That isn’t to say I kept my position private; I made it very clear that I opposed our hypocritical, horrible new president-elect. (I just vomited a little.) I made my support for Hillary clear to anyone who asked—but also with the now almost automatic caveat “I know she’s not perfect.” Why did I not follow that up with “but if there’s a spectrum from perfect to putrid, then Hillary is much closer to perfect than Trump.”

Like Megan, I noticed that nearly every news outlet this election season used similar caveats. What scale was she being measured on and why wasn’t an equal comparison to Trump made on the same scale? Maybe I missed it; there sure was a lot of information to get through this season.

So in short, I am guilty of not vocally supporting a candidate I liked and I am guilty of having too much faith in our system, polling, and people. I will not make this mistake again, I will not be an armchair liberal. Now that I have confessed my complicity, I hope to be part of the movement towards change.

A reader with much less enthusiasm at this point is Tonia:

I feel exactly the same as Megan, even though I voted for Bernie in the primary—mainly because I was already hearing such negative things about Clinton. I was concerned she’d never be “likable” enough. Once she clinched the nomination, I knew I’d vote for her—no problem. But I didn’t put a sign in the yard, or a sticker on my car. When the nice librarian asked me if I wanted to volunteer for the campaign, I smiled but said no.

I partly blame my lack of engagement on my job. As a hairstylist, you are taught from school to never discuss religion or politics. A lot of my clients know I have a gay best friend, that my daughter has a wide and diverse group of classmates that I invite to our home. But I’ve never talked about how Trump scared me, how I’m concerned about her trans friend and her safety. About how I take a certain black young man home after football games because even though he’s close enough to walk, I’m afraid for him to be out at night and alone.

I will recommit to the local causes that are important to me, but I don’t know that I will ever engage in national politics again.

This next reader, Sue, wasn’t a Sanders supporter, but she stayed quiet about her support for Clinton during the primaries. Sue’s note attests to the enthusiasm gap between the two candidates—public enthusiasm, at least:

You asked whether I could relate to Megan’s note and I burst into tears.  Among the many disjointed thoughts that I have had since this election, the one that haunts me the most is “I could have done more. We all could have done more.”

For instance, what did I do when Hillary decided to run for president and the excitement for Bernie flooded my Facebook feed, and showed up on innumerable bumper stickers and window signs? I joined a *secret* Hillary group. Instead of proudly displaying my own enthusiasm for her, I was silent in public and only gushed in private about how much I love her, with people who also loved her.

It wasn’t until it became clear that she would win the primary that I came public with my support, and even then, I didn’t post the daily memes the Bernie folks did, I didn’t buy a sign or a t-shirt. I stayed relatively silent. I think this may be true for many supporters, which of course fed into the “unlikeable” narrative.

And meanwhile, Hillary pushed through the most awful, degrading campaign in our history. Even during this campaign, I didn’t display my support publicly because I didn’t want to engage with the hatred of those who didn’t support her. How cowardly it now seems that I couldn’t wear a button in public while this woman was forced to share the stage with a sexual predator, be called a crook and a liar, and have her life and freedom threatened by his supporters.

If only I did more. If only I showed the same genuine public enthusiasm as the Bernie supporters did from the beginning. If only I had a fraction of her courage in this fight. If only we all did.

Here’s one more reader, David, who like Sue wasn’t a Sanders supporter and attests to the enthusiasm gap—within his own marriage:

Yes, absolutely, Megan’s piece resonates with me. I backed Hillary from the start of her campaign in 2016, just as I had in 2008. The overall reluctance to support her affected me too.

My wife objected to the HRC sticker the campaign sent to our house. I put it on my car bumper for several weeks anyway, acutely aware that as a man it was much less likely I would face a nasty remark about it. I was a bit thankful the sticker was rather small and not easy to see. I drive on Southern California freeways for two hours every weekday and I don’t think I saw another Hillary sticker the entire time. Plenty of people displayed Bernie stickers with no self-consciousness whatsoever.

I donated several times to the campaign, prompting arguments with my wife and ultimately exceeding the dollar limit we had agreed upon. My wife said she would “hold her nose and vote” and questioned my commitment to honesty. I wanted to do more and thought about phone banking, but I couldn’t get up the nerve to try it—again, fearing a nasty remark from someone.  

