Love Doesn’t Pay the Bills: A memoir of resilience and abundance

By Diana Firth

Love Doesn’t Pay the Bills is a powerful memoir from a neurodivergent woman who healed her life through mindful intention, mental reprogramming, and Divine guidance. Blending memoir with self-help, it offers an honest exploration of overcoming scarcity, societal labels, inherited patterns—and learning to thrive with a differently wired mind, to cultivate self-love, emotional stability, and financial prosperity. This journey serves as an inspiration for those seeking to trust universal guidance, live with purpose, and embrace the truth that they are enough.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: May 5, 2025
• ISBN: 9798765259979

Diana Firth

Diana Firth is a simplicity expert, speaker, and intuitive coach who helps others clear energetic clutter to reconnect with their purpose. Find her at www.simplifywithdi.net

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Copyright © 2025 Diana Firth.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 979-8-7652-5996-2 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-5998-6 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-5997-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2025902234

Balboa Press rev. date: 04/30/2025

Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1 Red Light, Green Light

Chapter 2 C’s Get Degrees

Chapter 3 A Road Map to Nowhere

Chapter 4 Westward Bound

Chapter 5 Change Is in the Air

Chapter 6 Late Nights and Candelabras

Chapter 7 Meshuggenah Love

Chapter 8 Undercover Lover

Chapter 9 Simplify with Di

Chapter 10 A Ministry of Love

Chapter 11 My Journey to Now

About the Author

To my parents, thank you for your unwavering love and support.

To my brother Jim: Thank you for teaching me that life doesn’t require training wheels, and for always catching me when I fall.

To my brother Larry: Thank you for always inspiring me to dream bigger, and for believing in me even when I didn’t.

Foreword

It is an honor to write this foreword for my dear friend Diana. Is that the most common, boring, basic, uninspiring first line to a forward for a book? Yes, probably. And I will tell you that it will be the only thing that is common, boring, basic and uninspiring about what you read in these pages. Because Diana, her life and her work, shares her journey and gives us all a roadmap for how to navigate life’s challenges with grace and purpose.

Diana shows up for us with her full, complete, vulnerable and authentic self, taking us on her journey to discover how best to live and love in this sometimes beautiful and sometimes harsh world. She has allowed heartaches and heartbreaks become her inspiration to discover joy, tenderness, hopefulness and courage as she crafts her very own deeply meaningful, purpose-driven, spiritually-guided life. And, what is most remarkable, is that she is not just doing this for herself. This is not a selfish pursuit of personal growth and development; no, instead, on her sacred journey, at every step of the way, she aims to be of service to others. She thrives and is at her highest and best self when she is teaching and helping others. Diana has a beautiful ability to recognize and honor the teachers, helpers and guides along the way who have helped her. Rather than just accepting and keeping the gifts her wisdom teachers have given her, she gives it away by teaching and helping others. Diana has surrounded herself with other wisdom seekers and turned her life experiences and lessons into powerful lessons that are intended to lovingly reach out to you, reader, and take your hand and say… come along…let’s discover the beauty and magic together….

I know all of this because I have been just one of the many lucky recipients of her personal power and gifts being shared with me. As a new widow, I faced moving to a new city and setting up a new apartment. The universe aligned in a magical way as usual and I found Diana. She showed up for me and held my hand as I set up my new home in my new city to start my new job.

All she wants to do is to help and to serve. She has learned hard lessons and has realized that past decisions do not dictate your prosperous future, in fact they very well might shape a beautiful future when you understand the magic and alchemy of changing hardships into successes. She lovingly gives us practical tools so we can heal ourselves when we realize we are not victims, and we can rewrite the scripts and narratives that have tried to determine our destinies. She has a remarkable talent at being able to show HOW to navigate the complexities of life. Rather than just tell her readers WHAT they should do, she shows HOW to take steps to help you reach your highest potential. We learn from her example that sometimes there are beliefs, habits and narratives that are not serving us to realize our highest and best selves. Diana is a woman who has embraced being divinely guided and through her own examples we learn how we can tap into sources that allow us to live with intention and mindfulness. She teaches us how to trust Universal guidance and shifts from scarcity to abundance. Through this work you will learn how to let your true self shine brighter than your labels

Diana starts off with admitting her vulnerability about how societal imprints in no way resonated with what her soul was craving and how this left her directionless, confused and without purpose.

