I've been staring at my screen all day long; reading sadness and confusion and pain on my scrolling feeds. I've been trying to find the words for my own bafflement and instead just fighting back tears. I didn't think this would hit me so hard but I was wrong and it hurts. It feels like a dull blade, sawing my heart in half. I'm in mourning here and not just for a candidate. I'm in mourning for America's soul.
Yes. The first woman president would have been incredible if for no other reason than to smash open that glass-ceiling that has capped us for so long. It would have been beyond meaningful to begin today to tell my daughter a new and improved story for girls, to tell her that she could be anything she wanted to be and really mean it. No asterisk. I didn't know how badly I wanted this until we lost but I don't blame Hillary. Looking back, I see now that she was victorious. I applaud her for coming so far and enduring more than any candidate in the history of campaigning has ever had to and through all of the shit slung her way and the unfair demonizing of her personality, she stood in the ring like a champion. But, today, my sadness is for far more souls than just one.
I'm in mourning, America, because through the vehicle of fear and ignorance, we let hate walk away with the presidency and gave our children a front row seat to the ugliest show on Earth. We showed them that being a bigot, a racist, a misogynist, and a bully gets you places. We failed them today and we let ourselves be caught off guard. We underestimated hate and in doing so, give it the election. We've gotten lazy with our freedoms and have slowly let the ideals this country was based on fall short. We didn't believe that the rantings of a madman were based in the true colors of our nation but they were. He knew it. We didn't. Shame on us for not believing what he was showing us is our America right now.
And I know that those of you who supported the t-bag won't see it that way but I'm not writing this for you. You are too far gone for saving or to understand that the disasters he brings for the next half of the show will hit you much harder than anyone else. I just hope you are smart enough to understand what is happening when he drops the hammer on you and that your attention lasts long enough to see Trump walk into the White House and leave the "trash" outside, where he thinks you belong. But maybe you'll get a trucker hat for your job well done that reads, "Making Great Suckers 2016."
But tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow, after my day of mourning, I will get up, like many of us who now truly understand how badly we were played, and my feet will hit the ground running. There is work to be done.
We have strong girls to create. We have a woman president to raise. We have an agenda of love to push. We have hate to trump. This man of clownsical games will not defeat me, nor you. He is merely a marker in our history that is showing us all the room we have to improve. The worst has happened and yet, today, the sun rose.
It's easy to feel despair right now; totally lost thinking about how many people cast their vote for hate, for sexual assault, for racism; but give it its moment and then move on. This is not about one man. It's not even about the people he mobilized in the name of fear. Now it becomes about love ❤️. How we push it. How we foster it. How we live it. LOVE is the greatest story we live. It is the greatest story we tell and the only way to sew our hearts back together so tell your story so often that it spreads. Tell it so loudly that you can't hear the haters.
This election tore us open like a wound full of death but it gave us something too. It gave us an understanding of the real sickness that is rotting our country that, like a disease, can't be eradicated until we understand what we're dealing with. And now we know. We know the cancer exists and now we must begin to treat it. Relentlessly and tirelessly.
I will not look at my daughter or son in defeat today. Instead I will explain to them that sometimes hate wins, sometimes evil triumphs, sometimes fear gets the best of people but in the words of Alan Sorkin, “we’ll fucking fight.” Because battles are not the war win the war we need one foot in front of the other. We need to get stronger. And we will.
This isn't the end. No, in fact, this is where the real fight begins.