Letters

I first met Sara Topping at the tail end of fall 2014. Eleven years have fogged the details of that initial interaction (as have three children and the unrelenting nature of time), but if I squint I can still see us in an SYS conference room, gathered with a dozen other expecting parents, for an East End Birth Network “birth circle,” who, in simple terms, had come together to share their experiences with pregnancy, birth, and the enormity of everything that comes after, but, in a more hallowed sense, had come together to engage in the primordial practice of collective building: creating the village via stories and commune that serve as the base infrastructure for connective and sustainable communities.

I can see Sara there, carrying the literal weight of two full-term babies, and, with hindsight, the much larger heaviness that speaks to the latter purpose of our gathering, the necessity to foster communities by and with its members, for mutual sustenance.

Sara’s boys will be 11 next month. But Sara is still “pregnant,” and I am fairly certain will always be “pregnant” with this second heaviness: an unflappable need to advocate for and create the practices and policies that will protect, support and, with equity as a north star, holistically build the necessary frameworks for the Southampton community (our community) to thrive and reflect with integrity the needs of all facets of its fabric: the people, the waterways, the land, the diversity within its shared culture, etc.

For Sara, there is no community if we do not protect our natural resources from which all else stems.

I can see us in that room and, from that discrete pinpoint in time, how the tendrils of our primordial purpose, how Sara’s insistence on that primordial purpose, grew, and it is like looking at the small pulsing origin for the incredible work the EEBN would go on to do under her tenure as executive director from 2018 to 2020.

I served on the EEBN board as secretary during Sara’s time as director and thus can speak firsthand to the incredible fruits of her personal and collaborative vision. Under Sara’s leadership, the EEBN undertook a multitude of projects, both in terms of tangible creations — “The Stork Co-op,” a mother-baby pantry that collected donated used and new postpartum and newborn care items to be distributed to families across the East End during the pandemic — and the intangible: the critical work of establishing relationships with local and county organizations.

I can think of no one who would serve Southampton with greater integrity. And I am honored to be able to cast my vote for Sara.

Meg Tarshish

Southampton

Topping is a candidate for Southampton Town Trustee — Ed.