Vent. Rest. Then Clear Your Mind and Fill Your Heart.

America has a serious problem. We need to be ready to take it on.

I am in shock. The idea that Trump could win a second term was simply unthinkable. I am too stunned to even begin to process the consequences of this decision for our country and for the human race as a whole. That will come later.

For months, I have tried to think through what I would do, how I would feel if Trump won the election. No matter what I tried, I could not. I was able to process just this one idea: if Trump won, we were looking at a much bigger problem, about both how we conduct our politics and how we conduct our society.

We have a great deal of work to do, but as a life-long survivor of severe clinical depression, I have learned a few lessons about coping, so believe me when I tell you this: while we must vent our initial shock, rage and despair, every one of us must take some time to rest, heal, and make sure we are firmly connected to the things in this world that give us joy.

I know you are mad AF, but we cannot go into this next battle burned out and blind with rage. We have been fighting for too long. We need to do some heavy thinking and re-examine all of our assumptions. We have to do that with a clear mind and a full heart. So, rest. Clear your mind, and fill your heart.

I am going to give this some serious thought, and then I will open a discussion about how this happened and what comes next.

I have spent my whole life as an internal critic and reformer of our political practices, but I firmly believe that we did almost everything right. Still, elections are primarily the periodic “taking the temperature” of a society. How you take that temperature doesn’t change the health of the patient. We may need to place more focus on what happens outside the election cycle.

I suspect that this will turn out to be less about Trump and more about the sixty-year project by the global corporate-conservative alliance to convince our society that greed is good, kindness is weakness, and that government is the obstacle to our freedom, as opposed to the means by which we obtain freedom.

More on that later.

Meanwhile, I will call my friends. We will commiserate. We will rant and rave, and plot and scheme. Our colleagues will let us know if there is action we must take right away, and if so, we will take it.

My cousin is getting married on Friday. I am going to go be with family and celebrate his love and toast to their future happiness. I might go find some solace in visiting my favorite paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago. I will make a lot of soup.

I will vent. I will rest. I will do my best to clear my mind and fill my heart. You should too.

Then, we will handle this.

With much love and gratitude,

Antonia