So He Won. What’s Next?
I pulled tarot cards weeks ago before my creative block and it told me these results. I’ve been trying to mentally prepare. I didn’t say anything because reasons. One of them being that we aren’t supposed to know everything.
So I’ve sat with what the cards told me would be the outcome. I even pulled one the night of that let me know definitively what the outcome would be before results dropped.
My grounding mantra are words by the late, great Octavia Butler:
“There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”
That night I just decided I was going to keep breathing because air is not going to stop moving. My heart wasn’t going to stop beating. The sky felt like it was falling but it was still intact. The earth was still under my feet. I can’t escape this. This is my reality.
--- The results are in. The reality is undeniable. For many, a Trump win symbolizes far more than a political outcome; it triggers memories of rejection, workplace traumas, and educational experiences where our brilliance was met with disbelief or undervaluation. For Black women, particularly those who are high-achieving and perpetually overqualified, this moment cuts deep.
The Weight of Rejection
Black women have historically been the backbone of social, professional, and activist spaces—often working tirelessly, armed with degrees, expertise, and an unwavering drive, only to be met with dismissal or undervaluation. This election result reminds us of that rejection, of moments when we put our whole selves forward and were turned away.
The pain is familiar, a collective wound that reopens, echoing personal experiences of being told we are “too much” or “not enough” by systems not built to hold us. These moments can be triggering, bringing up past workplace and school traumas where we were sidelined, spoken over, or simply ignored.
The toll on our physical and emotional health cannot be overstated. It manifests as stress, anxiety, fatigue—a bone-deep exhaustion that Black women know all too well. I know I felt a tightness in my chest and neck and shoulder pain that I breathed through as the night progressed.
Finding Liberation in Rest
But here’s the challenge: to not let this moment, devastating as it is, disconnect us from our liberative imaginations. In these times, rest is more than a break; it is a radical act of self-preservation. It’s the decision to turn inward and connect with the parts of ourselves that have been buried under years of serving others and striving to meet society’s ever-shifting expectations.
Rest allows us to remember who we are beyond our achievements and roles. It invites us to listen—truly listen—to the voices within us that have been silenced, the creative and tender parts of ourselves that we pushed aside to “fit in” and survive.
The sabbatical I took showed me this clearly: when I was tired, I couldn’t hear these parts. But when I rested, I became perceptive, attuned to shifts in the universe, and able to reconnect with the intuitive wisdom that lies within.
Reclaiming Our Truth
This moment demands that we reclaim our truth, even as the world tells us to shrink. People have countless narratives about who we are as Black women, many of which we internalize when we’re too exhausted to challenge them. But rest is where we defy those narratives. In the quiet, we start to see ourselves as whole—complex, creative, deserving—beyond the labels of “strong,” “reliable,” or “unbreakable.” We rediscover our essence, cultivate the parts of us we weren’t allowed to acknowledge, and remember how to march to our own beat.
Rest as Resistance and Renewal
This election may have far-reaching consequences—ones that threaten to dishearten and disconnect us. But what if we chose not to let it? What if, instead of being swept up in the despair of it all, we rooted ourselves in rest and found strength in the pause?
The narratives society projects onto us are heavy, but in rest, we have the space to rewrite them. We give ourselves permission to hope, to dream, to imagine new worlds where we are not just surviving, but thriving.
So, we breathe. We rest. We reconnect. Because while there may be nothing new under the sun, we know, as Octavia Butler wrote, that there are new suns. And in our pause, we find them. We find ourselves.
Let’s choose rest as our form of resistance. Let’s choose liberation by turning inward and allowing ourselves to be. The sky may feel like it’s falling, but beneath it, we are still here, grounded, breathing, and ready to rise again.
