On Monica Lewinsky: Emerging from “The House of Gaslight” in the age of #MeToo
Change your response, change your karma
A good student of karma knows that if you want to change your karma, the solution is to change your response to what you're being dealt. In other words, if we want to transform habits, behaviors, or our relationship with trauma, the key lies in how we respond to them. Numerous spiritual practices and healing modalities assist with the endeavor of recognizing discomfort and crisis as opportunity for growth and change, and it is through application, experience and the scientific method process that changes begin to stick and we learn to have faith in our path.
Case in point
In her superbly penned, Vanity Fair-exclusive essay, Monica Lewinsky keenly links individual and collective/societal trauma, while alluding to the psychological process of individuation as she reflects on the transformative healing potential that trauma has when it is properly examined, re-framed and integrated. She also references karma when she describes her decision to approach the man whom, twenty years earlier, had terrorized her and her family in his effort to investigate and prosecute President Bill Clinton:
A student of Karma, I found myself seizing the moment. Whereas a decade ago I would have turned and fled the restaurant at the prospect of being in the same place as this man, many years of personal-counseling work (both trauma-specific and spiritual) had led me to a place where I now embrace opportunities to move into spaces that allow me to break out of old patterns of retreat or denial.
Revolution begins within
Lewinsky's knowledge, insights and reflections on individual and collective trauma are profound. Citing wisdom from writer Salman Rushdie, cognitive linguist George Lakoff, and trauma specialist Jack Saul, Monica Lewinsky maps 20 years of socio-political events that have helped shape our current mainstream reality (24-hr news, potus 45, and the #metoo movement), while sharing the story of her individual healing arc and lighting the reader's way to hope.
Read Monica Lewinsky: Emerging from “The House of Gaslight” in the age of #MeToo, and if you find yourself wanting more, here's the 2015 NYT article that prefaced her 2015 TedTalk (The Price of Shame), Monica Lewinsky is back, but this time it's on her terms.