A mom and a stepmom share stories, ideas, friendship and family
Posted in Co-parenting, Divorce, Holidays, Love, Parenting, Peacemaking, Remarriage on Apr 26th, 2008
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 at my old [...]
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
Photos by G.
Related posts:
I bet I know what you’re thinking!
Kumbaya
Kumbaya: The making of
Kumbaya: Deleted scenes
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 the singing barefoot [...]
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 hair braiding photoshoot. [...]
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 friend of mine. [...]
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 [...]
Posted in Holidays, Perspectives on Dec 27th, 2007
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 [...]
Posted in Holidays on Dec 26th, 2007
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 [...]
Chris’s elf got braces.
G’s robot’s display screen started working.
I hung ornaments on my tree.
Kathy asked for a big green dollar sign with “The DHX” stitched on it. I think she might have been half-joking. But that was a fun one to make.
Jack wanted a little ying-yang sign — like his mom’s — to replace one [...]
On Christmas Eve, Kathy came over to our house. G and Jack made G’s mom’s traditional rosemary walnuts. G cooked a grass-fed, free range, dry aged steak, potatoes au gratin, and green beans.
G’s potatoes au gratin (made from this Jeffrey Steingarten recipe).
I made a winter vegetable chowder, blue baby potatoes with slivered garlic, and my [...]
Posted in Holidays, Movies, TV & music on Dec 25th, 2007
This is one of my favorite songs, and it feels like a Christmas song, even though it probably isn’t: Ubi caritas - setting by Maurice Durufle
“Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est / Where charity and love are, God is there” (lyrics)
Merry Christmas!
Posted in Boundaries, Divorce, Holidays on Dec 24th, 2007
Both G and I have been with both kids every Christmas of their lives. And whether or not that’s a truly important statistic, it feels kind of important. Important enough for us to have made the effort to figure out some strategies that seem pretty sensible. Maybe other dual-households can benefit by hearing how we work it.
Even [...]
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