The DHX: The Doughtie Houses Exchange

A comment to the “Wicked Step Mother” post I wrote awhile ago has been disturbing me for the past few days. I already replied within that thread, but I feel that this topic requires more open discussion.
The comment is that maybe it’s not in a woman’s DNA to love someone else’s kids, and that [...]

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I have deer-in-the-headlight moments when meeting people with step-situations, too. Yesterday I met someone with a similar — but different — family set-up, and I couldn’t think of how to keep the conversation going. I found myself sitting there smiling blankly while thinking up things to say and then ruling them out because I couldn’t [...]

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Now that I’ve changed jobs to work closer to home, Jill and I have been getting together for a weekly lunch. This has been great and I look forward to it every week. Mostly we yak about girl stuff — relationships, hopes, fears — but it’s also a chance to sneak in a [...]

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I’ll be at BlogHer this coming weekend.
If you’re going and would like to meet up, email me at jilldoughtie@gmail.com.
If it helps for folks planning to be there in person, here’s what I look like…

…when I’m wearing a helmet. But I won’t have a bike helmet on. I’m mostly posting this because it’s got a picture [...]

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Izzy Rose of Stepmother’s Milk and Samara of Simplicity in the Suburbs are planning a retreat for stepmoms this summer, August 8-11, in Austin, Texas.

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

Appetite, Honesty, Vulnerability, Flexibility, Kindness, Courage, Compassion, Nerve, Openness, Appetite…
This is a circle of words I made years ago. Together they feel like they balance and feed each other and keep life clean and open and full of possibility.

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By Katherine Shirek Doughtie
This morning I woke up thinking about the word “permission.” It’s a really interesting word when you open up the hood.
The “per” part is way cool — it means “through,” “thoroughly,” “utterly,” “very” — as in “pervert,” “pervade,” and “perfect.” (All my references, by the way, I got by clicking [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

On our “About” page, I wrote that I don’t like dogs. I think that’s changing.
I have not been a dog person for most of my life. Dogs invaded my personal space, and I didn’t know what to do about it. They wanted to touch me and jump on me and put spit [...]

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By Katherine Shirek Doughtie
I woke up and wrote this to a friend of mine, with whom I’ve been having these great discussions about meditation, Buddhism, and how we get through this thing called life intact. Thought I’d share the words with you all…
The duality of nature and experience is what provides the mechanism for [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie
Mrs. H at A Stepmom’s Say tagged me for the My Favorites meme.
Here are the rules:
Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you’ve written. (I have a couple of different blogs so I’m going to link posts from them, too. Outside of [...]

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