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For weeks, I had been carrying around heavy binders full of memos relating to the transition and the first decisions I would have to make as President Elect. There were Cabinet Secretaries to pick, a White House staff to hire, and a legislative agenda to begin working on with Congress. I loved diving into the details of governing, but in the homestretch of the campaign, it was hard to focus on anything past Election Day. Late at night, I would set aside time before bed to read a transition memo or review a few résumés. Sometimes I’d fall asleep halfway through. Other times I’d get fired up and call my team with some idea or plan I wanted us to get ready to pursue on Day One.

On Election Day, with the campaign all but finished, I had a chance to think in earnest about the work ahead. It was exciting. The hundreds of detailed policies we had proposed over the past twenty months hadn’t gotten the press attention they deserved, but they provided a solid foundation for getting right to work tackling the nation’s problems. I decided that first out of the gate would be an ambitious infrastructure program to create jobs while improving our roads, rails, airports, ports, mass transit systems, and broadband networks. There was a good chance the Democrats would retake the Senate, but I expected to face a hostile Republican majority in the House. In theory, infrastructure should have bipartisan appeal, but we’d learned that partisanship could overwhelm everything. So outreach would have to start right away.

The challenge went well beyond rounding up enough Republican votes to pass an infrastructure package. The election had further divided our country in troubling ways. Trust in government and in our fellow Americans was at historic lows. We were yelling at one another across deep fault lines of class, race, gender, region, and party. It would be my job to try to help bridge those divides and bring the country together. No President could do it alone, but it was important to set the right tone from the beginning. And I knew the press was poised to judge my transition and first hundred days on the basis of how well I reached out to disaffected Trump voters.

My first test—and opportunity—would be the speech on election night, which would be watched by tens of millions of Americans. It would be my final act as a candidate and my first act as President Elect. The advance staff, led by Greg Hale, had built an amazing set in the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan. I would walk out beneath an actual glass ceiling and stand on a stage the shape of America. The podium would be right over Texas. When the votes were counted, we hoped the symbolic glass ceiling would be shattered forever. I had been thinking about what I wanted to say for a few weeks. My speechwriters Dan Schwerin and Megan Rooney had been working with Jake Sullivan and Jennifer Palmieri on a draft. I knew they also had a draft concession speech under way as well, but I preferred not to think much about that.

Once I got settled in our suite on the top floor of the Peninsula, I asked Dan and Megan to come up. Bill and Jake joined us, and we sat in a small office going over the latest draft. One challenge was how to balance the need to reach out to Trump voters and sound a note of reconciliation, while also giving my supporters the triumphant victory celebration they deserved. There was also history to consider. If everything went as we hoped, I would be giving this speech as the first woman elected President. We had to find a way to mark the significance of the moment without letting it overwhelm everything else.

Most of all, I wanted to reassure Americans about the strength of our democracy. The election had tested our faith in many ways. Trump had violated every norm in the book, including warning that he might not accept the results of the vote if it went against him. The Russians had interfered. So had the Director of the FBI, against long-standing Justice Department policy. And the news media had turned the whole thing into an absurd circus. A lot of Americans wondered what it all meant for our future. I wanted to answer those fears with a strong victory, a smooth transition, and an effective presidency that delivered real results. Winning with a broad coalition would help counter the idea that the country was hopelessly divided. I would argue that despite our differences, a strong majority of Americans had come together in defense of our core values.

We worked on an opening for the speech that would convey that confidence. The election, I would say, showed that “we will not be defined only by our differences. We will not be an ‘us versus them’ country. The American dream is big enough for everyone.” I would promise to be a President for all Americans, not just those who voted for me, and I’d talk about how much I had learned over the course of the campaign by listening to people share their frustrations. I would be candid about how hard it had been to respond to the anger many felt and how painful it was to see our country so divided. But, I’d say, the outcome showed that “if you dig deep enough, through all the mud of politics, eventually you hit something hard and true: a foundation of fundamental values that unite us as Americans.”

I wanted to end the speech on a personal note. Throughout the campaign, my mother’s story had been an emotional touchstone. Her perseverance spoke to the perseverance our country needed to overcome its own adversity, as well as the long struggle for women’s rights and opportunities. With help from the poet Jorie Graham, we had written a closing riff for the speech that made me tear up every time I read it. I want to share it here because, as you know, I never got a chance to deliver it that night:

This summer, a writer asked me: If I could go back in time and tell anyone in history about this milestone, who would it be? And the answer was easy: my mother Dorothy. You may have heard me talk about her difficult childhood. She was abandoned by her parents when she was just eight years old. They put her on a train to California, where she was mistreated by her grandparents and ended up out on her own, working as a housemaid. Yet she still found a way to offer me the boundless love and support she never received herself . . .

