Around 6 a.m. on November 9, 2016, I went into my nine-year-old daughter’s bedroom and sat at the foot of her bed, weeping while I watched her sleep. I’m not a person who cries a lot. And if I do, I tend to be both furious and alone. But that morning, all bets were off.

Looking at my daughter in her little bed with her little stuffed bunny, brown hair covering her face, I knew I had failed her. We betrayed our daughters (and sons), allowing a dimwitted reality television host with a raft of sexual assault allegations against him to win the White House. My three kids had been worried about the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency since he descended that golden escalator, but I had soothed them. It could never happen, I said. Totally sure of myself.

I had to wake them up and admit I’d been wrong. That things aren’t fair. That when powerful men are involved, sometimes there are no consequences for bad behavior.

It was a terrible lesson. And I had to keep learning it. From the hideous show trial for now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to writer E. Jean Carroll’s all but dismissed account of sexual assault to the entire Jeffrey Epstein saga, the past three years have been blanketed in misogyny and frustration.

I’ve gotten so used to disappointment that I’ve turned into one of those people who are skeptical of even minor good news. Oh, a heartwarming acceptance speech at an awards show? I bet that person is a fraud. A cute moment captured on video? Rehearsed. A woman on the rise in national polls? No chance. I don’t want to fall it.

When Hillary Clinton conceded, I mourned her administration, what could have been. But I also felt a deeper sense of loss. I’d dreamed that I would see a woman elected president, and I worried that we had convinced an entire generation of men and women that a female president was unelectable. If this woman couldn’t win against this man, who could?

And I’m not alone in this fear. “There’s no way they’ll elect a woman,” an older friend tells me when I run into her at Starbucks. “Americans aren’t ready for a woman president,” a neighbor fumes in the elevator one morning. My mother-in-law worries that former vice president Joe Biden has a better chance against Trump, whatever his foibles. At night I lie in bed and stare into space, thinking about farmers in Iowa and whether they’ll ever take a chance on Elizabeth Warren or even Kamala Harris or Amy Klobuchar. I try not to personalize this. The last election wasn’t about how I felt, and this one isn’t either. It’s about voters in six swing states; it’s about ironworkers in Michigan and housewives in Milwaukee. This is not about my heart.