The ordering window for The Daily Coyote: Ten Years will close FOREVER as soon as the book goes to press, which could be as early as next Monday!
If you would like to have the book, please place your order ASAP,
which you can do HERE! There will not be any other chance
to get this book once the ordering window closes. This is it!
A different photo of Charlie will appear here every time you visit the blog. You can scroll to see the archives or use the menu in the sidebar.
Last fall, I decided I wasn’t going to do a Charlie calendar this year….. which felt very weird but life simply did not have room for it.
And then, in January, I checked my email for the first time in months and there were so many messages asking if there would be a calendar, and sharing what a consistently special part of people’s lives it has become, and I was like, how can I make this work????
Since this calendar is debuting a month into the new year, it includes a full twelve months you can use: from February 2025 through January 2026. So you still get a full year of Charlie to enjoy.
I’m not available to ship orders myself this year, so I’m having the calendar printed and shipped via Lulu. See the calendar and order it, if you so desire, right HERE.
For 18 months after Charlie’s death, my only desire was to grieve. I celebrate how deeply I let myself experience my grief and how completely I prioritized myself during this time. I took a sabbatical, and only did what I felt like doing. At first it was mostly crying in bed.
After a couple of weeks of self-medicating with every substance I could get my hands on, I desperately wanted to feel close to Charlie again, physically close to him.
So, I dusted off my grandmother’s spinning wheel, had new bobbins 3D printed to fit the vintage wheel, and taught myself to spin. My goal was to eventually spin the bags of Charlie’s wool I’d saved every year when he shed his winter underfur.
I practiced with sheep’s wool. I spun for five or six hours a day, listening to the same three songs on repeat the entire time. In my remaining waking hours, I devoured spinning videos on youtube and read spinning forums. I still haven’t spun Charlie’s wool…. but now I know I can. And I have so much yarn!
At some point, I started hiking daily with the dogs, often to the bottom of a secluded canyon where I’d spin on a spindle while sunbathing all day long.
I created such a luxurious cocoon to be so sad within. So much good food that I made from scratch from the finest ingredients. So many baths. So many books. So much time spent outside in the wilderness.
And then after 18 months, I realized I no longer desired my grief to be my priority or the defining feature of my life, and I didn’t want it to become a crutch.
That’s when I shared my birthday self portrait on instagram. I wasn’t ready to write anything, but I knew that picture was worth a thousand words, that it would show that I was ok, that I was coming back into life again.
birthday blizzards call for brrrrthday suits
When I took that photo, I still didn’t know who I was without Charlie. I didn’t know what I wanted for my next season of life, and I didn’t fully want to know—thinking about it felt like the last big goodbye. Taking this picture felt like my first step into that abyss, the abyss of Next. And I do love a good abyss.
It’s been 18 months since that first step, and what an abyss it has been. Love, magic, adventure. Returning to parts of myself placed on pause for Charlie, discovering parts of myself I hadn’t yet met. Stories for other days.
In the meantime, I have Charlie’s 2024 calendar for you. He’s with me every day. CLICK HERE if you’d like to spend another year with him, too.
And tell me a little about your last three years in the comments, if you please….
My web magician and I have set up some really cool code for The Daily Coyote. Starting tomorrow and forevermore, the top post of this site will feature a photo of Charlie from our vast archives, which will change with every visit the blog.
I didn’t want the daily pictures to end, or for Charlie’s blog to become static. With this new feature, there will always be a surprise from Charlie when you visit The Daily Coyote. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
I’ll be back to post more stories about Charlie and never-before-seen pictures from deep within the treasure chest of my hard drives, but such posts will be unscheduled and at random.
Since my written posts are mixed in with pictures around here, I’ve put my last long written posts about Charlie HERE so they are easy to find.
