Why 2017 Sucked for Women and 2018 Doesn't

A woman president. That was my big ask in 2016. And, honestly, was it really that big? In 229 years of choosing presidents, could the people of the United States (who’ve elected some pretty craptacular men along the way), finally put one female in the Oval Office?

And truthfully, I didn’t just want a woman. I wanted Hillary, a whip-smart politician who, yeah I know, made some mistakes, (Oh no! Those emails!), and who wasn’t—heaven forbid—warm and cuddly, but who was ready to battle for the environment, immigrants, people of color, and, women, yes, women, because she understands from the inside out the bullshit we’ve had shoveled on us through the centuries.

But then November 8th happened, and what followed was a gut punch with epic consequences.

That presidential election was an assault so horrifying that it turned 2017 into the worst year on recent record for liberal women. Our supposedly progressive democracy was suddenly being run, not by one of our own, but by a feckless bozo who belittles, objectifies, and abuses women. A man who assigns girls numbers between one and ten, who gropes and grabs and, whose mere existence grosses us out. Our country chooses an alleged rapist for a president, and women are somehow supposed to go on with our day, believe that we are going to be okay. Ho hum.

Men can be outraged by Trump and plenty are, but I don’t think the majority can feel, what he evokes in women on a cellular level. Do you know that every time we glimpse that man spewing insults, his stubby fingers pinching the air like he’s trying to take something from us, that some of us can actually feel those fat fingers on our bodies? Do you know that as I write this, my stomach tightens and my shoulders cringe because that’s a reaction we have to sexual predators?

Our president makes me physically sick, and I know I’m not alone.

The voice. The arrogance. The grab-them-by-the-pussy talk. The denials. The entitlement. “They let me do it.” Oh really, do they?

If you’re old enough to have fought for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 70s, it’s especially bruising. Forty years later and this is where we end up, with a predator-in-chief surrounded by smug white men in suits making decisions about women’s bodies.

In speaking with my psychologist husband, I started to see that too many women spent the better part of last year traumatized.

Any of these apply to you after the election?

Hopelessness about the future?

Emotional numbing?

Trying to avoid thinking or talking about the traumatic event? (I still tear up when I remember back to the early hours of November 9^th; I hid under the covers during the Inauguration.)

Add to the list: nightmares, hyper vigilance, and the micro traumas that steal our joy, our concentration, and our sleep.

After the election I tried turning to my girlfriends the way we do in hard times. “Are we going to be okay? What about our kids? The planet?” That’s when our friends are supposed to look us in the eye and say, “You’ll get through this,” and then tell a personal and inspiring story about their own experience of enduring hardship.

But this past year, my friends and I couldn’t do it for each, because we were all walking around with shattered hearts, trying not to feel the shards cut us with every breath of despair. You don’t put the drunk guy in charge of the AA meeting. But there we were, the traumatized trying to heal the traumatized. We had no words, but we did take action.

First there was the Women’s March that empowered and galvanized us—my highlight of 2017. And while it made me feel sheltered, it didn’t relieve the trauma. I still had to wake up and see President Pervert’s face on every screen, a daily violation.

My friends and I still sputtered to each other with each new political affront. How? Why? Who? Who could care so little for humanity that they put this man in power? We stumbled through the next many months in a haze of trying to balance our work and families and newfound activism, with the repeated trauma of Trump’s existence, a hate-filled misogynist at the helm.

Yes, there were moments of hope along the way, but things didn’t shift for me until the turn of the year. But turn they did.

Once the #MeToo Movement had gained momentum like a boulder plummeting down a mountainside, we had cracked something open—our silence, our shame. Then in December we had a night of glorious relief as sex offender Roy Moore trotted out of our lives thanks to thousands of black women in Alabama showing up at the polls.

And while those events didn’t erase the horror and trauma of the year before, they chipped away at it, smudged it up. We weren’t alone. We started to feel different.

Okay, I started to feel different, but I also noticed a change in the women around me.

And here’s what I think now: 2017 pretty much sucked. But 2018 doesn’t.

Not only is pussy starting to grab back and getting some grip, but it goes beyond politics, beyond #MeToo. And while saying good riddance to Bannon’s bloated face has been lovely, and the fun of Wolff’s Fire and Fury is like a New Year’s present we didn’t know we needed, the more important shift has happened inside. A reckoning. A realization.

Unlike in 2017, when thousands of us wrote postcards, phoned our congress people, organized events, and bit our nails to stubs waiting for someone to wake us from the political nightmare, we now know that’s not happening. It’s all too clear that Mitch and Paul aren’t ever going to grow a pair and put an end to this bullshit. In fact most of those Republican men would throw women under the bus—and have—for their power and portfolios.

Last year I shed all hope in the conservative Washington establishment, and am now ready to embrace a new reality. As my friend Stephanie put it, “No one is going to save us from the crazy man in the tower.”

The veil of delusion got ripped away, and as a result I am taking a giant step into my own kick-ass power.

The stumbling helplessness I felt in 2017 has been replaced but something that feels like hope, because it is hope. It’s also happiness, joy even. I’m back in my life. Writing. Mothering. Cooking. Playing Teaching. Leading. I don’t hurt all the time. I don’t feel small. There are women out there taking on the establishment, telling the truth, baring their souls and, in some cases, sex lives, so other women can come out of hiding, too.

I’m so done with hiding, with keeping myself small. The little orange man is getting far less of my attention these days—He’s melting! Melting! And when I pull my head out from under the covers, I can see that the women of the world–and plenty of good men—are with me.

We can’t let our guard down, but we don’t have to be scared. Not of him. Never of him. Almost one year exactly since the woman’s march, I felt like I had a coming out on the Cambridge Common today. My voice is strong. My heart is full.

2018? Bring it on.