Neale Donald Walsch

Walsch has been married four times in total and is currently married to Em Claire, a working poet, with whom he lives in southern Oregon. He has nine children from his various marriages.

Neale Donald Walsch was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, into a Roman Catholic family who were always encouraging of his spiritual and religious escapades since Walch was a very curious child.

He attended a Catholic grade school and expressed more than usual interest in the questions of life and religion, which constantly drove his family and teachers into wondering from where he was learning all that wisdom.

The parish priest made sure that Walsch’s religious curiosity, which was more than usual for his tender age, is catered to. He met with him once a week and slowly the priest encouraged Walsch to ask his questions more confidently.

By the age of 15 he was fully immersed in the process of gaining more all-round knowledge about different religions and spiritual texts. He started reading the Bible, the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, etc.

Walsch enrolled at the University of Wisconsin for higher studies but his heart was not in academics, which is why he dropped out of college to join the radio broadcasting industry. It led to a job role at 19.

Walsch had a versatile career and held various kinds of jobs like radio station program director, a newspaper reporter, managing editor and public information officer for the local school systems. He ultimately founded his own public relations and marketing firm.

He did not just hop from one job to another; the existential saturation entered his personal life too. He was married many times by his mid-age but each of these relationships was a source of agony for him than love.

He relocated to Oregon to give his life a new turn in the early 1990s as he had suffered enough of trauma, but unfortunately he suffered another blow with a car accident that left him with a broken neck.

Now Walsch was out of job and had to start from scratch to build his life up, find a place to live in and money to pay off the bills. He was collecting aluminum cans and bottles to sell off to buy food.

In 1992, in a moment of despair, Walsch woke up in the middle of the night and wrote an angry letter to god asking “What does it take to make life work?”

The most prominent work of Walsch’s life is considered to be his ‘Conversation with God’ series and his other published 28 books.