11/3/98

I have read many things in the papers about you, followed the countless discussions, analyses, hypotheses, assumptions, conjectures, and judgments - it has been a truly awesome experience the last several months.

Yet I have absolutely not seen or heard or read anywhere the deeper underlying subtext to all your travails: the phenomenon I have come to call "Woman's Curse". This is a state very well known to me and to almost every woman I've ever known, albeit they themselves might not have a name for it. Essentially, it is a state of emotional dependence, from young adult womanhood, on a relationship with a man to feel whole, to feel secure.

Just like you, Monica, I was "trained", overtly and covertly, from an early age for my eventual female role of dependence on a male. I was given books written especially for girls featuring knights in shining armor, taken to a million motion picture films whose indefatigable heroes swept hapless beauties off their feet. Newspapers, magazines, commercials, school textbooks, the arts, friends, family, and peers all essentially relayed the same message.

It makes me so sad to see a young woman like you still basically chase after men, but I don't think it's because of youthful inexperience. I see many, many women of my own generation enter and stay in similarly dissatisfying relationships - simply for the sake of being in one.

Amid all of the political storm and media rage I've heard very few voices of empathy reaching out to you, Monica. As a woman who has been there and done that, I genuinely feel for you. And all is not yet over: tough times still lie ahead.

All is not yet lost, though. I would very strongly encourage you to strike out on your own, to make a life for yourself before you want to share it with another. To go within. To learn about yourself, your inner strengths and weaknesses and needs. To fin d the tools to make yourself whole and happy without men. To find joy and peace in who you really are beneath the oft-ridiculed sham persona of Monica S. Lewinsky. You could, in doing so, even become a role model for the young women of the 21st century.

Wouldn't that be more spiritually rewarding than going down in history as the fin-de-siecle's most notorious presidential mistress?

My heart is with you and I wish you the very best.

Sincerely,