Today feels eerily similar to how August 6th around three a.m. felt for me, for my family, and many community members when my husband lost his race as county sheriff over a narrow 380 votes here in Washtenaw County.

My husband is a man who has dedicated his entire life to the service of others for 25 years as he has passionately conceived and pioneered programs that have transformed lives within our community, as well as our community at large. He has been an architect of change and has personally stood within the confines of his own dualities of his own humanness while doing this work and raising a family.

I have had to continuously attempt to wrap my head around the question, whether he were my husband or not, “How does someone like that lose?”

The reason I chose today to start writing is because I believe that now a very similar question is posed on a national level, likely for a lot of us.

My husband was honest, he was committed, he was integral, he was quiet about the hypocrisy and lack of qualifications and quite honestly, the outright recklessness that came with the other two opponents.

I was pretty quiet, too. At least with the general public, to respect his wishes and also have been thawing out from new motherhood, postpartum, and navigating life which also put me in a time of solitude in and of itself. But, I’m done with quiet (It’s never been my strong suit). For a long time we went with the motto, “It’s not our job to be the whistleblowers on their behavior.” and while I still believe that to be true for the sake of how I spend my time, I also realize how little it really matters.

So, for my own well-being, and for the sake of some solace in people feeling that relatability, I might as well say what I need to say and get it off my chest.

His opponents made a valiant effort to dismantle years of work, degrees, titles, and partnerships that my husband earned in his lifetime, career and profession. False rhetoric and misinformation being spread, kind of comes with the territory of politics, I suppose. The racism? I guess I shouldn’t be surprising.

I do not use the word lightly when I say that the behaviors of his contenders in a local, county-wide election were egregious.

They stooped to levels so low that they put my freedom at risk (freedom that I have worked damn hard to have back, I might add). But most importantly, the safety of my children, which is indefensible.

I have understood on a new level, the level that individuals who are hungry for power will resort to. They were willing to win no matter what the cost or the horror that could have come with their actions.

Hearted by

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Sound familiar?

It is now my firm belief that elections require lies, if your truth is not enough to win. They require advantageous relationships, if you don’t have genuine ones to begin with. They require false promises, if it gets your their vote. They require misinformation to be spread, to divert from the truth. It means that any moral compass you may possess has to be shattered, or at the very least bent, which is not who my husband is.

Doesn’t it feel familiar?

Integrity doesn’t win elections.
Honesty doesn’t win elections.

We can be bewildered, we can be beside ourselves, and we can be outraged by the injustice that we feel. There is no quick fix, there is no magic word, and it is truly devastating for those of us who favored the opposing team.

But what now?

What do we do with this knowledge and understanding that we have? In my personal life I have learned that if I ignore my grief or distract myself from what is, eventually it will catch up with me.  I’ve spent many days going through the many stages of grief, some completely isolated in the beginning.

A friend said to me a couple weeks after we lost, “This community needed him, but you guys did not need it” and it struck me. We may have just been given the biggest gift of all. It’s hard to see it now, it may even be hard a year from now, but truly, wholeheartedly I have moments where I believe that we were spared an experience that would have not been good for us. Is that a selfish thought? Probably, but we have two beautiful daughters who get both of their parents today, and what’s beyond this? No one really knows.

So, in the short term, let’s be together.

Let’s hold the people we love close, and let’s commit to being drivers of change in our own pockets of the world for now. I urge each of you to engage with the issues that matter in our lives, support candidates who reflect our values, and hold each other accountable.

The road ahead is uncertain, far more than many of us would have hoped. The loss is painful, and of course it can and will be a catalyst of growth, if we let it. I still hold onto the belief that we must channel our grief into action, and maybe that is just sitting still, feeling the sadness and not causing any more harm. Let us come together, not just to grieve, but to uplift and ensure that our collective voice rings louder than the noise of those who seek power at any cost.

In solidarity and with zero f*cks left to give,

Keri Lynn Roche Jackson