How I got here and where we're going, together

Midway through Donald Trump’s presidency, I ran into Aaron Sorkin in a downtown Manhattan office building.

A few years before that, I spent a heady six months writing (and rewriting) responses to questions about representing Molly Bloom as Sorkin wrote the screenplay for Molly’s Game. 

I hadn’t seen Aaron since the movie premiered on a snowy December night at Lincoln Center, but he remembered I liked to write in my spare time and politely asked how it was going. I told him I’d been working on a children’s book about a young raccoon who, guided by her equitable sensibilities, hatches a club of little animal “lawyers” to help other little animals. He offered to give it a read.

A couple months later, we caught up over lunch at a diner in Los Angeles.

“Your book,” he began with an unreadable expression.

Like many of us, lots of things about the world kept him up at night. The day after the 2016 election, Sorkin penned an impassioned personal letter to his wife and daughter, reassuring them (and the rest of us) that even after the unthinkable, we were neither powerless nor voiceless. He still believed that.

“Maybe your book could be like The West Wing for kids.”

After that, what began as a creative outlet turned into a mission to get kids excited about shaping the world.

There have been twists and turns. Three literary agents, a publishing deal I walked away from because I knew in my heart it wasn’t right. An election that shattered relationships. I became a mom and learned mental health can never be taken for granted.  

The truth is that I was always the least likely person to write a children’s book, let alone one about civics. And I have no business moderating a Substack.

But I think that’s why it will work.

I re-learned a lot writing Isabelle’s Mountain, but becoming a parent turned a hobby into a vocation. Which brings me to why we’re here.

Whether it’s finding journalists on Substack to sanitize my news consumption, keeping up with Hollywood’s latest shakeup or hitching my wagon to the next “toddler whisperer”, I’m on a daily quest to optimize learning without compromising quality. I can’t spend hours poring through parenting books. Millennial parents talk to our therapists and each other and filter bite-sized wisdom that still packs a punch. We cut through the noise and are learning to be in sync with our instincts.  

Over the next weeks and months, we have an amazing lineup of leading educators, activists, social psychologists, civic-minded celebrities and more to help us become reengaged, and hopefully along the way, be able to model civics in a way none of us have ever seen before.

Every generation believes there has never been a more difficult time to raise kids. They were right and so are we. We despair over climate change, politics, the state of the world. But the truth is that parents don’t have the luxury of despair. We made one of the most inherently optimistic choices humans can make, and now it’s on us to follow through.

Things are hard and they will get harder. But I’m committed to helping each other through with hope, positivity, and humor.

More soon,

Sarah