Adventures in aging with intention
Diana von Welanetz Wentworth is a New York Times best selling author, the first co-author that joined Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of the iconic Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and the founder of Love Letters, a global movement that is transforming hearts, one word at a time. We first met at our spiritual center and laughed about our twinning hairstyles. This is my tribute to my new dearest friend and major inspiration. Spotlighting her amazing life is why I started IF in the first place, so I hope I get it right. I mean she even dated Elvis Presley!
What brings you joy in this moment?
I think what brings me joy is a lifetime observance of my ability to raise my own spirits. And I do that through wonderment and asking questions that I don't know the answers to. Not questions like 'What am I going to do today?' More like, 'Where's the most joy to be found today?' Or 'What kind of magic will show up that will show me my next step?' So, there's a vibration, a frequency of the actual feeling and the solution that I want. An invitation.
Your energies ignite a radiance in you that's contagious. What are you most excited about these days?
It's hard to contain myself! I've begun a new page in my life -- inspiring people to write love letters. A long-lost art. Love letters are the love that we have captured inside, the realizations that there are people who've shown up right in front of us and inspired us. I call them shining mirrors, actually. So I've launched a love letters revolution, a global movement that honors sharing sacred expressions of the heart, the old school way, with pen and paper.
What I know for certain after 84 years, is the only thing that matters is shared love.
With all the events tearing us apart these days I felt helpless as to what I could do to find a connective thread to bring us home to one another. So, I did one of my 'what if' inquiries that often direct my life… What if I wrote a love letter to someone I really didn't know and shared how they impacted my life? I read a lot, so I sat down and wrote a letter to an author named Dawna Markova whose books have deeply touched me. It came to her out of the blue, and surprisingly she wrote back. That stirred something in me. What would happen if we actually took time to express to people how they've affected us, or made our lives better? What ripples of kindness and kinship would come from that?
What if my lifelong passion for writing could inspire others to remember that every single person we meet is a precious soul? Love Letters provides the gathering place to begin. I'm also inviting everyone to share a love letter they've written so their words can be a voice of inspiration in a Love Letters book I'm compiling, like the Chicken Soup for the Soul anthology series with its impact.
Recently, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared loneliness and disconnection as an urgent public health epidemic in America—a chronic crisis equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes daily.
With technology we’ve lost the health benefits that tactile movement triggers when tap into our emotions by slowing down and writing with a cadence of calm and reflection. That’s when the flow of the love hormone oxytocin and the feel-good motivating hormone dopamine fill us up.
Of the 14 books you've penned, is there one that stands out as your favorite? I imagine this is a difficult question, as each of them are your children…There's a romantic memoir that took me 10 years to write, called Send Me Someone. For many years I was married to the most wonderful man, Paul von Welanetz, and we were true soulmates. We had a long career together in cooking and entertaining. Just after our 25th anniversary, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Shortly before he passed, I had gotten up to get him some water, and as I was walking away, he said, 'I don't want you to be alone.' To which I said, 'Then send me someone.' He promised he would. Two months later, Ted Wentworth walked into the business I was running -- a big meeting I was hosting -- and we were married six months after that. Paul did send me someone. So, I wrote Send Me Someone: A True Story of Love Here and Hereafter. I sold the film rights to the Lifetime Network. They never made the movie, but it's my favorite book, because there are just so many wonderful moments in it, about love and loss and the mystery of life. My second husband also has now passed, so I've gotten to live two love stories in a way.
But another book that is primary in my mind is my first cookbook. It was before computers and word processing, and it took five years to write. I was just so ignorant. I had my typewriter and Whiteout. I didn't even know you double spaced a manuscript. It was called The Pleasure of Your Company, and it went on to win the "Cookbook of the Year" Award in the category of entertaining. And that opened the door to the rest of our culinary career, which consisted of six cookbooks, and then, eventually, the Chicken Soup for the Soul Cookbook. (The third book in the New York Times bestselling series that sold over 500 million worldwide in 43 languages)
What wisdom can you share with women about embracing aging? Any tips or mindset shifts that have made a difference for you?
One nice thing about growing older is that you can look back on your life from higher ground. You are at home within a combination of all your talents and your abilities. And, there's no pressure to feel significant anymore. I just wanna be playful. Remember how we used to just laugh till we thought we were gonna die of laughing? I still do, and I get in trouble for that sometimes. But I really love the idea of just being spontaneous and playful.
