doreen dodgen-magee, psy.d.

09/04/2025

🤸🤸CARTWHEELS ARE BACK🤸🤸

…after a one year hiatus to recover from knee replacement surgery!

What did you think you’d never be able/willing to do again that…SURPRISE…you can?

If it’s not too big of a risk to try, why not give it a whirl? You’ll be surprised how much empowerment comes from working up to re-capturing an experience your body was made for and loves.



Please share your efforts in the comments!

09/04/2025

The OG message indicators were those of our bodies.

Yawns. Excitement. Fear. Sore muscles. Lethargy. Love.

For a few minutes today, try to turn your attention from the message indicators you've trained yourself to tend to (the calendar, the phone, etc) and tap into those you were born with.

09/02/2025

Today marks the unofficial end of summer vacation for a lot of folks in the U.S.

This means that you may have arrived to this day having pushed, hard, to:

get the last moments of fun in 🥳

get kids (or self) ready for a new school year ✏️

or just to make it to September 🗓️.

The least effective response to exhaustion is to keep pushing. For just a few minutes, try doing absolutely nothing.

Step away from it all and take a few deep breaths, give yourself some credit for how far you've come, and, generally, offer yourself some care.

Every part of you will be rewarded.

08/31/2025

If I’ve:

failed to return your call or text ☎️,

completely flaked on getting back to you with promised resources 📚,

dropped a ball that we were to be volleying back and forth 🏓,

or any other such thing over the last 8 months 🗓️,

PLEASE FORGIVE ME.

Life has been impossibly complicated for me since January.

Sometimes I’ve had to make hard choices and have been intentional in saying “no.” At other times, life has happened in such a way that I didn’t have a choice and, in active and passive ways, I’ve just failed to be present in all the spaces and places I’d like to be.

This weekend begins a small break between one huge set of complicated realities and another.

So, I’m doing a bit of catching up with people who I’ve missed & doing things like eating actual meals. It feels really good.

If you’re overwhelmed, please know that life will continue even if you miss a deadline, disappoint people, or lose track of all the things. It’s ok…no, IT’S CRUCIAL…that you remember that no one and nothing gets any of you if you don’t get some of you.

Here’s to full, rich lives that sometimes require a pulling back and, even then, feel unbearably difficult and here’s to remembering that there’s almost always a next chapter.

Thanks for sticking around for the return .w!

look how far we’re getting in growing out our hair!

And, omg…isn’t my sweet Ollie amazing…the highlight of the last few months is getting to be his nana!

is my favorite place for the best sunny side up eggs and crispy hash browns! Give them a try!

08/28/2025

I’ve had this shirt out since February when I was determined to post about a familicide* which was far too close to the one in my own family.

It was to piquing of my own trauma so I let it go, promising to raise awareness on the day of the next shooting.

Problem: they were coming every day, often never even covered in any news.

When I began doing activist work around gun violence prevention in 2018, 90 people were killed a day by firearm in the U.S.

Today, that number has risen to 125 and gun violence is now the number one killer of children in the U.S.

Let that sink in. Let yourself feel those truths.

According to the gun violence archives, 157 children between the ages of 0-11 have been killed by firearm, and another 336 injured in 2025. For children aged 12-17 there have been 676 killed and 1,901 injured.

My heart is shattered for those in Minneapolis and in every city in America where these murders have taken place.

Easy access to guns (no required permits, age limits, or licensing), the lack of required safe storage, and lax (and disappearing) gun laws are the problems.

It’s been proven over and over again, more guns do NOT make us more safe.

If you’re ready to step off the sidelines and join the largest bipartisan movement to end gun tragedies, please text READY to 6-4433

.statistics

08/19/2025

How ‘bout you give your body the attention you normally give your phone? 😉

🍃

08/17/2025

08/15/2025

Here are a few iterations of the complicated, beautiful, flawed, glorious, beloved family that my husband Thomas and I are fortunate to live within. There really hundreds of other iterations of groupings in what we would also call “family” photos.

38 years ago today I married this person who was wildly different from me.

At the time, I said I wanted 10 kids, a doctorate, and a wildly open home and he was willing to add those goals to his own.

