There’s one thing—maybe only one thing—every single person in America can agree on right now: Exactly one year ago today, we woke up surprised. Maybe, the day before, you pulled the lever for now-President Donald Trump and thought, with one eye on the polls predicting Hillary Clinton‘s win, Oh, well, I said my piece. Maybe you stayed up late after voting for Clinton, watching that empty stage with its lonely blue H on TV, and felt ever more nauseous as midnight approached. Maybe you went to bed early because you hadn’t voted at all, sure that it didn’t matter. After all, nothing ever changes.
Except that by morning, everything had. And the drama hasn’t stopped since.
The next year unfolded in the kind of news gush the human brain isn’t built to handle. Women marched by the millions. Congress has tried and failed, tried again and failed again to repeal Obamacare. Details of Russian election interference that invaded even your Facebook feed continue to surface. At a more rapid clip than ever before, places became instant shorthand for tragedy and loss. Charlottesville. Las Vegas. Puerto Rico. The imminence of nuclear war is now something I check in on casually, right before I glance at the weather to see if I need a jacket.
Those are the big things, the things that used to steamroll us with their momentousness before we learned to digest them on a daily basis. But suddenly, it’s been a year, and we can see all the smaller, realer ways the election changed our lives and jobs and relationships. Almost everyone can name some parts of their day to day that look different in 2017 than they did in 2016. Here, I’ll go first: To manage my permanently ratcheted stress level, I’m working out more than ever before. I’ve gotten involved in local politics, managing a Women’s March huddle and pitching in on a city council campaign. And I’ve stopped putting up with the kind of casual prejudice that makes the cashier at my grocery store assume that because I’m white, too, she’s safe to tell me, in a mournful tone, “But oh, that neighborhood where my grandparents lived—it’s all black and Hispanic now.”
“You know what?” I responded, as she dragged my broccoli across the scanner. “I bet that’s exactly how people used to talk about your grandparents when they moved there.”
She stared at me, a little thrown. “There’s a lot of crime,” she said.
“And good people, too,” I replied. Get comfortable on that hook, lady, I was thinking. I didn’t come to let you off it.
I’ll be honest: Especially during the past year, I haven’t always been that calm or that neutral in my rhetoric. I’ve been guilty of generalizing and villainizing the people who think differently from me, and I still have many moments in which I can’t understand them at all. Reporting this piece—literally getting paid to listen to people, instead of just waiting for them to take a breath so I could cut in—helped and was humbling. (I wish I could have talked, specifically, to more women who voted for Trump. From the friends and acquaintances who lit up my social media with MAGA stuff a year ago, to professional Trump media surrogates, to women who work for Trump and Ivanka Trump brands, I got nos across the board. Hell, I couldn’t even get a response from the group called Women for Trump.)
But I’m not sure anyone else who falls on the other side of the aisle would have said something that affected me as much as what 21-year-old Abigail Bennett, whose story you’ll find below, shared at the end of our interview. I was impressed by the young College Republicans officer; I told her, when we talked about Charlottesville, that she did a far stronger job of denouncing what went on there than our president did. Before we hung up, I asked her if she wanted to run for office in the future.
She paused. “Only if the political climate becomes a little less negative,” she said finally. “I don’t want to put myself into a position where I’m miserable and nothing can get done because there’s so much hostility.”
I’m a registered Democrat; the chances of me ever voting for Abigail Bennett in the future are slim. It took a professional assignment for me to even hear her. But when she responded that way, it hit me: If the culture stays this toxic, principled and compassionate people on both sides will stand down. They’ll leave the ballot open for the sort of candidate who swims easy laps in this ugliness, who considers hate a platform and oppression a strategy. Bennett’s words are still haunting me, which I guess means that this year hasn’t finished changing my life, a little at a time, each day.
Here are more American women, in their own words, on how their lives have changed during the last year, too.
