The former White House intern was interrogated for 11 hours in 1998 about her relationship with Bill Clinton, an affair she now calls an ‘abuse of power’. Speaking with Rolling Stone in a new interview, Lewinsky said she’ll always remember that fateful time as “Survivor’s Day” – and so will her family. “Sometimes my mom buys me a gift or I buy myself a gift, and just make a moment of really acknowledging” it, Lewinsky continued. “That’s when I connect to my past the most. That was the worst day of my life thus far. It’s connecting to that, but in a way that brings it back to myself.”.
“So much of the personal work I’ve done [has been] working directly on forgiving and letting go of things from the past,” she said. “Sure, I have moments where I definitely get triggered or angry or feel sad.”. The greatest “gift” Lewinsky’s received in the last decade has been space and privacy, she noted. “I think the gift the world gave me in these last 10 years [is to] finally being able to have movement forward and being taken seriously as a human being; it allowed me to just shed a lot of that,” she explained.
“It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress,” she noted in piece. “I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.”. The “blue dress” Lewinsky referred to is a dress she wore with a stain that was later confirmed by the FBI to be from Clinton’s ejaculation after Lewinsky supposedly performed oral sex on him.
Reflecting on her past relationship with Clinton, who has been married to former First Lady Hillary Clinton for close to 50 years now, Lewinsky believes it was “textbook abuse of power.”. “It’s interesting because it feels as I get older I look at it differently. I’m now 51. The idea of being in a relationship [at this age] with a 24-year-old is insane to me, on so many levels,” she told Rolling Stone. Clinton was 49 when he began his 18-month affair with Lewinsky, who was 22 when it started.
“There’s just so many different ways of unwrapping what you thought something was, what it meant to you at the time, how you see it now,” she continued. Lewinsky has plans to launch her first-ever podcast with Wondery called Reclaiming on February 18. “With the podcast, [it] feels like a new chapter for me. It’s a different way to use my voice, reclaim my voice, and in that sense, to connect with people, and I hope it does,” Lewinsky said.
