A number of years ago, my husband and I worked together writing screenplays. It was a regular and essential part of our lives to submit work—pitches, treatments, or completed screenplays—to studios and production companies. Along with those regular submissions came regular rejections. It was well-known wisdom: If you weren’t getting regular rejections you weren’t submitting enough.

Early on, the rejections were a terrible slap in the face. We would feel like abject failures; we would wonder if we were tough enough to continue in the field. But after a while we noticed something. Whereas we once wallowed in defeat for two weeks or a month, now the time it took to recover was shrinking. First it shrank to a week, then to a few days, and soon we were bounding back in a few hours. We were training ourselves to understand not only the endurability of rejection, but the necessity to invite it in the first place. Along with that we also began to celebrate the acceptances more wholeheartedly, without taking them for granted.

I couldn’t help thinking of that today, the day after the disappointing election. The pall of the last four years has not lifted. The proverbial blue wave has not rescued us. The champagne bottle remains corked in the refrigerator. Now there is only waiting, more anxiety, more doomscrolling until we know the final counts. We’ve been deprived of the moment of celebration (and gloating) we lusted for.

And yet. Slowly, methodically, over the next few days, votes will be counted; Trump’s shenanigans will be quashed by teams of attorneys; and, though we may not win the Senate, it is highly like that the Biden-Harris ticket will be declared victorious. It won’t be everything we hoped for—not the momentous repudiation of Trumpism many of us (I) wanted—but I am certainly old enough to know that that is the nature of life in every arena. You don’t always get the job, the school, the income, the promotion, the prize you wanted and worked for, and you initially take the hit hard. But eventually, if you’re a grownup, you find a way to move forward. It is childish to remain stuck in defeat. You acknowledge it, pick up the pieces and move on.

As Mick told us years ago: “No, you can’t always get what you wa-ant. You can’t always get what you wa-ant…But if you try sometime, you find you get what you need.”

We have what we need, folks! Stay strong!