Do I feel guilty? Yes, some. In the end I only risked the displeasure of my wife and motorists on the freeway. I did what was easy, believing that my fellow citizens would reject Trump the way they rejected Sarah Palin.

I want to say to Megan: It is not your fault. You did what you could. Thinking about you writing that note still brings hot wet tears to my face.

Hateful is the dark-blue sky
Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence—ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

Full poem here—though after reading it, you may want to turn to “Ulysses,” Tennyson’s other take on the Odyssey, for this reminder:

Come, my friends.
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Read and listen here.

***

In the meantime, there’s dreamful ease to be found in “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry—reader Michele’s favorite poem in times of stress:

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.

Read and listen to it here.

***

Tom recommends “The Darkling Thrush,” by Thomas Hardy:

The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom. ...

Just thought it captured the mood of darkness and anxiety. But with a note of hope, even if we don’t know exactly what it is.

Full poem here.

***

Sloane writes:

I go back to Richard Siken often in times of upheaval and crisis; his writing conveys a sense of determination through panic that is deeply soothing. “Driving, Not Washing” tells a story of the aftermath of violence, and this line has stuck with me for many years:

Every story has its chapter in the desert, the long slide from kingdom
         to kingdom through the wilderness,
                    where you learn things, where you’re left to your own devices.

Full poem here.

***

Ileana recommends “I, Too” by Langston Hughes:

This poem gives me hope to continue fighting against racism in the U.S. It validates the sense of longing present in my life as a Latina American, longing to finally be considered equal as I know I am.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

Full poem here.

***

Finally, “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith, available here. Susan finds hope in the last few lines:

Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Instead, at around 9 p.m., I started to feel sick to my stomach. And I woke up on Wednesday feeling physically crushed. I had no idea how much this election meant to me until Tuesday night.

I guess it feels worse because I truly believed we were waking up on Wednesday with a woman President. I already believed it was a done deal, because to believe otherwise was to believe in a world I didn’t think existed anymore. I didn’t want to believe that we live in a world where racism, sexism, and threats of violence can still prevail. I'm lucky I don’t feel the weight of sexism and racism on a daily basis. I am surrounded by powerful and inspirational women every day at work and in my life. And it’s easy for me to forget that this is not the norm.

I now know in my bones that it’s not yet the norm. This past week I was reminded that I will never know what it’s like to be a confident male walking into any room. I was reminded that as a woman, I am not judged by what I say or what I think, I am immediately judged by what I look like, and how my mannerisms come across. I was reminded that when I cry or act “irrational,” I am perceived as a foolish woman who can’t control my emotions. We still only aspire to a world where “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all people are created equal.” The world needs to change for women.

That could be a silver lining to Hillary’s loss, as my colleague Caitlin points out: the reminder that a female president isn’t inevitable could inspire many women to speak up in ways they haven’t before. Brooke writes:

Thank you for sharing Megan’s article about the anger and guilt she is feeling. As a white woman who voted for Clinton but has felt equally intimidated to speak up over the last few years, I feel the same way and have been really struggling over the last few days. I feel like the black and Latina women I know have been so much more vocal, and I also feel ashamed I didn’t join them.

I also voted for Romney instead of Obama in 2012 and I never told anyone, and I worry that shame I felt for being a Republican—although socially very liberal—is what contributed in part to Trump’s rise. And the remarkable thing is, I still feel scared to be vocal! But I’m forcing myself to be vocal now.

Speaking of white women, they’ve received an outsize share of blame from liberal critics for voting for Trump—though as my colleague Michele writes, white women as a group tend to vote Republican for many different reasons. If you’re a Republican woman who broke party lines to vote for Clinton, or a woman who voted for Trump in spite of mixed feelings, we’d like to hear from you: hello@theatlantic.com.

This next reader can also relate to Megan:

I felt the guilt creeping in the morning after the election even during early conversations at work about what went wrong nationally. Then I heard it in Hillary Clinton’s concession speech: She acknowledged the secret, private group Pantsuit Nation, but then said, “I want everybody coming out from behind that—and make sure your voices are heard going forward,” with frustration peeking through. In that sentence, I felt like Hillary looked every one of us who was an active participant in that group square in the eye and asked us why we couldn’t have been more brave.

