The DHX: The Doughtie Houses Exchange

“When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong along with the fearful, the true mixed in with the facade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.” — Fred Rogers

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“Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.” — Fred Rogers

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The trouble with good guys is that everyone is the good guy — or a sympathetic character who has reasons for making the choices they did — in their own story.
Everybody is a sympathetic character in their own story. A person who plays a bad guy in our story plays a good guy or at [...]

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“In a world where we’re often judged harshly for identifying and revealing our needs, doing so can be very frightening. Women, in particular, are susceptible to criticism. For centuries, the image of the loving woman has been associated with sacrifice and the denial of her own needs to take care of others. Because women are [...]

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“The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us to become our best while looking our worst.” –Marge Kennedy

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Debbie Ford on firstwivesworld: Finding Forgiveness - “The pain of separation or divorce is often so intense that it radically alters our ability to see the whole picture. So much good gets lost. So many blessings disappear. So much wisdom goes to waste. Even when we think we are the one who can see clearly, [...]

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Emotional abuse won’t land a parent in jail, but what about emotionally abusive parents? Are they bad guys? What if we find ourselves co-parenting with one? This might be an issue I’ve been missing in thinking about the good guy/bad guy dichotomy.

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I’m divorced, too. I was not happy in my first marriage. Even though I have much better relationship skills now, I still would not want to go back and apply them in my first marriage. (You know how people say that most folks divorce because they lack the relationship skills they’ll have to learn anyway [...]

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“There’s the good guy and the bad guy in all of us, but knowing that doesn’t ever need to overwhelm us. Whatever we adults can do to help ourselves — and anybody else — discover that that’s true can really make a difference in this life.” — Fred Rogers

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The way out of an entrenched conflict is not to do a better job of hiding what we feel and think about the situation and the other people — I don’t think that’s possible. I think on some level the people in our lives in both houses know what we really think or feel no [...]

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