The Press Room Vet
The Press Room Vet
April Ryan, 50
White House correspondent and D.C. bureau chief, American Urban Radio Networks | Baltimore, MD
As a reporter for over two decades, April Ryan has had a chair with her name on it in the White House briefing room for a long time. But she’s had more dramatic moments during her last year of work than the last three administrations combined. (See: Former press secretary Sean Spicer admonishing Ryan to stop shaking her head, President Trump asking her, when Ryan questioned him on plans to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus, “Do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours?”) Ryan, author of At Mama’s Knee and The Presidency in Black and White, looked back on her year as a face of “fake news.”
Election night, when I saw the results, I said, “OK. Attacks will happen because he doesn’t like the press.” I didn’t know the attacks would be on me. It’s like going up against a pumice stone every day—there’s an abrasiveness, and you’re constantly feeling beaten down.
At first, I thought about leaving—but then I said no. This isn’t personal; it’s not about me. I’m a big girl, and I can handle it. I’m not going to let anyone take clothes off my kids’ backs.
This place will pull so much out of you, but I’ve learned to leave it there now. Early on, I couldn’t sleep—I was having a problem. Now, I’m doing more with friends, engaging more with people who mean well to me. When I get home, I don’t talk shop, and when people bring up the news or politics, I’m like, “Don’t talk to me about this.” It can be all-consuming, and I have a life beyond this.
PHOTO: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
I’ve gotten several death threats this year—once when I was shaking my head and Sean took me to task. If people don’t like me acting precious, whatever. Some people just don’t want me in the room. But on Twitter, I get people saying, “Auntie April, you’re great.” They ask me, “How do you take it? I would have—” But no, you wouldn’t have cussed out Sean or Sarah Huckabee Sanders or the president. This is the White House. This is my job.
There’s crazy everywhere we turn, but I’ve learned, this year, to put it in its place. I used to think I was thin-skinned, but my skin is tougher than I thought.
The Social Media Crusader
The Social Media Crusader
Jen Statsky, 31
Writer and producer | Los Angeles, CA
There was a time when Jen Statsky was as well-known for her biting Twitter jokes as she was for her work on shows like Broad City and The Good Place. Then came Donald Trump. Since his campaign started seeming like a real thing, Statsky has been using her platform—which currently has 120,000 followers—almost exclusively as a resistance bullhorn. Statsky reflected on her year trading punchlines for punches.
I didn’t make a calculated decision to stop writing jokes on Twitter and start making my tweets about this—it’s just that my Twitter now is a genuine reaction and representation of what I’m thinking about. I didn’t know I was capable of maintaining this level of anger. When I see a tweet about something that isn’t the news now, it’s like, “Oh, right. That’s what we used to use this app for. It wasn’t a daily rage factory.”
I recently had a tweet picked up by a right-leaning website, and the trolls came out. Nine times out of ten, they go right for your appearance. There’s no way you can read it all, because there’s just so much, and at a certain point it’s like, “Alright, I get the gist. I’m an ugly cunt.” It doesn’t affect my self-esteem, but I do feel this overwhelming sadness that these are real people. These people exist, and this is what they actually think. And this idiot [President Trump], every time he tweets or talks, is mobilizing armies of trolls. The way he spoke about Hillary, people were learning: “OK, that’s how we talk about women. Got it.” I feel like the Internet is truth serum that he reveals how people still think about women—that we’re invaluable, that you can use us sexually.
I’ve had the argument with people of “What’s the point? Twitter’s an echo chamber.” Maybe that’s true, but if you have a platform at all, it’s a way to spread information. And I do try to still be one percent funny in the tweets. Though some are just me, straight serious, telling someone to fuck off.
The DACA Mom
The DACA Mom
Angelica Villalobos, 32
Immigration rights advocate | Oklahoma City, OK
Angelica Villalobos came from Mexico to Oklahoma at 11 years old. She didn’t know she was undocumented until she was 18 and asked her parents for her birth certificate, so she could get her driver’s license. The years that followed her revelation were marked by pain and fear becoming routine. Villalobos was pregnant with her third daughter when, in 2007, a debate over whether to let undocumented people into hospitals cropped up in Oklahoma. Her oldest daughter’s ADHD medication—a legally controlled substance—would go lapsed for days while Villalobos tried to find someone with a driver’s license to go with her to the pharmacy. “You feel powerless,” Villalobos said. When President Obama signed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals legislation into law in 2012, she applied and was approved immediately. Villalobos, now an immigration rights advocate, breathed a sigh of relief. But since President Trump was elected—and since White House has announced plans to end the DACA program—she’s been holding it again.
