Photo by Sage Friedman
The last week before Election Day can feel like living an entire year with your foot on the gas and your phone on fire.
Information comes at you faster than you can process it. You are answering messages, solving problems, encouraging volunteers, moving supplies, and doing a hundred things you never imagined would become your responsibility. You are getting so much done, yet somehow it still feels like you should be doing more.
If that is where you are right now, you are not alone. Candidates, campaign teams, organizers, and volunteers are riding emotional roller coasters all day long. Hope in the morning. Panic at lunch. A wonderful conversation with a voter. A terrible message from a stranger. Then somebody needs a box of yard signs, and apparently you are also the shipping department.
In 2022, I wish someone had explained this entire cycle to me. Not just how to survive the final push, but how to come down afterward. How to make room for joy, disappointment, exhaustion, and grief. How to recognize that the person who kept everything moving might eventually need someone to tell her she could stop.
So I am telling you now: you are allowed to stop long enough to take care of yourself.
During the 2022 election, a member of my team got very sick. I told her to rest for a few weeks, and I continued paying her while she recovered. That was the right thing to do. Meanwhile, I stepped in and kept going with shipments, paperwork, our online community, and messages from people who were upset, frightened, or angry.
Then my aunt, the woman who raised me, was dying.
My family kept her on life support until after the election so I could get there to say goodbye.
Even writing that now, I can see how much I was carrying. At the time, I just kept moving. There was always another task, another person who needed something, another reason to put my own feelings somewhere I would deal with them later.
After the election, I did not stop to grieve the results. I did not stop to grieve my aunt. There were family complications, because apparently death sometimes comes with a complimentary package of family chaos. And I had three children who still needed Christmas to feel like Christmas while I was falling apart inside.
One day, my team member called. She had rested. She was feeling better. She was pumped and ready to go.
I was in bed, under a weighted blanket, having an ugly cry.
I should not have answered that phone call. Or I should have answered honestly: “I love that you are ready. I am grieving, and I need some time.”
Instead, we entered that conversation from completely different places, and we left it out of sync.
I share that because I wish I had understood something then: needing rest is not a failure of commitment. Telling people what you need gives them a chance to understand you. They cannot see the weight you are carrying if you keep insisting you can carry everything.
Please take it from me. You are allowed to say, “I cannot do this today.”
Between now and Election Day, try to protect fifteen or thirty minutes when nobody needs anything from you. Put down the phone. Sit somewhere quiet. Take a few slow, comfortable breaths. Unclench your jaw. Let your shoulders come down from wherever they have been living near your ears.
You do not have to earn those minutes by finishing everything. Everything will not be finished. That is practically the campaign motto.
And make a plan for the days afterward, because the calendar may move on faster than your heart does.
When you pour yourself into a campaign, you are investing in a future you desperately want people to have. Better schools. Healthcare they can reach and afford. The freedom to make decisions about their own lives. A government that sees their humanity.
When the result does not go the way you hoped, the grief can be enormous. Candidates feel it. Staff members feel it. Volunteers who gave their evenings and weekends feel it. There is a particular heartbreak in working so hard for a kinder world and seeing cruelty rewarded.
You do not have to talk yourself out of that heartbreak. You do not have to produce an inspiring lesson by Wednesday morning. It is okay to not be okay.
It is also okay to feel relieved that the campaign is over.
You can miss your team and be grateful that your phone is finally quiet. You can be proud of what you built and disappointed by the outcome. You can have a happy cry, an ugly cry, or both before breakfast. None of those feelings cancels out the others.
If you can, schedule a little time away. It does not have to be an elaborate vacation. An overnight somewhere, an afternoon outside, or a day without notifications can give you some room to breathe. Tell people when you will be unavailable, and let yourself actually be unavailable.
Photo by Jacqueline Mungia
Do something you love without requiring it to serve a larger purpose. Get a massage. Read a book. Listen to something that has absolutely nothing to do with politics. Write thank-you cards when you have the energy. Do something kind for someone because it feels good.
My own small joy has become skincare. I spend twenty or thirty minutes most evenings massaging my face and doing my routine. Eye patches in the morning. A Biodance mask once a week. It has brought me a ridiculous amount of happiness.
That was my New Year’s resolution, and here I am in October still doing it. In a year full of things I cannot control, apparently I can commit to a 20 step Korean skincare routine.
Find whatever that small pleasure is for you. You are allowed to enjoy your life while caring deeply about what happens to everyone else.
And if you win, please let yourself be happy.
Celebrate. Invite people into your joy. Let the volunteers, donors, friends, and family members who carried pieces of this campaign with you feel that victory. So many people need a reason to exhale. Your win can give them one.
Then, after some rest, be intentional about what comes next. Go to lunch with someone whose judgment you trust. Write down your questions, ideas, and hopes for your office. Find a mentor and ask for guidance. Think carefully about the team you want to build, the skills you need, and the kind of workplace you want people to experience. Create job roles with those things in mind.
Whatever the result, give your team some closure. Gather when people have had a chance to recover. Share a meal. Plan a holiday gift exchange. Thank people for specific things they did. Remember the funny moments alongside the hard ones. You went through something together, and those relationships deserve care.
Photo by Nick Fewings
I know so many Texans are afraid to get their hopes up right now. We have been here before. We know what it feels like to believe, work, organize, and wake up disappointed.
But 2026 feels different to me.
I am seeing things I did not see in 2022. We have learned difficult lessons over several election cycles. We are more focused. We have more experience. We are still imperfect, and there is plenty we need to improve, but I can feel the work taking shape.
I believe the next chapter of Texas Democrats can bring a deeper commitment to working Texans, one that people can recognize in their everyday lives. I want us to carry that commitment beyond an election, into how we govern, organize, and take care of one another.
I cannot promise an outcome. I can tell you that I feel hope, even with everything we have been through.
So keep going. Make the calls. Knock the doors. Help someone make a voting plan. Then drink some water, put down your phone for a little while, and tell someone if you need help.
You are allowed to hope. You are allowed to feel grief. You are allowed to celebrate.
And you are allowed to rest, even when you love Texas enough to want to fix it.
Love and hope to all of you! Now go vote and let’s elect some Democrats!
Nancy Thompson