About Diana Murdoch
The Short Version
Diana Schreiber Murdoch of Waterloo, Ontario is a Mom and Oma who has embraced many roles over her
fifty - something years.
As a life-long writer, she has produced
Many Short Stories with a family focus
Tidbits of Unconventional Wisdom
Informational Articles especially on Learning Disabilities and Brain Skill Therapies
Her professions span across clerical work, teaching piano lessons, dance choreography, Pre-postnatal instructor and labour coach, entrepreneur, administrative organizer, and currently a Student in 3rd year University working toward a Psychology Degree.
“On my 49th birthday, I started a journal. I decided that on my 50th birthday, I would be happily married or happily single, but I would for sure be HAPPY. My journal and a counselor helped me through many fervent efforts to create that happy marriage. But when I turned 50, I found myself only single. It took another 8 years of tearful soul searching, huge life changing decisions and just plain hard personal work to reach a state of happy. And very happy, too, I might add, as a flourishing Psychology student, and a playful grandmother, living on a shoe-string budget and loving the simplicity of life.”
The Long Version
The child of a German Immigrant family in the 1950’s, Diana struggled to fit in with the Canadian kids she grew up with. The cultures were always clashing. Low self-esteem led to poor decisions as a teen and young adult, when Diana found herself married to a deeply selfish man. Her joy is her three children. Her life story is about working to help her kids fit in to the Canadian culture while struggling with a variety of learning disabilities. Deciding to home school so she could ensure they could read without falling through the cracks of a poor educational system, she prepared lessons and taught lessons while also supporting her husband in his business ventures. Eventually, with tears and a heavy heart she gave up on homeschooling the kids to try to meet the needs of a man whose bucket seemed to have no bottom. As the children returned to a public school system, able to read already, her friend, Pauline, who also had two boys with learning disabilities, shared about the things she had been learning. In the early 1990’s, Neuroplasticity had not been discovered, considered and labelled. Yet Pauline’s research found a number of therapies based on the assumption that the brain could change. First Diana worked two jobs to afford the therapy for her daughters. Eventually she volunteered with Pauline and learned how to apply the therapies to other learning disabled people. The use of a Balance Board, and targeting specific brain skills, the development of memory skills and skills underlying school learning and life became the fuel of Diana’s day. As her two daughters left Special Education to become strong learners in the regular classroom, Diana began to promote what she saw as miracle making therapies. While Diana’s two incomes bought them a house and paid the bills, her spouse worked less and less hours in his business, and began to seek the company of less-than-virtuous women. Eventually her daughter told her she should not be sleeping with Dad anymore, since she suspected he was going to give Mom an STD. Shocked that her husband would have crossed that invisible line, a night of tears and confrontation led to separation and divorce. The depression left Diana in bed for a little over a year, literally unable to think beyond the most basic needs, eating, sleeping. She lost her lucrative job, her beloved home, and moved with her youngest into an apartment where a second out-of-wedlock grandchild was born. The first had been a boy for her son whose mother abandoned the baby. Diana worked with Pauline and the brain skill neuro therapies to support the staff in administration while rebuilding her life. Eventually, she knew she had to follow her dream and get that missed University education, originally skipped because of a misunderstanding with her parents. Her fault, not theirs. At the age of 54, Diana wrote a University Application Essay with the hallmark phrase, “I may be 35 years late, but I am in school now and ready to learn.” In line with her passion to help LD kids, she is majoring in Psychology, and her marks are mostly A’s and B’s. Diana has many stories of adversities that were overcome with determination, faith and friends, as well as a life-times' worth of Unconventional Wisdom gleaned through heart wrenching tears and overwhelming joy.
