Hillary Clinton ran for president. She did not win.

If you're still raw about that, then I have good news and bad news about her new book, What Happened.

Good news:

You will gain new insight into what was going on behind the scenes. You'll get a lot of info on the candidate's state of mind, and heart, throughout the grueling campaign. The book may not answer all of your questions, but you will get some more facts to add to the big "WTF" board, which you can stare at while shaking your head like a detective in Law & Order.

Bad news:

Particularly if you opt to listen to the audiobook, which Ms. Clinton reads to you in her warm, compassionate, sometimes amused, sometimes annoyed, fucking eminently human and capable voice, you will ugly cry, early, often, and with all your heart. But if she could fucking write it, then I can fucking read it. Or rather, hear it.

Reasons I'm Crying While Listening to What Happened

1. She genuinely gives a shit about women, children, and families. She's a flawed person and a flawed politician. But she seriously, really cares about women's issues, and she sticks on the side of women when it comes to issues that disproportionately affect, limit, and hurt women.

2. She's so smart.

3. She took so much shit for us. She willingly walked into the fire, even after all the reasons she has to mistrust us, and she believed we would show up with water. But we just let her burn.

4. My joyful memories of Election Day feel so naive they actually make me angry, and then my heart aches because a girl should be able to feel joy on Election Day without regretting that moment of unguarded hope.

actual footage

from inside my brain

every day

since november 9

5. My memories of feeling devastated and afraid in the days immediately after Election Day are not even memories yet; I still feel that way, and it still hurts.

6. We could have had a real President. And instead we've got a shameful disgrace of a closed-minded, short-sighted, self-serving traitor, bigot, liar, con man, a walking billboard of the carte blanche issued to toxic white masculinity that our country continues to buy into, a second-rate ringmaster that has escorted a circus of misogynists, racists, assholes, dilettantes, narcissists, liars, Russian spies, and literal Nazis into the cradle of our nation's freedom.

But as slippery a slide as it might be to descend, completely, to the state of shock and heartbreak that descended upon so many of us late in the hours of November 8 (we have, after all, scant few victories for human decency to claim since that night), HRC won't let us. As the woman herself says in the book, we can't change what happened anymore. All we can do is get up out of the dirt, show up wherever we can, and somehow remain hopeful about the state of our nation, despite the nation's odious necrotic seeping boil of a current leader.

The way I stay hopeful is by doing everything I can to teach kindness and courage to my kids.

Chicken and I had this conversation in the car the other day:

Ch: are we going to Home Depot?

Me: we don't shop there

Ch: why?

Me: because the owner of that company believes that Donald Trump should build a wall between Mexico and the USA

Ch: why?

Me: he doesn't want Mexican people and other Latinos to come into this country

Ch: but mom, that doesn't make sense

Me: I agree

Ch: like, what about ladders?

Me: right

Ch: and tunnels

Me: totally

Ch: and parachutes

Me: yes, the wall is a very bad idea

Ch: it really seems like Donald Trump needs to think a little more about this

Last night Chicken said, out of the blue, "I wish I could fight Donald Trump," and together we made a list of ways he could fight Donald Trump:

This is our family's latest art project. We're making a Wall of Heroes. This central canvas is huge, 4 feet by 3 feet, and there will be three smaller canvases that have little clothespins on them, and we can hang up different pictures of heroes as we learn about them.

I'm also happy to report that I'm pitching a new show to Netflix: The Woman in the High Castle. It's an alternative future concept, much like The Man in the High Castle. Except instead of asking ourselves, "What if they won???" we'll be asking, "What if she'd won."

Related question: If we are living in a dystopia, but clinging to an alternative reality in which our President does NOT gleefully tweet gifs in which he assaults women and political rivals, then do we call that a dysdystopian fantasy? Or maybe just a Prozackian fever dream?

Stay strong out there, people.

Have each other's backs and stay checked in.