The mother of an 11-year-old girl, upset in the aftermath of the recent election, told me how hard it had been to explain the outcome to her anxious young child.

“You’re lucky your children are older,” she said.

The last time Donald J. Trump was elected, my son was 11 years old. He was scared that the country’s newly elected leader might try to deport his father, who was a British citizen at the time. (Shortly thereafter, I convinced my husband it was time to become an American.)

Our older child was 13. Both were old enough to be aware that something significant had shifted in the country’s political landscape, and to be worried about what it meant.

That shift would lead to the mishandling of a pandemic -- and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths -- along with the loss of women’s bodily autonomy and the rise of vulgarity and bigotry in the public discourse.

Eight years ago, I felt like I had to be strong and hopeful for my children. I wanted to be a voice of hope and encouragement for my readers and my community. Some of the things I wrote during that administration provoked plenty of racist vitriol. But it felt important to speak out against harmful policies and to say that we were better than the ugly, divisive rhetoric of the times.

This time, I have no such illusions.

A convicted felon, whom a jury found liable for sexual abuse and who promised mass deportations of people he has called “animals,” will soon lead this country. Those of us who were appalled by this candidate’s character, past behavior and vision for the country have a few immediate decisions to make: How does this election shake out in our personal relationships? How does this influence where we want to live and the work we do? How do we plan to fight for the things we care deeply about -- whether it’s democracy, human rights, health care, education or even simple decency?

For me, it’s striking how different this time around feels. On our last go-around on this chaos train, I felt compelled to defend what I thought were the ideals and values of this country. But with this election, a majority of voters revealed what their values actually are.

For those of us used to looking for silver linings and seeing the good in everyone, we need to be prepared to see and accept another truth: You can’t make people care about others.

I admire the people who have redoubled their commitment to activism in the dark times ahead. I also understand those who feel the need to disengage, draw their circle closer and focus on their own safety.

I know that hope is vital to surviving difficult times, but I’ve struggled to find it. Based on the conversations I’ve had (and witnessed) this past year, I believe that the distrust between those on opposite sides of the political spectrum will continue to grow even greater over the next several years.

My biggest fear is living in a society where the majority of people can no longer tell the difference between truth and lies. History is filled with dark lessons about what can happen. I’ve thought a lot about what this political moment means for my profession -- for those of us who believe in sharing truth in a post-truth world.

I have found some comfort in connecting with communities and people who share my concerns and values. And I think writing stories and columns that give people a chance to feel seen, especially when the world refuses to recognize their humanity, matters.

Maybe it matters now more than it ever did before.

I worry about the country and world my children are inheriting.

That frightened 11-year-old in 2016 is now a 19-year-old sophomore in college. He was more concerned about my feelings on election night this time around.

He sent me a text when the outcome became pretty clear: “I love you. Inshallah everything will turn out well in the future.”

Among the many shockwaves reverberating after the presidential election, a seismic shift in favor of abortion rights took place in the middle of the country -- in a bright red state, with support from Republican and Democratic voters alike.

Missouri, the first state to pass a near-total abortion ban after the Dobbs decision, overturned that ban with 51.7% of voters supporting a constitutional amendment enshrining the right to an abortion until the point of fetal viability, usually around 24 weeks.

Missouri was one of 10 states in which a question related to reproductive rights was on the ballot. Those measures passed in seven states and fell short in three. (One of those three was Florida, where 57% of voters supported repealing the state’s strict abortion ban -- but the bar for passage had been set at 60%.)

Missouri’s governor-elect, Republican Mike Kehoe, had previously stated that he was prepared for the amendment’s passage and would look for ways to subvert its impact. Other GOP legislators have been much more blunt, vowing to find a way to overturn the will of the voters.

The victory -- and its immediate rejection by GOP lawmakers in power -- ought to drill a message into the state’s electorate.

Missouri voters have repeatedly supported, as ballot questions, issues often backed by Democrats: raising the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid, legalizing marijuana and upholding abortion rights. Yet they continue to elect Republicans who seek ways to delay or undermine these policies.

This contradictory behavior of Missouri’s voters can be understood by the larger revelations from the election of former President Donald Trump. The early exit polling data indicates that he was elected by three key constituencies, which backed him by solid majorities: white men, Latino men and white women. One of their most important issues was immigration. Trump promised mass deportation and a restoration of the American culture and dominance that he values. He made many derogatory and false claims about immigrants during the campaign and debates.

