“No no no no,” I whispered to myself as I sat on the edge of my bed, looking at my phone. It was the 2024 Election results. I stared at the map mostly covered in red. I focused on the line showing who got what electoral votes, with Donald Trump easily crossing it with 277 out of the required 270.

Once we got the kids off to school, my husband put his head down on his hands and started crying. I walked over, put my arms around him, and wept too.

All day, I felt empty and raw. A sense of despair buried itself into me and wouldn’t let go. All of the exhaustion from election stress and all of the other shit going on in my life overwhelmed me. A fog settled over my mind.

This was my thought pattern – variations on a theme: “We did everything we could, but it wasn’t enough. I did everything I could, but it wasn’t enough. So what’s the point? Why bother? Why did I spend all of that time phone banking and having people hang up on me? Writing postcards? Why the hell bother with climate action now anyway? What difference does it make when he’s back in office and wants to destroy it all anyway? What the hell is all of my life’s work for anyway?!”

The singular image that came to mind was a brick wall that we had been dissembling brick by brick, bruising and bloodying our hands in the process. The election result was a layer of concrete being dumped over that brick wall.

Then the emails started coming in. They were from the organizations that are normally asking me for money: environmental groups, climate justice groups, social justice groups. The messages all acknkowledged the pain, of course. But most then followed it with the trying-to-be-hopeful “rest today, fight tomorrow!” or “we’ll fight back!” It wasn’t even just metaphorical – they all had virtual meetings and webinars organized for people to attend. 

My mind immediately noped out of that language. Rest today, fight tomorrow? I have no more fight left in me. I’m way too tired to even think about fighting right now.

I understand that groups are trying to capture the moment. They want to harness people’s anger and passion before they get distracted again. But it just felt like bypassing my pain – and the pain of others who felt the same way.

It seemed like a bit of a symbol of how in Western society, we aren’t willing to sit with pain. We want to find ways to push through, numb, it or bypass it. We see it in Wine Mom culture, spiritual bypassing in churches, and toxic masculinity.

Personally, I struggle with this issue. Before my burnout, I ran on adreneline for 20+ years. I tend towards overwork because I find great satisfaction in accomplishing goals and checking boxes off of my to-do list. It makes it easier to not think about why the work needs to be done.

But I’m learning to sit with and process pain. Part of it is because of the burnout, I realize I don’t have a choice. It will catch up with you eventually. Part of it is for my kids – I want to model healthy emotional habits.

And part of it is because if you don’t process emotional pain and trauma, you end up hurting others. The wounds never truly heal – they just fester and poison you slowly.

I’ve seen a couple of examples of this issue lately. We just wrapped up watching the television show Avatar: The Last Airbender with the kids. In the show, there are multiple examples of people who are badly hurt by the Fire Nation who then carry out revenge on innocent people. They decided that the ends justify the means in terms of cruelty and apply those means to anyone in their way.

In the real world, there was quite a hubbub recently around a prominent social justice advocate known for using shame in how she addresses white women. It emerged that she had plagiarized and blatantly disrespected a number of Black women activists in her climb to social media prominence. One of the women who spoke up, Shay Stewart-Bouley, said that she thought this attitude and these actions are largely a result of not processing racial injustice in a healthy way.

The solution is to be able to authentically acknowledge emotional pain and work through it with others in community.

One way is to check in and commiserate with others feeling the same way. In addition to my husband, I talked to my mom and several friends yesterday. A few of my co-workers texted me with their concerns and worries. The activist/advocate-caregivers group I’m part of – the Luminary Braintrust – provided a valuable place to share our feelings. I also happened to have a therapy appointment scheduled.

Another approach is to mentally envision all those who share your pain and find solidarity with them. It’s called tonglen and it’s a Buddist approach to connecting with suffering. My friend and fellow activist Ashia Ray – who runs Ignition Notes by Raising Luminaries and the Winter Incubator where tonglen is covered – introduced me to the concept.

Lastly, using nature and movement can help us work through pain without bypassing it. In the book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, Emily and Amelia Nagoski, talk about how exercise helps our body process stress. For me, running and biking are essential tools. Nature can also be a place of healing. Getting outside and tuning into your senses can ground you and help work through anxiety. I actually have a whole newsletter post about this that I wrote pre-election, so stay tuned.

What we don’t want to do is dump our emotional crap on people who are and will be more affected by the election results than we are. Black people (especially Black women), trans people, disabled folks, and people in other vulnerable groups don’t need white cis non-disabled folks to be pouring their eyes out at them. We need to follow the idea of Ring Theory. When in crisis, you should emotionally dump outward to the people least affected and give inward to the people most affected.

Similarly, we don’t want to burden our kids with our pain. We can show our pain to them – we don’t need to act like it doesn’t exist. But we should do so in ways that help them know that they are not responsible for making us feel better. Nat Vikitsreth at Come Back to Care recommended pairing letting your kids know about your feelings with actions you are taking to work through those feelings. I love how this approach both takes the burden off of our kids and models emotionally healthy practices.

So this week, I’m going to be resting and taking care of my family. I’ll be going on a lot of walks and runs. I attended yoga class last night. The garden will get some much-needed tending. There may be more crying and that’s okay.

Eventually, we do need to take action. But it doesn’t need to be immediately. It’s healthy to feel our feelings in authentic ways that don’t further burden people who are the most affected. So for a bit, just be. Just sit with and acknowledge that pain. I promise that allowing space for it will be better in the long run than trying to ignore or smother it.