Diana Patton's goal is simple, yet remarkable: she wants to inspire women all over the world to overcome the tragedies in their life by using that same pain to advance themselves.
To that end, Patton, a Fostoria native and Toledo resident, is ready to share her personal tale of heartache and triumph. In her memoir, "Inspiration in My Shoes," Patton writes of a life spent facing adversity— from her abusive home life, to dealing with racism, to the pain of losing her brother to suicide. The raw emotion of her story can be felt on every page with a blunt honesty that Patton explains was very deliberate.
"Its intention is to really be as transparent as possible, to reach young women. Because in this day and age, I think young girls—15 to 25—are very knowledgeable about when people are truthful," Patton said in an interview.
Tumultuous Beginnings
Today, Patton is known as an attorney, a public speaker and as the former Vice President and COO for the Toledo Fair Housing Center— a position she recently left to focus on spreading her message and the release of the book. Her desire to fight for the rights of the underprivileged stems directly from her own life experiences, from the time of her birth in 1968 as one of seven siblings.
"We grew up with a very abusive father. My father was, I believe, mentally ill. He was sexually abusive to my sisters and I. No one really knew everything, but they kind of knew what was going on, in the small town of Fostoria,” said Patton.
Living in a tumultuous time for civil rights complicated Patton's sense of who she was meant to be. "Dealing with the issues of abuse and my identity as an interracial child was very hard for me," Patton said. "And I tell that tale in part one of my book to explain, in very raw detail, all the things that happened to me and my sisters. Then, part two of the book, basically, is me coming out of that."
You Need to Write a Book
The desire to turn her story into a book began to crystallize when she met the man who would eventually become her husband and the father of her two children. "When we first met and I actually told him my life story, he said, 'Oh my God, you need to write a book!' That was in 1990," she said with a laugh.
"After my brother passed in 2007, [that] was when I started to ink the story. And then, I thought, 'What, am I crazy?'"
The demons of self-doubt caused her to stop working on the book until she gave a TEDx talk in September of 2014. "Then that feeling came back again…that ever gnawing feeling that, 'You've got to finish this.' So I just asked God to give me strength," Patton said.
Patton's ultimate hope— now that "Inspiration in My Shoes" is in readers' hands— is to help others overcome the pain in their lives. "There's a lot of healing that hasn't happened, that I didn't know about. Even in writing my story. And in my family, there's still more healing that has to happen.
"And so my prayer is that through this book, there's a complete circle," Patton said.
For more information on "Inspiration in My Shoes" and Patton,
visit dianarpatton.com
