About the author

Dr. Diane H. Nettles began her career teaching grades K-4. After earning her doctorate in curriculum and instruction at University of South Florida, she taught for one year at Gallaudet University. She and her husband Tim then moved to the Pittsburgh area, where she was a faculty member and chairperson of the Childhood Education Department at Pennsylvania Western University in California, Pennsylvania. In her thirty-two years at the university, she won numerous faculty and teaching awards. In the six years since her husband passed away, she has devoted her energies to discovering and researching the value of humor and positivity to meet life’s biggest challenges. When she’s not writing, her favorite pastimes include gardening, traveling to all the places in this world she and her husband wanted to see, playing pickleball, learning how to paint, and making valiant attempts to play tennis. Through it all, she works diligently to avoid the “w” word—“widow”—and to live her new life skillfully.