Carrying Political Grief

Carrying Political Grief

For anyone exhausted, angry, and grieving what Trump is doing to this country

A 55-page book. 15 chapters. Pay what you want: $15 minimum, $25 requested. Instant PDF, 30-day full refund.

Click 'Preview' button above to download a free sample of chapters.

In May I published an essay called "A Political Grief No One Is Talking About." More than 1,000 readers responded in comments across platforms. Nearly 25,000 people have read it, making it the second most-read piece I've ever published. Many of you were in that room. Your comments named the fear of leaving grandchildren in this world, the exhaustion of fighting battles you thought were won, the dread of dying before this fight resolves.

This book is what I built from what you taught me.

Beyond the essay

The essay named the grief. This book teaches you to carry it.

Fifteen short chapters. The early ones name what you're carrying: the exhaustion, the rage, the guilt about feeling joy, the fear for specific people you love. The middle ones change how you relate to it. You stop treating feelings as problems to solve and start reading them as information about what you value. The late ones widen the frame. Ousting Trump won't deliver permanent liberty and justice for all. These struggles pass from one generation to the next, and the final chapters show you how to work inside that fact without despair deciding your next move.

Inside the chapters

Each chapter ends with a small invitation. You'll spend ninety seconds with a hard feeling before reaching for your phone, and ask it one question: what data do you have for me? You'll make a two-column inventory of what the world is landing on you and what you were already carrying, so you can see the actual load your system has been managing. You'll learn to tell the cynical laugh from the gallows laugh, and why autocrats jail comedians. You'll write a letter to someone who will outlive you.

These are small moves for tired people. Minutes, not makeovers.

What this grief is

There's a weight that gets misdiagnosed as burnout, doom-scrolling, or a failure of self-care. The wellness industry locates the cause inside you and sells you fixes that never name who is doing what to whom. Trump, the GOP, and the billionaires funding them are dismantling what you spent decades helping build. Your grief is a response to real loss with real perpetrators. Nothing about you is broken. The essay this book grew from is reprinted in full inside, so you can start where 25,000 readers started.

The chapters

1. Political Grief · You are not broken. You are paying attention
2. Exhaustion · This is what a system designed to wear you down feels like
3. Rage · Anger is not a failure of equanimity
4. Fellowship · You are not the only one carrying this
5. Feeling good is not betrayal
6. Worldview · The gains were real. The permanence wasn't
7. Feelings · What if they're not a problem to be solved?
8. The Two Laughs · Gallows humor is not giving up
9. Your Body · The ledger
10. The Faces · Your fear has names
11. Carrying in Two Directions · Grief that flows both ways
12. The Long Arc · You won't live to see how this ends
13. The Ocean and the Floodplain · This tug of war is older than Trump
14. Defiance · Grief and refusal have always lived together
15. What You're Fighting For · Let the pain tell you

Who wrote this

I'm Paul Shattuck, MSW, PhD: social worker, researcher, forty years an organizer. In December 2024 my employer fired me for refusing to delete a post supporting federal workers Trump targeted. I write Stay Human — Shape Tomorrow on Substack, with nearly 13,000 subscribers across 95 countries. I'm 63. I carry this grief too. The book exists because I went looking for something that named it and found nothing.

What exactly you get

A PDF, delivered instantly. Fifteen chapters, the original essay reprinted in full, and reader voices throughout, because the people who answered that essay shaped this book. Read on any device or print at home. Read it straight through, or skip to whichever chapter names what you're carrying today.

Pay what you want: $15 minimum, $25 requested

• $25 keeps this within reach of people under financial pressure and keeps me building work like it.
• $15 if you're stretched thin. No guilt. Pay what fits your reality.
• Anywhere in between works.

Type your price into the box and click Buy Now. To buy it as a gift, check "Give as a gift" on the checkout page, just above the payment information, and enter the recipient's email.

30-day guarantee: if it doesn't help you, email me for a full refund. No questions, no friction.

A note on use: this copy is personal, meant to be returned to, not forwarded. If it could help someone you care about, gift them their own copy.

If you're in crisis: this book is not for moments of immediate danger. If you're having thoughts of hurting yourself or someone else, call 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) or 911. There's no shame in needing more support than a book can provide.

In solidarity,

Paul

Stay human. Stay strategic. Shape tomorrow.