Life Blog

I have something important and personal to share with you, and I want you to hear it from me directly.

Mary had a stroke last Tuesday at 7 p.m. as we sat down to dinner. She couldn't see Annie seated to her right and, as her eyes filled with terror, she couldn't get the words out to tell me what was wrong. The paramedics arrived quickly. While we were en route to our local hospital, she couldn't recognize the names of close friends.

As the ambulance drove with sirens blaring, I held her hand with one hand and with the other sent messages to as many people as I could reach - our book club, friends in Italy, my personal "prayer request" group on Messenger - and an urgent and cryptic Facebook post to family and friends: "Pray for Mary. In ambulance now. Please God."

Dear Duggan Sisters Family,At this stage of my life, Thanksgiving Day is every day, or at least I aspire to that enlightened state.  I’ve loosened my grip and my youthful fantasies of creating the perfect Norman Rockwell holiday moment, opting instead for a more flexible and easy-going approach....

By Mary Duggan

My mother and her Aunt Kitty will always be women’s history for me. I think this is the case for many women. We learn how to navigate our lives, survive the terrible storms and stay on course while performing domestic tasks at the kitchen table with our mothers, and in our case, one small but mighty great aunt from Australia, as our teachers. 

Dear Friends,

Every day is Earth Day for the Duggan Sisters and that’s the way we like it. 

From our simple turn-of-the-century Worker’s Cottage on the Southside of Chicago - where we have lived happily above the shop for 15+ years - we have built our brand from a singular premise: you can not maintain a healthy body on a sick planet. And so we rise each day, firing up one HVAC system, not three, and working to maintain the smallest possible carbon footprint as we go about the business of being a business, working to make a real difference for both people and planet.