She is not afraid of stepping into the unknown and is divinely guided. Let her guide you on your journey to discover what makes your heart sing in service of your own personal growth. And through that process you will come to know your purpose so clearly. Diana knows that each of us has a special gift, strength, talent and ability that we are meant to share with the world.

May you find yours.

May you serve.

May you feel free, abundant and filled with purpose and meaning on this beautiful journey.

Thank you Diana, for this gift of a book.

Cindy Marten,

Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education

Chapter 1

Red Light, Green Light

THE SUN BEAT DOWN, marking the passage of a sweltering summer day in 1978. Nina stood at the top of our tree-lined street, her arms stretched out in the shape of a T. The rest of us lined up 50 feet away, ready for the race to begin. Nina yelled, green light! and we took off running. She yelled, red light! and we stopped abruptly in our tracks. Nina screamed, we ran, we stopped, and Nina shouted, green light! one last time as I won.

I loved that game. There were lots of fast sprints forward, only to be stopped abruptly before starting again. I was the smallest and youngest in my friend group, but my speed and craving for the unexpected led me to win time after time.

Born a creative, freedom-loving soul, I was destined for a life filled with adventure, only I was locked into a belief system and societal structure that told me to do otherwise. I was highly intuitive and chose feeling over logic. When I entered school, I learned this wasn’t the norm and reluctantly adapted to my new environment. An early diagnosis of ADHD set me aside from everyone around me, making me feel different and not as capable and smart as everyone else.

I knew differently. This unleashed an internal struggle no one could see but me. I yearned for freedom, travel and exploration, but I was born into a world where women stayed home to raise kids, clean house and care for a family. Nothing about that excited me, which sent me on a journey of stop and go for a large part of my life.

Though I grew up near Washington, DC, it all started for me in 1970 on Nellis Air Force base near Las Vegas, Nevada. I was born to the most amazing family anyone could ask for. They weren’t without flaws, but in the grand scheme, I hit the jackpot.

I was conceived in love and into the arms of a supportive family, but it was a rough ride getting me here. My mother had no clue she was pregnant until five months in, when she passed out just before meeting Sammy Davis Jr. She had taken several tests that ruled out pregnancy. At one point, she thought she had an ulcer. I imagine my soul knew I was in for a wild adventure, and I stayed in her cozy womb a bit longer than expected. I was almost three weeks late entering the world, and when I finally decided to come out, they had to pull me out with forceps.

I can only imagine the scene, with my mom just then catching up to the idea she was going to be a mom again and then hearing, Okay, ma’am, it looks like you’re going to need a little more help with delivery today. We’ve passed the time for an epidural, so we need to put you to sleep. They placed a mask over her face and asked her to count back from ten. The long, intensive labor resulted in a cracked pelvic bone for my mother. I came out without a scathe but was ushered into the arms of nurses instead of the embrace of my own parents, whom I met six hours later.

It was a warm November day in the desert, just three days before my brother Jim turned seven. Up until now, he was the youngest of two, which is to say that the idea of a new family member didn’t excite him one bit. But the way my mother tells the story, the minute we locked eyes, we were bonded for life. My oldest brother, Larry, had just turned ten that June and ran home at record speed to beat my arrival. My brothers arrived home to find me bundled up in a pink hand-knit blanket from my paternal grandmother. My mother finally had her baby girl, and the family she dreamed of having was now complete.

My parents grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, where they attended the same high school. In their junior year, they fell in love. Immediately upon graduation, at age 17, my father enlisted in the Air Force, with a letter from his father permitting him to do so. My mother watched as he went off to pursue his lifelong dream to wear a uniform and serve our country. She stayed behind and got a job at Gulf Oil as a secretary, but she yearned for an adventure of her own. One year later, she snuck out of her parents’ home and drove to Valdosta, Georgia, where they got engaged. They were married that October and began a lifelong mission of giving back and raising a family to do the same.