Clearly, Trump's values and priorities are a reflection of the majority of white voters’ own values and priorities, along with those of Latino men, and his messages resonated with these groups the most.

So, how to explain Missouri's split vote -- in favor of both abortion rights and the man who takes credit for overturning Roe? It shows that white women, in particular, would prefer to vote for their personal bodily autonomy as a separate issue from everything else Trump stands for. None of his racist messages -- including the lies that Haitian immigrants were eating pets -- are deal-breakers for his core constituencies. Some of his supporters may find it distasteful to dehumanize others, but not disqualifying.

Preserving their own rights means compartmentalizing their support of Trump.

The vote in Missouri does not mean the right to an abortion is immediately available again in the state. The supporters of the amendment will use the state’s revised constitution to begin to file legal challenges to the current abortion ban law. Republicans undoubtedly have their own legal and legislative challenges in the works to try to keep women’s reproductive rights as restricted as possible.

In the meantime, women will continue to leave the state to get the medical care they need after a miscarriage, unwanted pregnancy or diagnosis of a fatal condition for the fetus -- if they are financially and physically able to do so.

Many women are not able to, as evidenced by the multiple reports of women who have died preventable deaths due to abortion bans in their states. Pregnancy-related deaths rose by 56% in Texas after the state’s 2021 ban went into effect. Infant mortality has also risen: "Hundreds more babies died than expected in the year and a half after (the Dobbs decision) in June 2022," reported the Washington Post last month, citing a JAMA Pediatrics study.

Today, we can be grateful that a majority of Missouri voters support a woman’s right to life if she gets pregnant.

Tomorrow, the fight to ensure that right begins again.

In an especially tense moment on screen, a woman who has been caring for her blind mother refuses to open the apartment door for her. Her mother had endangered the daughter’s newborn son in a moment of severe cognitive confusion.

The mother was begging for her daughter’s help. The daughter was holding a boundary.

I was on the edge of my seat in the cinema at the New Orleans Film Festival.

All of a sudden, a wail erupted from the back of the theater. I looked behind me: A young woman, who looked to be in her early 30s, slumped over in her seat momentarily. She quickly got up and began yelling at the couple sitting in front of her: “I’m OK! Are you OK?! I’m OK!”

I was in an aisle seat about 10 feet away from her. The heightened emotional scene continued to unfold on the movie screen, but every person in the theater was fixated on this young woman in the throes of a crisis.

I was glued to my seat, holding my breath. The first thought that flashed through my mind was the mass shooting in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in 2012. The shooter killed 12 people. "Is this how helpless they felt at that moment?" I thought. I wondered if the woman was going to pull a gun out of her bag and open fire on us. I felt so vulnerable being in such close proximity to her, and tried to avoid eye contact.

Then she put her hands above her head, yelling “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” as she marched down the aisle. An organizer from the New Orleans Film Festival guided her out of the theater.

In the film we'd been watching, "Removal of the Eye," the married co-directors, Prashanth Kamalakanthan and Artemis Shaw, play fictionalized versions of themselves. They are struggling with new parenthood, stalling careers and caring for an aging parent in decline. Their lives are thrown into chaos when one spouse's immigrant mother goes on a mission to exorcize the family from the evil eye. The film is a thrilling comedy with a current of anxious tension running throughout.

I talked to Kamalakanthan about what he thought was happening during that moment, which interrupted a pivotal scene. He said that to him, the energy in the room felt more like concern for the woman than overt fear. The wail had sounded like a loud groan to him, and he initially thought someone was responding poorly to the film.

“Oh no, it’s playing really badly in the room,” he'd thought. He realized how serious the incident was when he saw the woman walking out with the help of festival staff.

“Then I was a little shook and distracted from the rest of the screening,” he said.

I was, too, because I realized how socially conditioned I am to anticipate the worst when a stranger freaks out in a public place. It wasn’t just Aurora, but every single mass shooting and grieving parent and person I’ve lost to gun violence that has imprinted on my psyche.

Combine the skyrocketing mental health crisis in our country with the mass proliferation of guns and loose gun laws, and this is what you get -- heart-pounding paralysis in a theater seat when someone has a psychotic episode near you.

The festival staff helped the woman get medical attention. Those of us in the audience shifted our attention back to the drama on the big screen.

There’s a point in the film when Shaw's character says, “I feel like something really, really bad is going to happen.”

I thought about that line later as I processed what had happened in that room.

How did we let our society get to the point where this sentiment has become our cultural touchpoint in an emergency?

Sadly, we know the answer to that.