Epilogue: What Repair Requires

This series began as an effort to document what happened during the 2025 election season — not to relitigate it, but to understand how ordinary people, acting under pressure, made choices that caused real harm.

As part of that process, I approached several successful candidates privately and directly. I asked for three specific things: repair, apology, and correction. I explained what had been said, why it mattered, and how it had affected me and others. I did not ask for agreement on intent. I asked for acknowledgment of impact.

The responses were consistent.

There would be no apology.

The reasons offered followed a familiar pattern. 

• I was told that I had not witnessed events from two years earlier, implying that past conditions explained or excused present choices. 

• I was told that time would heal what had occurred, despite the fact that correction and acknowledgment were still available in the present. 

• I was told that apologies should flow in the opposite direction, reframing a request for accountability as an act of harm itself. 

• I was told that electoral success settled the matter, implying that outcome alone conferred correctness. 

• I was told that asking for apology was immature.

What these explanations had in common was not disagreement about facts, but an absence of self-location. No candidate could identify a point at which their own conduct might merit reflection — or even consideration.

That refusal matters, regardless of whether one agrees that an apology was warranted.

It reveals a deeper contradiction. In most contexts, we teach that someone else’s behavior does not justify our own. We teach that accountability is not weakness, and that repair is how trust is rebuilt. We teach that maturity is the ability to recognize when our own actions are harmful. Those standards do not expire with age, authority, or electoral success.

When My Back was Turned

I couldn’t have been 5 feet from the table when one member turned to an ally and said “She was asking for an apology. Never gonna happen.”

It was an unkind moment. That behavior does not reflect disagreement; it reflects a lack of care.

If the candidate or their ally believes that this moment does not reflect who they are, they are welcome to apologize, correct, and also commit to not speaking dismissively about others, whether that person is in the room or not.

Whether we agree or not.

Throughout the campaign, claims were made about what I would or would not do, about who I was aligned with, and about whether my work could be trusted. These claims were not paired with evidence. When asked to correct false implications or dehumanizing language, the response was not engagement - but dismissal.

Neutrality was invoked, even as judgment continued to flow in only one direction. In private and semi-private conversations, dismissive language was used to describe members — including referring to one as a “chihuahua.” By the tone and context, I don’t think this director liked chihuahuas.

That matters. Dehumanizing or belittling language, even when offered casually or defensively, is not neutral. It shapes what is considered permissible, who is treated with dignity, and whose concerns are taken seriously.

This is the quiet hypocrisy that underlies much of what has been documented here: grace is requested inwardly and denied outwardly. Context is demanded for one’s own actions and refused to others; harm is explained away by history while new harm is justified in the present.

That last thought reminds me of something we teach our kids:

Someone else can be wrong, and you don’t have to be. You have a choice to make. Who do you want to be?

Time does not heal wounds on its own. Time merely passes. Healing requires acknowledgment, care, and restraint — choices made by people who want to be kind.

When I later asked whether a candidate from the recent election would be supported for an open board position, I was told the candidate was “not a homeowner,” despite established facts: the candidate has lived in that home for decades with her legal partner, a man who would be considered an eligible board director. The technicality was treated as disqualifying — even though it could have been remedied quickly.

That, too, is a choice. Process can be used to include, or it can be used to exclude.

This series does not argue that anyone acted with malice. It argues something simpler and more difficult to accept: that carelessness, defensiveness, and certainty — when left unchecked — cause harm even in well-intentioned communities.

I asked for repair because words matter - I have shown that they were applied inaccurately, and further that this inaccuracy reinforces bias. That request was declined.

The record now reflects that.