My parents were born in 1939 and 1940 to parents who had lived through war and the Great Depression. My mother’s grandparents had a big influence on her and served as surrogate parents while her mother was at home raising her two younger siblings. They taught her everything she needed to know to be prepared for a disaster. There wasn’t an emergency that my mother wasn’t prepared for. We grew up filling our bathtubs with water at any threat of a big storm. I learned early on that you could flush your toilet by pouring a bucket of water into it without ever touching the lever.

My mother’s grandfather was the local tax collector, and despite his title, he was revered by many for his local charitable work. He held local food drives to feed the less fortunate and found other ways of giving back throughout the year. Later, he was given the great honor of having the town hall named for him. Her grandmother spent her days cleaning house, rearranging furniture and cooking meals so tasty they could be featured in Good Housekeeping. Her home was so meticulous you could eat off the floors, in the true sense of the cliché. There was not a speck of dust or dirt anywhere. My mother tagged along with her as she cleaned morning, noon and night. She once came to the house only to find her grandmother lying between the rafters in the ceiling above, with a duster in hand. My mom’s grandparents taught her to be frugal and count every penny, passing along the scarcity mindset of most Americans of that time. When she was at home, she started each day collecting eggs from the chicken coop, which she sold in front of the house for 70 cents a dozen. From this, she learned you could earn money doing just about anything.

Unfortunately for her and others from the Silent Generation, the way in which they were raised and the state of the world manifested in a life filled with fear. Her birth story is one I heard repeatedly throughout my life and forever shaped the way she felt about snowstorms. She was born in February 1940 during one of the biggest blizzards in history. My grandfather had to shovel his way to the hospital while my grandmother was in labor in the car. Once they arrived, my mother came out of the womb and directly into the hands of nurses without meeting her mother for almost a month. The prolonged labor had caused my grandmother to contract childbirth fever, which nearly took her life. My mother’s birth story, and the time in which she was raised, created fear and attachment issues that cursed her throughout her entire life. She’s the happiest, most intuitive soul I know, and without the fear, her life would have felt much different.

My father was raised by a family of entrepreneurs and homemakers. He watched his grandfather manage the Imperial Hotel, of which he was sole proprietor, in Chester, Pennsylvania. When he wasn’t at the hotel, he was managing one of his many side hustles, which taught my father that one job sometimes wasn’t enough. His father had worked his way through medical school and eventually opened his own practice in the next town over. His mother was a quintessential homemaker straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting and had the cooking skills to prove it. It wasn’t unusual to arrive at their home to find freshly baked pies cooling on the windowsill.

At age eight, my father took his own entrepreneurial spirit to the beach of Wildwood, New Jersey, where he spent his summers with his grandmother. He sold newspapers on the boardwalk, shined shoes and even entertained his customers with a song and dance routine he learned from his childhood friend Bucky. All of this served him well as he grew into the family man he knew he wanted to become someday.

A few months after I was born, my father was stationed at the Pentagon, and we moved to Northern Virginia, just twenty miles south of Washington, DC. Woodbridge was one of the first known sleeper towns, home to droves of working-class Americans. It was a place where everyone had a plan, and time was our gatekeeper. Horse stables and pastures where livestock could roam were mixed in with modern conveniences like 7-Eleven and McDonald’s. The river’s edge was only a few miles from our front door, which explains the creek at the bottom of our street. We lived on a street where all the houses looked the same. Our yards were covered in thick, green grass, and trees covered us like a canopy of peace from the outside world. There were no sidewalks; only ditches separated the yards from the street.

My father spent most of his time at the Pentagon, but when he wasn’t there, he was driving a commuter bus part-time. He was clever. He figured if he had to drive into DC, why not get paid to do it? He left our house before sunrise to pick up the bus and the lines of commuters heading into the city. He dropped off passengers and then took the bus to the lot. At the end of the day, after his shift, he picked up the bus filled with passengers and headed home. He did this every weekday for five years.

At one point, he spent a brief time overseas, and while he was away, my brothers became surrogate fathers. Although our time with my father was sometimes limited, he was a dedicated family man and fulfilled the role he was taught to play—earning money and providing for his family, even if that meant working more than one job.

