Can we finally dare to hope?

I can’t stop crying. The salty drops trickling down my cheeks are tears of release, relief, and joy.

I can’t stop watching videos of people partying in the streets of American cities, celebrating the announcement that Joe Biden is now President-Elect, and I can see they’re experiencing similar emotions.

It feels as if an enormous weight has been lifted. That’s the release.

The relief is from anticipating the end of a four-year period of constant psychological assault by a president who doesn’t have dominion over my everyday life but still profoundly impacts my values, beliefs and faith in human nature.

The joy is in the hope that unity can trump division, that fairness and decency will prevail, and that empathy is what the world needs right now.

As I reflect on what has just happened, I realise it is the culmination of a cycle that began four years ago, when my feelings about world events became intermingled with my personal emotional challenges.

The pall of background anxiety began four years ago, after the EU referendum in June 2016. It pained me that so many people in this country believed the UK would be better off going it alone. Politics aside, it cut against my belief in connection and cooperation.

Two months later, my sister-in-law passed away after a long illness. Dealing as best I could with my brother’s profound loss as well as my own grief, I distracted myself by becoming fascinated by the upcoming US election.

At that time, it looked almost certain that Hillary Clinton would become the first woman president. She was the favourite – a supremely qualified candidate. Trump was the underdog – an amusing sideshow, puffed-up and grandiose. Surely the American people would vote for hard-won female experience over arrogant male inexperience?

Then came Election Day. I didn’t get much sleep, checking the results as they came in. When they called it for Trump, I sat up in bed, shaking with fear. I felt on a visceral level that his narrow win was truly dangerous for America and the world.

The personal meets the universal

In December 2016, my mum celebrated her 90^th birthday – a great day, marking a great milestone – but sadly the coming year would bring a marked decline in her mental and physical faculties.

After that, my personal grief and anxiety – caring for Mum and dealing with the loss of a little bit of her every week as she sank into dementia – existed alongside a deep collective unease.

For me, watching Obama leaving the White House and Donald Trump becoming president symbolised a loss of hope and faith in the future – a reversal of progress, if you like.

As the rise of extreme Brexiteers continued here at home and Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, Trump carried on with his relentless battering of my senses and sensibilities, creating alternative realities and undermining people’s trust in facts, knowledge, science and truth.

Perhaps I should have switched off the TV and social media, but I couldn’t look away. After all, I am a journalist at heart.

Then came 2020.

In January, it became clear that Mum could no longer live independently. She contracted norovirus, which she then gave to me. At the end of the month, while I was recovering, she moved into a care home – which was heartbreaking in itself.

She’d only been there for about 10 days when she fell and fractured her pelvis and was in hospital for nearly a month.

She survived surgery and made it back to the care home, but never recovered her mobility. She lost her ability to walk, then lost her 98-year-old sister.

We (me, my brother, sister, niece and brother-in-law) visited her once more before the first lockdown on March 23^rd. After that, there was the odd Skype call, but she never understood why we weren’t coming to see her. And I lived with the background fear that coronavirus might enter the care home and take her away without us being able to say goodbye.

When we finally resumed (socially-distanced) visits in July, we were shocked – she had lost so much weight and was terribly frail.

I watched, helplessly, as she entered her final decline. At times it felt as if I was waiting for her to die. But the end came quickly and, thankfully, she did not suffer.

The last day came on September 10^th. I think she’d had enough, and decided to leave us on what would have been her 71^st wedding anniversary, six months to the day that her sister had died.

To add to this annus horribilis, in the middle of all this we received the shocking news that my brother’s niece had been stabbed eight times by her ex-boyfriend, who has now been charged with attempted murder.

Stress upon stress, loss upon loss…

And now here we are again – we’ve come full circle back to another US election.

Only this time, whatever challenges lie ahead, hope is kindled.

I’m picturing Mum smiling, as she was always an optimistic lady. (She loathed Trump, so would have been very happy to see the back of him.)

I’m learning from Joe Biden, who has ascended to the highest office by holding on to purpose and perspective while dealing with immense personal loss.

Here’s a man who, like me, values empathy, unity, equality, fairness, connection, and co-operation.

Here’s a man who has experienced terrible tragedy in his life.

Here’s a man who has plumbed the depths of sorrow and picked himself up again.

Here’s a man who has given me hope that this too shall pass.

The past four years have been exhausting in so many ways. Now it feels as if I finally have permission to rest and to grieve.

I’m not sharing my story because I want you to feel sorry for me, but to give you permission to honour your grief and anxiety – because God knows you must be feeling scared and sad in your own way.

There is not a single person – certainly in this country, if not the world – who has not experienced some kind of loss this year, be it the loss of a loved one, loss of health, loss of income, loss of intimacy, loss of physical touch, loss of connection to friends and family, loss of routine, loss of freedom, loss of a wedding, loss of a birthday celebration, loss of hopes and dreams… the list goes on.

COVID-19 is not done with us yet (although we’ve just had good news about a potential vaccine), and we have the great unknown of Brexit to come.

But, for now, I can allow myself to cry, safe in the knowledge that my faith in human nature – and the possibility of a better future – has been restored.

We all need to grieve our losses. It’s the only way to make space for hope.