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Take Care of Yourself Today--Tomorrow Needs You

By Courtney Enlow | Think Pieces | November 9, 2016 |

By Courtney Enlow | Think Pieces | November 9, 2016 |


This morning, I woke up. I cried. I cried a lot. I was held by my husband for a long, long time. I hugged my kids for a long, long time. And then I took my medicine, I showered and brushed my teeth and got dressed. I took three ibuprofen because crying that much always gives me a headache. And I got the kids ready and off for the day. I drank coffee. I filled up a Klean Kanteen to remind myself to drink my water. I will probably eat something at some point, I think. I know I should.

I tell you all this because I know there’s a lot of us out there who won’t be able to do those things today, or tomorrow. For whom the pain is so great, the terror so high, that these things will not happen right now. And there are many for whom life could change so massively that they’re robbed of these simple and impossible morning routines, and the people they share them with.

Do not mistake the intentions of more than half the people in this nation. Do not let the narrative be normalized as disenfranchised white middle class feeling neglected by Washington and electing a political outsider. What those words conceal is this: the misogyny that has surrounded Hillary Clinton her entire adult life masquerading as complaints about her crookedness and calculation, and the outright racism and xenophobia that made Trump’s repeated promises to kick out all the brown people so appealing.

This will be blamed on people of color. Do not do that. This will be blamed on third party voters. At this moment, I’m pretty OK with that because this didn’t have to go this way, but it’s not completely their fault. Half the country bought into the idea of white supremacy, and a lot of the White Us is just now realizing that it always has. Half the country is broken. The country is broken, as a whole.

But we, as people, as human beings, are not broken. We will not be broken by this.

Because now we fight. We fight for our friends, for our families, for strangers. For our country, for our world, for our lives and for their lives. We take every ounce of privilege any of us might have, be it white skin, be it gender, be it physical abilities and beyond and we use it for good. In the face of grief, in the face of our pain, and in the face of unprecedented abuse, because I cannot overstate how much worse the abuse will get—I’ve already seen a massive increase in emboldened, happy trolls, so please be careful out there.

We have to fight for what is good and what is right. Because we have no other choice.

I am sad. I am angry. I am scared. I am devastated. I am not OK. But I am motivated. I am ready.

And I’m still with her.