While my brothers were off doing what teenagers did in the 1970s, I was at home with my mom learning to be a housewife. I was her perpetual shadow. Anything that she did in the house, I wanted to learn to do. If she was ironing clothes or making beds, I joined in. I learned what a hospital corner was before ever stepping foot inside of a hospital. It wasn’t unusual for my mom to shift things around in the house. Rearranging furniture became a regular routine. We lived on limited means, but my mom had a natural talent to make any home look like it belonged in a magazine. She could turn mud pies into mansions and taught me all of her tricks. When it was time to redecorate my bedroom, she taught me to pick out just the right shade of pink paint by matching it to the pink-and-white checkered fabric being used to make my curtains and bedding.

It was during these moments that she would praise me and say, You’re going to make a good housewife someday. Although I loved her praise, that word, housewife, didn’t resonate with me and caused me to experience some internal conflict. I loved spending time helping my mom in the house, but I was craving adventure, which didn’t involve folding sheets. Most of my life, I was taught to create my own white picket fence story, only it didn’t match what my soul was craving. I yearned for a life of travel and exploration to the places I saw in National Geographic.

Being a housewife also meant having kids, and I knew early on I wasn’t meant to be a mother. I distinctly remember a time at around age nine when I asked my mother’s cousin, who was married without children, why she didn’t have any children. My mother was mortified, but her cousin gently explained to me that she loved her career as a teacher, that she had a special man to share her life with, and that was all she needed. She was calm and confident and held a smile the entire time she spoke to me. I was happy with her response and spent many years of my life watching her and others like her. My dad’s cousin Gay lived a similar life—happily married, with a career in radio—which intrigued me even more. They both had happy marriages, successful careers and no children. This was an option that I stored away for future reference.

Growing up in a patriarchal family meant I would take on the role of the women in my family—only it didn’t look like a life I wanted. Staying at home to cook and clean looked dreadful to me. I made it clear to everyone early on that the gender roles placed upon me were not mine to live.

On one Thanksgiving, after our meal, the women all congregated in the kitchen to do the dishes while the men sat around the TV watching football. I made my way into the living room with the men, where I was wrestling around with my cousin Gordon. My uncle looked over at me and said, Hey, you better get into the kitchen and help with those dishes.

I stood up, looked at him with my hands on my hips and said, Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I have to do dishes.

My mother was a hybrid. She was a stay-at-home mom, but she was also the queen of the side hustle. Raising a family of five on an enlisted man’s salary meant living lean, but she knew how to stretch a dollar. She would do just about anything to bring in extra cash, including the paper route she picked up in the summer of 1976.

One warm summer morning, when I was just five years old and a recent graduate of kindergarten, I remember being awakened from a deep night’s sleep when the hum of the central air-conditioning shut off. I pulled the blankets up to my chin in the cold room. Then I realized it was summer and I didn’t have to go to school—precisely the motivation I needed to get up and start the day.

The songs of mourning doves and the smell of breakfast greeted me as I walked down the hall to our kitchen. My mother was busy at the stove cooking scrambled eggs, and I sat at the table, where my juice and a vitamin awaited me. I took a big gulp of juice as the pulp did a dance of tart and sweet across my tongue. As we shared our breakfast together, my mom told me what we had planned for the day.

Now, after breakfast, go get dressed so we can get the papers delivered. Then we need to stop at the church to drop off fabric for the quilting group and do a little shopping before we head home, she said.

I asked a series of follow-up questions, which I often did, and she answered them one by one with a great deal of patience before I stood up to get dressed.

I got into the passenger side of our blue 1960 Karmann Ghia, my tiny legs sticking to the warm leather seats. We drove down the road, windows open, with the warm summer air blowing in our faces. My mom wore a pair of oversized, round, white sunglasses with a hair scarf that blew in the wind as we drove. She looked just like Ginger from the TV show Gilligan’s Island. She sang along to Paul McCartney as she drove. You’d think that people would’ve had enough of silly love songs; I look around me and I see it isn’t so. Stylish and carefree, it seemed like she didn’t have a care in the world. I thought she was the coolest mom alive. I wanted to be just like her.

As she pulled down the street, she slowed the car enough for me to lean out the window and throw the papers into the driveway, extending my little arm as far as it could go. It was exhilarating. I felt like I was getting away with something I wasn’t supposed to be doing, and I loved it. I watched as my mom took her turn. Her right hand on the steering wheel, her left hand holding the paper, she threw it out of the driver’s side window, over the roof and onto the pavement. After several more rounds of this, it was time for a break.

