An Unexpected Life . . . Chocolate cake and birthday parties, two loving parents, a Jewish home, and a gentle Southern childhood prepared Diane Forman for a life of stability and security, not the rollercoaster of joy, marriage, loss, adoption, divorce, financial struggle, Al-Anon, widowhood, family mystery, and a rare, debilitating disease. Born in 1939, Diane found herself caught in the social upheavals and technological changes of her generation, challenges that shook the foundation of her world-and enriched it. In The Diane Chronicles, her strong narrative tells the tale, her quiet poems reflect the emotion, and her many photos illustrate the people past and present who have shaped her life. Amid the roadblocks and detours, readers will identify with Diane's humor, determination, spirit, and grit as she openly shares this personal yet universal journey through an unexpected life.
About the Author: About the Author . . . Born in New York and raised in Georgia and North Carolina, Diane Forman now lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her writing life began in high school, when she wrote humorous articles for the school paper. She graduated from Duke University in 1960 with a degree in English, taught school, and later taught Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics. In 1980, divorced and a single parent of two children, she acquired the Wisconsin franchise for Evelyn Wood. In 1987 she married a man with "issues." Those were resolved, but then he went scuba-diving in Hawaii. In 2002, she wrote Common Threads: Nine Women's Journeys through Love, Loss, and Healing (Baywood Publishing). In 2006, she wrote The Storyteller, about her father, a man of great integrity and a lover of travel, adventure, books, and life. Coming from a small Jewish family, Diane always wondered about the silence around her mother's origins - how could someone not have parents? Where were all her dad's many cousins, aunts, and uncles? In 2006, she turned to Ancestry.com for answers. At the same time, her daughter began her own pursuit, to find her birthparents. Each of the three quests led to an amazing journey of discovery. One day in 2013, Diane felt pain in her left eye. By the next day, she was hospitalized with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a rare disease that changed her face, her senses, and her life forever. Diane met Bill Forman at a wedding in Jerusalem in 1999, and they have been happily married since 2001. For the last sixteen years, Diane has shepherded three groups of memoir writers, whom she encourages to write their stories-and write them well. She is a mother and grandmother.