role playing

Now hold onto your skirts, this post isn't about THAT kind of role playing. But I can blog about it in the future if requested.

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I've always wanted to have children. I always had an idea about the type of parent I was going to be, so when I moved in with the husband and step-kids I jumped into the role that I'd be preparing for my entire life. There I was: 24 years old, with my type A+ personality, my amazing organizational skills and dedication to education. I was ready to be the parent I always dreamed I would be. It's all I ever knew. No one ever told me about how to be a step-mom. They don't sell a set of dolls at Toys-R-Us that include a BM, step-mom, and step kids to practice with.

I know that these are not my kids. But when they are with us, when I'm taking care of boo-boos, reading books, snuggling while watching movies and brushing teeth - it FEELS like they are. I'm doing mom-things, but I'm not their mom. Which is so confusing and difficult (for me, as well as for them). Because they aren't. These are not my children. But I'm in this ill-defined role of caregiver and co-parent - but I can't be mom. I can't be THE parent.

So I've stepped back. I don't help with homework unless asked, and even then, as soon as it starts to become a struggle I step back. I didn't rush to meet the kids' teachers this school year. I'm answering a lot of questions with, "You'll have to ask your Dad about that." I love them and stay invested in their wellbeing - but I am not RESPONSIBLE for their wellbeing. I do what I can to help them be happy and caring human beings, but expect the husband to step up.

This was a really hard thing for my husband to come to terms with. I was so overly involved before. Killing myself to be amazing and "fix" the kids. Give them what they missed out on in life. When I stepped back, my husband was confused and hurt. Why wasn't I making an effort to meet the kids' teachers? Weren't the kids going to be hurt that I wasn't as involved? And finally it came to me. The thing that I hadn't found words for yet, the thing that I didn't want to fully realize.

"We have to stop playing Mom and Dad. Because we aren't. We're Dad and Step-Mom."

So here I am. Still trying to find a balance. A balance in life and within myself. Because, honestly, I don't want to be anyone's step-mom (do any of us?). I want to be someone's mom. Bio-kids are several years off for us right now. So in the meantime, I'm going to stay present with the amazing step-kids that I have. Try not to put pressure on them to be something to me that they are not. Try not to put pressure on myself to be something that I'm not. Right now, I'm a step-mom. And I'm working on being okay with that.

What I wrote back

So a few weeks ago BM emailed me this long and ranty email. Thanks everyone for your input. A friend helped me craft the following response. BM hasn't responded, which is fine.

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I want to start off by acknowledging the huge risk that you took in writing this email. I, too, would like to move past some of the hurtful things that have occurred between us. In your email, you talked about the effectiveness of using email to communicate and I agree that this is a great way for us to transfer information about the kids, so I hope that we can continue to do that. As another step towards building a good relationship, I plan to make extra effort to be polite and friendly when we interact in person. I think that communicating via email and changing the way we interact in person will go a long way towards building a better relationship between the two of us.

I have found a lot of resources online for step-moms, one of which is a book written by a mom and stepmom pair about how to work as a team for the benefit of the kids. I found it to be helpful and think you might also relate to it. I'd be happy to get a copy of it to you if you're interested. In the meantime, here is a link to their website: http://www.noonesthebitch.com/

It it very clear to me how much you love your children, and I want to share with you that I love them very much too. I hope that with these changes, I can someday be recognized as a valued caregiver for your children. It's been an honor and pleasure to watch them grow up.

-Me

tax return

So for those not in the know - husband and I had our wedding in early 2010, but got legally married in early 2009. Health insurance etc caused us to do it sooner. We didn't tell our families because it was about 6 months after we met and we were already accused (appropriately) of moving too fast.

Fast forward to now. BM found out about husband and I getting married before our "wedding". She requested the 2009 tax returns for child support purposes (which we filed jointly) and then texted husband yesterday, "when exactly did you and [stepmom] get married?" She was all pissed about it, but said she wouldn't tell the kids. We decided to beat her to it, since she's bound to get pissed at us sometime soon and tell them. We didn't tell SS8, since he's well SS8, and wouldn't understand anyways or really care. So we decided to only tell SD10 and SD12. I explained it superly awesomely and neither of the girls cared. It was pretty great. SS10 had some questions, but they were good ones. I reiterated to them why we didn't tell them before and that it was okay to be grumpy with us about it - but that we made what we thought was the best choice at the time. And that we considered our wedding to be when we got married and became a family, not when some piece of paper said it. Their general response was, "Whatever. Can we eat dinner now?"

