the world is. Was gonna receive this. But everything had fallen apart before that. And thank God, because it ended up being the best thing that happened.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

And you were cornered in your karmic predicament.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yes.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

No other choice.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when I found myself with my, you know, then I came up with a new plan years later, it was like, oh, okay. Some part of me thought, oh, I can have a plan again. Time to have a plan, right? And then that's plan fell apart. And I moved through things faster. I didn't get as low as I had before. And I started to. Also for me, it was a time where I had to start to really accept, which is still hard for me, of I'm not gonna have a small life. I don't get to have a small life. So as much as that's what I really want, every time I try to get small or have a plan to get small, that plan gets disrupted. And so that some of the work for me is around. And I think so many People experience this in different ways in their life is Right. How do you accept that? How do you accept that something is going to be different? How do you accept that your life is going to maybe be bigger than you thought it would be? In different ways? And it is. It's so fucking annoying.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Super duper annoying, that I think by the age of 40, at least, probably younger for most people. Everyone I know could write a book called not exactly what I Planned.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yes.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Like, not exactly what I planned. But as to your point, when the bottom falls out again and it's like, argh. There was a line that a friend of mine used to always say, which is like, I thought this was a parachute and it's backpack full of bricks.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah, right.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Like, whoa. Like, I thought this was gonna be this and it's this. A certain number of rounds of that. It doesn't. It's not necessarily that you start to love it, but there's a certain number of rounds of it where you're like, oh, right, we've done this. Like, we've done this before. And so here we are again. Like, here we are again where everything we planned didn't work. Okay.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

What's the next right action? I give up. Like, what do you. You know, when Raya was dying and using drugs and life had gotten so horrific and awful and I wanted to kill her and myself, I went for a walk one day to get. Just to get away from her and to get out of the apartment, which I was doing constantly. Like, I'd walk in the apartment, like, say hi, look at her. And be like, I gotta go for another walk. Like, I was like, putting miles of walks just like, I don't know how to deal with this situation. And I was walking down East 9th street in New York City and I started. I was crying in public like I always do, and I was. And I started praying. But I had the weirdest prayer of my life. And I think the most courageous and in a weird way, the most honest. And I opened my mouth to pray, but instead of saying, make this stop or make this go away or save me or fix this situation, I said, make it worse. I know. And I heard myself say it. And I went, what are you saying? And I was like, my soul said it. My soul that came here to learn and to grow and to evolve and signed up for this exact Earth School curriculum so that it could learn things that could not be learned any other way. My soul said to God, make it worse, because I know there's some treasure in here for Me that I have not found. There's something in here I'm not seeing. There's some gift in here that I can't discover. And don't take it easy on me. Take the gloves off. I'd rather get to it. I want to see what the thing is. So if you have to crush me under your heel into powder, do it so that I can be reborn as whatever the thing is that I'm supposed to be reborn as after I'm totally destroyed. But let's just. It was basically like, let's fucking do this. This, you know, like, I'm here for this. Let's do this. And God obligingly made it worse.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Well, look how your plan worked.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

God's like, well, I mean, I signified my willingness.

[Monica Lewinsky]

No, I know, I know.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Yeah. And like, that was it. It's like I signified my willingness to be here for this thing even though I didn't know what the thing was. And it got worse. And it got worse after Raya died and because there was a thing I couldn't see. And it was until, like, I had to go through a whole nother round of something like that again with another person before a friend finally sat me down for the second time. Thank God she did it twice. She did it once a year earlier and was like, there's a 12 step program for sex and love addiction. Maybe you want to check it out? And I was like, I'm good, you know. Then I was like. Went out and did some more research.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Right, exactly.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

And a year then I was like, what's that program again? And. Cause that was the thing that I couldn't see. What I couldn't see was what is my role in the madness of my life? Why does this particular pattern keep repeating? I'm the common denominator in every single one of these stories. Why, why? Why does it keep happening? And I couldn't see it until I could see it. And I'm really merciful about the fact that I couldn't see it till I could see it, because I couldn't.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah. Well, that was actually something I was really interested to ask you. Is just in so many of your different experiences and how open you are with sharing those processes for yourself of how do you find the self love in those moments? How do you find the acceptance there?

