OPINION | I need to be real with y’all again. More than a year ago, I wrote about the heartbreak of serving a country I was struggling to recognize. Today, after the 2026 midterms, I am writing about something I was afraid I might lose completely: my faith in America.

The Democratic victories that changed control of Congress did not erase what brought me here. My body is still permanently disabled. The friends I lost are still gone, and the questions I have carried about my service did not disappear with the election returns. But some of the weight lifted, and I need to acknowledge that as honestly as I acknowledged the pain.

For a long time, I have been asking myself what the hell I served for. I spent 21 years in the Army believing certain principles were worth defending. Watching my own country embrace things I had been taught to oppose made that belief increasingly painful to hold. These election results gave me reason to believe I was not holding it alone.

The Heartbreak Was Never Just Political

In my earlier essay, “Fighting Fascism Abroad, Living Through It at Home,” I described giving this country my body, my time and my peace of mind. Those were not dramatic words chosen to make a political argument sound more convincing. They were the terms of a sacrifice I am still living with.

I cannot separate my understanding of America from the years I spent serving it. My military service is part of how I understand responsibility, leadership and the consequences of decisions made by people far from those who must carry them out. When I question what this country is becoming, I bring all of that with me.

That is why the usual political explanations have felt so inadequate. This was never simply about my preferred candidates losing or someone in Washington saying something offensive. It was about watching principles I took seriously become disposable when they inconvenienced people in power. It was about wondering whether the country still believed what it had asked people like me to sacrifice for.

I never expected to become the veteran questioning whether America understood the cost of its own promises. Yet there I was, angry at a country I still loved and unsure what to do with that combination.

I Believed What the Army Taught Me

The oath of enlistment commits service members to supporting and defending the Constitution. It also requires obedience according to regulations and military law. It does not ask us to worship a president or surrender our judgment about right and wrong.

I took that seriously. I also took seriously the values I was expected to practice and teach: duty, respect, integrity and the courage to do what was right. They were supposed to mean something when following them became difficult. Otherwise, they were just words we repeated until someone important wanted an exception.

As a leader, I stood in front of young soldiers and taught them about responsibility and the dangers of authoritarianism. I believed we needed to understand what happens when leaders crush dissent, weaponize fear and demand loyalty to themselves above everything else. Watching those same tendencies appear at home did not make those lessons less relevant. It made them harder to live with.

My opposition to those things did not come from suddenly forgetting what the Army taught me. Much of it came from remembering. I could not reconcile being expected to recognize abuses of power elsewhere while being told that recognizing them here made me disloyal.

Trump Made That Contradiction Impossible to Ignore

Donald Trump did not invent every injustice in America. But I hold him responsible for deepening the betrayal I have felt during his presidency. My anger has never depended on pretending that everything before him was good. It comes from refusing to accept that previous failures give anyone permission to make things worse.

His June 2025 directive calling National Guard personnel into federal service around immigration enforcement protests struck a particularly painful nerve. The administration described its purpose as protecting federal personnel and property. As a veteran, I also worried about the people wearing those uniforms and what domestic political confrontation could do to their relationship with the public.

Then came his September 2025 order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization. Opposing fascism does not excuse criminal conduct, and criminal allegations require evidence. But I reject a political culture in which being anti-fascist becomes something a person must apologize for while authoritarian behavior gets dressed up as patriotism.

I was not watching this as an abstract debate over executive power. I was thinking about what I taught, what I believed and what service had cost. The contradiction followed me beyond the headlines because I could not turn off the part of my life that made it personal.

America Was Never Innocent. I Still Believed in It.

When I say America wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t this, I am not describing an innocent country. I am a Black woman. I do not need anyone to explain that the American promise has never reached everyone equally or that patriotism has often been used to excuse injustice.

I am describing the distance between what I believed this country was obligated to become and what I was being asked to accept. I believed its failures were things we should confront, not traditions we should preserve. The fact that America had fallen short before was supposed to strengthen our responsibility to do better.

My service did not require me to believe every American war was just or every government decision was honorable. It did require me to take my own responsibilities seriously. I could believe in constitutional principles while questioning whether the people invoking them were living up to them.

What hurt was feeling that even the obligation to try was disappearing. Cruelty seemed increasingly easy to excuse when it reached the right people. Loyalty seemed to matter more than integrity. I was left wondering how to remain faithful to the country’s promise while refusing to become an accomplice to its betrayal.

How the Midterms Restored My Faith in America.

That is the place from which I experienced these election results. People can describe the outcome as a blue wave or a blue tsunami. For me, the significance was more intimate: I could see a possibility that the country was not finished resisting what it was becoming.

I am not claiming every voter shared my reasons or understood this election through a veteran’s experience. People came to their decisions through their own lives and concerns. But the collective result gave me something I had needed badly. It showed that the direction we were traveling was not beyond challenge.