I would like to be in the room when BM tries to turn the kids against us by "telling" them - only to have them shrug and say they already know. *cue evil stepmother laugh*

she wrote back

Wow... I'm still trying to process this. Not sure what the write back. The ear infection that I currently have doesn't help matters either. Any suggestions?
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[myname]....I am going to go out on a limb here,
I am sorry. I am sorry for any hurt that I have caused you. I am sorry for any hurt that I have caused between you and Marco. I truly am. I wish I had the time to have gotten to known you before our worlds came colliding together. I believe it would have made all the difference in the world.
You don't even know me.... and I don't know you.
you only know what [husband] tells you and that's tainted, yes the angry, hurt, sad,bitter worn out [BM]. That person is so not me. I hate that person. Why do I end up being this person more than half the time when I talk to him?.... and then you have to hear about it so it then just can confirm what you think of me.....That's a very easy answer: it has nothing to do with you or him....I ache for my children. My heart is empty without them. I knew them before anyone did, they grew inside of me and after they were born when they opened up their big beautiful eyes I fell in love, a connection was made. I have never been the same after the divorce. For me it was about the loss of my children....yes I see them but not how I want or need to. So it becomes so painful for me and I am sorry I have let that pain over shadow all the good things you have done for my kids.
One day [stepmom] you will have the joy of caring a child and giving life to him or her and falling so in love that you think it's almost impossible to take your next breathe of air you're so taken back by the child's beauty.

You see those three Beautiful children: [SD12, SD10, SS8]
the lights of my life.... [husband] and I created those beings together
and I am just like them....just as he is.

I put ALL of who I was into [husband] and my kids, and so little into myself only to have my family slip through my own hands. Was I holding on too tight or not tight enough?? I can sum it up to one word: FEAR. THEN ~ it consumed me until I was not even recognizable, and NOW~ well I can see it and I don't want to live with it any longer.
It's time for me to let go.... and trust. I need to trust in [husband] again and you are his other half. With all my health problems I have, it's time. If something were to happen to me, I need to know that the woman [husband] has given his life to will give her life to my children and him and will be faithful and true...... So I am going to believe in you because [husband] believes in you. Not only that but because [husband] loves you with all of his heart. Changes will not happen over night because some wounds run deep but I am ready for them to heal. I will not let the fear of change or the type of loss i have gone through damage this family any longer on my end if I can help it.
I know this is alot to take in at one time.... but I need the both of you to be on board here. I can't change the way this family functions on my own. I can only change the way I function. We may need family therapy??? lol
so just breathe.....it's all we can do at times. It's ALL I can do at times.... just breathe.....

Point is I would like to start over with you, if you are willing.....

I love my children more than life it's self.... if you knew my background, my up bringing, you may just understand why I am so protective over my children and why I have build my walls so high. But I have to get over these feelings I guess.... who knows lol lol I'm willing to work on them an have already started the process.
It's only going to work if we all three are willing to do it together. I want the BEST not only for the kids but for everyone around them.
Small steps can lead to great things....

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I don't know even where to being. I'm scared that this is just a momentary respite from her crazy. So hurt, so angry.... I'm not sure if I can move forward. Suggestions?

emailed her

*gulp*

Hope this doesn't backfire in my face. I emailed BM for the first time ever. There was an issue with SD12's school website. We originally thought that we could create individual logins to view grades etc, but then found out we could only create one. Well, I got there first and therefore BM couldn't create one. So I changed the password to something innocuous and emailed her an apology along with the new login information. I even set up the emails for her. Let's see what this olive branch does.

more money, more child support

Greetings. So the husband is considering changing jobs (same field, just different company). The pay would be substantially more than he makes now, which is great for us. We have goals of owning a home and saving for our bio-kids and a raise like this would help us get closer to that. My issue? A raise for him means and 'raise' for the BM in terms of child support. This just blows my mind and I'm almost beside myself with resentment. At this point, it's very likely that he is going to take this job, so I obviously need to get over this. But uggg... it makes my blood boil. It's frustrating to be trying to build a life with someone, only to have to pay his ex-wife's rent as well. And the money isn't even going to the kids - which would make it somewhat better.

