Discernment is about the quality of our perceptions, and the value of the decisions we make. Coming to the country was one of the great decisions of my life. But I have made some very bad ones and they often haunt me.

Just as the Great Recession struck, my life was in turmoil.

I decided to end a 35-year marriage to a very good person, I was in great emotional turmoil and the publishing world as I knew it changed in the most radical of ways.

For decades, I had published one successful and praised book after another, supported by a loyal and gifted editor. He lost his job in the recession, and I was orphaned, as they say in publishing.

I lost my place in the new publishing lexicon. A five-time New York Times bestseller, I no longer received royalty checks, my new editors did not return my calls, fight for my books, or quite understand them. It was clear I was no longer valuable to them, the book tours stopped.

The reporters stopped calling. Perhaps I had lost my gift for writing, I wanted to be gracious about it.

As of now, I have one book left on my contract with a commercial publisher, and I love the book and will work hard at it, but I had begun to reconcile myself to the idea that my book writing days were coming to an end.

I couldn’t quite find my place in the new publishing firmament. It was nobody’s fault, life is full of change, and our challenge is always to respond to it with grace. I have worked to accept this change.

Back then, I made a fateful mistake.

I had a brilliant and fiercely loyal agent who, like me, was independent and sometimes difficult, just like me. I thought we were too much alike, even though I loved him in many ways. I had so much conflict and drama in my life, I felt I need an agent quieter and calmer than me.

I decided to change agents. It was an awful mistake, impulsive and foolish.  It is no excuse, but at the time, I was blinded by fear. I knew it was a mistake right away, but had too much pride to go backwards.

Ever since I left Richard, my publishing life has struggled, no one has understood me and my work as he did, no one fought for it in the same way, no one believed in me in the same way.

It has been wearing and difficult for me, a life-time book writer, I was blessed to make a living writing books for decades. What a miracle that was. A writer lives a lonely and self-sustaining life when it comes to work, I think we all need someone who believes in us and who will fight for us. I do. That is just how it works.

I always had this kind of attachment disorder, where I ran away from the people I loved the most. I was just too terrified of being close.

But things had changed, and I became more pessimistic about being an author. I love my blog, millions of viewers come to it every year, it is the heart of my creativity and work. More people read my writing now than ever. And it is better than ever, I know it.

I responded by throwing my heart and soul into the blog and my photography, and yes, into what I thought might be my last book.  And that has been a good decision. I have never written better or with more heart than on my blog. My agent went on to become even more successful than he was, he grasped the changes in culture and has moved in step with them.

But this love of my blog pulled me even further away from book publishing. My kind of blog is very different than most, and I don’t sell my books here, I just announce them.

This week, I’ve been practicing my monologue for my acting class, “The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot, a work I have always loved.

It is about a man who is timid, who is unsure of his commitment to life, and who begins to doubt his value.

“And indeed, there will be time to wonder, “Do I dare? And Do I dare? Time to turn back and descend the stair?..Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions, which a minute will reverse?”

Yesterday, I had this powerful impulse to contact Richard and say I was sorry for having left him, it was foolish and unfair.  I have wanted to do that for a long time. I e-mailed him that and said so, I had no other motive in mind, I just felt it was something I needed to do.

He messaged me right back, saying he understood the pain and fear I was in, and then an  hour later, he sent me a message saying perhaps our paths would cross. I said I wanted that.

Soon after that, another message,  saying he was always looking for new ideas and if I had any I wanted to share with him, we should talk. When we worked together, we always did that, we just threw ideas at each other in this easy and continuing way.

We made plans to talk this morning (Friday), I had four ideas to offer him, I was thinking about books or even film. He liked three and loved one, as usual, he had a broader grasp of things than I do, and he asked if I might think taking one of those ideas, turning it into a book, or perhaps later on, a movie.

Richard is a big cheese now, he makes stuff happen. I think my call to him was supposed to happen.

It hit me during this conversation with Richard – he just gets me, and I so much have missed that  – that I was not ready to fade away, not ready to be shunted aside and forgotten. I want to keep writing on my blog and taking photos, but I am not ready to wonder if I can still dare?

He talked to me of podcasts, and of turning some of my blog writing into books, and of writing more books as well. He didn’t like the idea much of my turning away from books.

I can dare, I do dare.

I have a lot left to offer the world, I am not ready to step aside and be one the voices dying with  a day fall, spitting out the butt-ends of my days and ways? I am not ready to be J. Alfred Prufrock, timid and afraid to step into the water.

We had a great talk, Richard and I.

He was shopping in a food market as we went back and forth, it brought back a flood of confidence and good feeling. I have lots of ideas, more than ever, and some of them, I could tell, he thought were good. He had faith in that part of me, it was like pouring gasoline on a dying fire.

Some things really are meant to happen.

At the end of our talk, I knew what I had to do. I held my breath,  asked him if he would represent me again.  I said I completely understood if he said no.

He thought about it for a second, asked me a question or two. “Sure,” he said, “yes, let’s do it.” My heart practically flew out of my chest. I could hear his wheels turning.

I sent Richard an e-mail thanking him and  filling him in on my current publishing status and life, the Army of Good, the astonishing reach of the blog, my love of photography.

There are no guarantees in this world, no promises of fame and best sellerdom or movies or money. Most ideas fail or die. I don’t need to be a big hit to come out right.  One day I will be over. I just need to matter.

But I do feel re-born, my ideas can still live, I have a lot to offer still,  there may be more books yet inside of me. I feel good about it, excited and fulfilled. It seems very right to me. Maria was excited for me, she grasped how big a deal this was.

Agents on Richard’s level are not into charity work. He has faith in me and my ideas – like breathing clean air after a long confinement inside an airless room. I am not alone now.

But that’s not the point. I love my life and will be happy to remain in it, and lucky to have it.  I will dare to eat a peach, and plunge into the cold water with my pants rolled up.

“Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?”

I signed a new contract with life today, I am not ready to melt away, or turn from my duty to live my life.

And that phone call and message is discernment at its best. That was a good decision.