I don’t doubt these people had good intentions, but personally, I’m glad to have a parent at all — I already lost one . And I’m glad to have a parent whose political views I may not align with, but who I love and care about and like to spend time with. I feel fortunate to have a parent who has never once questioned my decisions and choices, unconventional as they’ve often been, but instead always supported them. I do not love that my mom voted for Trump, but that’s her choice, and it’s up to me — not my Facebook community at large — to decide how I want to deal with that. And frankly, I’d rather use this as an opportunity to take the high road and make peace with the situation than resent my mom because she doesn’t see things exactly the way I do. If I can come to terms with my mom voting for Trump, why can’t everyone else?Admittedly, if she were a bigot or a racist, this would be more of a struggle. But she isn’t, and she voted for Trump anyway, because, surprise, not everyone who voted for Trump is a terrible person or sees things one way. My mom voted for Trump, in part because she wanted that amorphous “something different” that so many people were seeking in this election, and she hoped that Trump could deliver. She also saw Hillary Clinton as “simply too familiar” of a candidate — an electoral phenomenon one of Refinery29’s own contributors talked about in her essay on what went wrong for the Democratic nominee . My mom disliked Hillary Clinton way before this election, for reasons I’ve yet to muster the courage to ask her about, and she wanted to vote for someone who…wasn’t her.I hadn’t planned on breaking my no-politics rule with my mom — and doing so wasn’t easy — but after Trump was elected and I felt my world shatter, I became increasingly curious to know where my mom stood. It was only after reading this article that essentially suggests we hear where people with opposing views are coming from — and really listen — that I decided I would finally ask her.