Secret Weapons

I'm not going to lie, today was hard. This election has taken so much toll on everyone and even if you're on the winning side, I hope that you can at least appreciate how hard it is for those who didn't support your candidate. I'm not going to get into the whole "we'll get past this" or "the people have spoken" blah blah blah. We all read the articles, heard the speeches. I'm not going to argue. It was just...HARD.

I'll admit I didn't respond well this morning. When the boys woke up they asked me who won and I did not handle it like a reasonable adult. I cried. A lot. The boys wrapped me in a huge group hug and Hopper told me that I should "Try and think happy thoughts and then when you find one, repeat that to yourself at least ten times."  Good advice, I thought.  So I did. I tried to think happy thoughts, all day. I wasn't very successful at it, but I gave it a shot.

Then tonight as I was getting the boys in the bath, I told them that I had discovered a very happy thought. I told them,  "The thing is, I have a Secret Weapon, TWO Secret Weapons, as a matter of fact:  I have you guys. And you have me. And no matter who is president, we can choose to be kind and respect everyone, every single day. Nobody has to vote you into office to do it, you can just DO IT. If you do that every day, you will make a difference in this world. And that means more to me than anything." They both looked at me and nodded and then immediately went right back to trying to smack each other's tallywhacker which is a new and disturbing game that I hate.

Later, after brushing teeth and books, I was tucking them in and I asked, "Hey Remember, What's Our Secret Weapon??"

Hopper grabbed my neck and whispered, "Duh, Mom: it's Hope and Love."

We got this, I think.