Dianne Darr Couts’ memoir, Things Fell Apart, but the Center Held, spans continents and cultures. It tells the story of Dianne’s extraordinary childhood, rich with wonderful experiences juxtaposed with sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse. Personal and institutional betrayal would impact Dianne and her family for life, but her candid memoir also shows how unwavering love, support and courage set the stage for her to thrive in spite of it all.
Dianne was born in Akron, Ohio, but her early childhood memories were made in Greenville, South Carolina. Her real adventures began the year she turned seven when her parents went overseas as missionaries. This took her first to a quaint little town near Paris and then to French West Africa where she lived in the port city of Dakar, on the savanna and in the Sahel south of the Sahara Desert and in the rain forest of Guinea.
Dianne’s memoir includes stories of her adventures in all those places, but it also recounts the abuse she experienced. In the final chapters, Dianne reveals how the physical effects of that trauma followed her into adulthood. However, through all the good and bad, Dianne’s gratitude shines through for the love and courage of those who defended her as a child, kept her world together and allowed her faith and resiliency to grow.
Drawing on her own experience of trauma and its lasting effects, and on her years as a board member of MK Safety Net, Dianne speaks at national conferences and in churches to raise awareness of abuse in religious settings and to encourage abuse survivors on their healing journeys.
Dianne graduated from the University of Akron and has a Master’s Degree in the Art of Teaching from Marygrove College. She is a retired high school teacher whose career of teaching English and French spanned four decades and included teaching in private and public schools in the U.S. and abroad. Dianne and her husband Bud, who have been married for over fifty years, live in Akron, Ohio. They have three married children and seven grandchildren.
