What Happened

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

In the past, for reasons that I try to explain, I’ve often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net. Now I’m letting down my guard.

In 2016, the U.S. government announced

that Harriet Tubman will become the face of the $20 bill. If you need proof that America can still get it right, there it is.

Too many saw the world in zero-sum terms, believing that gains made by fellow Americans they viewed as “other”—people of color, immigrants, women, LGBT people, Muslims—were not earned and must be coming at someone’s expense.

I think that’s dangerous. It helps leaders who want to take advantage of that rage to hurt people rather than help them. Besides, it’s just not how I’m wired. Maybe that’s why Trump was now delivering the inaugural address and I was sitting in the crowd.

How can we as a nation allow untold thousands of Americans to be disenfranchised by voter suppression laws?

For a good while afterward, he was so depressed that he practically couldn’t get off the floor. That’s not me. I keep going. I also

stew and ruminate. I run through the tape over and over, identifying every mistake—especially those made by me. When I feel wronged, I get mad, and then I think about how to fight back.

Instead, I did yoga with my instructor, Marianne Letizia, especially “breath work.” If you’ve never done alternate nostril breathing, it’s worth a try. Sit cross-legged with your left hand on your thigh and your right hand on your nose. Breathing deeply from your diaphragm, place your right thumb on your right nostril and your ring and little fingers on your left. Shut your eyes, and close off your right nostril, breathing

slowly and deeply through your left. Now close both sides and hold your breath. Exhale through the right nostril. Then reverse it: inhale through the right, close it, and exhale through the left. The way it’s been explained to me, this practice allows oxygen to activate both the right side of the brain, which is the source of your creativity and imagination, and the left side, which controls reason and logic. Breathe in and out, completing the cycle a few times. You will feel calmer and more focused. It may sound silly, but it works for me.

Elena Ferrante’s four Neapolitan novels and relished the story they tell about friendship among women.

You are experiencing a Friday. But Sunday is coming! Death will be shattered. Hope will be restored. But first, we must live through the darkness and seeming hopelessness of Friday.

Maybe it’s because I never explained myself as bluntly as this.

When you know why you’re doing something and you know there’s nothing more to it and certainly nothing sinister, it’s easy to assume that others will see it the same way. That was a mistake.