I teach second grade so the day after the election this year was full of questions. My kids wanted to know if they were safe, if I voted for Trump, what this meant for America, etc.

Ironically, my adult friends were asking a lot of the same questions. In the days following the election, more than a few people asked "what do we tell the kids?"

My answer to them was the exact message I wrote to my students Wednesday morning. I woke up early that morning, said an extra prayer for all of our sanity and headed to teach my babies. And on my board, I wrote this--my message to them, and if I'm honest, to myself:

1. Your voice is important and we will listen.

2. This room is a safe place for all of us.

3. We belong to each other and we will ALWAYS love each other well.

I promised them that we would keep showing up. I promised them that no one in the White House had any say on who each of them chooses to be each day. It's a choice we each make... to be love, to be a safe place, to be brave, to put others before ourselves. And lest anyone read this as an endorsement, it's a choice we would have to make each for ourselves no matter who won the election.

The reality is that the way light overcomes darkness today is the same way it always has. We have to choose to turn on the lights. We turn the lights on every single time we sit across the table from one another and listen rather than fighting to be right. We turn the lights on every time we choose to see people, really see them. We turn the lights on every day when we show up in our places with extra measures of love and grace for those who need them. Light and dark cannot coexist. Light always wins.That's the "great" America I want my kids to know.