In an election that came down to 150,000 votes, why did we—educated, opinionated women (and men)—shy away from trying to have reasonable conversations with our friends, families, and neighbors? Why did we take so much comfort and joy in our Facebook wall turning into a safe space of Hillary cheerleaders? Why weren’t we forcing ourselves to have challenging conversations?

My colleague Chris is leading a challenging conversation right now among some readers who voted for Trump and others who are trying to understand why so many people did. Those confrontations and connections will be even more important as we move on from the election, and I encourage you to read that discussion here, and join in. Meanwhile, that same line from Clinton’s concession speech stood out to Joy, a reader from Los Angeles:

I was added to the Pantsuit Nation early on when there were a few thousand members. I watched that number grow to three million in a matter of weeks. I read the stories that poured in and understood the relief people felt at having a shared private space to express ourselves. It was a secret space, hidden from the trolls and family members who leapt at any mention of HRC on our social media pages. It felt good to belong to a group who wasn’t afraid to say she’s not the lesser of two evils; she is THE BEST CHOICE.

In Hillary’s concession speech she referenced the Pantsuit Nation and how she hoped those voices would come out and be heard. And that’s when it hit me: I’d been hiding. My hiding cost her the election, just as much as the Trump voters.

I hesitated before wearing my Hillary T-shirt out in public. I never could commit to putting the bumper sticker on the outside of my car, so I taped it inside the tinted rear window and told myself my children were probably safer this way. I felt exposed when my in-laws, Trump supporters, came to visit and saw my Hillary votive candle on my mantle. I worried that my kids would repeat something I’d said about Trump and their grandparents would get offended. Why did I worry about offending them when everything out of Trump’s mouth offended me?

Now we’re days past the election and I’ve been added to many more secret Facebook groups. People are wearing safety pins as a secret signal to others they pass on the street. We’re all afraid and communicating in code. No one wants to be exposed, identified and vilified as a “crybaby” who won’t accept things and move on. What is it that keeps us in the shadows? I still can’t answer that for myself.

That’s been the most painful question for many of our readers, who wrestle with guilt and shame over failing to publicly support Hillary Clinton even as they explain the fears and pressures that kept them quiet. Meghan G., another member of Pantsuit Nation, writes that she’d stopped mentioning her support for Hillary because she was always accused of voting for her “just because she’s a woman.” Amy, a Democrat in Texas, kept quiet about politics at work, because she has a government job—but she also didn’t wear her Hillary shirt outside in her neighborhood, because her husband was afraid she’d be harassed or attacked by Trump supporters. James B. Youngblood, who lives in a mostly white, mostly Republican town in northern California, says that “as a gay man I have often let things slide and hid my own feelings, often to keep the peace and avoid confrontation but also to avoid physical violence.” He calls his reasons for keeping quiet “shameful,” and maybe they are. But those threats and fears are also real.

It’s a strange mixture of factors, I think, that silences Hillary supporters—especially women, especially in this era of so much and so little progress. There are the habits of silence we learn over years of being dismissed or talked over, of being called bitchy, of having our pleasant smiles prized over anything that we might say. The habits of fear that we learn over years of silently ducking our heads past catcalls, of clutching our keys in our pockets in case a strong man on a dark street turns out to be dangerous.

But then there are the other aspects of being a woman in America: the fact that nearly every possibility does seem open to us, and that the sexism we do encounter is rarely so overt as Donald Trump’s. The remarkable fact that for many women my age, the nomination of a woman by a major party feels normal; that the shattering of America’s highest glass ceiling feels so inevitable that it’s somehow embarrassing to admit putting votes behind a desire to see it break. It can almost feel, strangely, like a betrayal: Generations of women have fought to ensure that when it comes to opportunity, gender doesn’t matter. Today their success is defined, ironically, by the invisibility of what they’ve achieved.

And that combination—the subtlety and the complexity and the normalcy of it all—can hold us back from publicly supporting the champions we have. Take it from Carol, whose surprise about Clinton’s loss is mixed:

Hillary’s brutal beating by Trump has shockingly revealed to many of us that the U.S. is far more misogynistic than we realized. Many of us women truly thought we’d come a long way, baby, but now we know the awful truth.

In 2008, I talked my mother, a glass-breaker herself, out of voting for Hillary in the primary by convincing her that too many people seemed to hate Hillary, and that she couldn’t win the national election. I had long heard shockingly snide remarks about her from both women and men.

