This week on a special mini episode of One Bad Mother, it's okay to feel your feelings.

Woo!

Woo!

Boy!

Woo boy!

This was not how many of us hoped this election would go.

As a parent, this was the first election where my kids were old enough and aware enough

to absorb the campaign rhetoric that both sides put out.

You know how in the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, as a kid, you never

noticed how garbage the other kids were to Charlie Brown, and then you watch it as an adult,

and you have an entirely different takeaway? Well, this election was my kid's Charlie Brown.

My kids took away from this election a sense of real anxiety and fear, and I spent a lot of last night not watching the results come in because I had to focus on making my kids feel safe.

Ellis was angry that there seemed to be no justice for a bully, and Katie Bell was very scared that we would go to war. And we weren't even

watching. Guys, we were watching cat videos and occasionally checking the count. The thing is that I

shared their feelings. I want my children and their friends, some of whom are trans or immigrants or female-bodied who want reproductive care, to live in a safe world. Even in my most rational of mental states, the fear of what may happen still looms.

So what the fuck do I tell my kids? And what the fuck do I tell myself? Well, this is what I went with.

It is okay to feel scared.

It is okay to feel angry and sad.

Those are your feelings, yours.

You get to have them.

Now, my question is, what are you going to do with them? It's a big question.

And there are lots of different answers. And to make life more fun, every day is going to be

...