Coming to you from one night in Atlanta, the Hollywood of the Southeast.
I've been on the east coast for just over a week, between Florida, New York, Philadelphia, and now Atlanta. As much as New York will always feel like home, it’s the east coast that roots me. There’s something about the treeline, this feeling of something I can comfortably set my gaze on from New England until the palm trees start to throw me off.
It’s only been a few months, but I’m doing some housekeeping.
I am so passionate about making parents fall in love with civics. I’m fiercely committed to finding inspiring voices and unique perspectives, but I’m taking good feedback to heart and leaning into this as my Substack.
Sarah Vacchiano’s Civic EQ.
If you’ve been here from the start, you know that in May I’m publishing a children’s book about civic friendship, the first in a series that Aaron Sorkin describes as “The West Wing for kids”.
This Substack is my third baby. The books were my first. My actual human baby, Gus, was my second.
It’s taken years to tie it all together. I was already in my mid-thirties when lifelong uncertainty about becoming a parent became the deciding factor. By then, I’d spent half a decade randomly writing about an eight-year-old civic-minded raccoon while steadily avoiding interaction with actual children. It was all part of finding my voice as a writer and ultimately, my identity as a mother.
At 39, the life I’ve created for myself is very different from the way I grew up. I’m an entertainment lawyer who writes and reluctantly moved to Los Angeles after 10 years in New York City.
I was brought up differently. I grew up in one of the original megachurches, in a small Virginia town put on the map by Jerry Falwell. Much like Los Angeles is Hollywood, this small town’s life force was televangelism. I went to Sunday school, memorized Bible verses and wore a purity ring.
My dad — an Italian immigrant who arrived at Ellis Island by boat when he was six years old — found fundamentalist religion just before my brother and I were born. Our mother grew up in New York City, has three master’s degrees and a PHD, and while she fully sanctioned our megachurch upbringing, by 2008 she’d left religion for Obama.
My father and I haven’t agreed on politics for almost 2 decades. I joke that the good old days were when my dad was a Tea Partier who thought Bill O’Reilly hung the moon.
Neither of us had any idea what was coming.
When I finally flew the coop, I married at 21, divorced four years later, then dated a woman for 5 years. My dad dutifully reminded me along the way I wasn’t on the path he’d set me on, but to his credit, he really kind of rolled with it all.
When the 2016 election happened, I realized that my online (Facebook/IG) community was an even split of ultra-religious conservatives and liberal, top-10 law school grads who clerked for the Supreme Court or became federal prosecutors. I thought I had something to say; no one wanted to hear it. Then 2020 happened.
To most of the people I grew up with and the father who raised me, I’m the quintessential coastal elite, educated beyond my own intelligence, lacking in traditional family values (I did ultimately get a few good passes for marrying a wonderful [male] person and having a [terribly cute] son). But my path is my path and especially in a post-Covid, politically charged world, we’re all trying to figure out where we belong, try on what feels right, not go overboard, be authentic without feeling exposed.
My guess is we’re all on a similar journey, trying to figure out how our ethos can be so different from people we love and respect. But beyond that, this is an exercise in understanding, on both ends of the spectrum — for us as former children, and also now as parents.
Thanks for being here and more soon,
Sarah