This morning. 6.16am. In bed.

“Mummy, why are you and Daddy so worried? Why does Daddy keep reading the news?”

“Because a bad man has been given a very important job darling, but don’t you worry, everything will be fine!”

Oh the lies we tell our beautiful, innocent and loving children.

Our future generation. The small human beings we brought into the world, who have joy in their eyes and love in their hearts.

The lies we are forced to tell as parents to reassure, keep them happy and help their magic world bubbles remain afloat, as the world we know crumbles around us, leaving dusty, dirty debris at our feet.

That’s just one little white lie I’ve had to tell her this year, as 2016 looks set to go down as one of the most disturbing and turbulent years in modern history.

I told her a similar one when the UK voted to leave Europe too. The only difference being that on that occasion, I did so as tears ran down my cheeks.

Brexit rocked my world for six a few months ago, yet sadly this morning’s result, whilst still painful, didn’t leave me quite as stunned.

In a way, it almost felt depressingly inevitable.

Donald Trump as President of the United States. It beggars belief doesn’t it? Like so many of us, months ago I never thought it would happen. It just seemed too farcical.

Surely – I used to say to my husband – people will never vote for such a hideous figure of a man. Surely people have more sense?!

But people did vote. And clearly people haven’t. Because today America is facing a grim future.

And as the snow fell here in South Yorkshire this morning and as I found myself glued to my Twitter feed, whilst also trying to get Elsie dressed and out of the door, I couldn’t help but glance at my daughter’s cherubic face and want to scream with dismay at everything that is wrong with our modern world.

And as I sit here frantically typing away, compelled to share some of my thoughts on this historic (for all the wrong reasons) kind of day, feeling my baby boy kick and squirm around in my pregnant belly, I can also feel the now familiar knotted ball of anxiety and dread.

Just what kind of world am I about to bring a new innocent life into?

I have to say, it’s not the easiest thought to live with right now.

Because I no longer recognise this world. Nor does it seem to speak to me anymore. It’s not the world I dream of, hope of or perhaps rather naively, still thought existed.

Like so many of us, I feel like a political alien, alone at space in my ship, bar a few like minded and kind hearted travellers.

And it’s at times like these, when I often think about a conversation I had years ago with an old boss who after dissecting my first journalistic piece, kindly explained that although it was well written, it just wasn’t suitable.

“You have to get your head around the fact Katie, that not everyone is like you. Most people who read this do not have the same mindset.

“You’ve got to strip this right back and make it easy for everyone to read. You need to understand that the majority of people are very simple.”

Professionally speaking, it’s the best advice i’ve ever been given. But his words are echoing around my head for other reasons today.

Because I cannot stop thinking about how right he was when he says that most people don’t think like me. Or indeed you.

Or any of us who believe in peace, equality, fairness and love. Of good triumphing over the bad guys. Of the importance of being kind to your fellow man and woman, regardless of what class, race, religion or social status someone is.

2016 has been a hellish year globally.

Awash with scare mongering, fear and hatred. And yet apparently more people than ever seem determined to plunge us into further darkness still.

Isn’t that the case?

When a man proud to be tainted by everything we are supposed as a society to find abhorrent – racism, sexism, arrogance, deception, contempt – is given the keys to the most powerful office in the world by millions of American people?

Eight years ago when Barack Obama became President of the United States, I wept tears of joy watching the news unfurl.

Oh how different things have become, in such a small space of time.

My Gran, one of the wisest women I’ve ever known, once wrote in a letter to me as a child, that anything was possible. That if I worked hard enough at school, maybe one day I could be Prime Minister if I wanted to be and change the world!

It is a letter I still cherish to this day.

Peggy Eileen Foster believed in women. She believed in good people. She believed we all have the potential to make and leave a positive difference on this world.

It’s a message I will continue to pass on to Elsie and to my unborn son.

But for now, I have no choice but to carry on with the necessary lies and hope beyond hope, that 2017 is the year when the world starts to feel like home again.

“Trump is such a silly word isn’t it Mummy? Imagine having a name which means something smelly and really horrible!”

Welcome to the new President of the United States.