Finding Space For My Grief, Clinging Onto Hope

It didn't seem like it could get any darker, but here we are. So where do I go next?

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Like many people during the summer of 2024, I was starting to get worried about the potential outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

I didn’t watch the first debate for a reason: I couldn’t stomach the train wreck I was certain it would become. And it was a train wreck. In 2020 I had been happy to vote for Joe Biden. I was hopeful for how his presidency could transform our country. Would he do everything I wanted him to do? No, but what president has been everything I’ve ever wanted?

I didn’t want him to run again, but I feared the alternative. I feared a return to a Trump presidency. I saw the darkness on the horizon and didn’t want to believe that was our future.

When the sudden switch to Kamala Harris happened, I spent the nearly four months leading up to the election living in a blissful world of hope. I saw a vision of a country I wanted for my children. I saw a vision of a country I wanted for myself. I saw a country finally moving forward into the 21st century. It was perhaps a little bit late, but I dreamed of progress for our country in a world where an intelligent, compassionate, and capable woman would finally become president of the United States.

During those hopeful months, my frantic reading pace came to a complete stop. I consumed podcast episodes about the election and watched MSNBC every evening while I made dinner.¹ I usually tend toward nonfiction reading that is both informative and instructive, but I became consumed as I learned more about how I could make a difference with a Harris administration and believed I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Joe Biden had been successful. He had done a lot of things to make our country stronger and cleaner, but I also knew there was a lot of work left to do. I was fully prepared for a future of watching our elected officials get stuff done and improve lives for all Americans.

The weekend before the election, my husband and I took our teenage daughter to the Taylor Swift concert in downtown Indianapolis and in a stadium with tens of thousands of women, celebrated the power of womanhood and sisterhood and a vision of what we could be as a country. I had so much hope.

It wouldn’t last.

By the time we went to bed on November 5, I was pretty certain of the election results. I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned as fear and grief closed in. I held myself together at school the next day, teaching my students and pretending as if I didn’t feel like I was living in the Upside Down.

I started crying as soon as I got into my car to drive home.

When I got home, my husband met me in the kitchen, put his arms around me, and let me sob. Big, ugly, body convulsing sobs.

Then he said the words that continue to keep me going: “The only way out is through.”

I’ve gone through all of the emotions in the last four months: grief, anger, and fear. I’ve struggled as I’ve occasionally gone numb, more bad news just being met with me saying “Yup, sounds about right” or “Of course, that’s what is happening right now. But I don’t want to be numb. I don’t want to not care about what happens. It’s in my nature to care too much.

So I’m allowing myself to grieve.

I’m grieving the loss of a future I had hoped for my children. I’m grieving the loss of admiration for people who I had looked up to, who were instrumental in shaping the woman I am today. I’m grieving the loss of confidence in my faith community and the belief that they will be there for me when darkness falls. I’m grieving the loss of character and compassion and human dignity.

I look on social media at the comments posted by family and friends and friends of friends as they defend Donald Trump and say that God put him into the presidency for a reason and I ask myself if we’re ever going to come back from this. Will people ever see the truth? Are we doomed to be a society living in two separate versions of reality? Will I ever be able to trust the people I love the most? Do I believe they will stand up for me if it means they too will face persecution? Will they stand up for my children? Will they even stand up for themselves?

And the fact that I cannot affirmatively answer those questions brings me more grief.

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Sometimes being a student of history can amplify anxiety. I know too much. As someone who took Russian History during undergrad and then spent years studying and teaching Holocaust studies to my English students, I’m seeing parallels everywhere I look now. My current re-read of George Orwell’s 1984 also isn’t helping to calm my anxieties as I see the realities of Orwell’s prophetic words everywhere I look.

But history also gives us reason for hope.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

While history provides us with warnings, it also shows us the path forward.

Most American colonists did not know they were in a revolution until the protests and revolts exploded into a war that ended in a new country. The new country was plagued with more difficulties as leaders tried to do something that had never been done before: establish a true democratic republic.

And it’s never been easy.

Indigenous peoples were pushed off of their land and subjected to acts of genocide that would nearly wipe out tribes, and yet new generations fight to keep their culture and history alive today. Africans were stolen from their homes and enslaved in a new nation, generation after generation resisting the loss of their humanity and holding onto hope of eventual freedom. Women protested and marched and even went to prison in the fight for the right to vote. Crushed by the Dust Bowl and economic depression, laborers fought for better working conditions and wages and with the help of FDR, rebuilding the country before, during, and after our involvement in World War II. The Civil Rights movement brought us closer to equality than we had ever been before, and presented a picture of what our country could be. Women continued to fight for their rights, and LGTBQ Americans came out of hiding to be wholly and authentically alive. We elected a Black man to be president.

We have never achieved the promise of a more perfect union. When progress has been made, that progress has received pushback. That pushback has often been violent and repeatedly brought us to the brink of disaster as those who have lost their status and position have fought against change. The American Dream for many has only been a dream, a mirage fading in the sunlight when we get just close enough to touch it. If I’m being honest, my thoughts have been pretty dark lately. It’s been tempting to give into despair, believing that America is doomed to repeat the mistakes of other nations. That we are headed down a dark path from which there is no return.

After the election, Kamala Harris said “There is an adage: Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

As my husband wisely said on November 6, 2024, the only way out is through. I’m trying to see the stars. I’m trying to let them guide me to the horizon. And I’m ready to watch the sun, no matter how hazy, eventually come up again.

Clinging to that belief is an act of hope. Planning for summer vacation and my children’s school schedules for next year and thinking about the fast-approaching reality of college, is an act of hope. Teaching my students how to do research that seeks solutions to problems instead of just arguing what they are for or against, is an act of hope. Going to local county Democratic meetings and working to find connections with other people who believe in a better world for everyone, is an act of hope. Writing everything down and refusing to hide from hate and oppression and the possibility of backlash, is an act of hope.

We need to grieve and hold each other up as we process the different emotions swirling around us.

But as long as we cling to hope, we can see the stars. We can find our way through.

And that is what we have to do.

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1. As much as I still love Nicole Wallace, I haven’t been able to watch it since election night. In fact, I haven’t watched much news since November 5, consuming most of my news through print now. I don’t know if that will change anytime soon.