This is not the sort of lesson one can teach aspiring writers. But it is what happened to me.

In the first year after my husband died, I decided, at age 48, that I would make the bold choice to leave my known life as a teacher and administrator in a Waldorf school, and see if I could develop a sustainable writing career.

Except for a few letters to a local newspaper, I’d never been published.

I gave myself three years to see what might be possible. And I was amazingly fortunate to acquire a top New York literary agent almost immediately. She was a friend of one of the parents in the school where I had been working. I had the inspiration to create a spiritual gardening book. I wrote a proposal, she accepted it and sent it out. It did not sell.

Meanwhile, I began doing a visualization from Silva Mind Control, seeing myself as a successful writer.

Seven months after my husband’s death, I was starting to pull myself together. I had a fire ceremony on the Equinox with close friends, telling them I was “beginning to feel like a Phoenix,” the mythical bird that is destroyed in fire, then rises again from the ashes.

My memoir, “The Difference Between Seeds & Stones” tells the full story. The short version is that several weeks after my ceremony, a live, wild merganser duck showed up in my woodstove, sitting on the ashes! I am 100% convinced it was a humorous and loving gift from my husband.

I wrote to my local paper about the extraordinary coincidence, was offered a column, then began writing for magazines, then met spiritual dog trainer April Frost. Then my agent needed help with one of her dogs and I introduced her to April. That meeting led to my writing a proposal for a book about April’s training method, “Beyond Obedience,” for which April and I received a $200,000 advance!

The book came out in 1998 and it is still in print today, available through Amazon.com or your local bookstore.

Drawing on her extensive experiences as an animal behaviorist, Frost teaches you that training your dog should not be a tedious chore limited to exerting physical and psychological control over an animal's drives, but instead an enriching and spiritually fulfilling experience--gratifying for both human and animal. Frost discusses such essential concepts as mutual respect, unconditional love, mental and emotional discipline, and your expectations and priorities. She shows you how the insights gained from working with your dog can have positive, far-ranging effects on many areas of your life. Beyond Obedience offers valuable insight into the emotional bonds that enrich the lives of animals and their companions.