I was in such a state of mental shock and quickly spiraled into a depression at the multitude of loss. My husband, I thought, was going to leave me. I was cut off from this mentor and someone I cared for very much, David Petraeus, who also did nothing to stand up for me and in fact, empowered his surrogates to throw me under the bus, and that was devastating.

You need to accept responsibility for your mistakes. And I've done that.

The national media don't know me. They know the caricature that was created of me by journalists who were frankly jealous of my access. And it was a very negative caricature. There's this propensity for blaming a woman. It comes down to implicit bias. There are so many studies that show this.

I also feel like I've done plenty of wrong things. I'm not innocent here, and I'm certainly not going to be righteous about that.

[My kids] were very young at the time and didn't realize what was going on. We told them that mom made a mistake and people want to talk about it in the news so they're outside our house.

My local paper, The New York Times, Yahoo News, CBS, and The Washington Post, all agreed to stop using the word 'mistress.' The big one was the Associated Press. They made a style change, and it's the gold standard that sets the guide for news outlets around the world. That's a small step for the American language, a medium step for feminism, and a huge step for me personally.

I'm 100 percent serious. I've been fighting for equality for women's issues my entire life, in the military included.