In Hindsight, What Really Happened: The Revised Edition: John Edwards, My Daughter, and Me

Dear readers,

When I wrote What Really Happened I was still very raw from the firestorm that my life had become due to my unwise decision to have an affair with John Edwards, a married man.

I realize now what I have never admitted before. I behaved badly.

That may strike you as obvious, but it’s taken me a long time to admit this, even to myself. I was attacked so often, and so viciously, that I felt that I was the victim. I felt hurt, and betrayed, and somehow that justified my actions. But of course all of the attacks and all of the betrayal were beside the point. The point is … I behaved badly.

And the release of What Really Happened didn’t help. When I look back at this book that I wrote, I want to throw it out and start again. But instead of attempting to erase my mistakes, I am now owning them. I’ve annotated the original book. Typos have been corrected but not a word has been changed, not even words that cause me to cringe when I reread them. Instead I have put notes throughout—notes that acknowledge what I couldn’t when I wrote the book.

Best,
Rielle