Someone asked me the other day what I valued. It was in the context of an executive coaching session. The coach was helping me find motivation to continue leading during what has been a very tough year as a social impact CEO.  I paused and reflected on the question before answering: I value aesthetic.  I value virtuosity.  I value the rigorous habit of a daily creative practice. I value ritual.  

That is why I love this holiday photo taken the day I put up the Christmas decorations this year. There is the aesthetic: an ensemble of objects, large and small, that together make up the picture-perfect image of a living room dressed for the holidays. There is the virtuosity of the painting, both the wall hanging and the wall it hangs on, which was painted green by Tim, when the wall hanging was brought home from the frame shop oh so many Autumns ago.  There is the hint of a daily creative practice with the books placed carefully for reading, which I do nightly, sitting in this corner of the sofa, with the Twins snuggled close, watching a Pinterest video to learn Minecraft tips and be dazzled by TD Bricks next original Lego creation.  There is the ritual of Christmas stockings and lights and ribbons and bows that adorn the space.

This is the image that inspires one of my favorite rituals; sitting down to write our yearly holiday epistle, sharing with you all the beauty, rigor, practice and ritual that filled our days this past year, so that I can begin a kind of wintering, a reflective time to prepare for the new.  As Katherine May writes in her book on the same topic, "Here is another truth about wintering: you'll find wisdom in your winter, and once it's over, it's your responsibility to pass it on."  In this way, this season, that begins with a Solstice starts a wintering of the soul that doesn't end magically on January 1 with the start of the new year, but rather, the winter months themselves are the opportunity to sluff off the old, in quiet reflection, during the darkest time of the year, even as the light returns little by little, each day.

In fact, in reflecting on the title of May's book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, I would say that 2025 was a whole year of wintering; there was a lot that challenged me personally and professionally this year.  So that as I sit to write this letter I want to be truthful about that darkness even as I reach for the light, returning in small increments, three minutes each day, as we slip into the new year.

The year 2025 began like all Pacific Northwest winters do, with cold and a dusting of snow. We were homebound for the holiday.  Tim got sick, then the Twins got sick; I kept upright, but only because I refused to declare myself sick, as well.  January started with organizational challenges at work that really pushed me to want to be a more impactful leader.  That journey to be more impactful continues even as I am seeing the impact of the work in the good news of community partnerships and positive youth outcomes.  

At home, the family held up their end of the commitment to care for one another. The Twins and I skied. Tim finished remodeling the laundry room, and sometime during the year we welcomed another puppy to join Chester as the second family dog.  I know . I know.  Two dogs under the age of three. Why not? We did it with babies.

We watched movies.  One of our favorite Family rituals begins with Tim popping corn the old fashioned way, over the stove, lightly salted.  We each pour our favorite flavored sparkling water into cups and sit before the big screen to enjoy a movie. Like many households, KPOP Demon Hunters was a favorite, though the Twins tried to stay "cool" about all the singing, while they secretly enjoyed the story.  

We avoided cameras. In fact, this year could have been called the year of little photographic documentation. What began as #madkentadventure pictures and videos, documenting every moment of their wild and precious lives, became a mom, please no pictures  and hands up like I was some sort of Mamarazzi trying to steal their privacy.  Another thing, in fact, to note about the cover image: there are no people, there are no matching pajamas.

Even without my photos or documentation, from time to time one of them would say (usually Madison), take a video of me doing this.  And then moments later, how many likes did it get?  The good news is that I still have the pen on these requested posts, so I can limit it's addictive admiration-seeking power.  

Computers made an entrance into our home with each Twin saving to buy their own gaming laptop. There was the research on gigabytes and SSD (I don't even know what that means) and setting them up and letting them go. There was the constant battle over screen time.   Try limiting a nine year to one hour a day of personal screen time.  Like my quest to be a more impactful leader, this journey also continues for Tim and I with Twin sons who love their screen time more than human interaction, reading and playing outside.

We had our traditional summer time at Caldera.  The Twins and I practically lived at the Creekside Cabin during the summer, spending three to four days each session between July and August.  This summer Tim enjoyed quiet time at home, while we were away, staying there to commute to his new position at Highland Ridge Custom Home Remodeling which requires him to go to the office five days a week. This year he welcomed back a regular commute and daily in person interactions with grown ups.   

This also meant we spent the summer close to home, driving only as far away as The Dunes for a Fourth of July camping trip which has become something of a tradition in and of itself.  Tim and Kenton also took a fishing trip to the Mackenzie River Valley in August, while Madison and I enjoyed an in-town staycation, heading to a Thorns game and taking advantage of all the Providence Park cuisine for our evening meal.  

This year, the Twins turned double digits, with two birthday celebrations - one for each digit.  One at Caldera's 2025 Hearth Festival which landed right on the actual day of their birth.   They were asked to invite one friend to stay with us in an A-Frame and enjoy the annual celebration of creativity in Caldera's little corner of Jefferson County, Oregon.  We dined at a local restaurant, The Open Door; also their choice.  It was so cute to see their friends and them dressed up and sitting at the 'fancy' table showing off their double-digit table manners. The next day found them running wild on the land going from craft services for their adolescent carb loading to Luckey's Woodsman protein-packed boxed lunches, the featured food at Hearth Festival this year. The second birthday celebration was themed . . . you guessed it, Game On, which happened the weekend after their actual day of birth, with 10 friends and a healthy split between screen game time and gym game time. 

