An Elder · Seventy-nine years · Three children
I raised three. Two of them quit calling, and for four years I sat in this house and called it their doing. It wasn’t all theirs. What I worked out in those four years — what I’d said that pushed them off, what I never should have said twice, and how a man makes himself into somebody people come back to — I wrote it down. Thirty days of it. Nobody hands you this, and I’m not taking it into the ground with me.
This is not a book about being Native. It is thirty days from an old man who happens to be one.
Portrait goes hereAmos on the porch, late afternoon. Shoot or generate at 4:5, 1200×1500 or larger.
“I spent four years waiting for an apology that was never going to come, and I called that waiting ‘keeping the door open.’ It was not open. I was sitting behind it with my arms crossed.”
Amos Redhawk · Day SixPrinted for the eyes you actually have
Most books written for people our age are set in the same small type as everything else, and then somebody suggests you buy reading glasses. The download includes both settings. Print whichever one you can read at the kitchen table without leaning in.
I spent four years waiting for an apology that was never going to come, and I called that waiting “keeping the door open.” It was not open. I was sitting behind it with my arms crossed, listening for a knock, and calling that patience.
What almost every other book hands you.
I spent four years waiting for an apology that was never going to come, and I called that waiting “keeping the door open.” It was not open. I was sitting behind it with my arms crossed.
Included free at every level. Same words, readable.
Where you are right now
If even one of them lands, there is nothing wrong with you. You have walked into the one part of a life nobody sits you down and prepares you for.
The book · three parts · thirty dated days
Each day is short. Four or five pages, ten minutes, one thing to do before dark. You do not have to finish it to start feeling it. Most tell me Day Eleven is where it turns.
Days 1–10
Days 11–20
Days 21–30
The turn
Every piece of advice below is well meant. Every one of them kept me stuck another year.
Included free at every level
The book is the thirty days. These two are for the night before and the morning of — the sentence you are about to say, and the call you have been putting off.
Nine things never to say to a grown child, each one with the reason it lands the way it does, and the plainer sentence to use in its place. Short. Keep it by the phone.
How to make contact after two years of silence, or ten. The opening line, the length, what not to bring up, and what to do with the answer either way it goes.
Choose how you want to begin
Everything here is digital — an instant download, nothing shipped to your house. Every level includes the 18pt large-print edition, and the audiobook lands free in your inbox on October 5 for everyone who buys before then. Most begin with the book.
Three Chairs, on your screen and in your ears tonight.
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$98 value · pay $24
The book, plus the dated practice that actually puts it to work.
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$167 value · pay $44
Both books, all the audio, and a letter from Amos every Sunday for a year.
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$340 value · pay $99
From readers
is-sample classes and this notice. Easiest way to collect them — email every buyer on day 7 with one question: “which day landed hardest?” Keep first name, last initial, town and age.
★★★★★
Day Eleven was the one. I have said six of those nine sentences to my son, some of them more than once, and I never once heard how they landed until it was printed in front of me.
— Dale R., Springfield, MO · 72
★★★★★
I used the first call almost word for word. Two years of nothing and she stayed on the phone forty minutes. I am not saying it is fixed. I am saying it started.
— Marilyn T., Erie, PA · 69
★★★★★
My daughter is not coming back and I have made my peace with that. Days twenty-seven through thirty were written for me. I listened to them twice in the truck.
— Wendell H., Kingman, AZ · 77
Second portraitCloser, hands visible, indoors. 1:1, 1000×1000 or larger.
About the elder
I am seventy-nine. I live in town, not out on any romantic stretch of land — a small house, a porch, and three chairs on it, two of which sat empty a long while.
I am a Native elder, and I want to be straight with you about what that does and does not mean here. This is not a book about being Native American. It is a book from an old man who happens to be one. The teachings are older than any of us and belong to no single people. Folks of every background have sat on this porch and found themselves in what I am telling you. You will too.
I am also not a man who got this right the first time. I got it wrong for four years running, loudly, and I lost time I do not get back. That is the only credential I have got, and it is the reason I can tell you exactly where the ditches are.
It is not a book about how to die. It is a book about the years you have got left, and who is sitting down with you in them.
Before you decide
The last page
You have spent a lifetime showing up for everybody else. This is one small thing, for you. Nothing is wrong with you — you only needed somebody to say it plain.
Send Me the Book · $24 →Before you go
Take the $44 set — the book plus the thirty dated days that put it to work. It is covered by the 14-day promise: if it does not change how you see the quiet in your family, every dollar comes back and you keep the book either way. There is no risk on your side of this.
Send Me the $79 $44 Set → No — show me all three again