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Oh, honey, we're just doing the best we can. Either Brene Brown said this so beautifully in one of her books that she, when she was a social worker, was dealing with a family that was so dysfunctional and Just couldn't get out of its own way and kept causing so much harm to themselves and other people and to their children. And it was just like a nightmare. And she was so full of contempt and disgust for these people. And her husband, who's a doctor who works with a lot of people who are in a lot of suffering of different kinds, would say to her, like, they're doing the best they can. And she was like, but are they, though? You know, like, basically, like, do better humans, you know, like, that was the position that she was taking, and she was challenging him with that. And she's like. And one night she said to him, if I hope I'm getting this anecdote right. But she's like, do you really, really, really think that everybody is doing the best they can? And he's like, I gotta think about that. And he came back a few days later, and he's like, I don't know. But I think when I see it that way, I am a happier person and a more compassionate person, and it's easier for me to be here on this planet. So I'm choosing to decide that that is the truth. So if I see. If I can look at. If I can look at myself and everyone from a position of mercy for how difficult it is to be a person, how difficult it is to manage a brain, how difficult it is to manage our karma, how difficult it is to be in this particular moment of history, how difficult it is to be a woman, like, all of this stuff. Then it's like, I really have no choice but to say, man, this isn't easy. And I think when people meet at the heart level, it's like we're looking at each other and being like, this is hard, isn't it?

[Monica Lewinsky]

And the other person is like, yes, it is.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

You know, and then that's where we begin. As my sponsor said to me in that beautiful call, this is intimacy. You're letting me see how hard this is for you, and you're letting. Then, therefore, I now feel safe to show you how hard this is for me. And now we're together, and that has to be the way, even if the only person in the room who is receiving that mercy is me. So it's extending again, going back to the very beginning of this conversation. The hand of friendship to somebody who is suffering. Yeah. And the Dalai Lama has spoken about that. Like, when he's in pain, he's like, oh, this monk is suffering. This monk is suffering right now and needs compassion and deserves compassion. And when he felt he spoke about guilt and about how somebody had come to him and asked if he could join his order and take the monastic vows. And he said, you can't because you're too old. This is something you have to start doing at a very young age. And the man subsequently committed suicide. And he spoke about the guilt that he felt that he had turned this person away and this person took their life. But then he did this sort of spiritual awareness of, like, there is also someone suffering here now. Like, that man suffered and killed himself. And now I'm suffering because that man took his life. And so I need to serve the one who is currently suffering, who is nearest to me, which is this one. And this one needs compassion, and this one needs mercy. So whatever you're in and suffering and struggling through, there's somebody right there who needs mercy and compassion. And everybody that I know wants to practice universal human compassion. But universal human compassion isn't universal if it doesn't include you. Right? So. And it's hard.

[Monica Lewinsky]

It's hard both for others and for ourself at times, or maybe the way to say it is it's hard to grab for that or to reach for that when your tank's not full, when you're not, you know, when things are not going the way you plan, the.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Way you planned or the way you want them to.

[Monica Lewinsky]

You're telling that story that. That Brene told in her book. And I'm thinking, yeah, most of the people in my life would probably say that. I would come barging in saying, well, you're not doing the best you can. Because if you followed my advice, my plan that I could give to fix this, clearly, then it would be fine.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Because I'm so great at life. Look how well I've done.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yes, exactly.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Look how everything always works out for me, which is why I know that what I think you should do is right. And that's how I humble myself constantly. Constantly from wanting to tell everybody how to live is like, let's take a little survey of Liz's life. And the decisions that I've been so certain about were gonna be great before I be out here fronting that I know how you should live. Like, I don't even know how I should live. Right. I don't even know how I should live. And I also don't know that whatever that person is doing that I think they shouldn't be doing, that I'm sure is gonna destroy their life, might not be. There's a poem I have in the book about this, a Prayer. It's a. It's prayer for recovering codependent. And the last line is, like, about how you don't know how hard their soul might have struggled in so many lifetimes to come right here to the cusp of collapse that is so necessary for their awakening. Don't interfere with it. They really might need to have this. I mean, I needed to have my rock bottoms or I wouldn't have needed a higher power. Like, if everything went in my life the way I planned, I wouldn't need God. I wouldn't be interested in God. Like, I wouldn't be. Be interested in compassion. I wouldn't be interested in mercy. I'd just be out here being like, I'm killing it. I'm so good at everything, you know?