In honesty, I think Hillary, who is my age, is yesterday’s version of a woman leader, defined in the corporate world of the ’90s when we strove to fit in with the men, from the pantsuit to the tightly controlled emotions. Some day, I believe a different woman will come along who is strong in a different way, more comfortable in her femininity, using her femininity in a way that is powerful but somehow not threatening. And only because Hillary lost so painfully will people rejoice to finally see a woman take the White House. Hillary was simply not the right woman for this time.

At this time, the president-elect of the United States is a man who’s been openly hateful toward women. In this time, what it means to be an American woman is more complicated than ever. So what does it mean, as Carol puts it, to use femininity in a way that is powerful? What is it, as Joy asks, that keeps us in the shadows even as we succeed? I’ll welcome your thoughts and reflections, as I’ll be reflecting myself.

For my part, I’ve quietly, passively, half-guiltily supported Hillary Clinton since the 2008 primaries, when a boy in my high-school Spanish class said the most sexist thing I’ve ever heard in person, before or since. His name was Tré. He was a class clown, usually, but that day he was being serious, wearing a “Hope” T-shirt with Obama’s face, and wristbands in red, white, and blue. He wasn’t old enough to vote, but he was supporting Barack Obama. He was hopeful and proud; it was long past time for a black man to sit in the White House. And then he turned to Hillary Clinton, or rather to Bill Clinton’s infidelities: “If her pussy wasn’t good enough, how’s she going to be president?”

In the classroom, there was a minor uproar. A girl shrieked with laughter: “You’re so bad!” The boy next to me, Noah, pronounced Tré’s language inappropriate and threatened to call the principal, and Tré turned angry: Noah wouldn’t dare. The two of them faced off over a desk, and all I could think was that I couldn’t let them fight. All that I said was, “Tré, please stop.” And he thanked me for asking nicely.

I was 15. I could recite the names of suffragettes; I’d grown up on historical-fiction novels with heroines who weren’t allowed to do things just because they were girls. But this was the first time I’d seen a peer, someone I liked and trusted, so crudely and casually dismiss the strength and skills of someone like me. It was the first time I recognized how much a female president would mean: the example that she’d set, the respect and the progress to which she would testify. It was the first time I realized, fully, that I needed Hillary Clinton. It was also the first time I failed her.

But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us.
We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder
the longer they spend burning us,
we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading,
by refusing to die: what are we but a fire?

Full poem here. Katie writes:

I printed this out to put on my wall.

***

In Laura’s recommendation, “Ulysses,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson takes up a similar theme:

Come, my friends,
Tis not too late to seek a newer world. …
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Full poem here.

***

Barry, a member of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Horde, sent us Margaret Walker’s “For My People”—recommended by another Horde member, Dirk:

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
    from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
    trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,
    all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born.

Full poem here.

***

And Margo Waring shared her own poem, “Morning, November 9, 2016.” The last few lines:

Home, I will sink my fingers into cold earth
Restore order to my garden.
I will listen to my stream
Hear it dissolve into the sea.

Full poem here.

***

Diane finds melancholy comfort in Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Full poem here.

***

Jonathan’s choice is a poem written in 1981 by a fifth-grader, Marvin Mercer:

My heart trembles like a poor leaf.
The planets whirl in my dreams.

Full poem here.

***

From Leslie, “Let No Charitable Hope,” by Elinor Morton Wylie:

I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
The little nourishment I get.

Full poem here.

***

That one reminded me a little of “Invictus,” by William Ernest Henley:

In the fell clutch of circumstance
     I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
     My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Full poem here.

***

Paul recommends William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming”:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

Full poem here.

***

From Catherine, “Hope,” by Lisel Mueller:

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs
from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

Full poem here. Catherine writes:

I sent this out to my friends the night President Obama won his first presidential election.  I sent it out again last Thursday, President Obama’s last full day in office.

***

Speaking of hope, Jean’s pick is by Emily Dickinson:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

Full poem here.

***

From Steven, Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing”:

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and
          strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
          singing on the steamboat deck …

Full poem here.

***

John pivots off  a recommendation from another reader, Michele, and writes:

Here’s another Wendell Berry poem that deserves attention in these times, for the attitudes it recommends adopting and the actions it encourages.

It’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”:

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.

Full poem here.

***

And on that note, Lori recommends “Outwitted,” by Edwin Markham:

He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!

Read it here.