What was really hard for me, going back to the campaign, was politicians like Sessions saying that [undocumented immigrants] are job-stealers and that we take benefits and social security—we don’t qualify for any of that. I’ve been paying taxes towards Medicare and Social Security since I was 18—before DACA, I had a ITIN number—and I don’t get any of that. I’m not complaining; what I’m saying is: President Trump didn’t just end the DACA program. He made us feel like criminals and terrorists. When you tell people to be afraid of others, it’s a very dangerous weapon. I took my 13-year-old daughter to a Bernie Sanders rally with me back before the election, and when she went to the 7-11 next door a group of white men started to harass her. They told her to go back to her country. She was born here. She’s a U.S. citizen.
My husband and I are both Dreamers. We’ve been together for 18 years. We have four daughters. The morning after the election, my 10-year-old was crying, saying, “Are we gonna have to go back to Mexico?” I tried to make it funny and said, “Well, you’ve never been to Mexico!” But inside, I had no idea what was going to happen.
I still don’t know. I don’t want my oldest daughter to have to worry about me and my husband. I want her to focus on her education. But we have talked with her about becoming her younger siblings’ guardian when she turns 18. She plans to go to college, and we’ve had to talk about having her stay in-state.
I’m afraid. I think it’s OK to be afraid sometimes. It forces you to look at your life differently, to come up with ideas to prepare for what’s coming. But I don’t want my daughters to be afraid. My youngest was always afraid of storms—she’d ask to sleep with us. Now, she’s OK with rain and thunder—but there’s this.
The Millennial-Republican Rep
The Millennial-Republican Rep
Abigail Bennett, 21
Student, University of Maine and Secretary, National Committee of the College Republicans | Oxford, ME
As an officer of the national committee of the College Republicans and the daughter of Richard Bennett, former chair of the Republican Party, University of Maine student Abby Bennett is essentially the face of young conservatives. But this administration has challenged her straight-ticket loyalty—she did not support President Trump in the election, and continues to find him problematic at best. Bennett opened up about what she’s learned this year—about herself, her peers, and the future of her party.
Politics are in my family. My dad was the chairman of the Republican party, and he’s my biggest role model. I started getting involved in high school with a Republican youth organization called Gen 207, and as soon as I got to college, I said, “Where’s the Young Republicans?” Later, I became secretary of the national committee. I’ve worked for Senator Collins—I love Senator Collins—and I really look up to Carly Fiorina, whom I thought was very outspoken and articulate during her campaign. I believe in freer markets and lower taxes. I believe that the government isn’t the solution for most problems in society.
We Republicans are the minority on campus right now. It’s difficult to put yourself out there, to sit at a table getting signatures. We face adversity all the time. Most people aren’t rude, but you have the people who want to go after you—the discourse has gotten really aggressive. But I also have people who come up to me and whisper, “I love your laptop stickers!” It’s almost like there’s a group of closeted Republicans on campus right now. They don’t want to announce who they are because of the atmosphere.
I understood why some people supported President Trump. He’s transparent, and he’s brought new conversations to the table, like the negative consequences of globalization. But when those Access Hollywood tapes got released, with him talking about women that way—I couldn’t come to terms with that. It’s just locker room talk? No. He’s running for the highest office in the land. He should be held to a higher standard. With older people, [my decision not to support Trump] was a point of contention—“if you didn’t, you’re not a true Republican.” But a lot of younger Republicans didn’t support him. People got really upset online when I condemned his comments about women on Facebook. My dad tells me not to respond to online comments, but I get really worked up about it sometimes. I don’t post as much about politics anymore on social media; I stick to positive things and nice pictures.