By November, as you may imagine, I was tired. I can't speak for Tim, but I'm sure he would chime in here and say that we are two tired parents trying to live up to this gentle parenting paradigm and falling short by mere nature of the fact that we are human and Twins are twice as much of everything (and we don't believe in gentle parenting . . . at all.)

Still, we all find time to laugh and care and experience the daily beauty, rigor, practice and ritual of our lives.

As the wintering begins, I say to you all, let the darkness be. Sit with it. Be in it. Challenge yourself to care for yourself during this winter season: rest, nourish, and connect to self, to family, to community. Remember the light is coming back, little by little and by spring you'll be ready to look up at the cumulous clouds, on a blue sky day, with all the wisdom you've brought to bear during the winter months. 

Three years. Today.  I sat down to this page to document a year in the life of a single mother of twins, turned wife and the family we had just become, standing on a mountainside.

I've been reflecting on why we write. Why we, as human beings, need to tell stories about ourselves, about a moment in time, about each other.  As most of you know,  Tim and I live, with Madison and Kenton and our dog, Chester, tucked on the far east corner of East Multnomah County, in the Portland Metro Area of Oregon.  We live on the literal edge of the urban growth boundary.  The house on the other side of our back fence is a non-working farm. Our own pocket neighborhood, sub-division, developed in the late seventies, was also a farm, owned by a local family, who still live in the neighborhood, The Sunderlands.  

I was prompted to start our holiday letter after reading a quote that says, I write because it's the only way I can be heard.  I have it on a sticker, on my work calendar.  It was said by a participant of a writing program in Portland that uses creative writing as a tool for healing and transformation.  

Earlier this week, after being inspired by talk of musical theatre with parents at a birthday party for one of the Twins' friends, I took a "Hamilton" ride on my Peloton app.  The song, Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story, always moves me. It is the ending piece of a beautiful, poetic narrative, a modern-day oral history exploding the 20th Century phenomena of Hip Hop into the most poignant vehicle to relearn a history of the Founding Fathers. It is told as a story of hunger and hope, the battle between those who fear and those who aspire, which always brings tears to my eyes.  It is that same hunger for something better for our families that continues to fuel this nation and keep many of us hopeful even as tides come in and go out.  

It is the nostalgia and the memory that flood my emotions as Eliza Hamilton puts herself back in the narrative. It is more than just telling her husband's story, it is asserting that our history as a nation had many players whose voices we never heard coming from the pages of our classroom textbooks. 

In the mid 1990s Noah Baumbach made  a movie for GenXer's, many of us whom at that time were hitting that quarter-life crisis.  In the film one of the characters says, I'm nostalgic for things that happened five minutes ago.  We were a whole generation of people already looking back at life in the 80s and early 90s as the quintessential, the not to be seen again, at a critical time in our lives when we didn't know what was going to happen next.

In our home, we call this kind of outward reflection  - googling.  "Mom, are you googling us right now?" Kenton might say, if I were to read this blog post out loud at the dinner table.  Madison would add, "Mom! I don't think we asked you." Tim smiling mischievously, as if the three of them are in on a secret that I have missed. And I will acquiesce and turn the conversation to the Minecraft creation of the week - a yacht, is it? All the while, nostalgic for two-year-old faces and needs that were easier, somehow, to ascertain and fulfill.

When I began this story on this digital page, I came here to have witnesses for all our memories. As if holding them all alone I might collapse in upon myself and the stories would be lost to time and neglect.  This is why I treasure objects and photographs, I believe.  They hold a visual form of the memory - of a person or a place - which some connect to the object.  It relieves the mind (or at least my mind) of holding tightly to every memory because I know that small ceramic piece from the Heard Museum will remind me of my Arizona hike with a dear friend, right after my first miscarriage.   And the photos of our family, this summer at Yellowstone, standing in front of the sign, will bring back memories of ice cream in Gardiner, long drives before we spotted a mother bear with cubs and that early morning wildlife tour where we finally spotted a moose.

So today, I write to you, three years from the last time I wrote in this space, to say, here where  are,  today. The past year has definitely been informed by are our stories from the past three years. I've been holding them because life was moving fast and I didn't have time to put them down on the page.  Also because life has been full of the living, leaving little time to be nostalgic for things that happened five minutes ago.  And because, as a married lady there is a witness to my day to day.

This year began with an ice storm.  Kenton enjoyed feeling like we were in a cabin, as we cooked over our wood burning stove fireplace insert, and walked around before bedtime with flashlights.  We attempted a meal out, once the storm stopped raging, because we still had no power, and found ourselves skating across icy sidewalks walking from car to a corner Pho restaurant/bar. The adventure continued with a dog who pooped by our table and a loud patron, inebriated from too many drinks while waiting out the storm.  Like many we were without power for more than a week. 