[Monica Lewinsky]

Do you think there's actually. Do you think that exists?

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I think there are people who believe that they're killing it, but I think that's called psychopathic narcissism. And that's a condition that we don't want to have. Yeah, yeah, but. But even them, you know, like, let me see your actual life, right? Let's see how this is actually going. Let's see the wreckage that you're leaving in your wake and the damage that you're doing to others. Right. They might not see it. As a woman in my Al Anon group said to me when I first came in, God gives the brightest students the toughest assignments. And I was like, I don't wanna be the brightest student. I wanna be like a dunce in the back. And she's like, yeah, but you didn't choose to do that. You chose to awaken. And I really do feel that I did that. I chose to come here to awaken. And I would love it if the way that I had an awakening was at the ashram in India eating really beautiful ayurvedic food and sitting in a beautiful temple and chanting. And that. That's how I found God. But that is not how I found God. I found God on the bathroom floor. I found God at my rock bottom. And if there. And the God that I love is like, honey, if we could have done it gentler, faster. There's the gentle way or the fast way. And do you want to go the gentle way or the fast way? And I chose the fast way. And the fast way is through suffering. Yep.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Everything you've talked about has been around reclaiming. But, you know, I asked people at the end if there's anything they're working on reclaiming right now.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

So I don't know if there's my physical strength. I still have never gotten back to the physical vitality that I had before Raya got sick. And the 18 months of that journey, which was now, like, eight years ago, took something out of me at the physical level. And then the healing from it, the grieving of it and the healing from it, the writing of the book, like, the whole epic of that experience cost. I feel like it cost me a lot of physical strength. And I'm actually going to be taking a sabbatical next year for six months, which I've never done. No writing, no teaching, no talking, no interviewing. And I have two things that I want to use that time for, and one is to improve my Spanish, and the other is to improve my physical health, which I think is going to be a combination of resting and strengthening.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Those sound good.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I would like to have. I would like to. God, I remember, like, in the months after Raya died, I kept saying to a friend of mine, like, I have no vitality. Like, my vitality is gone. I long to feel energized and vital. So I'm giving myself the gift of that next year, and I think the timing of it'll be pretty good. After the release of the book.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yes.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

I think it's too much to ask myself to be able to. To revitalize before the release of the book.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yeah. Because that would be nice.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

That would be nice. But it'll be after all of this is done. So that's the gift. Can I ask you a question?

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yes, of course.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

So this is the question that I love to ask new people when I meet them, and you're a new person to me.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Yes.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

What are you most excited about in your life right now?

[Monica Lewinsky]

This podcast feels like it's a part of that. I think there are a number of things that I have been putting energy towards in different ways. One that's happening next year. That is something the project itself took 10 years energetically. The seed. I've started nurturing the seed almost 20 years ago, and so that I'm kind of excited about seeing these things come out of the ground. And while the podcast was actually not something I was planning for a very long time, I think that it came out of things that had been swimming in me for a long time. In that way, I think excitement is something like, with joy. A lot of people who I've talked to for the podcast that, you know, they'll talk about wanting to reclaim joy. I think we're living in times where we have to go hunt for it. Yeah, a bit more than normal. And I think excitement and joy can live near each other. So, yeah, I think that's. I think it's something that I need to be open to more.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

So. It's a beautiful answer.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Thank you so much for this, Liz.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Thank you, God, what a delight to speak to you and thank you for everything that you are and do in the world and the untold number of people who you serve and help and shine light for.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Thank you.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

We see you and we appreciate you and we honor you.

[Monica Lewinsky]

Thank you.

[Elizabeth Wurtzel]

Thanks.

[Monica Lewinsky]

That's very, very kind. Reclaiming with Monica lewinsky is hosted and executive produced by me, monica Lewinsky production services by WTF media studios. Our theme song is by Ben Ben. 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.