Welcome to Sentivia

Alright, let me tell you a bit about who I am, or rather, who I've become. You're looking at someone who spent a decade in the shadows, completely silent in the public eye. It wasn't a choice, not really, more of a necessity. But that silence has broken, and it's only been in the last few months that I've started to speak out. My first major public talk, the one that really launched this change, was at the Forbes "30 Under 30 Summit". Think about that – 1500 incredibly bright young minds, all under 30. I even joked with them that some of them might only know me from rap songs, which, yes, are actually a thing. I'm apparently in almost 40 rap songs. The irony!

And then, as if things couldn't get any stranger, a 27-year-old guy tried to hit on me. At 41! He thought he was charming. His line was he could make me feel 22 again. Which made me realize, I'm probably the only person over 40 who has no desire to go back to 22.

You see, at 22, I fell in love with my boss, and at 24, I had to face the devastating consequences. How many people here made a mistake or regretted something they did at 22? Yeah, that's what I thought. Plenty of us have taken a wrong turn in our youth, maybe fallen for the wrong person, even our boss, maybe. But unlike most of you, the person I fell in love with was the President of the United States.

And that's when my life changed. Dramatically. I was swept up into this improbable romance and then immediately catapulted into a political, legal, and media firestorm. This was before social media, remember? Back then you got your news from newspapers, radio, or television. But my story broke online in January 1998. It was this new thing called the internet, and it usurped traditional news for the first time. That's when everything went haywire.

Overnight I went from being a completely private person to being globally humiliated. I was patient zero, in a way, for losing my reputation on a global scale, instantaneously, due to the tech we have. This rush to judgment, this online mob, was unbelievable, like virtual stone throwers. Even before social media there were online comments, email stories and the cruelty, oh God, the cruelty. The news media was plastering pictures of me everywhere, you might remember the beret picture, yes it was a bad choice in hindsight and trust me that is the least of my mistakes I've made. But the level of attention and judgment was simply unprecedented. I was branded a tramp, a tart, a slut, a whore, a bimbo, and, of course, "that woman." People saw me, but hardly anyone actually knew me. And I get it, it was easy to forget there was a real person underneath all the labels, a soul, someone who was once unbroken.

Back then, we didn’t have a name for this experience, what I went through. Now we call it “cyberbullying” and “online harassment.” And frankly, I lost everything. My reputation, my dignity. I almost lost my life.

Let me take you back to that moment. It was September of 1998. I was in a windowless room in the Office of the Independent Counsel, forced to listen to 20 hours of taped conversations a friend had secretly made. It was humiliating. I had to legally authenticate those tapes, listening to myself rambling about the day, confessing my love for the president, my heartbreak. Listening to the worst version of myself, a self I didn't even recognize. Then the Starr Report was released, with those stolen words made public, and a few weeks later they aired on TV and posted online. It was excruciating.

It’s not something that happened regularly back then but now these kinds of stolen words, actions, or photos, become public without consent or context, and lacking any compassion. Fast forward 12 years, social media came along and the landscape for public humiliation only got worse, it didn't matter if someone made a mistake or not. I remember speaking with my mom about a kid called Tyler Clementi, who was secretly filmed by his roommate. The online world, the bullying, the ridicule, it drove him to take his own life.

This tragedy really hit me. It made me realize what my parents went through, the fear they had, the lengths they went to in order to protect me. I now saw that my experience, this horrible thing that happened to me, had to serve a purpose. We didn’t know in 1998 where technology would take us but now we can see its not only good, it also carries darkness and we need to change that. Because the cyberbullying, the shaming, it has mushroomed. Especially with our youth, who are not equipped to handle it. People are suffering, and some are tragically dying. There is nothing virtual about that.

What I now realize is that the cruelty online has been amplified. It is no longer local, it’s global and it's there forever, not like the past. We have created a culture of humiliation and there is a price, people are being hurt and there are those making money from the suffering of others. Clicks lead to shame, that shame leads to clicks and so the cycle continues.

We need a cultural revolution. We need to put an end to public shaming. It's time to bring back compassion. We have an empathy crisis. Because as Brené Brown said, "Shame can't survive empathy." It was empathy that saved me, and we need to be upstanders, not bystanders. Post a positive comment, report bullying, support organizations dealing with these issues. We need to remember that freedom of expression also means having the responsibility. We all want to be heard but are we speaking up with intention or just for attention? We need compassion.

So, why am I speaking out? Because it's time. It's time to stop tiptoeing around my past and take back my narrative, not just for me but also for anyone suffering from shame and public humiliation. Because, you can survive this. It might not be quick, painless, or easy, but you can insist on a different ending to your story. Have compassion for yourself, we all deserve it, online and off.