When we could finally leave our home safely, Madison and Kenton played basketball during the winter season, deepening friendships with their Corbett Arts Program with Spanish peeps.  Winter also found us on the mountain, finding the deal of value passes too good to leave on the table.  The Twins took lessons, and attended a Spring Break Camp at Mt Hood Meadows.  By our last ski day of the season, which was in early April, we three skied together on the big lift.  They had arrived.

Tim and I celebrated his spring birthday in a small Oregon Coastal town, where we read books and did puzzles, ate at a local restaurant and took walks on the beach.  

In May, my parents and extended family all descended upon Mykonos to celebrate my step-Dad's eightieth birthday.  My sister and I surprised him, thanks to our Mom.  I spent seven lovely days in Greece, with my parents and sister and all of Papa's family, helping him celebrate 80 years of a life well-traveled.  Athens blew my mind.   My love of history and story, met the city full of history and story alive in the architecture and the art.

Summer found our family in Yellowstone, enjoying the National Park's wonder and awe, walking on an active volcano, seeing profound evidence of the majesty of creation.   Just one week after our return from Yellowstone we said goodbye to Cooper, our little Chihuahua Boxer mix.  Cooper had lived a full life with Tim, long before coming into the chaos that is a home filled with children, new marriage and playdates. He stuck around as long as his little body would let him.  He passed of old age. We still miss him.

We also spent several days at Caldera just outside of Sisters, Oregon, where the summer program is the heart of the connected arts learning youth development organization I lead. I started at Caldera as Executive Director in January 2022 (part of the reason life has been full and fast for the past three years.)  The Creekside Cabin, where the Twins and I stay during our summer visits, is set just off the road from Caldera, but part of the property. It is one of our favorite places. When we wake each morning we look right out of the glass doors at Link Creek, where landlocked Kokanee Salmon are helping restore the creek's ecology so that Chinook Salmon may come back to this creek, swimming up to Blue Lake, the jewel of Caldera. 

This year, Tim and I celebrated three years of marriage by taking the day off.  We enjoyed the quiet of our home, the view of Mt Hood out our dining room window and went out to lunch. It was a day well-spent, observing the passing of time and commemorating the day we decided to join our paths together. 

October saw the Twins turning nine years old with a Pokémon themed birthday party.   Corbett friends gathered for a birthday snack themed charcuterie board, ice cream cake and balloon launching - the highlight of the party was 11 third and fourth graders letting go the 11 helium balloons that I had just bought at Fred Meyer. They thought this was fun. I apologized, inside, to the environment.  

November was Thanksgiving with family and friends, and on the day before the first day of December getting our tree and boughs and wreath to decorate our home on December 1; welcoming in the holiday season of light and warmth.

So today. Three years from the last time I put words to this digital page, I write to share a memory of a year. I write so you can be witness to our lives. I write already nostalgic for 2024, and looking forward to 2025.   Happy Holidays to you and a Happy New Year! 
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At first it was just a house. After almost a year of looking-lite and then two weeks of intense looking, we found a house and moved in on New Years Eve. Maybe it wasn't until later, much later, almost a year's worth of days having gone by, when we brought our Christmas tree into the living room,  that it finally felt like our home. Maybe it was the afternoon the neighbor took down the dying tree, the last of the Ivy and English laurel - both non-native species that had been chocking the yard. Maybe it was the morning after Tim had removed the final obstructions and we saw what the foliage and tree canopy had been hiding from our view, the mountain. Maybe that day, is the day it became home. Or maybe it was the day when we returned from blending our families, on the other side of the same mountain. Maybe on that day, having joined as a family on one side of the mountain, we returned to live at the foot of the other side.  Maybe it was that day it became home.

Before that day and for many days thereafter, we watched the boys grow. We spent pandemic days together in a home office while the boys made a dig-site outside and elaborate pillow forts inside.  We celebrated the end of winter, the coming of spring. We watched our front yard burst with color and were complimented on the most luxurious lawn on the street. The boys harvested pears from our pear tree, and blueberries from the blueberry bush. Tim discovered that pears make a sauce, much like apples and that it cans well and tastes, as the boys say, "delectable." The boys discovered that salamanders can be made to feel at home - for a brief time - in a bucket full of mud, with some rocks and twigs, until a guilty mother, sneaks out in the middle of the night to set the salamander free.  

There were rivers and and cooking and carving and planting. ​

There was planning for the big day in September. And tasting cake and ordering dresses and suits and watching ducks. In the middle of it all, we found time for a modified camping trip, also known as day-tripping with a tent.   We smiled a lot.

We masked up. We started school. Tim made gluten-filled gooey treats for all the kids (big and small.)  

In this pandemic world, home takes on a whole new depth of feeling. It is a safe place. It is all the places. It is family. It is work. It is respite. It is celebration.

It is love.

At the center of this, our wild and precious year, was a blending of families. With cousins and aunties and uncles. With siblings and parents and friends. On the other side of the mountain,  on the last official day of summer.