LEAD Together Newsletter

In Now and Next™, we don’t start with goals — we start with strengths. What is already present in you? Patience? Curiosity? Steadiness? Creativity? These are your green shoots. Engagement becomes much easier when it grows from what is already alive.

Emergence carries stories: The story of who you were last year. The story of who you think you might be this year. And the quieter story beneath them — the one that’s still forming. Here is where curiosity may lie. Ask questions, no need to think about answers now, they will come.

Hmmm, I now see wonder as not a luxury; it’s the world reminding us of relationship. The light string only shines when every bulb is connected. We’re like that too. Our belonging is the current that carries joy from one life to another.

It’s amazing what happens when we stop fighting those parts and simply offer them a seat by the fire. They give space for presence to return.

When you name a strength or take a small step toward connection, you shift from reacting to creating. And creation — no matter how humble — is the birthplace of wonder.

This week, begin by noticing how your body knows belonging. Where do you feel “home” in your skin? Is it the warmth of the fire against your face, the rhythm of a familiar song, the pressure of your child leaning in for a cuddle?

Meta-relational means this to me: We are all connected, like threads in a big, gentle web.When one of us moves or feels something, the whole web ripples a little.It reminds us that we belong to one another, to the land, and to everything that helps us live.

In my years of work and parenting, I’ve noticed how quickly “self-care” becomes another chore. The part of me that loves lists keeps whispering: Am I doing rest properly?

So as you read this, perhaps pause and notice: What small act of rest feels possible today? What strength in you can make it happen?

As we move past Samhain into winter, the increasing hours of darkness, and we reflect after months of movement, can we quietly ask: Will we stop for a moment?

Discovery doesn’t mean pretending grief is good or easy. It means noticing what grief also carries — the cracks through which new light enters.

In these small moments, something remarkable can happen: your nervous system, long trained for vigilance, begins to soften. Grief, too, begins to loosen its grip.

May we take small steps alongside grief. May we trust that even tiny movements matter.

May we notice grief as a companion. May we honour the stories it carries. May we return to the breath that makes room for both loss and love.

Discovery often arrives when we give ourselves permission to pause.

But adaptation also happens after the meeting, in the way we choose to carry it forward. It’s less about the speed of our response, more about the vision we hold for the year ahead. What if you gave yourself permission to pause first? To root the year not only in tasks, but in being?

Engage. Engage doesn’t mean piling on more. It means practicing small skills that shift how we meet our children and the systems around them.

Body. Story. Breath. Because when we walk into school meetings about our children, our bodies carry whole libraries of stories with us.

I’m offering you the LEAD Compass — a simple, circular worksheet that can be printed and returned to again and again.It’s a way to map one small noticing, one small step, one small moment of being, and one small discovery.

When we shift toward being, we send a quiet but powerful message: that our value (and our child’s and family’s) is not measured in productivity. That who we are matters as much as what we do.