A Letter to my Daughters Post-election (2024)

My lovely girls,

We wake to a world that feels broken. To the realization that greed or indifference or ignorance or fear or downright misogyny, racism, male violence, or hate has prevailed in choosing a leader for our country, a person who goes against everything—every small and great thing—that I have ever taught you to believe in.

How do we reckon with that?

How do I guide you through this reckoning?

Is it even my job anymore?

It isn’t—but I believe it is my responsibility. Perhaps less as your mother—you don’t need me anymore to make your world right—than as an elder of the community that you and I share; as someone who has lived longer on this earth than you and your peers; as someone who has seen the black underbelly of our world and still has the optimism to believe that we will be okay.

And when I say “we” and when I say “okay”—I don’t mean all of us, everywhere, will be okay. And I don’t mean “okay” in that we won’t feel a difference. I recognize that some people—people we know and care about—may not be okay as things go forward. And the “okay” I’m promising might not be what we expected out of life. But if okay counts as being loved, secure, having a backstop, having your largest needs met, then I believe we’ll be okay—and I promise to do everything in my power to leverage my ‘okay’ in a way that helps other people be okay. That is part of what I can do. Use my energy and resources and body and voice to protect and care for folks who will be harder hit than us.

You know your history. There is a German half of you who comes from a story that is unbearably harsh and unjust and cruel and evil. It is a history that has sometimes made you feel embarrassed or responsible for, although we all know that we are the product of our history, not the instigators of it. Still, this history makes us more aware, perhaps, of what has just happened and how it might resonate as our life goes on. But because we are more aware of it, we can also maybe take things more seriously—and realize the terrible consequences of what can happen to a country led by a hate and fear-based power that erodes individuality, democratic systems and ideals; how it silences good people and the kind acts that define humanity. We can recognize, too, that much of the fallout of that hate is through a deliberate process of “othering,” which is where your other half kicks in, too. From my side, you entered this life with the baggage of a US history of racism and economic oppression where people have long been left out of many possibilities in life because of where they come from or the circumstances of how they’re born. Hopefully, I’ve raised you in full knowledge of my own experience of being poor in the years of my post-divorce childhood. Poverty is a kind of ‘othering’ in this land that is ugly and vicious and brings out hate, both in those carrying the stigma and those looking down on them.

In fact, as far as belonging goes, even in your lifetime, you’ve witnessed the ragged edges of it. Your father is an immigrant here; I’m an immigrant when we’re in Germany. Not belonging has cost us both at times—in small but vital ways. You two belong to both countries, which means you’ve skipped the process of paperwork, stress, and the humiliation of feeling unwanted by a country you want to feel at home in. I wish everyone could know the shame of being treated as an “immigrant” in a visa process, to witness the feeling of precarity and unkindness it engenders, even when it has nothing to do with you. And given that our processes have so far ended positively, given our socio-economic status and white skin, our paths to visa status have been much less fearful than others’. Still, I’m thankful that both before and after you two joined our world, we’ve been able to experience both the struggle and adventure of living in other places: countries with different rules and different people and possibilities, and that you two have learned how those experiences make us bigger. Make our world smaller—less scary. Being other places and with other people make our lives more varied and friendlier.

I want to remind you, too, that before you were born, we lived in places with despots in power. Places where no one could trust the leadership; where speaking out could be dangerous; where freedom and choice were restricted. Places like that have existed in the world your whole life span, and mine—and people in them still generally get on with life. It is important for you to know this. That in places where the state is in shambles, everyday life still happens. People wake up, they have breakfast, go to work, they make plans with family and friends—and their lives include good days and happy times and celebrations and weddings and births.

There is so much you know already—you are not ignorant nor uninformed. Your innate intelligence is your own—as is your experience of life. The same way that your choices and your power and your agency is all yours and the good that you are in this world is yours to claim, not mine. And as you grow into your twenties and into your thirties, you will evolve into your power even more.

And I’m proud. Proud of knowing that both of you are good people in this world—and that again, it has nothing to do with me, but with the choices you’ve made. The people you are. And it’s because you are good souls, that I feel blessed.  

But also, it maybe makes this situation even worse now. Because I’m broken-hearted that you have to face this shit that the world has brought to your goodness. This violence and hate and man-splaining universe that has fuckingly arrived at your door.  

So, here is how I will reassure you: Please be reminded that there are always good people and your world is full of them. People who have always stepped up with goodness and kindness, with wise thoughts and good souls and their hard work to create even more good in our world. And know that your charge is to find more of those people. To connect their good souls—to you and to others. To have such a big huddle of good folks around you that your life will steer in the direction of hope and joy and Better. And that your role will not just be to find those people, but to help them when you are able, and let them depend on you when they need—and in your turn, you will ask for their help, because that is true connection. And that if you steer your days with such good folks, you will find comfort and solace in each other’s company, and together you will be part of the growing evidence that there is yet more good in this world. And the more good we know and experience and power out from us, the more good will grow to power out even more.

If we are downtrodden, there will be no one to walk a new path forward. There will be no one to counter their brutality of spirit if we do not practice a spirit of love and connection. We have to create and forge and maintain and practice and leverage and power goodness and kindness in the world—as small as it might be on a daily basis—so that it exists in reality and not just in theory. We need to practice love to believe in love. And that might be offering a cup of tea to a friend to share on a bad day or enjoying together the natural beauty of a walk or a meal. It will be waking up, looking across the table at a face you love and saying, “Wherever we go from here, we do it together and that gives me comfort.” And it will be seeing that person near you giving a small gift of love to someone else that will reignite in you the belief that love exists—and that you are part of it, over and over again.

And know that from small joy will come better days. I believe that. I wish you that. I want you to know, with that, you will be okay.