A tactic that keeps me centered is something I stopped doing. Complaining. Complaining repetitively just for the sake of complaining goes nowhere. It doesn't change anything and it makes everyone around me feel awful. I keep my mind from going anywhere dark, and the simplest of things keep me smiling.
You're in a chapter now where you're living with your daughter. What's the experience teaching you -- this shift from being the parent who leads to a new kind of interdependence? A lot of us, me included, are wondering what transitions lie ahead.
This chapter is so unexpected. I did not expect to be widowed a second time. Teddy and I had been married 31 years, and it happened rather suddenly. Coincidentally, around that time my daughter Lexi left her marriage. Lexi and I hadn't been close in a long time because my husband and I had travelled a lot and lived quite a distance away. But we reconnected and found out we enjoyed each other. Instead of me renting a guest house somewhere we found a spectacular home together, and it's become the greatest joy of my life. Having this amazing accomplished daughter who matured so beautifully. We've just created a surprisingly wonderful friendship and trust for each other. There's no hierarchy, only equanimity. We share a sort of dark sense of humor and love making fun of each other. What surprises her is that her friends tell her she's got the most amazing mom. And I'm just so tickled by it, because I feel like I have the coolest daughter. So, you never know what's gonna come.
You must absolutely share your story of how Elvis Presley appeared in your life!
One day when I asked my UCLA sorority friends to turn down the volume on an Elvis Presley tune, they jokingly said I didn't like him. Surprisingly, I answered that in fact I was going to date him someday. I honestly don't know where that notion came from. He was in the army in Germany, so how was he going to find me? Nevertheless, two months later, my mother and I went to Paris to start a Cook's tour of Europe, and a kid came running up to me at the hotel and said, 'Diana, Elvis Presley's in the dining room, and I'm too scared to ask him for an autograph.' I said, 'Oh, well come with me.' I walked in the dining room, not realizing the dining room was closed, and there was Elvis standing there in his army uniform with two men, who I later found out were his bodyguards. He was visiting Paris for the first time. I go marching up to him, and say, 'Hi, I'm Diana, from Beverly Hills, and my friend would love your autograph.' And there was kind of a spark there. That night, our tour group went to the Folies Bergère, and everyone was making a big deal that Elvis Presley was in the balcony. I ran into one of his bodyguards in the lobby, and he asked if I was going back to the hotel after the show. When I walk in the door of the hotel, there's Elvis in his army uniform, sitting in a chair. He gets up, walks up to my mother, and asks if he can take me to the late show at the Lido Nightclub. But I mean, how weird was that? Oh, my gosh. It was just so wild. Our paths crossed again in Germany and then we saw one another numerous times whenever he was filming in LA. No big romance, but fun. My sorority sisters never quite believed me, because I didn't have any photos or anything. We were out driving around one night, and they asked me to show them where Elvis lived. So, I drive up to the house, and there's all these cars, and they're all excited, and I said, 'Oh, my God, today's his birthday! There's a party going on.' They literally dragged me out of the car and up to the door. They ring the doorbell and one of those bodyguards that I knew says, 'Oh, hi, Diana, come on in.' The whole thing was one of the most magical stories of my life. And it really helped me believe that magic happens when you expect it.
What are you most proud of in your life?
I'm most proud that I'm forever curious about following my own heart. It really goes back to my grandmother, who was an entrepreneur. She ran a boarding house. She made the most fabulous food, but I think what she loved most was putting people together around the table. And it took me a long time to realize that what I loved was not food preparation -- it was the energy, the synergy, of people gathering together. I replicated that by being a cookbook author and a cooking teacher to the masses. Eventually, along with my husband we created an organization called "The Inside Edge," where we would meet up weekly in three Southern California cities at breakfast to talk about what's possible in the world -- sharing uplifting ideas with the likes of Ram Dass, Jack Canfield, and Louise Hay, people who were brilliant. It became a non-profit and speaker series and now 41 years later, new generations are still being inspired. I closed down the foundation in 2024, but recordings are available online.
Ideas just sort of pop into my head and I just follow my heart. Like Love Letters. I say well, let's see what happens if I try it? That was also the motivation for my latest book Expect Magic, released last year. I've learned to sense an invitation to recognize the magic woven into ordinary everyday moments that can spark extraordinary transformations for a life filled with purpose and endless possibilities.
Connect with Diana at DianaWentworth.com and join her Love Letters revolution at loveletters.love
