Cara Ross thought the world was trying to tell her that everything would be OK. When she got home from dance practice, her 3-year-old, Eliza, shrieked: a butterfly was fluttering about the house. They’d left the cage open because the chrysalis hadn’t formed properly, and Ross was planning to discard it before she had to explain to Eliza what happened. Instead, it emerged triumphant.

It‘s an Election Day miracle! Ross thought.

Eliza got in close to take a look. The butterfly was brown and white, with a little orange at the top of its wings. Ross tried not to make too much of the orange as they headed out to their polling site in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she cast her ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris, her baby in her arms and Eliza at her side. 

A former labor and delivery nurse, Ross was hopeful that a woman president could champion the things she valued: full access to reproductive care, more paid parental and sick leave, better child care. She loved that Harris is a mother, too, and viewed her as a good role model for her kids. 

Ross hoped that with this election, the promises she made to her girls — that women could be president if they wanted to — would not be empty.

When she found out Wednesday morning that President-elect Donald Trump won in a landslide — including in her own state — it hit Ross harder as a mother of daughters. It made it all the tougher that the election put gender front and center, from the candidates themselves to the issues that motivated voters. 

“Part of it is just like, as a female with daughters, feeling like more than half of the country just doesn’t see the potential in women, doesn’t care about the rights of women,” Ross said. “And it just is heartbreaking.” 

Across the country, women like Ross hit the polls with their children on Tuesday. Many did it with their daughters in what felt like a symbolic moment to vote for a candidate who, for the first time, was a woman running a campaign committed to protecting reproductive rights. 

Now, those same parents are having to talk to their children after Harris’ defeat — and plan for what’s next. 

In New Hampshire, abortion doula Camilla Thompson had been excited to put a pink Kamala Harris T-shirt on her 2-year-old, Ava, before they voted together. By the middle of the night Wednesday, when she woke up to feed her 9-month-old son, that happy memory had been tainted. 

Ava woke up around 5:30 a.m. and saw Harris on the TV. “There is Kamala,” she told her mom. 

“We didn’t win, sweet girl,” Thompson told her. But Ava just smiled and waved at the TV. 

Thompson’s first-ever vote in a presidential election was for former President Barack Obama in 2012, and she had looked forward to the opportunity to select a Black woman to represent her, another Black woman. She’d been plotting how to take Ava, her only daughter, with her to Washington, D.C., to see Harris’ inauguration. 

The loss hurt more because of what she felt it told her about how unprepared the United States is to elect a Black woman at all. 

“Black women, or Black people in general, have to work two times as hard to get the same that our counterparts get,” she said. “It’s a hard reality. It’s also: What did we expect? That was hard to come to terms with.” 

She takes respite in the fact that her kids, who are 9, 5, 2 and 9 months, won’t be cognizant of the outcome of this election, she said. Thompson can now only focus on what she can control, as a medical assistant at a hospital in Exeter, an abortion doula for the Reproductive Freedom Fund of New Hampshire — which helps cover costs for abortions — and a maternal health coordinator for Black Lives Matter New Hampshire.

She wants to ensure that the organizations she works with are partnering with as many others as possible, that they’re securing funding so they can continue their work amidst an administration that will likely be hostile toward abortion. 

“My hope is to hit the ground running in whatever way that I can,” she said, “because I think we’re stronger in numbers, and we have to start somewhere, right?”

It’s the same train of thought that’s been going through Eleanor Grano’s mind in Chicago. A day earlier she’d ventured out with her two-month-old in a ballot box costume to cast a ballot for Harris. Grano, who is currently on parental leave, also works in the reproductive rights space as a communications professional for abortion funds in Texas and Illinois. 

She already knew by Tuesday night that Harris was very likely to lose, but she was devastated, she said, when she saw the next morning that Harris had also lost the popular vote.

Now, she’s thinking about how it will impact her job. Trump indicated he’s open to limiting whether mifepristone, one of the pills used in medication abortions, can be sent by mail. That will put a lot of pressure on the work she’ll be doing while navigating life as a new mom. It’s part of the reason she was hopeful for a Harris presidency, so that abortion rights would not be under attack and she could be more present for her son, Edward. 

Grano has found some comfort in seeing that ballot measures on abortion and paid leave passed in states that also supported Trump. There’s more work to be done there, she said, on helping voters connect the dots between the policies they support and the candidates who support those policies, too. 

“I do think one of the things I’m going to learn quickly is how to work smarter, not harder. There were ways that I approached my work in the past where I spent a lot of time ruminating in the grief of what was happening,” Grano said. “When you have a child, you just have to keep moving.” 

She’s also looking ahead at what may happen with cost increases. Trump has promised to raise tariffs on imported products, which could also lead to price increases impacting the British infant formula Grano buys for her son, Kendamil. Already, a can that lasts a week and a half is $44. 

It’s not always the easiest to find, and already she has alerts on her phone to order it as it comes back in stock at Target and Walmart.

In North Carolina, it was sometime Wednesday before Ross talked to Eliza about the results of the election. She was feeling sad, she told her, and showed her the map of the United States they’d been studying: “The person that Mommy picked to be the line leader didn’t get picked as a line leader.” 

“Can I help?” Eliza asked. And then later: “Are you happy, Mommy?” She asked again: “Are you happy, Mommy? 

No, but it’s OK, Ross told her. 

Thinking ahead to the next four years, Ross keeps telling herself that whatever happens, things can be undone. But she’s scared. She thought about whether Trump would prioritize any of the things she cares about as a parent. 

Her voice got small as she landed on the answer. 

“I don’t think it’s going to happen,” she said in a half whisper.