We pulled up to High’s convenience store and grabbed a picnic table under the trees. I can still taste the filling from the vanilla cream cookies my mom always packed in my lunch. We sat and ate our lunch as we watched many patrons enter and leave the store—hands full of sodas, cigarettes and slushies—a sign that summer was in full swing.

When I wasn’t helping my mom, I was busy trying to get my brothers’ attention. Even though they were much older, they always found time to fit me in. They loved my fearless nature and pushed me in everything I did. One night, while my parents were out on a date, my brothers got a clever idea to turn me into a mini stunt person. Larry took the lead, saying, Lie on your stomach on top of this mattress, and stay still until we’re finished wrapping you up. Jim looped my dad’s belts around the mattress, with my little body wrapped inside like a taco. Once I was wrapped up, they placed me headfirst at the top of the stairs. Larry chimed in one last time before pushing me off. I’m going to push you on the count of three. Are you ready? I looked up at him with eager eyes and nodded yes without fully knowing what I was agreeing to. Three, two, one, and off I went, thumping my way down the staircase. They slid me down the stairs headfirst, over and over again, and watched every time in sheer delight. The risk-taker in me loved every second of it, and I was determined to become the first female Evil Knievel. When my parents arrived home, they found me still strapped to the cot mattress with three of my dad’s belts, one loosely dangling from many rounds of stair gliding.

That same year, Jim taught me to ride a bike, but we skipped the training wheels entirely. He broke out his football gear and suited me up. With his oversized helmet flopping on my head, he put me on my bike and said, When I let go, just keep pedaling—don’t give up. I fell many times that day, but I didn’t relent until I learned. If I cried, he would check to see if I was okay and then send me back out to do it again, blood and all. Jim wore a big smile even when I fell and encouraged me to try again and again. Making him proud made me even happier than the promise of a new pink bike. That Christmas, I received the coveted Strawberry Sizzler—a new pink bike!

Larry was one of the fastest kids in the neighborhood and often took me running up and down our street, each time pushing me to go faster than before. He took my hand and said, We’re going to run as fast as we can, and when I let go of your hand, just keep running faster and faster. As we took off, my little legs worked double-time to keep up with his longer and faster strides. His encouragement fueled me until I was on my own, running faster than ever before. I heard his voice from the distance saying, Just keep going! You can do it! Faster! Don’t stop! Keep going! Running was like breathing for me. It was a life force I couldn’t live without. From that point forward, I ran everywhere I went, as fast as I possibly could, always hearing Larry’s voice in my head, encouraging me to persevere.

Being seven and ten years younger than my siblings meant that sometimes I was left to play alone. Playing make-believe, creating alternate realities and pushing myself physically were my happy place. Physical fitness of any kind gave me a surge of energy that was indescribable. It awakened a level of confidence in me that nothing else could match. I felt unstoppable. I was fiercely competitive with myself and always striving to do more and better. I would lie on the floor with my feet wedged under our basement sectional and do multiple rounds of sit-ups using the sand timer from our kitchen. In my mind, I was training for the Olympics.

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD WAS FILLED with kids my age, which gave me plenty of options for playtime. Growing up in the 1970s meant using your imagination and playing outdoors all day long. We were the pioneers of building epic forts out of cardboard boxes. We played make-believe better than any Hollywood screenwriter, and we created secret clubs with passwords and a hidden agenda no one else knew about. Nina formed the Snoopers club. As the youngest, I was in a perpetual state of initiation. I once spent three hours searching for a four-leaf clover to gain acceptance into the club. Kelsey felt some sympathy for me and always found a way to help with the many missions they sent me on. That same loyalty would continue for the duration of our lives. The ’70s brought a carefree energy to our young lives. Our days were filled with dandelion wishes and Barbie doll fantasies, the sweet taste of honeysuckle, the musical sounds of the ice cream man arriving, the smell of fresh-cut grass that stained our white shoes, the play of freeze tag in our yards. We climbed trees. We caught tadpoles from the creek. We hopped over stones.