I’ve hemmed and hawed about whether to post about this anniversary because I know of so many people who would love to be partnered and, for whatever reason, are not. I don’t ever want to have my presence here feel like it’s intended to “show off.”

I decided to post because I want to celebrate the fact that family (and partnership) can look all kinds of ways and, when we are open, can be chosen/fallen into as well as given. Those kind of families and partnerships are every bit as real as the ones that society recognizes.

Thomas and I have been intentional about welcoming differences, learning from people much younger than us, and gathering folks who we feel exceedingly fortunate to be loved and chosen by.

It may feel difficult to make friends or to choose family. Even still, I encourage you to take small steps to do both.

Invite someone to a hang at a park. Open your home every Tuesday for a simple soup and bread supper. Join a book or hobby group.

If you really love someone, tell them. If you consider someone a sibling, let them know.

Thank you to for helping me foster the family and friends that have shaped and, all too often, supported us. Happy anniversary!

Thank you, also, to all the kids/youth/young adults who have been part of us…you know who you are and you are beloved! There’s always a seat at our table/a place in on the badminton court for you.

❤️

08/14/2025

We're in the last days of summer break...the days often spent getting ready for what's next. The days spent rushing and regretting and checking off to do lists.

Back to school. 📚

Back to work. 👩🏼‍💼

Back to the grind. 🤦🏼‍♀️

While you're catching all those end of summer sales or loading up on school supplies, take some time to be bored.

How do you do this, you ask?

1) Find a place in the mall/store/your home to walk or sit.

2) Power your phone all the way off.

3) Commit to people watching or day dreaming for at least 10 minutes.

4) When your mind starts "reminding you" of things. Thank it and remind it you're resting. Tell it you'd return to it in a few minutes.

5) As you power your phone back on, set a timer to do this again tomorrow.

We have the power to regain calm and focus...we just have to claim it and practice it.

When you give this a try, come back and let us know how it went!

08/13/2025

There’s plenty of terrible going around.

May this one tiny moment embed itself in your heart and mind today then my is spread itself around.

07/13/2025

Things I love/cherish about getting to speak at Moyallon Quaker Camp in Ireland.

1) No phones. Truly. Only in our rooms (where we rarely want to be). I feel more calm and present than I have in a very long time.

2) Silence (often 30 minutes long) peppered throughout the day and all gatherings.

3) Beautiful, diverse (in being and thought) people who inspire me and accept me for who I am.

4) Those same beautiful people to learn from and fall (deeply) in love with. (These people!!!!!!!! My heart!)

5) Bedtimes with no streaming on my lap top. Just me and my solar lantern and twinkle lights, writing notes to folks to offer up the next day.

6) Reminders that my way of life is not THE way of life. Traveling does this for me and I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity.

7) The folks who are here who I met 9 years ago when I was the speaker who remember me and who (confoundingly) love me. My heart is so knit to theirs (Oliver, Alex, Lydia, & Mark…YOU! Just, YOU!)

Headed off to meeting for worship where we’ll sit, for an hour, in silence, listening for God, for Love. This just does not happen in my life at home.

I feel beyond fortunate.a

07/06/2025

Once, in an airport, someone approached me, saying, “I ready your book and we are the same! I HATE TECHNOLOGY!!”

I stared at her blankly, baffled at how she could read what I’d written and come to the conclusion that I hated technology. It just wasn’t my message at all.

As I watch the tide of those who claim to follow Jesus twist his messages to support actions that hurt those that he privileged with his energy, care, and subversive teachings, I feel that same baffled mix of rage and sorrow.

Because I know how much our algorithms determine what we see and, therefore, know, I hope that you might see and share some things here that others in your followership might not otherwise see.

There is nothing beautiful about taking resources from the “least of these.” *

With love I ask of you: Please check your bias, your sources, and your privilege. This is not a time for passive scrolling. It’s a time for seeking a deeper, more complex, understanding and doing what we can to resist tyranny.

* Matthew 25:40 “The King [God] will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these [the poor, young, old, hungry, imprisoned] my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me.”