I just took the front page of today's paper, which said in 50-point type "Bush Wins!" and started a fire with it. Small consolation after Tuesday and Wednesday's debacle, but it made me feel better, nonetheless.

This is the first time in my memory that I and everyone I know and love are feeling horrible at the same time. It seems very dangerous. Usually in a population there's a kind of balance — one person's in love, another's heartbroken; somebody's father just died, but somebody else is pregnant. The picture I keep seeing in my mind this week is of all of us on board a sailing ship standing in a crowd at one railing, the boat heeling so far over it could easily flip.

I've found some solace from a friend who said, "Open your aperture wider, to include the whole planet, and this seems less important," and from another who was taking comfort in the historical perspective — that oppression isn't new, and it was never going to be solved by having Kerry for president instead of Bush.

After my initial hit-by-a-train feeling began to wear off, around Wednesday noon, I had to drive by myself to Sacramento. Something weird happened on the drive, while I was listening to Beethoven's Missa Solemnis because I couldn't stand the election rehashing one more second. My mind finally settled down. I began to feel more buoyant, more collected. And I realized it was because this kind of massive defeat is really familiar to me.

Advocating for abused children, which is where I focus my political energy, we are almost always up against odds like this — molesters routinely win custody of their kids in the courts, as the general population ignores the issue or minimizes it or dismisses it. (Witness how the subject disappears off everyone's radar even though the FBI says it happens to one in three girls and one in five boys.) Suddenly the national arena has moved into territory with which I'm very familiar.

We're going to lose the Supreme Court, we'll lose public legitimacy for our views just because there are so few Democrats in power. It's going to seem as though we're powerless. But don't you believe it. It just takes a different kind of strategy to fight this way — since there's no outside support, you have to embody your values more personally.

I can't stop a kid from being attacked by her dad, but I can show up at her school and tell her class it happened to me, too, and just stand there being alive and OK. Read a few poems. She can see that I didn't crack up, or commit suicide. She can feel less alone, and hold onto that feeling until she's old enough to get out.

There's a longer horizon to this kind of resistance, and it's more intense person-to-person work. But it's not impossible. It's actually kind of fun. I'm as sorry as anyone we lost so badly this week, but welcome to the fray.