The DHX: The Doughtie Houses Exchange

By Katherine Shirek Doughtie
I was selling my book at the LA Times Festival of Books today, when I heard a woman’s voice say “Don’t I know you?” After about five minutes of cross-referencing, we figured out that we had shared a cabin at a church camp about 12 years ago, had had Thanksgiving together [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

We’re plotting something.

I told you we were bad women.

Yep.

(Photos by G.) (But we’re not flipping him off. We’re just being Kumbaya rebels.)
Related posts:

I bet I know what you’re thinking!
Kumbaya
Kumbaya: The making of
Kumbaya: The extended version

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

Photos by G.
Related posts:

I bet I know what you’re thinking!
Kumbaya
Kumbaya: The making of
Kumbaya: Deleted scenes

Read Full Post »

By Jill Davis Doughtie

Here we are prepping for our singing-Kumbaya-while-braiding-each-other’s-hair photo shoot.
Actually, we were preparing for a cat’s cradle photoshoot — G’s mom is an artist, and she wanted a few pictures of us playing cat’s cradle together to possibly use for a painting she was thinking about. After the cat’s cradle pictures, we took [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

Photo by G.
See, we really do sit around braiding each other’s hair and singing Kumbaya. It’s challenging with those flowers in our teeth, but we wouldn’t let a little thing like that stop us.
Actually we had relatives and guests who were willing to help us live out our fantasy of a Kumbaya [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

Bloody Marys are a long standing Christmas morning Doughtie tradition. We spend our Christmas mornings together, and now that I’ve joined the clan, we make Bloody Marys two ways: the hard core Clamato version, which is a recipe handed down from G’s mom, and the Spicy V-8 version, which comes from a [...]

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Lisa Cohn’s A Stepfamily Christmas is that wacky, heartwarming, true story that I think we’ve all been hoping to find about ex-partners spending Christmas together for the sake of the kids and growing to love and enjoy it over time. Check it out. This story gives me even more faith that we’re doing the right [...]

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Sewing new pictures and details on the stockings is my favorite part of the holidays. Sewing quiets the worry part of my brain. My brain follows its rhythms, thinks a space ahead and generates ideas as I need them. I’m in flow. Sewing is my own. It’s not a holiday tradition in any of our [...]

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I keep this list of human needs posted on the refrigerator to help myself articulate what’s going on with me. Here are the things I find myself wanting deeply around holiday times:

acceptance
affection
appreciation
belonging
inclusion
to be seen
to be known
to be understood
presence
safety
choice
freedom
space

It’s not that it’s anyone’s (or any group of people’s) job to intuit what I want or to [...]

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