Nature was my refuge. I was always barefoot and discovered earthing early on. My mother could never keep shoes on my feet, and I often returned home without the shoes I left the house in. The feeling of the warm earth beneath my feet felt better than cramming my toes into hot and sweaty tennis shoes. I loved waking to the sound of mourning doves and taught myself to replicate their call. I waited for them to respond and spent a great deal of time convincing myself it worked. I could spend hours outside alone. I would often lie on the grass, stare at the sky and watch the clouds roll by—my own early form of meditation, and the only time I was quiet.

We played late into the evening and came in only at the sound of our mothers’ voices calling our names one by one. I can still hear my mother’s voice breaking my name into syllables, as if the longer the name was and the slower she yelled it, the more likely I would hear it.

Di-aaa-nah! I took my time getting home, leaving my mother with no option but to repeat my long, drawn-out name several more times.

THE KIDS IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD were always ready for excitement. My neighbors and second family, the Dawsons, used to babysit my classmate Kevin. He was very much the male version of me, and we were just about the same size. All the neighborhood kids would chicken fight on the grass, and we met our match in one another. Larry would place me on his shoulders while Kevin would face me atop Mickey’s shoulders. Having my brother as my base gave me the courage to fight back with all my might. Even though we mostly tied, I managed to knock Kevin down a few times. Kevin, like me, loved running, and we held races to see who was fastest. He wasn’t happy when I beat him and pushed harder the next time to prove he couldn’t be beaten by a girl. That gave me the drive to run even faster.

Thanks to Kevin, I learned the valuable lesson that girls can beat boys. Our society raises boys to push the limits, to take risks and to go beyond what they believe is possible, while we raise girls to be careful and cautious. This push to take risks and live without fear served me well later in life. When I started my business out of nothing at age 39, this was the imprint that helped me succeed.

These early experiences of love and acceptance were shadowed by expectations to follow in my parents’ footsteps. I remember learning the word entrepreneur when I was little. It resonated deep within me, and I knew immediately that I wanted to be one someday. This became less of an option for me as I grew up because the concept was clouded by everything I had seen and been taught. No one knew this was something I felt, so how could they help foster a future for anything different? They simply assumed I wanted what they had. So, I continued on in life being guided by people who were guiding me into the life they knew and loved, not the one I was yearning to live.

AFTER TWENTY YEARS OF SERVICE, my father retired from the Air Force and decided to pursue his passion of working in radio. He grew an appreciation for this work while serving in Vietnam, where he had a late-night radio show that quickly made him known and beloved. He longed to be back on air, so he landed a position as a disc jockey on the evening segment of a local country station.

I would sit in our kitchen on a barstool near the window, legs dangling, and listen to his show on the small radio my mom kept on the counter as she washed the dinner dishes. I was listening to a voice unlike the one I heard at home, but I knew it was my dad and thought it was amazing that he could change his voice the way he did. Welcome to another broadcast from WPIK–WXRA. This is Big Al coming at you with the latest hit from country’s coolest, Johnny Cash, singing ‘One Piece at a Time.’

On a few occasions, my mom took us to see him at the station. There was my father, sitting behind a glass window in front of a large table filled with turntables, switches and wires. He wore oversized headphones and was surrounded by albums he would sometimes grab at random and play for the thousands listening at home. A bright red light just outside the door indicated he was on air, and we weren’t allowed to enter. Once the light turned green, we got to go in. I knew I wanted to be on the radio someday. I sat on my dad’s lap with his big headphones on and played make-believe broadcaster.

That Christmas, I received my own handheld tape recorder with a microphone and began recording myself over and over, rehearsing for my big debut. This is Diana Firth coming at you from WPIK–WXRA. I mimicked the voices of guests I would interview. In my best deep voice, I gave the weather report. This is your local weatherman. We have some dirt clouds above Los Angeles and ten feet of snow in Michigan. I interviewed family and friends, ad nauseam. I never went anywhere without my recorder. I was sure I was destined for a future in radio, just like my dad and his cousin.

I WAS EXTREMELY FORTUNATE to also be surrounded by people who were tuned into a higher power and lived their lives with integrity and grace. My parents raised us in the Presbyterian church, where I gained a sense of community and love outside of my immediate family. I sang in the children’s choir and loved taking part in holiday productions. One year, I stood in front of the entire congregation and recited my lines as I held a basket filled with musical notes. I had only one line. As I reached into the basket, I grabbed a handful of musical notes and said, I couldn’t carry a tune in a basket, and then I dropped the notes on the floor.