I think the administration has done some good things—he’s reduced regulatory costs, he’s given a voice to the manufacturing industry—and I like his authenticity. I think his lack of political correctness is a game-changer and will change how campaigns are run, hopefully for the better. But he makes sweeping generalizations about people, and he acts rude and childish. Twitter has given him a platform to be immature. I wasn’t very happy with the way he handled Charlottesville. We’ve had different people coming to our group this year, but we’re not going to accept people who are racists, who are just so far behind in our civilization. This faction is trying to become part of our party, and I will continue to make sure that they don’t. They are not welcome here.
The Mom Demanding Justice
The Mom Demanding Justice
Sheila MacLean, age withheld
Technical recruiter | Bethlehem, PA
Sheila MacLean and her husband brought their family from Austin, Texas to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 2013 and enrolled their two sons in the Saucon Valley School District, which is 87 percent white. Almost immediately, both boys, who are biracial and were 11 and 13 at the time, began experiencing regular racial harassment. In October 2016, just a month before the presidential election, the MacLeans’ older son punched another student—a student who had filmed him eating chicken and added racist commentary.
The district later cracked down, and the student who made the video was eventually charged with cyber harassment, but the racist behavior, MacLean says, persists. Earlier this year, the district held a meeting to discuss banning the Confederate flag on school premises. MacLean spoke at the meeting and was there to hear one board member pontificate, “You can’t handle the day-to-day bigotry, then it’s your problem…what you teach your kids is to hang in there and deal with it.” MacLean opened up about her anguished quest to make school safe for her sons.
The harassment started right away, as soon as we moved here. My sons were called the n-word in the hallway. One of them had a Confederate flag thrown over him one day. The kids told him to “wear it with pride.” My oldest son dealt with it by getting headphones to wear in the hallway, so he wouldn’t have to hear the epithets. For my job, I commute into Philadelphia or New York, and I had to stop because I would frequently be getting calls and texts from my sons saying, “Come pick me up.”
We reported these things, but there was always an atmosphere of disbelief [from the administration] and maybe even suspicion. Finally, the superintendent, whom I thank God for, got involved when someone got ahold of a note my oldest son had written on his PSSA exam, on the paper where they have to show their math work: “Please help us. They’re harassing my brother and me.” Whenever I think of that, it brings me to my knees crying. I feel like we failed our sons. We have always told them—someone bothers you, we’ll take care of it. We tried to do what was right and work within the system, but the system is not designed to help them.
Leading up to the election, I had an idea of the ramifications [of Trump winning]. But because of what my family was already going through, it just seemed so far away. Now, a year in, I jokingly say that whereas people were more circumspect before, now they’re letting their freak flags fly. Racism seems like something to be celebrated, touted as patriotism. But we’ve also been blessed to have people rally around us. Our church and our neighbors have been huge supports. I had another mom from school call me out of the blue to say, “I just heard what happened, and I am so sorry. What can I do to help?” After we were on the local news, a little old white lady at the grocery store came up to me and said, “I am so sorry. I just want you to know that we don’t all feel this way.” I don’t ever want to give the impression that everyone is like this, or even the majority, because they are not. It’s the minority, but they can be impactful.
My older son still wears his headphones in the hallways at school. My husband and I have discussed moving. But we look around right now and think, The way everything is going, where would we go?
The First-Time Candidate
The First-Time Candidate
Amy Zanelli, 36
Realtor and Candidate, County Commissioner | Lehigh County, PA
Amy Zanelli had been active in politics and community issues her whole life, stepping back only when her children were born and she stayed home to raise them. But President Trump had her concerned for the future, and all the talk around a need for more female leaders had her inspired. When the call came—literally—she answered it.
Once 45 won the primary, I started to get very nervous—and when he won, it felt like everything came crashing down. My daughters were in tears, my wife was in tears. Earlier that day, we had all been in our pantsuits with our little “nasty” name tags on. Not even 24 hours later, we saw swastikas [on the news]. For us, a lesbian Jewish family, that’s a little nerve-wracking.
I started to get very involved. I was rallying activist groups in my area and helping with the Hamilton Electors movement. My wife and I had to drag our two older daughters to the Women’s March—they didn’t get it until they got there. But after the march, they kept saying, “Mommy, are you going to run?”
