Blog Posts by Dory Devlin, Shine staff

AP via Yahoo! News: Jenny SanfordFor all of the pain Jenny Sanford has publicly endured--that rambling press conference where her husband, Gov. Mark Sanford, called his Argentine mistress his "soul mate" and apologized to her before apologizing to Jenny and his family comes to mind--among the worst was when the governor's emails to said mistress were published. His four sons along with the rest of the world read the explicit, descriptive words about his his lover's body parts. The boys, Sanford tells Barbara Walters on ABC's "20/20," were devastated. So was she.

"It just ripped me up, to see them reading these e-mails, to see them have to grow up so fast," she says.

Jenny Sanford is beginning to tell her story, which she has written in her book, "Staying True," due out this week. In her interview with Walters, which airs Friday, she talks about her decision not to stand by her man at his press conference, a strong move cheered by women tired of seeing devastated, betrayed wives loyally standing beside their selfish,

Reuters via Yahoo! News: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates (L) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen answer reporters' questions during a news conference at the Pentagon.It was a pretty amazing thing to hear the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, say he personally could not justify or abide by not allowing openly gay men and women to serve in our military. Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mullen said:

"No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens," he said. "Speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal and professional belief that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would be the right thing to do."

The wheels are in motion to upend the 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military that allows gay Americans to serve without publicly divulging their homosexuality. Democratic President Bill Clinton signed the law as a compromise after the military objected to allowing openly gay recruits to join the ranks. The law bans openly gay people

Elevator scene from 1998's Anyone out there remember a time when the biggest concern about getting stuck in an elevator in a big building was that no one would realize you were there for hours? In our digitally connected age, that concern has melted away with mobile technology, which gives just about everyone with a cell phone the ability to dial, text, and tweet for help. It also means they'll have the ability to upload the confined encounter via video and tweets on Twitter and Facebook updates. It's good to know you can reach help fast, but that same real-time connectivity now comes with the very real possibility of ending up on YouTube when you least expect it.

That's what happened this week when NBC's Ann Curry was stuck in an elevator in the New York Times building with some social media hounds who had been together for a panel discussion on social media and Haiti. To while away the time, everyone pulled out their cell phones to tweet the obvious: "Stuck in an elevator in The New York Times building with

Dena Lockwood knew pretty much from the start that her employer viewed the fact that she was a parent as a deficit. The tip-off: In her interview for the sales rep job at a company that sells medical tests to doctors in 2004, she was asked if her being a parent would prevent her from working 70 hours a week. She said it would not. .

The mom of 2 kids, 16 and 2 at the time, soon realized she was hired at a $25,000 base salary with a 10 percent commission while other women sales reps with similar experience and no kids were paid $45,000 before commission. She eventually negotiated her base salary up to $45,000 but her commission was reduced 5 percent. Her manager said it would be raised if she hit $300,000 in sales that year. She did, but her contract was not changed.

Fast-forward to a day in 2006, when her then 4-year-old daughter has pinkeye, so Lockwood calls in sick to care for her. A half hour later her manager calls to say, basically, she's fired. If you read this Chicago

Elin Nordegren may be staying with her famously philandering husband, but Elizabeth Edwards has had enough.

The couple has legally split after a painfully public airing of John Edwards' affair, his public acknowledgment of paternity of his mistress's baby, and oh so many purported details about the egocentric, hurtful things he asked others to do to help cover up his many lies.

The breaking point, People mag reports, came after she visited John's 1-year-old daughter, Frances Quinn, in December, bringing her presents and paving the way for a relationship she foresees her children having after she is gone. Her incurable, stage 4 cancer will not go away, just as the truth about Edwards' affair and paternity did not despite his many denials. After what must have been an emotionally difficult visit to say the least, Elizabeth's sister, Nancy Anania told People: "She said, 'I've had it. I can't do this. I want my life back."

To add to this very public family drama, Elizabeth has been raked

AP via Yahoo! NewsPresident Barack Obama needed to hit a pretty big reset button in his first State of the Union speech, convincing dubious Americans that the change he promised is possible, even though a filibuster-proof Democratic majority is history and true bipartisanship seems lost for good.

So last night he did what was expected after a few surprising election results and polls made it pretty clear people are really, really worried about our ballooning national deficit, the slow recovery of the job market, and the overall outlook for our country's economy. He shifted the focus to job creation and ways to cut spending even as he suggested further ways to stimulate the economy with tax credits. He scolded Democrats to not "run for the hills" just because they now have the biggest Congressional majority in a long time instead of a no-filibuster majority. He implored Republicans to suggest health care reforms that will help insure the uninsured and reduce costs rather than blocking any and all bills

Maybe it's because we're too busy to worry if we're happy or unhappy, but some recent research supports what many of we working moms already knew: We're happy with our marriages in part because we work, no matter how busy that makes us, or how much negotiation of roles at home needs to take place to make it work.

For all of the academic hypothesizing that divorce rates would rise as women gain more financial freedom, the statistics show the opposite: the more education a woman has and the more financial independence she gains, the more likely she is to stay married. The Pew Research Center study, using Census data, found that wives are now the primary breadwinners in 22 percent of marriages, up from 7 percent in 1970, and are better educated than their husbands in nearly a third of marriages.

The long-term sociological view of this is that because women no longer have to marry "up" for economic survival and success, we look for true mates, respected equals to share all of the stuff

Who knew?

Everyone. But be it known that on January 21, 2010, John Edwards publicly admitted what has been not-so-privately known for awhile: He is the father of Rielle Hunter's baby girl, Frances Quinn Hunter.

What a guy, huh? Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential candidate running with John Kerry in 2004, the former North Carolina U.S. senator who fancied himself easily the victor in a two-way Democratic race against Hillary Clinton in 2008, denied more than once that he could be the father because of the "timing" of his affair with Hunter, who worked as a videographer on his 2008 presidential campaign. Now, he admits paternity of Frances Quinn, born in February 2008, saying it was "wrong for me to ever deny she was my daughter," and that he is providing financial support for the child and mother.

"I am Quinn's father," he said.

Why now?

The imminent release of a tell-all book by former aide Andrew Young, who lied to say he was the father of the baby, is one