I think about my mother every day. Sometimes I think about her on that train. I wish I could walk down the aisle and find the little wooden seats where she sat, holding tight to her even younger sister, alone, terrified. She doesn’t yet know how much she will suffer. She doesn’t yet know she will find the strength to escape that suffering—that is still a long way off. The whole future is still unknown as she stares out at the vast country moving past her. I dream of going up to her, and sitting down next to her, taking her in my arms, and saying, “Look at me. Listen to me. You will survive. You will have a good family of your own, and three children. And as hard as it might be to imagine, your daughter will grow up and become the President of the United States.”

I am as sure of this as anything I have ever known: America is the greatest country in the world. And, from tonight, going forward, together we will make America even greater than it has ever been—for each and every one of us.

The speechwriters went off to make final revisions, and I went back to the waiting game. The polls were starting to close on the East Coast, and results were coming in.

The first warning sign was North Carolina. President Obama had won it in 2008 but lost narrowly in 2012. We had campaigned aggressively there. Now things weren’t looking good. It was early still, but black and Latino turnout wasn’t as high as we’d hoped, and working-class white precincts likely to go for Trump seemed energized. The same was happening in Florida, the battleground state that in 2000 had decided the entire election. We had been hopeful that this time Florida would be the state that broke the Republicans’ back and put our goal of 270 electoral votes within reach. The state’s changing demographics, especially its growing Puerto Rican population around Orlando, as well as the pre–Election Day early vote numbers, seemed favorable to us. But when my campaign manager, Robby Mook, came into our suite with the latest numbers, I could tell he was nervous. Robby is as positive a person as you’ll ever meet, so I figured the news must be bleak.

Soon the same story was replicated in other key states. In Ohio, the state that decided the 2004 election, things were downright bad. But we had expected that. I reminded myself we didn’t have to win everywhere. We just needed to get to 270. Robby and John Podesta kept me and Bill up to date, but there wasn’t much to say. All we could do was watch and wait.

Bill was full of nervous energy, chomping on an unlit cigar, calling our longtime friend Governor Terry McAuliffe in Virginia every ten minutes, and eagerly soaking up any information Robby could share. Chelsea and Marc were a calming presence, but they too were on edge. How could you not be? The waiting was excruciating. I decided to do the least likely thing in the world and take a nap. Hopefully, when I woke up, the picture would have improved. I was so bone-tired that even with all the stress, I was able to close my eyes and fall right asleep.

When I got up, the mood in the hotel had darkened considerably. Robby and John looked shaken. Old friends had gathered. Maggie Williams, Cheryl Mills, and Capricia Marshall were there. My brothers and their families were around. Someone sent out for whiskey. Someone else found ice cream—every flavor in the hotel kitchen.

I had won Virginia and Colorado, but Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa were all long gone. Now all eyes were on Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states that we’d counted on and that Democrats had won in every presidential election since 1992. We were getting killed in heavily white, working-class rural and exurban areas. To compensate, we had to run up big margins in the cities, especially Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Milwaukee, and then everything would be decided in the suburbs. As the hours slipped by, the numbers got worse. Some of the urban precincts were slow to report, but it was getting harder and harder to see how we could find enough votes.

How had this happened? Certainly we’d faced an avalanche of challenges throughout the campaign. Jim Comey’s letter eleven days before had knocked the wind out of us. But I thought we had clawed our way back. Things had felt good out on the road. The energy and enthusiasm had been electric. And all our models—as well as all the public polls and predictions—gave us an excellent chance at victory. Now it was slipping away. I felt shell-shocked. I hadn’t prepared mentally for this at all. There had been no doomsday scenarios playing out in my head in the final days, no imagining what I might say if I lost. I just didn’t think about it. But now it was as real as could be, and I was struggling to get my head around it. It was like all the air in the room had been sucked away, and I could barely breathe.

Not long after midnight, the Associated Press reported that I had won Nevada, which was a relief, and I had a good chance to prevail in New Hampshire, but it wouldn’t be enough without Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The experts were telling us that it might be so close that we’d need a recount or at least another day to sort everything out. After 1:00 A.M., I asked John Podesta to go over to the Javits Center to ask our supporters to go home and get some rest. Win, lose, or draw, I’d wait until Wednesday morning to speak.

