{"id":3501,"date":"2015-04-05T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2015-04-05T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/?p=3501"},"modified":"2015-04-02T19:59:20","modified_gmt":"2015-04-03T02:59:20","slug":"easter-thoughts-on-new-life-and-monica-lewinsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/holidays\/easter-thoughts-on-new-life-and-monica-lewinsky\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter Thoughts on New Life and Monica Lewinsky."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Easter,<\/a>Today is Easter Sunday. In anticipation of the holiday, stores, classrooms and homes have been decorated with symbols of new life: bunnies and ducklings and baskets full of colored eggs that might have become baby chicks if they hadn\u2019t been boiled.<\/p>\n

At its heart, Easter is a holiday that celebrates the new life of Jesus Christ, or, to be more precise, his Resurrection from the dead after three days in the tomb.<\/p>\n

\"Monica_lewinsky\"<\/a>So where does Monica Lewinsky\u2019s story fit in? No cute baby animals there, no miracles. But after watching her TED talk<\/a>, it occurred to me that her story is the perfect example of new life.<\/p>\n

Can you guess how long it\u2019s been since Monica Lewinsky was introduced to the world? It may seem like just yesterday, but it\u2019s been seventeen years. Ever since 1998, Lewinsky has been buried in a symbolic tomb of shame.<\/p>\n

The image of the pretty smiling girl in a beret has never disappeared. But the real Monica Lewinsky has been out of the public eye. If you\u2019re too young to remember her story, you may at least have heard her name. It\u2019s been used in the lyrics of almost forty rap songs.<\/p>\n

When her story hit the news, I remember sympathizing with her. Still, I followed the salacious details of her affair with the President and joined in the ubiquitous conversations about the young intern. Thinking back on her worldwide public humiliation, it\u2019s a miracle she survived.<\/p>\n

In her TED talk, she recounts how her mother sat by her bed each night in 1998 and wouldn\u2019t allow her to shower behind a closed door. She was afraid her daughter would be \u201chumiliated to death.\u201d As we\u2019ve seen in more recent cases of cyber-bullying and online harassment, suicide wasn\u2019t an unreasonable fear.<\/p>\n

Now, at the age of forty one, Monica Lewinsky has a new life. She speaks out against cyber-bullying and slut-shaming and advocates for empathy and compassion. It\u2019s the compassion and empathy of her family and friends, professionals and even strangers that saved her, she says.<\/p>\n

Ms. Lewinsky winds up her TED talk with these words: \u201c\u2026 anyone who is suffering from shame and public humiliation needs to know, you can survive it \u2026 you can insist on a different ending to your story \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of us have stories far less dramatic than Monica Lewinsky\u2019s, but we all have our troubles and symbolic deaths. In the midst of our troubles, we may have a hard time seeing past them to the new life beyond.<\/p>\n

A few months after my husband died, I tried to imagine how I would ever be happy again. <\/em>At that point, seventeen years ago, it seemed impossible. Today I can report that, yes, I definitely have been happy many times since he died.<\/p>\n

It took only three days for Jesus to rise from the dead. We ordinary human beings take much, much longer to rise up\u2014to recover from cancer or alcoholism, from a job loss, divorce, a death in the family\u2026 or shame.<\/p>\n

Have you ever experienced a \u201cresurrection\u201d of sorts? Have you had occasion to be grateful for the compassion of others?<\/p>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is Easter Sunday. In anticipation of the holiday, stores, classrooms and homes have been decorated with symbols of new life: bunnies and ducklings and baskets full of colored eggs that might have become baby chicks if they hadn\u2019t been boiled. At its heart, Easter is a holiday that celebrates the new life of Jesus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[755],"tags":[764,756,759,758,763,762,760,757,761],"class_list":["post-3501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","tag-compassion-for-victims-of-cyber-bullying","tag-easter","tag-new-life-for-monica-lewinsky","tag-new-life-on-easter","tag-online-harassment","tag-surviving-cyber-bullying","tag-symbolic-tomb-of-shame","tag-the-resurrection-of-jesus-christ","tag-worldwide-humiliation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-Ut","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5988,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/family\/easter-then-and-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":3501,"position":0},"title":"Easter Then and Now","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"April 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Back then, I wore a new dress every Easter. 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