My grandma has been dying for a long time. She’s been unable to speak or move for a few years now, but I know she’s in there somewhere. I’ll usually bring her a cookie when I visit and feed her by hand. I can tell she loves it, but it wasn’t until recently that I heard her actually say something.

‘Thank you.’

That was it, two words, her two steel-gray eyes staring straight at me.

And then she was gone again.

Once a week we’re posting my thoughts on the message from each For The Sender chapter, making our way through both books and giving away a book autographed by the For The Sender family each time.

So here’s Chapter 1, Book 2. Share your story in the comments below and we’ll choose a post and send you a book autographed by the For The Sender family.

Stella and Annie seem to share only one thing in common: me.
But they share more than that, not the least of which is a certain kind of spirit I must attract somehow, because it keeps showing up in my life. These two animals have the same fears (born in their past, like all of us) and find joy in the same place (wide open spaces).

And they like each other. One will follow the other around even when there’s room to run, and they’re always mindful of each other’s space.

So if a horse and dog can do it…

To me, that’s the message of the first For The Sender book… we all have the same victories and defeats, the same triumphs and losses, we just call them by different names. I called my big loss Kona, who was a black Lab that saw me through a lot of growing in my 20s and 30s. For you, it might be a partner. Or a job. Or anything, really, that makes you feel that kind of loss. And that’s the subtitle of the book: Four Letters. Twelve Songs. One Story.

Once a week we’re posting my thoughts on the message from each For The Sender chapter, making our way through both books and giving away a book autographed by the For The Sender family each time.

Here’s the last chapter of Book 1. Share your story in the comments below and we’ll choose a post and send you a book autographed by the For The Sender family.

That fire I mentioned in the ‘trust the process’ post kept me out of our little gulch for a couple of weeks. Stella and I went walking through the devastation the morning after I was allowed back in. The black she sat in would soon return to green, like the tops of the hillsides already showing shades of life, and flowers would begin to push up from the ashes, but it would take time.

And standing there in the ashes, I realized that the fire burned the old, dead grasses away to make room for new growth. Sometimes that needs to happen in our own lives, too.

Once a week we’re posting my thoughts on the message from each For The Sender chapter, making our way through both books and giving away a book autographed by the For The Sender family each time.

Here’s Chapter 5, Book 1. Have you ever watched the world burn around you and seen beauty rise from the wreckage? Share your story in the comments below and we’ll choose a post and send you a book autographed by the For The Sender family.

This photo was taken in the first hour I had Kona… I had unwrapped a disposable camera and was throwing the plastic away when I turned to see her resting her head on the side mirror, waiting for me to come back.

It would be that way for the next fourteen years.

When she died, it was a heartbreaking loss for me. But I found that her passing left a little crack that let the light shine into my heart. I felt the loss so deeply that I started feeling everything else deeply too, and I hadn’t done that in a long time.

Once a week we’re posting my thoughts on the message from each For The Sender chapter, making our way through both books and giving away a book autographed by the For The Sender family each time.

Here’s Chapter 4, Book 1. Have you ever had your heart break, only to find that more light shined in? Share your story in the comments below and we’ll choose a post and send you a book autographed by the For The Sender family.