We all know this year has been rough.
If like most people, your mental and emotional wellbeing is already depleted, election day 2020 might feel like the straw on your camel’s back.
But WAIT! We are not camels, we can do hard things, and there are plenty of people with words of wisdom and power that we could all stand to hear from today.
This is why below you’ll find words, quotes, memes, tweets - powerful reminders and phrases to keep us on track, however this election goes.
Because though this election feels really important (and it is) - the race to the world we want to live in is a marathon, not a sprint. There is no one day that decides our world - and however this cookie crumbles, we are going to make it.
(Also, if you need cookies today - go get ‘em.)
Here ya go. Big, warm, election day hug. (And because you’re reading this, I know you already voted. Give yourself some love for being an involved and invested citizen.)
“Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”
(St. Augustine)
“Hey. Hey you. You’re doing great. You got this. We got this. And no matter what happens Tuesday, we did amazing shit and we gon keep doing amazing shit. Victory will come from movements. And the story of this cycle, no matter what, will be WE showed up and showed OUT.
So keep going. Stop doom scrolling. Leave the polls alone. At this point, it’s about every voter getting to the polls. And after? It’s about us keeping it pushing. LET’S FUKIN GOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”
(Alicia Garza)
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
(Martin Luther King Jr.)
“A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch…but on her own wings.”
(Unknown)
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
(James Baldwin)
"Hope is the fuel that helps us keep moving toward healing, toward the better imagined state. But hope often keeps us from being able to see and take in the trauma that has occurred- and it keeps us from seeing how we protect ourselves from knowing this—hope can keep us from becoming whole. You can’t do surgery in rose-colored glasses.
“Despair is a turning point. In a state of despair you see the bigness of it all—and because of that you are freed from a world of simplistic duality—of there being an easy answer, of it being this-or-that. Despair helps you hold the complexity, which is the only real hope of healing. So we need to sit with our despair, sit on the ground if necessary, and we need to be able to sit with other’s despair as well. We need to trust that the ground that has been burned by despair is preparing for the seeds of change, the seeds of growth. And we must be the faithful gardeners of this growth by holding our pessimism and distrust and risking our hope again."
(Gretchen Schmelzer)
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning.”
(Louis L’amour)
“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
(John Lennon)
“Hope begins in the dark.”
(Anne Lamott)
"Reminder: no matter who is elected today, it is neither an end or beginning. The work never stops.”(Rachel Ricketts)
Keep going, my loves.
xo,
Melissa
Here's a song we're gonna dedicate to democracy today. Give it a listen and please, I'm begging you...shake your tookus while you do so.