I thought, “OK, I’ll run for school board.” Then the chairman of the local Democratic committee called and said she had asked some people from groups in the area whom she should recruit to run for this commissioner post, and they kept saying me.
This hasn’t been my campaign—it’s our campaign, my whole family. My daughters have been the most amazing little campaigners. My middle daughter, Maya, who’s nine, has gone out with people to teach them how to knock doors because she’s so good at it. The little one tells everyone she meets, “Vote Zanelli!” Our lives have become much more busy, but I’m still the class mom for all three of them. Sometimes I get flack [for doing parenting things when I could be campaigning], but I’m not going to ditch my kids for this office. I have to maintain a balance—I can’t just tell them they can have it all without showing them.
The hardest part of the last year has been the scrutiny. I went from this sheltered stay-at-home mom life, where I got to control almost all of the elements of my day, to being in the public spotlight. I can’t just throw my hair up in a bun and run to the supermarket anymore. But there are good parts of the spotlight, too. One of the best moments I had was when I was working a table for a local activist group at a festival. I wasn’t campaigning, but I had my button on. A group of young girls came up and one of them said, “Oh, I love Amy Zanelli!” She looked at me and said, “Wait, oh my God, are you Amy Zanelli?” She and her friends squealed like I was Taylor Swift. My daughters were there, and I’m so happy they saw that. I don’t want them to be passive observers of their world. I want them to reach out and shape it.
The Washington Insider Who Feels Like an Outsider
The Washington Insider Who Feels Like an Outsider
Rachel Bovard, 33
Senior Director of Policy, Conservative Partnership Institute | Washington, D.C.
For her entire career, Rochester native and policy analyst Rachel Bovard had been working on policy that, under a Democratic administration, was unlikely to ever become law. When last year’s election night rolled around, she didn’t expect anything to change. Then the evening wore on—and everything did.
Election night, I was at the Heritage Foundation [where Bovard worked at the time]. We had a big party. Everybody was like, “It’s gonna be another Dem. I’ll have a drink and leave.” Around 9 p.m., I saw Florida was in play. Then I saw Wisconsin and Michigan, and I was like, “Holy shit. This is real.” I’ve been working in the minority a long time, so it’s a little different for me—it was a feeling of “Oh my gosh, we’re going to have unified control of the government. This is amazing. All these policy things we’ve been toiling on in the wilderness, we’re actually going to be able to do.” That was my first thought.
I have worked around politics for a long time, and I’ve always had this detachment; it’s my job. I have a ton of friends who are progressives, and it’s been just fine until this year. Now, for the first time ever, I feel dismissed by them. They’re disgusted. I’ve lost friends I’ve known since college. Good friends, ones I want to share my life with. These people think I’m a horrible human being. I think my parents have been very hesitant to talk about what I do or share my work, and I don’t even send my brothers, who are super liberal, stuff that I write anymore. It’s super lonely that way.
People take the basest elements of Trump and use them to define everyone who supports him: “You’re a sexist. You’re a racist.” The left looks at the right and says, “You hate people. You want all brown people to die.” The right says, “No, we do care, but the rule of law matters.” We want to fix the system.
I’m not waving the flag for Trump, but I’m probably more of a Trump supporter than anyone I know. I appreciate that he’s upended this stratified, elite view of Washington. I think he’s a small and petty person, but that doesn’t matter to me. The policy matters to me. I think the shit about Charlottesville’s awful, but I don’t look at my president as a [moral] leader. I just don’t. I don’t know if that comes from my Catholicism or what, but I don’t expect him to be the North Star. You have these face-palm moments, like, “Are you kidding me? You couldn’t just handle it and not tweet that?” But I also don’t agree with the hysteria on the left. I don’t think he’s ruining our country.
I’ve never been this stressed before. I’ve done muay thai for years, and I’ve started doing that more. I started going back to my therapist. I’m sad about the world. I’m sad that we all hate each other this much.
The Former Hillary Staffer
The Former Hillary Staffer
Mary Jennings, 33
Surrogate Communications Manager, Hillary Clinton for President | Washington, D.C.
