In 2020, I sent my dad a text: I told him I couldn’t talk to him anymore—not until at least the election was over. He wrote back just to say he was looking forward to talking to me again soon.
It was the thick of election season, and I was profoundly anxious. Like so many people, it had already been a hard year for me, and the instability of our country left me feeling genuinely afraid of what was to come.
In an effort to do something, I started working with an organization on an initiative called “deep canvassing,” which was aimed at persuading undecideds to vote for my preferred candidate. The work was emotionally draining but rewarding, and I’d often try out what I’d learned on the undecided voters in my life.
If only I could deep canvass my father.
My dad and I had always differed on politics, but this time, it felt personal. “If he really cared about me, he’d change his vote,” I thought. Every failed attempt to convince him only left me feeling more alienated.
After the election, my dad and I resumed talking. He never held those weeks of radio silence against me—he was just happy to get a text back.
In the months after the 2020 election, I found Braver Angels. In so many ways, it opened up my mind and fundamentally changed the way I think and talk about politics.
The first idea that radically shifted my mindset is that the goal of political conversations is to learn, not to persuade. When I stopped trying to convince people to agree with me, I suddenly had a lot more room to actually hear them out.
Now that I had the capacity to hear what they were saying, I realized that people are often more conflicted and complicated than I thought. By not putting people I disagree with on the defense, we could have more honest conversations. In these, we often found a lot of agreement.
The more I was able to productively disagree with people, the more I realized that I didn’t need them to agree with me in order for me to be okay. I found strength and peace in myself that left me feeling more empowered, even when the world felt scary and out of control.
And as for my dad, I learned that navigating politics in families is uniquely challenging. It’s not unusual for political differences to feel personal. In 2020, I measured my dad’s care for me with a single metric: his vote. However, in the years since, as my relationship with my dad has grown and changed, new thoughts started to emerge.
Would someone who didn’t care about me show up wherever, whenever I needed him? Would someone who didn’t care about me give me space while reminding me he’d always be there for me?
Without meaning to, my dad—just by virtue of being himself—complicated the narrative I had of him.
Four years after I fired off that text to my dad, he and I sat outside a polling place in Michigan to spread a different message. Here, on Election Day, we sat side by side to let people know that although we may vote differently, we’re committed to maintaining our relationship.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard from many people who are scared and hurting. And some may feel it’s not an option to reach across the aisle or reconcile with their relatives; their family dynamics may be more difficult, or their personal stakes in politics could be higher.
But it’s precisely because I’ve been given so much that I feel it’s my duty to bridge the political divide and reduce the growing level of contempt. To me, it’s the best way I know how to protect the country—and the people—that I love.
— Gabbi Timmis, Director of Communications & Marketing
