January often arrives heavy with expectation, urging us to move faster, decide more, become something new. But winter has never worked that way. In this opening episode of 2026, I begin not with resolutions or reflection prompts, but with an old folktale. The Twelve Months is a traditional Eastern European winter story, retold from The Telling of the Seasons, in which a young girl is sent into the frozen forest on an impossible task. There, she encounters the twelve months of the year gathere...