Lawyer turned communications expert Mary Jennings wasn’t looking to get into politics. But when a friend invited her in 2013 to come to a meeting about Correct the Record, an early Hillary Clinton SuperPAC, she decided to check it out. Fast forward to 2016 and Jennings was living in a Brooklyn one-bedroom with two other campaign staffers, helping to run communications for the Clinton campaign. “It wasn’t a lifestyle I wanted to sign up for,” Jennings says. “But she was that candidate for me. I’ve always admired her.” On election night, Jennings watched Clinton fall short. Thus began a year of eating, healing, and starting over. Nearly a year after that fateful night, Jennings looks back—and forward.
My day-to-day on the campaign involved writing talking points and preparing people who were going on TV that day, talking about campaign issues. It was really fun and super fast-paced. It was always a special day when Hillary came into the office. By the end of the campaign, our headquarters had something like 800 people, and she would shake every single person’s hand. It would take hours, and I felt so sorry for her, but it was really important to her.
I never had time to think about election day until it arrived. We never felt like the inevitable campaign—we were working our asses off, doing 18-20 hour days. We knew what was at stake. While the country not might have been paying full attention to how insane Donald Trump was during the campaign, we were watching it all. Every day. And we were terrified. We knew how he ran his businesses. We knew how he treated women. We knew his decades-long history of racism. Every day, we thought: “Oh my God. What if?”
My job on election night was to escort people to the suite level at the Javits center. I was running all night long—a toenail finally fell off in February because idiot me wore wedges that night. I barely looked at a TV all night long. At one point, my boss pulled me aside and said, “Hey, stay here, walk around and cheer people up. The vibe is getting down.” I was like, “Why? It’s still early. It’s going to be fine.” I don’t know what time it was—maybe 11—when my husband, who was there for support, called me and said, “Go find an empty room, Mary. She’s going to lose.” My sweet husband came into this room with more vodka drinks than I’ve ever seen one person carry. I collapsed on the floor and sobbed.
We had to be at the office the next morning because we had a week to close up this office that some people had been working in for years. There was a lot of crying that first day, but our operations team was so amazing—it seemed like something was brought in every hour. Ice cream! Donuts! Tacos! Bloody mary bar! Eat and drink to cope—that has been my 2017 mantra. Oh, and lots of HGTV.
PHOTO: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
I never went through that phase of feeling sad for myself. I felt sad for Hillary, even though she of course was holding it together, trying to make us feel better. She’s the strongest human being on the planet, in my humble opinion. To be honest, I was all right at the end of the year. It was about to be the holidays, and I hadn’t seen my family and my dogs in forever. I’d been living apart from my husband for a year. During the holidays, I watched a ton of crazy dark movies like The Revenant, Cold Mountain. I was like, “If Leo can handle being eaten by that bear, we’ll be fine! We literally had a Civil War, and look—it’s OK now.”
But come January, when the man started to govern, I hit a majorly dark depression. The first six months of the year, I was depressed. I did some work on the Supreme Court fight, consulting for a coalition that opposed Judge Gorsuch’s nomination, which also ended in a depressing outcome. I was eating and drinking way too much. Eating has been a theme; I feel like every time there’s a news alert, I’m running to the fridge. During Charlottesville, when [Trump] basically said, “Oh, it’s OK that white supremacists are marching in the streets,” I ordered edible cookie dough from Postmates. We’re living under a nuclear threat and he keeps poking [Kim Jong Un]? Now I need mac and cheese. I’ve gained the Trump 20—it’s like the freshman 15, but a lot less fun.
In the summer, things started to look a little brighter. My husband and I traveled and spent a lot of time outside. We bought bikes. Now I’m finally looking for jobs, and I feel like my life is getting on track. But things that depress me still happen all the time, like the announcement on DACA or birth control. It’s like, why?
I want to take a break from politics [professionally], but I will continue to support my progressive friends and our causes with all my heart and pocketbook. We’ve learned this year that calling your Congressman and protesting works. We’ve seen millennial and female candidates stepping up. We’re not just piling on Trump—we’re doing something about him. To see that has been uplifting. There’s still a lot of hope.
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