There’s a lot of chatter right now about forgiveness and reconciliation. No doubt every spiritual and moral practice has their own version of what repentance and forgiveness looks like. Here’s how repentance was taught to me as a Mormon. There are specific steps: 1) Recognize and admit to yourself you did something wrong. 2) Feel sincerely sorry about it. 3) Stop doing this wrong thing. 4) Admit publicly that you did wrong — especially to people who were affected by this thing you did wrong. 5) Make restitution for the thing you did wrong.

Can you tell I’m excited? My emotions are jumping back and forth between laughing + cheering and weeping + shaking.

I’ve been celebrating with posts on Instagram and Twitter — I mentioned how we stood outside waving American flags and banging pots and pans and it was so wonderful seeing people from our quiet little town wave and honk their horns. I said it felt like the whole world was celebrating with us. In response, I’ve heard from people all over the world who answered: We ARE cheering along with you!!

I heard from someone in Berlin that the city rang their Freedom Bell when the election was called. The Freedom Bell was a gift from Philadelphia(!) and they only ring it on German holidays. (Crying again!)

Here are a few tweets I’ve shared since the announcement.

Hello, Friends. What a week! How are you holding up? Did anyone get enough sleep the last few days? As I write this, we still don’t have an official winner for the presidential election — though I’m confident, based on where the numbers are right now, it will be Biden. I look forward to celebrating and analyzing once the call has officially been made.

Something I’ve found really helpful this week: I’ve stopped looking at maps that fill in an entire state with either blue or red. They give such an inaccurate representation of what is actually happening in our country. Land doesn’t vote; people do.

Here’s another helpful map:

In many states it’s way harder to vote than it should be. In fact, voting should be super easy throughout the country. Anytime someone is working to make it harder to vote, assume they are up to no good.

Ready for your link list? Here are a few things I’ve wanted to share with you:

I’m so excited for you to get to meet Gina today. Let’s start by congratulating her, because she had a baby last week (and still managed to write this lovely post!). Gina and her family live in Yakima, Washington and their historic home is warm and charming and fun to explore. She is a resilient person who has dealt with some really tough stuff in her life, including the loss of a child. You’ll love getting to know her. Welcome, Gina!

[UPDATE: This post is from Wednesday, but I added Thursday & Friday tweets too.]

For anyone waking up to election news, stay hopeful! Good progress happened while you got some (much needed) rest. Here are a whole bunch of tweets I shared on Instagram this morning that you might find encouraging and calming: