Jessica Torres is a communications strategist based in Washington, D.C. who believes in the magic of sisterhood. The views expressed here are her own.

“How do I explain this to my kid tomorrow?”

That’s what one relative asked me as election results came in last week. She had waited for her young daughter to fall asleep before turning on the TV. My phone rang nonstop in my Orlando hotel room that night, where I burned sage and texted friends and loved ones from my pillow fortress, watching MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki and an assortment of CNN contributors tap their brightly colored election maps onscreen.

The world had seemed like a very different place earlier that day.

In the afternoon I called my grandma to ask her when she was going to the polls. I expected to hear her say she was going to put some beans on a low simmer and get ready to leave.

Instead, she said: “I’m not voting this year.”

This was the woman who dragged me to union meetings as a kid, who left behind Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic to build a better life for herself. Mi abuela, who throughout my childhood took me with her when she voted during every election. This woman — mother and grandmother who hauled bulky groceries for our nightly family dinners in her squeaky shopping cart all the way across the Bronx, who worked in factories as a young woman — felt left behind and invisible in this election. Tired of being disappointed and ignored, she chose to quietly stay home.