Hi Friend,

When I awaken in recent mornings, I look for the snow. How much do we have today? Is it soft and fluffy or icy? Or icy rain (quite a fair amount this last week). Or snow on top of ice: beautiful - and often hazardous. Then there's the sludge. And the cold, which brings with it that endless taking-on and taking-off hats and gloves and sweaters and scarves… And then there is that exquisite evening light, all silvery and glowing with luminance.

It's full winter here in the Hudson Valley. I didn't grow up with snow, and it’s taken me many years to begin to understand how to engage with such cold winters. Most nights in the last few weeks, I'm gleefully in bed by 8 pm, computer screen off, reading and listening to audiobooks and drawing/journaling and praying and singing and mind-wandering and quasi-dreaming.

There are many ways to describe this season. I have come to refer to it as one of my primary 'seed sorting seasons' - a term I picked up from Krissy.

We live in a dominant culture that frequently uses certain agricultural metaphors and then conveniently forgets others. From education to entrepreneurship to impact investing, people are "sowing", "planting", "growing," and "harvesting" their metaphorical seeds, plants, and fruits for ourselves and 'our communities' (often a very ambiguous term).

Missing is the whole winter thing. A time when the fields lay fallow. A time of rest; of seedsorting; of storytelling.

These long nights are conducive to rest and the dreaming that so often accompanies it. In the process of seed-sorting dwells: reflection, thought, and care. Literally and figuratively looking at what has been harvested in the past - and sorting it. Arranging it. Finding different ways of engaging with what we have. Sharing and discussing and deepening our understanding.

Circular Time can help with sorting and categorizing and discernment - for couples, certainly, as well as teams, networks, and individuals. We've got two more spaces left for individuals (Jan 13 and 29). Of course, if you want to book a private group session or a private 1-1 session with me, that's possible, too.

I'll be sharing more seed-sorting in the weeks to come, but for now, I want to gently remind you that it is ok to not have your plans all figured out for 2026. That a lot has changed in the last year (at least). Most of my clients and I are actively discussing what categories are shifting for them - not just tasks or ideas, but entire ways of approaching planning. To value your own processes of seed-sorting, even if they are slow.

At this time that is so conducive to thinking about big things like the nature of time, I hope you enjoy this most recent podcast episode that we recently recorded with Meda DeWitt, a Tlingit traditional healer, thinker, artist, activist, museum curator, mother, and leader. We touch upon some of these questions - and so much more.

We met in a parking lot of an Indigenous economics conference in San Francisco last November. She was one of those people whom I just liked immediately upon meeting her. We barely knew one another, but even so I invited her onto the podcast to talk about time. She agreed. It didn't take long to see what a remarkable person she is. This is such a rich conversation.

The Tlingit peoples are the traditional communities in what is now southern Alaska: a place that knows a lot about darkness and cold and non-linearity as well as long periods of light... of many forms of time. I loved Meda’s phrase, "non-managed" forms of time.

So, for all of you who like to think about time (you know I do), and/or like to stretch out your mind for some expansiveness, I think you will enjoy this episode.