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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“Peacebuilders do not collude with the mindset that dehumanizes and demonizes ‘the other,’ seeking instead to listen, to discuss, to learn, to feel compassion for, and to see themselves in the other, the other in themselves. They realize that violence only begets more violence, that polarization only splits us further apart, and that ‘either/or’ thinking [...]

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Here’s the secret the way I know it: it’s not about making the other person be different. It’s about working with what is. It’s about weaving a picture and a life I like out of the materials I find.
Nothing anyone else does can make me go to war with them in my heart. That is [...]

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Pain looks different from the inside than it does from the outside.
From the inside when we act out in pain, we see ourselves as victims. From the outside, when we act out in pain, we look like monsters.
Outsiders who haven’t lived through a similar kind of suffering don’t see the pain; they see the actions.
The [...]

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“All appears to change when we change.” — Henri Amiel
I didn’t always know Kathy the way I know her now. In the second half of our interview at Continuing the Stepparenting Journey, I told Karon that Kathy is “flexible, warm, open, willing to keep showing up and trying, and willing to start over and over [...]

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