Neverthless, I Resist.

On the day I went to vote in the 2016 election, I had Rachel Platten’s Fight Song on repeat. I played it so many times just before breakfast that Ruby nearly begged me in tears to at least mute it while she ate her cereal. But I couldn’t help it. I was amped. I was energetic. I was emotional. I had adrenaline pulsing through me. This time, after all of the lies and the insults and the petty shots that women had to take again and again, the physical intimidation – just all of it. This time, this time we were going to go to the polls. And we were going to fight.

Of course, it didn’t happen like that. Who knows why really. Jill Stein, Russian bots, Wisconsin, Bill Clinton. Who knows why it wasn’t our time. It just wasn’t. I lay awake that whole night wracked with sickness. I could handle the results of the election I suppose. But what I just didn’t know was how to explain what the moral of all of this was to my kids.

As parents, I think we do that a lot. We go through good times and hard times and fun times and usually somewhere is a parable, a kernel that we offer to them to take forward. It provides context, meaning. You can’t make up lies every single day and insult people without consequence, tell them they are nasty, or imply that you can grab their pussy whenever you want and anyway that’s just how guys talk, and still win. The kernel I was sure I was going to offer them, the context to this life experience, was when you act without integrity, there will be consequences.

More than a year later, I’m still waiting to teach them that one.

The lesson I ended up teaching them about the 2016 election is that things don’t always turn out as you like or as you expect, but as a person and a family and a nation, you move on. We are a nation of laws, not men. And we would figure it out. And maybe that was the lesson then.

But now, one year later, what is the lesson now?

At Friday night services the other week, our Rabbi spoke about the value of struggle in general. That there is always, always something to be gleamed from struggle. And to never walk away from all of it, from the experience or the pain until you’ve figured out what that thing is. So here we are, seven days away from closing the books on this year and I’m thinking about his words. I can’t walk away yet. What was it all for?

This morning I open up Twitter. It’s Christmas Eve and lots of people spread cheerful and hopeful holiday messages. The President does what he did the day before and actually literally every single day of his presidency, he goes online and insults in the most childlike way anyone who disagrees with him. He disparages them. Name calls. Throws out lies. Maybe its true? Maybe its not. And any way who cares because my base loves me.

That sick feeling that I felt on election night, the one I feel every single day when I read this vitriol fills me.  I grab my shoes and literally run out of the house, away from the computer, away from another day of just hate. Today. It’s Christmas Eve. Can’t the President take just one day off from hating everyone. Just one? I feel physically ill and mentally exhausted from the hate.

As I pound the streets outside in real life, I breathe in the sharp December air as if I am literally in need of oxygen. I pass strangers on the road and I smile at them, a wide clear grin. I am desperate for non-threatening and kind human interaction. Every single stranger smiles back at me.

A different Rachel Platten song comes on, this time one I haven’t heard before. It’s called Broken Glass.

I’m going to dance on broken glass

I’m going to make that ceiling crash

So what, still got knives in my back

So what, so I'm tied to the tracks

I feel like we've spent the past year trying to repair our shattered hearts over that glass ceiling that didn't break. We've been trying to mend our brokenness. And maybe we need to stop fixing it and dance in it. We hurt because we care. Because we love each other and our Country. And really all of that brokenness from all of that love is kind of a beautiful thing.

I will not normalize hate. I will listen. I will hug my kids till they have to peel me off. And smile at every stranger. I will listen without judgement to the people I don’t know and try and wrestle with the best way to be patient with myself and people I disagree with. I will give to every damn charity. And support my community and family from the ground up. It’s how I’m going to do it. I have to. Or else I will lose myself in this country’s top down swirl of bile.

I will not hate. He just can’t make me.

I choose love.

I’m ready to leave you now 2017. You taught me to resist vitriol and hate. That was the value of your struggle.

Now that I know, I can let you go.

When I finally reach my house, the kids have gone out but a friend has left me a bag of Christmas cookies in my mailbox. Unsolicited holiday cheer just because kindness is real. I pop one in my mouth and remember that goodness everywhere is alive and well and worth fighting for.

Nevertheless, I resist.