Roger Ailes. Bill Cosby. The student from Stamford. A host of others. Almost every woman I know has dealt with assault or abuse, myself included. I don't know how or why, but Trump boasting about groping women has broken through what has regularly been there. And with it has come revolt.

"He doesn't mean anything by it," no longer cuts it. That's what I heard about Trump when he started his campaign and railed against Mexicans, Muslims, etc. Friends that dealt professionally with him, broker to broker, would say he doesn't mean half of what comes out of his mouth.

My friends don't say that any more.

This summer was rough. I was in a funk. For the first time in a very, very long time, I had moments where I felt hopeless.

Some of it was work related. When the rejections pile up they start to feel like a lack of connection. A lack of community. I always work at getting my work out there, and though I do get things it's been a while since I've worked this hard and met this much silence.That's really what it is: the silence, not the rejection.

I've been writing a new sci-fi feature. Which is another thing that had me down, since the script is about the beginning of the end of the world. The end end. It looks an awful lot like where we're at today.

Having that house fall through didn't help. We're ready to move and nothing is coming on the market.

Living in New York is a great opportunity to see incredible humanity on the street. But what I see is also rife with the opposite. And the news cycle has been running amok with the opposite. I kept reading versus stepping away. And no matter what Trump said, no matter how ugly or cruel, his fans didn't mind. They were a sizable amount of people, so there was no way to view it as an exceptional viewpoint. Sadly, they is us.

I started snapping out of it last week as stories appeared about Trump groping women. Republicans began distancing themselves from him, citing things like, 'As a husband and father ... As a father to three daughters ...' I felt fury reading that, though couldn't put into words why. Then Frank Bruni called them out for using their wives and daughters as props and bam! I felt connected. He had the words. The funk lifted.

The New York Times wrote an article about two women accosted by Trump. Trump's lawyers demanded a retraction and threatened to sue. The Times' lawyer responded with a great letter. This cheered me, as did Michelle Obama's speech.

In addition, I discovered #MuslimsReportStuff. Not much out there shows Muslims and irony together.

Who knows what's coming next. Whatever it is, this pause of sanity has let sunlight break through.