He has a home in southern Oregon where he lives with his wife, Em Claire, who is a working poet[citation needed].

Before writing the Conversations With God series, Walsch worked variously as a radio station program director, newspaper managing editor, and in marketing and public relations.

In the early 1990s he suffered a series of crushing blows—a fire that destroyed all of his belongings, the break-up of his marriage, and a car accident that left him with a broken neck.

[citation needed] Once recovered, but alone and unemployed, he was forced to live in a tent in Jackson Hot Springs, just outside Ashland, Oregon, collecting and recycling aluminium cans in order to eat.

[5] Other documentaries and TV appearances include: Walsch was accused of plagiarism for a six-paragraph entry in one of the daily postings on his blog during 2008, when he published an item titled "Upside down, or right side up?"

[6][7] Walsch's entry purported to tell the tale of a miraculous appearance of the words "Christ Was Love" during the rehearsal of his son's school Christmas pageant; but his article was almost identical to an article published 10 years previously by Candy Chand in the spiritual magazine Clarity and spread over the internet in places such as the Heartwarmers website, down to the name of the son mentioned in both articles, Nicholas – as both authors have a son named Nicholas.

He cited it as a classic case of false memory and said that he had been repeating the anecdote as his own in many speeches over the years, adding that he was "chagrined and astonished that my mind could play such a trick on me".