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.

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….

Charlie definitely smelled “wild” when he was a baby – his scent was very strong and, forgive my indecency, he smelled like sex. That’s all I can compare it to. Within months his smell faded, and now his natural scent is quite subtle. I was just sniffing him and and have to say he smells like roasted hazelnuts.

Charlie has two layers of fur. The outer, longer layer, called guard hairs, is the black and silver fur you see in pictures. It is somewhat coarse but not wirey – it’s similar to the texture of a black lab if a lab’s hair was three inches long. Then he has underfur, which is red and gray. It is shorter, denser, and thinner, and unbelievably soft. It’s as soft as puppy fur. That’s also the fur he has on the top of his head between his ears, and I am still blown away that it has remained so silky and soft. My face fits perfectly between his ears and it is the most delectable spot to nuzzle.

Not at all from June to March, not even a hair.  In the spring, though… he sheds TONS.

Ha! I love this question. Nubule is not in the dictionary because it’s an invented word. I’ve been using it for years, and so I forget it’s not an actual word. To me, it means a small, tiny, cute, little blob. The word nub (an actual word) means a small lump. Nubule is the personified, cuter version of that.

Yes. He gnaws on them and then buries them and then other animals dig them up and gnaw on them and bury them somewhere else and then Charlie finds them, and unburies them, and gnaws on them, and buries them somewhere else.
When I saw how much Charlie loved them, I stockpiled elk legs in my freezer to give as special treats and now there are elk legs in various stages of gnawedness scattered all across the land around here.