A few months ago, I gave a speech at an event celebrating Hope and Change.
At the time, my husband Alex was running for the United States Senate and we were several months into a campaign that had completely taken over our lives and usually left me overwhelmed by about 3:00 every afternoon.
In that speech, I said something I have said many times before:
Hope is a choice.
I’ve been thinking about those words a lot since Alex lost the primary.
Because it’s one thing to say hope is a choice when you’re looking toward a future you desperately want and still believe is possible. It’s quite another thing to choose it after disappointment…but I would argue that’s when hope matters most.
I don’t think hope is an abstract idea. It’s not pretending everything is fine when it isn’t. I definitely don’t think it means putting a positive spin on something that hurts.
Hope is a choice you make after heartbreak. After disappointment. After loss.
I started learning that lesson long before politics entered our lives and even before Alex entered my life.
On September 11, 2001, I was living in Jerusalem. That evening, my neighbors came to my home bringing food, condolences, and kindness. They knew I was American and they knew I was grieving. They also wanted me to know I wasn’t alone.
I stayed awake all night watching coverage of the attacks. The next morning, on my way to work, I deliberately drove past the American consulate because I needed to see our flag.
It was flying at half-staff, of course, but it was no less beautiful; no less a symbol of hope and freedom.
I was thousands of miles from home, but I felt connected to millions of Americans who were grieving alongside me. We mourned. We carried the scars. And somehow, eventually, we kept moving forward.
One of the benefits of reaching middle age — and there are some! — is having enough life behind you to recognize that there are peaks and valleys. I’ve had both, as have most of us.
I’ve also experienced how quickly one can become the other. Life can change on a dime. When you’re standing in a valley, it’s very easy to believe you’re going to get stuck there. Experience has taught me otherwise.
Again and again, life has not turned out the way I planned. Oh, I love a plan, but plans are not promises.
I’ve been very honest that I didn’t want Alex to run for Senate. I knew what public life had already cost our family, and I didn’t particularly want to volunteer for another round of scrutiny, threats, attacks, and upheaval. I also saw how deeply Alex wanted to serve again. Eventually, I decided I couldn’t let my fear keep him from trying and somewhere along the way, I’ll be darned if I didn’t start believing in it, too.
I could see the senator Alex might be. I watched him travel across Florida talking to people and listening to what they told him about their lives. I watched people believe in him. And despite all my doubt and hesitation, I let myself imagine him winning.
That’s the dangerous thing about hope, I suppose.
You have to let yourself want something before you know whether you can have it.
So we tried. We did the things they told us to do…and we lost.
Of course I knew losing was possible, but knowing something is possible and living through it are very different things.
I wasn’t heartbroken for myself or our family, but I was and am heartbroken for Alex. Watching someone you love give everything he has to something and come up short is its own particular kind of pain.
I was also heartbroken for the people who believed in him, volunteered for him, donated to him, opened their homes to us and told us what his candidacy meant to them, and for the staff who poured their expertise and their hearts into working for Alex.
We had all allowed ourselves to imagine what came next and then, suddenly, there was no next.
Or at least not the one we had imagined.
There are plenty of lessons from this campaign that I’m still sorting through, including some uncomfortable ones about politics, the Democratic Party, and what voters are trying to tell us right now. Those pieces will come in time, I’m sure.
I want to be clear about something: I don’t regret believing.
The outcome doesn’t make your hope foolish. Hope is not a prediction.
Hope is a decision about how you are going to live in the face of uncertainty.
The alternative is despair.
Despair keeps us frozen. It isolates us. It tells us that because something didn’t work this time, nothing we do matters. That our politics are too broken, our country is too divided, and we might as well check out.
I understand the temptation of thinking that, but I don’t believe it.
In that speech a few months ago, I talked about what I called active hope.
Volunteer in your community. Talk to a neighbor. Help someone vote. Show up for something you believe in. Stay engaged instead of checking out.
At the time, I was asking people to do those things in the context of a campaign, but now I think the idea matters even more.
Democracy cannot depend on our willingness to participate only when our candidate wins.
Hope requires us to look honestly at where we are. It also requires us to believe where we are isn’t necessarily where we have to stay.
I wish I could tell you I woke up the morning after the election feeling philosophical about all of this.
I did not.
It sucked and, to be honest, it kind of still does, but this is where all those lived experiences of being in both the peaks and valleys come in handy.
Hope isn’t only the thing that gets you to try; it can also be the thing that gets you out of bed after the trying didn’t work.
Hello [waves hands enthusiastically!] from that place because that’s where we are now!
We’ve spent the last two weeks thinking, talking, spending time together, and beginning to figure out what comes next. To Alex’s credit, he has never once snapped in the many times a day I look at him and ask, “Are you okay?”
And of course I cannot talk about these last two weeks without saying thank you. So many of you have reached out, checked on us, sent messages, called, dropped off food, made us laugh, and reminded us that we are loved. Friends, family, campaign staff and volunteers, and so many people we’ve gotten to know from the different little corners of the internet have wrapped your physical and virtual arms of love around our family.
I know I haven’t responded to everyone, and I’m not sure it’s possible for me to adequately express how much it has meant to us, but please know this: we have felt every bit of it. We are incredibly grateful. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
We don’t have all the answers yet. I’m not even sure we’re supposed to (or so my friends keep telling me). But we’re getting back into the swing of things and, in some ways, finding our voices again.
So Alex and I are going to do a Substack Live together today at 5 p.m. Eastern. We don’t plan on talking about the campaign, per se, but who knows where the conversation will lead. 😀
Mostly, we’re ready to talk to all of you again.
I’ve missed this space. I’ve missed this community. And after two weeks of wondering what comes next, maybe the answer for now is simply this:
We keep going. We keep moving forward.
