Losing Diane Keaton: Why Her Death Feels So Personal to Me

The First Wives Club raised me and losing Diane Keaton feels strangely personal.

I believe in vision boarding (yes, I’m one of those people), but this past year I didn’t have the energy for one. So instead, I printed a still from Something’s Gotta Give and tucked it into my mirror. I look at it every day while getting ready - imagining myself as Diane, the writer in that perfect Hamptons house, crying and creating, surrounded by light and ocean. If I’m honest, it was mostly the house. The idea that if I could afford a place like that, I could actually afford to be a writer.

Learning that Diane Keaton died is hitting me harder than I expected. Yes, I recently lost my ex-husband, the father of my child, but this feels like losing a piece of my childhood too. The First Wives Club was everything to me growing up. I must’ve watched it a hundred times. It wasn’t just about divorce; it was about women who took what was left and made something good out of it. In the end, they created a nonprofit in their friend Cynthia’s name for abused women. That’s the part that always gets me. I tear up feeling so proud of them.

As I write this, I realize how much my life ended up mirroring that story, publishing my book The Plan B Chronicles: Divorce. Defiance. Liberation. The therapist in me wonders if that’s coincidence or if the brain just keeps replaying what feels familiar. Either way, I just feel lucky I got to see women that brave at such a formative time in my life.

From The Family Stone to Father of the Bride, she was always authentically herself. She made aging look electric. She wore pant suits and ties and never once tried to be anyone other than Diane.
Damn. We lost a great one.