This is the first start of a year that I have been an official step-mom. Since this is a HUGE part of my life I thought I would blog on my feelings about it a little bit…well actually a LOT. Hopefully if there are any others girls out there starting off on the “step” journey this will help!
While I have only been a step-mom for 3 months, I have been “Daddy’s girlfriend” for over 4 years. I do not think anyone can ever prepare you for what this role entails or means… and even when you become a step-mom it is an endless battle of understanding it yourself. For the past 4+ years Pretty and I have worked to get to know each other, trust each other, and form a bond… a bond unique to that of a parent-child bond. I often tell B that I am going to write a book called “When Prince Charming is a Daddy” because this is what happened. There I was… sweet, innocent, naïve Cinderella (ha!) when suddenly Prince Charming rode up on his white horse with a car seat on the back! I often thought step-mothers were cold and mean… we have all seen the movies… but I thought I was young, vibrant, and fun so this would probably be really easy. I pictured myself driving my Xterra down the road with Pretty in the back seat singing along to Wicked, Annie, and The Newsies soundtracks… I could now go see Disney movies in the theaters without people looking at me funny! This was going to be a blast… we are going to play dress up, paint our nails… it was like the ultimate babysitting job! And that is the thing… step-mom is somewhere in between babysitter and mom… it is like this weird gray area that no one ever talks about and it is a battle that I live with every day. Easy… BAH! Along with struggling about my place in Pretty’s life I struggle with her security, making sure she is safe and becoming a good person. I worry about her doing well in school, getting hurt on the playground, getting teased or being the one teasing, boys, her spiritual development… I worry about the normal parent stuff… it’s not just dress up and nails!
B kept Pretty and I separate for a good part of the 1st year we were together… I completely understood his desire to protect but sometimes I felt a little jaded, like I was not getting the whole B. When year 2 rolled around Pretty and I started seeing each other frequently and she was even told that I was the G word. I worried about her reaction, and I could tell that she had mixed feelings about it, but we talked to her about what it meant and that in NO WAY did it mean she was any less special. As time has gone on Pretty and I have grown to love each other so very much… but we have “grown” to this point, and that is natural and ok. B once told me that he thought it was easy for Pretty and I… and while we always liked each other, this was a foreign reality for both of us and nothing about it was easy. You cannot throw 2 strangers together and expect them to love each other like a parent and child, the natural bond a parent and child share is not there… we have to form a unique relationship and bond and no one ever tells you that it is ok to struggle with that, to have to work on it. It is NATURAL that it takes time. On top of that Pretty had to share a daddy she had never shared and I was not the only girl in my boyfriend’s life like most couples who are dating. Our relationship with B was changing at the same time that our relationship with each other was evolving.
My uncle once told me “it is not natural for a child to live in a house without both parents” and while that is Pretty’s reality, my uncle is completely right. Pretty has no memory of her parents together but she is torn that she can never be with the 2 people she loves the most… it is always 1 or the other. When she is with her mom she longs for her dad and when she is with her dad she longs for her mom… I truly cannot imagine. And while she struggles with that, B and I struggle with how to raise her “every other weekend” and I struggle with what it means to be a parent but not a mom. Pretty respects me, obeys me, and comes to me just as a child does their mom when she is with us… and I get to be the mom for a few days and then she goes back to another mom… a mom who gets to make more decisions about her best interest than me, a mom who takes her to school every day, a mom who packs her lunch and makes her dinner while helping with her school work at night, a real full-time mom. And like being stabbed with a knife it hits me again… I am not her mom… I am in between. I have no doubt it is hard for her mom to share Pretty with me, after all she dreamed about her for years, carried her for 9 months, gave birth to her, and raised her. It is hard… for everyone. I will always love Pretty, I will always want what is best for her, and I will always be in between. Life is full of strange and curious things and most of the time we don’t have a handbook on how to do it… step-families are one of those things. But what we do know more than others is that family and love is not always biological, love is a gift we have to share with each other and make each other’s lives that much better. I am a better person because of her and she is better because of me… and that doesn’t take away from her relationship with her mom and it won’t take away from my relationship with the children I give birth to. We love each other unconditionally and we didn’t have to, we chose to. We chose to be a family, and it hasn’t been easy and I am sure there are more hurdles ahead but we have formed our bond, a unique bond from that of her and her mom, a bond that only we can understand. Forever and always I love you My Pretty!
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