This election hurts us, but our mothers are broken

Late Tuesday night, many of our mothers were expecting a call. It was the call we had been waiting to make since we’d both blackened the circle next to Hillary Clinton’s name earlier that day.

It would have been one of the many calls people in America would make — the call celebrating the election of the country’s first female president.

That call never happened.

November 8, 10:26pm: “Honey, it’s not over.”

For a lot of us this would have been a great victory, a reassurance that our future — and every young girl’s future — is truly full of endless possibility. Seeing an insanely qualified woman elected president of the United States would give us the chance we’ve been longing for, but for our mothers, it would have been the milestone they’ve been fighting for their whole lives. It would have been one step closer to the future they wanted for us, and the future their mothers wanted for them.

November 15, 12:10pm: “I’ve witnessed too many men think they are smarter and more capable even when they are not. I raised you to be strong, independent and fearless. All I want is for you to be respected and treated equally.”

This election, both leading up to Tuesday and the in the days following, has brought women closer together in a way the world hasn’t seen in a while. But it’s the relationship with our mothers who voted for Hillary that has truly strengthened.

In June of 2015, when Trump announced his candidacy for president, many of our mothers told us they had already seen too much to ever believe the world would let that happen.

Month after month they were on our backs, making sure we registered to vote and urging us to get more involved “so he doesn’t get elected.”

We discussed every news story that came out, were simultaneously appalled at the words coming out of his mouth and as November 8 got closer, we became more confident in what we thought was going to be a historic moment.

We were optimistic, until we weren’t.

November 8, 11:42pm: “I’m out. I quit. I am going to bed.”

The night we had been looking forward to, the night we were going to stay up late for, quickly and dreadfully had the opposite effect.

There was a moment last Tuesday when every woman could relate to how Hillary felt — it was the moment we knew the night we expected to have was out of our reach. And whether we watched until the end or retreated early, we went to bed in utter disbelief at what had just happened.

And that’s exactly how we woke up.

November 9, 6:57am: “I am shocked. I have nothing else to say right now.”

Wednesday was a day where girls needed their mothers to tell them everything is going to be OK, but this time they just couldn’t. Instead we grieved, questioned, cried and swore, together.

November 10, 7:58am: “I feel very angry.”

Our mothers didn’t support Hillary just because she is a woman. Their devastation wasn’t because history would not be made with the first female president. They voted for her the same reason everyone else did — because she deserved it.

It’s not because we’re sore losers that this hurts. If there’s one thing women are good at it’s resigning to a loss and rising above it. That’s how our mothers raised us.

But this is different.

November 13, 12:32pm: “I am just so disillusioned.”

For the past week we’ve spent every day on the phone to our mothers, trying to comfort them even if we haven’t even comforted ourselves yet. Throughout their life they have seen more than we have, but never did they think they would see this.

We are all angry, and we are all afraid.

But our mothers feel something we don’t. Just like they feel the nation has failed them, they feel they have failed us.

They aren’t just angry, and they aren’t just afraid — they are broken.

And it’s time for us — as daughters, and as restless beings — to put them back together.