Around the same time, John and I both got messages from the White House. President Obama was concerned that drawing out the process would be bad for the country. After so much hand-wringing about Trump undermining our democracy by not pledging to accept the results, the pressure was on us to do it right. If I was going to lose, the President wanted me to concede quickly and gracefully. It was hard to think straight, but I agreed with him. Certainly that’s what I would have wanted had the shoe been on the other foot.

At 1:35 A.M., the AP called Pennsylvania for Trump. That was pretty much the ball game. Even with Wisconsin and Michigan outstanding, it was getting impossible to see a path to victory.

Soon there were reports that Trump was preparing to go to his own victory party at the nearby Hilton Hotel. It was time. I decided to make the call.

“Donald, it’s Hillary.” It was without a doubt one of the strangest moments of my life. I congratulated Trump and offered to do anything I could to make sure the transition was smooth. He said nice things about my family and our campaign. He may have said something about how hard it must have been to make the call, but it’s all a blur now, so I can’t say for certain. It was all perfectly nice and weirdly ordinary, like calling a neighbor to say you can’t make it to his barbecue. It was mercifully brief.

Then I called President Obama. “I’m sorry for letting you down,” I told him. My throat tightened. The President said everything right. He told me I’d run a strong campaign, that I had done a great deal for our country, that he was proud of me. He told me there was life after losing and that he and Michelle would be there for me. I hung up and sat quietly for a few moments. I was numb. It was all so shocking.

At 2:29 A.M., the AP called Wisconsin and the election for Trump. He went on TV not long afterward to declare victory.

I sat in the dining room of my hotel suite, surrounded by people I loved and trusted. They were all in as much pain and shock as I was. Just like that, everything we had worked for was gone.

It looked like I was going to win the popular vote, maybe by a significant margin. There was some comfort in that fact. It meant that a majority of Americans hadn’t embraced Trump’s “us versus them” campaign, and that despite all our troubles, more people chose our platform and vision for the future. I had been rejected—but also affirmed. It was surreal.

I blamed myself. My worst fears about my limitations as a candidate had come true. I had tried to learn the lessons of 2008, and in many ways ran a better, smarter campaign this time. But I had been unable to connect with the deep anger so many Americans felt or shake the perception that I was the candidate of the status quo. And look what they’d thrown at me. I wasn’t just running against Donald Trump. I was up against the Russian intelligence apparatus, a misguided FBI director, and now the godforsaken Electoral College. Yes, we knew the rules going in. We knew the states we had to win. Yet, it was infuriating that for the second time in five elections, a Democrat would win more votes but be robbed by this archaic fluke of our constitutional system. I’d been saying since 2000 that the Electoral College gave disproportionate power to less populated states and therefore was profoundly undemocratic. It made a mockery of the principle of “One person, one vote.” In a cruel twist of fate, the Founders had also created it as a bulwark against foreign interference in our democracy—Alexander Hamilton cited protecting against foreign influence as a justification for the Electoral College in Federalist Paper No. 68—and now it was handing victory to Vladimir Putin’s preferred candidate.

In my head, I heard the vicious “Lock her up!” chants that had echoed through Trump’s rallies. In our second debate, Trump had said that if he won, he’d send me to prison. Now he had won. I had no idea what to expect.

The speechwriters gingerly approached with a draft of a concession speech. I honestly wondered why anyone would want to hear from me ever again.

The draft was too combative. It spoke to the fears of millions of Americans about a new President who had campaigned on bigotry and resentment. It said that they weren’t alone, that I would keep fighting for them even now that the election was over. Did people even want me to fight for them? Was there any point in making an argument now? Maybe I should just be gracious, concede, and walk away.

Jake pushed back. Yes, he said, being gracious is important. But if we believe what we’ve said for the past six months about the dangers this guy poses to our country, then you can’t act like that’s not true anymore. People are scared and worried about what he’ll do to their families. They want to hear from you.

A spirited discussion ensued. Eventually I asked the speechwriters to take another crack at a draft that was shorter and more gracious but not sugarcoated.

Bill was watching Trump’s speech on television. He couldn’t believe it. Neither could I. Eventually everyone left, and it was just us. I hadn’t cried yet, wasn’t sure if I would. But I felt deeply and thoroughly exhausted, like I hadn’t slept in ten years. We lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Bill took my hand, and we just lay there.