PALO ALTO — She feared it would end this way.

Christine Blasey Ford even told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that she wondered whether she would “just be jumping in front of a train that was headed to where it was headed anyway, and that I would just be personally annihilated.”

This private, unassuming college professor, this wife and mother of two teenage boys, has returned to the Bay Area, one of her friends said Saturday, although he wouldn’t say where. Like the “Peninsula Moms” who promised to “form a human chain” around her house, her friends are fiercely protective of her.

Despite her ordeal on the national stage — the death threats and ridicule she suffered after accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers — her friends hope she will return stronger for it, that the chance she took will somehow be worth it in the end.

“I have to be optimistic that good comes from taking a risk to tell the truth, even if the power aligns against you,” said Jay Backstrand, a baseball coach to one of Blasey Ford’s sons. “If you stop believing that, I’m not sure what the whole experiment is anymore.”

Blasey Ford’s lawyers told CNN she has no regrets. All she wanted to do was tell her story. She has no interest in seeing Kavanaugh impeached, her lawyers said, and is ready to move on with her life.

Of all the places to come home to, Blasey Ford probably couldn’t dream up a more welcoming one than this bastion of highly educated liberals. A week before she testified, a plane flew over downtown Palo Alto pulling a banner saying, “Christine: We Have Your Back.”

Backstrand said he and a few other close friends flew to Washington, D.C., to provide her emotional support — “a friendly face, safety, encouragement, stability.” The TV cameras captured him during Blasey Ford’s testimony, sitting just a couple of rows behind her.

Blasey Ford kept herself isolated during the days surrounding the tumultuous Senate hearings, where Kavanaugh vehemently denied the allegations. But Backstrand said she was aware of the rallies at Palo Alto City Hall, and the letters of support from her professional colleagues as well as her friends and neighbors who promised to bring over dinner and help with the kids.

“She deeply appreciated it and knew it was happening for sure,” he said.

When Blasey Ford settles in, Palo Alto Mayor Liz Kniss plans to present her a proclamation, extolling her courage and bravery.

“She’s one of us and we will support her no question,” said Kniss, who was so inspired by Blasey Ford that she — while standing in front of Blasey Ford’s house after a rally two weeks ago — decided to tell her own story of being sexually assaulted as a young woman. It was a secret she had kept for more than 50 years.

Kniss said she was overwhelmed by letters and words of support — and expects Blasey Ford will be as well.

But the mayor, too, had no answer for a question everyone is asking: “Where does she go from here, and more than that, where do all the women in the U.S. who have been sexually assaulted go from here?”

Months before Blasey Ford burst onto the national stage with her explosive allegations, she had confided in friends on the beach in Capitola and worried that coming forward, risking her reputation, her family’s safety and all of their futures to go public wouldn’t make a difference in the end.

“It is a life-altering experience and nothing’s going to be the same,” said Jim Gensheimer, one of those friends she told about Kavanaugh at the beach. “That’s the sad thing in a lot of ways.”

That July day on the beach, she had told Gensheimer she “wanted to remain confidential and was weighing the calculus, but then her cover was blown, so all the fears she had are coming true.”

Blasey Ford might have held the loneliest seat in the country when she faced the Senate Judiciary Committee, painstakingly laying out her claim that she was “100 percent” positive that it was Kavanaugh who pinned her down, groped her and covered her mouth during a high school party decades ago.

During her testimony, Blasey Ford showed a vulnerable side. Her chin quivered at times as she discussed the lasting impacts of her attack. She has told friends that her fear of being trapped made her insist that her husband install a second front door when they remodeled their Palo Alto home. She has a fear of flying.

But her friends are not worried that she lacks the strength to endure what may come.

“She’s tough as nails,” Backstrand said. “She’s proved that. I’m not worried about that.”

Other people made famous by national controversies are still facing challenges from an unforgiving public. Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who had an affair with President Clinton, has become an anti-bullying advocate after trying for years to restore her dignity. Former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has become the face of Nike, but is still without a team after he led the movement to kneel during the National Anthem to protest police brutality against people of color.

Blasey Ford’s next move is far from clear. Will she go underground and stay out of the public eye, as Anita Hill did after accusing Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment? Could she become the new feminist face of the #MeToo movement?

“I don’t think Christine has any idea,” Backstrand said. “My guess is that it will take a long time, as it would for anybody, to figure out maybe what all just happened, what she thinks about it, and where she may or may not play a role in the future.”

“She deserves a giant hug for her bravery,” said Bethany Kay, 44, who knows Blasey Ford through their children’s sports, “and being in the national spotlight talking about difficult issues, not knowing what the outcome would be and knowing she will be torn apart in all different ways, even by the president.”

While Blasey Ford has inspired many young women to tell their stories of sexual assault and demand to be heard, Kay said, “it’s got to be sad and frustrating” to bring such serious allegations and ultimately be ignored by more than half the Senate.

She hopes Blasey Ford’s testimony will “be the first of many waves of hopefully greater change of gender equality in our country. We haven’t seen that turn yet today, but this will be a point on a timeline. Each woman who breaks a glass ceiling is on the timeline of changing gender equality.”

Blasey Ford never sought the limelight, her close friends say, and for weeks tried to remain anonymous — with both Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the Washington Post. But once her name was leaked and other reporters started knocking on her door, she decided to go public.

“She went into this with her eyes wide open and decided to take the risk to do it,” said Helena Chmura Kraemer, a Stanford professor emeritus who has co-authored a book and journal articles with Blasey Ford.

Whether Blasey Ford will return to her job as a psychology professor at Palo Alto University — which specializes in training psychology PhDs and is affiliated with Stanford — is also uncertain.

But she will be welcomed back when she’s ready, Kraemer said.

“I’d probably take a quarter off,” Kraemer said. “Sounds like a good idea for a sabbatical and to take time for everything to cool down and her children to readjust.”

Despite being the target of death threats after her story first appeared in the Washington Post three weeks ago, Blasey Ford is probably safer now that Kavanaugh was confirmed, Kraemer suspects.

“I think she’d be in more danger if he didn’t get on the Supreme Court,” Kraemer said. “For the rest of us in the United States, I don’t think that.”