So many of us, those who are liberal, progressive, thoughtful Americans, are waking up this morning after our presidential election in a profound fog of grief.
Today feels surreal. It feels impossible. It is a nightmare from which we desperately try to awake.
We find ourselves in tears. We find ourselves angry. We want to lose ourselves in everyday activities, but we find ourselves lost and confused.
We are grieving. We are experiencing the well documented five stages of grief.
We have to go through the process, fellow progressives. Let’s support each other as we go through the various stages following this horrific presidential election.
1. Denial
In this stage, we feel that the situation is just impossible. It’s the “This cannot be happening” phenomenon. We walk through our day today, thinking of ways to unravel the past, to redo the outcome.
“If only we had…” is the theme of this step.
But we can’t change the facts. We can’t. We can’t undo what happened last night.
We have to go through this phase and then move on.
2. Anger
Oh, this one is so easy. We want to blame those ignorant, bigoted fools who did this to us!
It’s so easy to point a finger at James Comey or Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. We need to lash out. This is part of the grieving process.
3. Bargaining
Because we are so exhausted by our anger, we begin to think of ways to make the situation seem a little bit better.
We start to think of ways that it might all be less horrible than it seems today.
“Maybe the Democrats in the Senate can block his Supreme Court choices,” we tell ourselves. “Maybe if Democrats agree to back off of the free tuition idea, he’ll do something about the crazy interest rates on Federal Student Loans.”
We try to make it less awful by twisting the facts in our minds. We try to bargain with fate.
4. Depression
This is the feeling that keeps us in our beds, under our covers, unable to lift our heads. Depression comes upon us when we realize that our loss is real. There is nothing that we can do to change the outcome. All of our bargaining, all of our rage, won’t change reality.
5. Acceptance
This is the point that we reach when we grasp the fact that we cannot change the outcome. The election results are what they are: nothing we do can change that. We can be as angry as we want, we can try to find magical solutions, we can curl up under our covers to cry and eat ice cream.
Nothing we do will change the shocking reality that Donald Trump is going to be our next President.
As we reach the acceptance phase, we learn to wipe our eyes, straighten our shoulders, and look forward to the next steps. We get ourselves ready to move forward and to make things better.
For ourselves, for our children, for our country.
Acceptance is the place we will all reach in the next few weeks, as we put this long, nasty presidential election behind us.
And then we start to organize and work toward undoing this horror.
You can learn more right here.
Featured image via YouTube Screengrab.
