Heidi Stevens: Regardless of the outcome, this election is going to take some time to process. Here's how we could start

I’m writing this with no idea who our next president will be. You may be reading this already knowing.

I’m typing this six days before Election Day. It will appear in the printed version of my hometown newspaper, and several others, five days after Election Day. Such is the reality of newspaper deadlines. It’s a little like writing a Super Bowl story during halftime.

But the outcome isn’t the whole story.

The outcome charts the path ahead on so many issues that shape and define our lives: the economy, health care, reproductive rights, the climate, what our children learn at school, whether there’s a Department of Education, the future of Ukraine, the future of the Middle East, the future of newly arrived immigrants, the future of our democracy.

But the moments that led us here matter too.

And regardless of the outcome, we have some processing to do.

Regardless of the outcome, we just lived through a campaign cycle in which one candidate, a convicted felon, filled Madison Square Garden with racist drivel, including a comedian who called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”

Regardless of the outcome, we just watched John McEntee, former director of Donald Trump’s presidential personnel office and Project 2025 senior adviser, post a video a week before Election Day saying, "So I guess they misunderstood. When we said we wanted mail-only voting, we meant male—M-A-L-E."

Trust us. We understood.

Regardless of the outcome, we just endured a commercial from Elon Musk’s America PAC that starts off, “Kamala Harris is a C Word.”

“You heard that right,” the ad continued. “A big ole C Word.” (Eventually, you learn, the word in question is "communist." Which is also something Harris is not.)

Regardless of the outcome, we just witnessed what happens when candidates for the highest offices in the land spin lies about immigrants and their families—lies about them eating pets, lies about them getting in the way of hurricane relief efforts, lies that dehumanize our fellow humans and make them easier to harm.

Regardless of the outcome, we just sat through an election cycle in which one side was so mean-spirited, so exhausting, so untethered from truth, so intent on cleaving us into parts, so dead set on spinning us into warring factions, so adept at disorienting us, so determined to distract and dislodge us from the promise of our collective humanity, that it will take a minute to get our bearings.

Here’s one place we can start.

The presidency is a privilege.

We are, by careful, codified design, governed by the people, for the people. And the people are a beautiful, complicated, raucous, wounded, proud, resourceful, joyful, angry, brilliant, vulnerable bunch.

To be trusted to lead that bunch is an honor. But it is a job of service, not sovereignty.

Regardless of the outcome.

We have so much to live for. We have so much to fight for. We have so much to work for. We have so much to fix. Our planet. Our health. Our access to housing and food and clean air and clean water. Our kids’ safety from gun violence. Our daughters’ bodily autonomy. Our parents’ ability to age with dignity. Our humanity.

We are a body politic. Bodies do best when all of their parts are functioning. When all of their parts are healthy. When all of their parts are cared for. When all of their parts are tended to. When all of their parts are fed. When all of their parts are understood as vital and interconnected.

Ideally, our next president knows and honors and lives by this. Ideally, our next president surrounds herself or himself with people who know and honor and live by this.

But regardless of the outcome, we do. We know it. And it’s on us to honor it and live by it. It’s on us to protect all the parts of the body politic from harm, from exploitation, from denigration, from neglect. It’s on us to make sure all the parts of the body politic are fed, feel loved, know joy, see beauty.

That work is also a privilege. And we can start it on day one, regardless of the outcome. Regardless of who’s in office. And we can, and should, continue. As long as we need to. As long as we’re called to.

That’s how we write the rest of our story.