What do you do when your dream comes crashing down, not just deferred but obliterated in a way that makes reality seem too weighty to bear? What do you do when your heart is broken by forces beyond your control?
I can't count the number of people who reached out to me Election Night to ask, "Will we be okay?" "WTF and what now?" " How did this happen?" "How do we survive this unthinkable outcome?" "I'm too frightened to face the future, what do I do with that?"
You get the idea. We suffered a blow we worked so hard to not have to face. We had faith in the better angels of America. But we were delivered a diabolical despot. What is our path forward? I actually held an Election Night party, so positive was I of the outcome. So, when the world turned dark as returns came back in a sea of blood red, I turned to my friends and asked them, "What is our path forward, those of us for whom goodness and mercy were out of reach?" Their blank faces, stricken with grief, spoke volumes.
So, as I was hosting the event, I felt responsible to form an answer.
We go knocked down so, "We rise up. We rise with the day." (Oh yeah, those are lyrics but they were perfect.) I know what we must do next and it's in something Hillary has been saying all along.
We will do all the good we can, for all the people we can, for as long as we can.
Millions of us have bonded throughout the course of this election, through social media, through working in our communities, as we held hands and reached for that brass ring of victory of what seemed like good over what seemed like evil. So do we just throw up our hands, or wring our hands and go into mourning? No. Just. No.
We listen to Andra Day sing "Rise Up."
And that's what we do. We rise up and do all the good we can for all the people we can for as long as we can. We stand together, we don't give in to fear, we don't give in to hatred and bigotry, we don't give in... ever.
Because. Love. Still. Trumps. Hate.