Issue 93: What I told my 7-year-old daughter about the election

+what I keep telling myself

Octavia Butler by Katy Horan from Literary Witches — an illustrated celebration of women writers who have enchanted and transformed our world.

Of all the worries I woke up to on Wednesday morning — and there were many — my biggest one was this: what do I tell my 7 year-old daughter?! How do I share my profound fear and disappointment without vilifying the choice made by more than half of this country.

This is what I said to her:

1. Our candidate lost.

2. We are still who we are. We still believe in kindness and respect and opportunities for all people and those believes are unconditional, they do not change based on convenience.

3. We are disappointed and it may take us some time to feel calm, but we will work on getting ourselves calm. (After school, we went for ice cream and visited our neighborhood bookstore).

This is what I tell myself:

1. Continue to commit to not be the comic book version of yourself (Toni Morrison told us that). I stand for what I stand for and I don'r reserve my kindness only for people who agree with me.

2. There's something happening that needs to resolve itself: the election only exposed something that was already true. Whatever this is, it needs to boil over in order for something new to emerge.

3. Republicans have full control of government. They will now have an opportunity to show us their true selves.

4. What a gift to Democrats.... if losing to the worst candidate while raising obscene amounts of money doesn't make you realize that your fundamental understanding of the electorate is wrong, I don't know what will.

5. Fight the urge to retreat and disengage.

I am really trying to talk myself through this y'all. I hope you take gentle care of yourself. Back to book content next week.

What I am telling you:

Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.

— Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Talents

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