The relief does not mean I have forgotten how frightened or angry I have been. It means those feelings no longer have the entire room to themselves. There is space for something else now, something that allows me to imagine a future without immediately bracing for another betrayal.

I do not suddenly know that everything will be all right. That would be more certainty than I possess. What I have regained is the ability to believe that things could become better, and after the weight of the past several years, that possibility feels enormous.

The History Mattered to Me, Too

The victories themselves carried meaning beyond party control. Keisha Lance Bottoms won in Georgia, Gina Hinojosa won in Texas, and Abdul El-Sayed won his Senate race in Michigan. Their breakthroughs offered a different picture of who could belong in American leadership.

I have also written about Hakeem Jeffries’ potential rise to become the first Black House speaker. He must still win the House’s speaker election. But the possibility matters to me because representation at that level involves more than being visible. It means participating in decisions about how power will be exercised.

As a Black woman and a veteran, I do not experience those developments as competing parts of my identity. I served a country whose promises I also needed it to keep. Seeing people cross barriers that had excluded others gives me another reason to insist that those promises belong to all of us.

None of these officials can repair the country simply by occupying an office. Their decisions will matter more than their portraits. Still, I am allowing myself to recognize the achievement without immediately minimizing it. After spending so much time describing what America was losing, it matters to be able to name something it has gained.

I Want Accountability. I Also Want Repair.

I want people who abused public trust to answer for what they did. Where evidence establishes criminal conduct, the law should apply regardless of someone’s title or political connections. An election victory should not replace that process, and accountability should not become another word for punishing whoever lost.

But my hopes extend beyond the prospect of anyone being investigated. I want to see damage repaired. I want a government that people can trust to recognize their rights, perform its responsibilities and tell them the truth. I want our allies to have reason to trust our commitments rather than wonder whether those commitments will survive the next political outburst.

Most personally, I want service members and veterans to see a country trying to honor what it asks of them. That cannot stop at ceremonies, applause or thanking us for our service. It must include taking seriously the principles invoked when we are asked to put our lives on the line.

I do not want another generation to carry this same question: What did I give so much for? I cannot promise that politics will ever provide a complete answer. But I want the people exercising power to understand that their choices can either deepen that wound or give us some reason to believe again.

My Renewed Faith Is Not a Blank Check

Democrats should not mistake this relief for unconditional loyalty. I am grateful for these victories, but gratitude does not require silence when the people who won disappoint us. My standards cannot depend on which party benefits from them.

The same beliefs that made me furious with Trump will shape what I expect from those preparing to exercise greater power. I will still care about honesty, civil rights, responsible leadership and whether people can obtain the care they need. I will still question decisions that place political convenience above human consequences.

That is not cynicism or an inability to enjoy a victory. It is what taking the victory seriously requires. People worked for this opportunity because they wanted something to change, not simply because they wanted different names attached to the same failures.

My faith is returning to the possibility of a better country. It is not transferring into the custody of a political party. The distinction matters because I have already experienced what happens when devotion to America becomes confused with permission for its leaders to do whatever they please.

I Was Not Wrong to Believe in Something Better

One election cannot settle every question I have about my service. It cannot give me back my health or return the people I miss. I will not pretend their losses now feel acceptable because an election went the way I hoped. Grief does not work that way, and neither does sacrifice.

What I can begin to separate is the value of the principles I served from the conduct of leaders who abandoned them. Their failures do not make integrity foolish. Their willingness to excuse cruelty does not make respect meaningless. I do not have to let their behavior decide whether anything I believed was worth believing.

That has been difficult to hold onto. When so much of your life is connected to service, a country’s failures can feel like an indictment of your own choices. Questioning the government becomes tangled with questioning yourself, even when you know those are not the same thing.

These results have given me a little more room to untangle them. I was not wrong to expect better. The young soldiers I taught deserved leaders who meant what they said about honor and responsibility. I still believe that, and now I have more reason to believe enough other Americans do, too.

That Mustard Seed Is Bigger Now

Before these midterms, some days my faith felt no larger than a mustard seed. I could still insist that America should do better, but believing it actually would was another matter. Holding onto even that small possibility took more effort than I knew how to explain.

That seed is bigger now. It has not grown into certainty, and it has not erased the anger that kept me speaking when hope felt harder to find. What changed is that I can imagine repair without immediately feeling foolish for wanting it.

The woman who wrote that earlier essay was telling the truth. I will not dismiss her heartbreak now that I feel some relief. She was trying to hold her country accountable to principles that had shaped her life, and she had every right to demand better.

I am still that woman, still that veteran, and still living with what service cost. But the question of what I served for no longer feels quite as lonely. The midterms did not give me back everything America took. They gave me a reason to believe that what I served for still has a future.