Laughter ensued as I thought to myself, I wonder if that’s true? We attended monthly potluck dinners and candlelight services every Christmas Eve. I loved taking my lit candle all the way home to light our family advent wreath. Something about the sacred flame from the church gave me the feeling that we were surrounded by God’s grace. That, and the exhilaration of holding a lit candle in the car, was my favorite part of the holiday season.

While I didn’t always agree with the religious ideologies I was raised to believe, I was deeply spiritual, highly intuitive and sensitive to the energies around me. I can remember lying in bed feeling the energy of spirit, only I didn’t know what it was, and it scared me. My body would fill with chills, even if I wasn’t cold, which was a strange sensation for a six-year-old. I gripped the blankets tightly in my hands and held them under my chin as I prayed for comfort and protection. I had seen my deceased grandfather at age six, and that experience forever shaped my knowledge and awareness of the spirit realm.

It was 1976, and I was taking a nap in my room at my grandmother’s house. I looked up and saw my grandfather above me. He smiled at me and then placed his finger to his lips, making the shh gesture before fading away. I wasn’t scared at all and knew from that point on that we were connected to something greater than what we could see here on Earth. I had just turned four when he passed away on Christmas Eve in 1974, and although I didn’t get much time with him here on Earth, he stayed with me every step of the way and guides me even today.

I have a picture of him that I’ve kept in my Bible since I was young. I was always curious about him, and in times of need, I would open my Bible, take his picture out and talk to him as I prayed. The one thing I never did was share my experience of seeing him. I guess I took that shh gesture seriously. When I played with my cousins in the basement of my grandmother’s house, I always felt his presence and later found out that was where he was when he felt the sharp pain hit his heart the night he died. I didn’t tell anyone any of these things because I don’t think I fully understood what it meant. I was 16 before I confided in my aunt what I’d seen. She put me at ease as she told me that she, too, had seen him at the house. This comforted me in knowing it was real and that I wasn’t crazy. It also triggered an interest in me to learn more about the afterlife and physic mediums. For Christmas a few years later, I asked my parents for a copy of Sylvia Browne’s Adventures of a Psychic. Later, I would watch her on The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live with great interest.

From the time I was a small child, I had a deep knowing, a sense that everything was going to be okay. I had a joyful spirit with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. As I stood on the coffee table in our basement, using a brush for a microphone, I declared aloud, I’m going to be a rich and famous actress someday. Somewhere in my heart, I knew I wanted to stand on stage and make people happy.

My mother took one look at me and said, There’s more to life than money, Diana. Her own sense of self and scarcity mindset led her to not fully understand me, and my confidence made her uncomfortable. The only response she knew was to shut it down. This caused me to second-guess myself in certain areas of my life. I was constantly playing a game of forging ahead boldly or questioning if I should.

Each summer, I got to spend an entire month in Pennsylvania with my maternal grandmother, whom I called Mom-Mom. I slept in the same room where I saw my grandfather, and for that reason, I always had a difficult time falling asleep. I could feel his energy there, and when I played in the basement with my cousins, my body filled with chills.

My grandmother never worked a day in her life but spent a great deal of time volunteering at the nursing home just a few miles away. I loved these excursions and looked forward to seeing the elderly people each week. As we walked into the old stone building, my grandmother tightly gripped my hand and said, When we go in there, you behave. You can’t run around; you’ll make them nervous. No matter what anyone said, I couldn’t control the energy in my small body and was in constant movement. The old people seemed to love my energy, and I often danced and sang for them in their rooms.

Each weekend, I got to spend time with my paternal grandparents in the country. They lived in a beautiful home, made of stone, on five acres of land next door to a horse breeder. There were white picket fences and horse stables set atop lush green fields. I spent my days walking in the woods playing make-believe, petting the horses in the stables and sitting on the stone statue of a woman my grandfather named Laura. That’s where I would sit and dream. My grandfather was always in the garden and taught me a great deal about growing my own herbs. This is nature’s toothpaste,