So yes, I obviously have some issues that I still need to work out. No one really prepares you to get married and then share part of your household income with another person who you hate. That was not part of thought process. I don't like being so stuck on money, but it's frustrating. I need to be supportive of the husband since he's dealing with a lot, but I can't help getting angry every time he writes a check to her. So to therapy I go with this issue again -- I guess the answer is to just deal with it?

Anyone else been in this situation? With a pay increase for your spouse and the ex at the same time? How did you deal?

sabotage

Oh how I wish this could be sent to BM. I wonder if there will ever be a place where she could read this?

How Sabotaging Stepmoms Hurts Your Children

MIA

Sorry all - I know that you were waiting impatiently for my next post. :-P

Things are good. Actually, really good. My antidepressants are doing what they're supposed to do - thus proving to me that my depression isn't just something that I can snap out of, but a really-truly chemical imbalance that requires medication to function at baseline. It's not what I want, but it is what it is. I'd rather be functional and on medication, then depressed without them.

Things with the husband have also been so much better. Fights are limited, and we can usually get over them pretty quickly. After a two-week break (with me being out of town and then our therapist on vacation), we're headed back to couples counseling this week. Even though things are going well, I know that we have some communication issues to work out.

On the step-mom front, things are going alright. These kids are so amazing and resilient. I'm still annoyed and hating how much money we give to BM - but I can't waste too much energy on it. The husband has been to two co-parenting/medication sessions with her so far. The therapist/mediator suspects that BM has a personality disorder -- something I suspected a while ago. The bi-polar diagnosis that BM claims just doesn't fit at all. I have a MA in clinical psych and I know what bi-polar looks like. So, great - we're dealing with a basically untreatable mental illness. I mostly just feel sorry for the kids. It seems like the longer husband and I are together, and the happier we are -- the crazier she gets. Just imagine how crazy she's going to be when we decide to have our own kids. *gulp*

perspective

My best friend sent to this me a while ago. First, it made me grumpy. Then, I was still grumpy and has a case of the "yeah, buts..." Finally, I have opened myself up to the possibility of another truth. Everyone needs a friend like mine - willing to point out your BS and challenge you, but also able to step back when needed. Thank you.

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Ho Mama! A Blog for Slutty, Single, Low-income Moms

There just aren't enough Mommy Blogs out there written by slutty, single, low-income moms. So here I am to fill in that gap.

One year to the day from meeting my daughter's dad, we had a three month old baby. How slutty is that?

I've been married twice, but have seen no need to coordinate marriage with conception. I mean, really, why complicate things?

When I got pregnant, I was living in San Francisco. Upon discovering my impending BabyMama-hood, my female roommate kicked me out into the street. My male roommate, her boyfriend, went along quietly. (She seemed to think he had a crush on me).

This action would have been illegal if I'd been on the lease. But I was merely a sub-tenant. A serf. And now a pregnant serf with an $8 an hour job in one of the most expensive cities in the world. A city with a 1% vacancy rate.

Never fear, though. Slutty, single, low-income moms are nothing if not resourceful. I brought my premature baby (all five pounds of her) home from the hospital to an SRO hotel in the Tenderloin.

My daughter didn't come home to a crib or a nursery. But you know what? She didn't seem to notice. Perhaps cribs and nurseries are more for parents than for babies. Hmmmmmm.

Anyway, I did manage to find some cardboard cut-outs of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet to tape to the walls. But my daughter was much more fascinated by my face and voice than by any baby toys or cutesy decorations.

Feeding her was cheap and easy. My breasts pumped out a steady supply of milk. Feeding myself was a bit trickier. It's quite a hike from the Tenderloin to Whole Foods, especially with a baby strapped to your chest. But we managed.

I couldn't cook in our hotel room - we didn't have a refridgerator or a microwave - so I had to eat a lot of raw fruit, roasted peanuts, and protein bars.

Anyway, the lobby of our hotel was filled with loitering male prostitutes looking awkward and vulnerable in their lipstick, dresses, and cheap crooked wigs.

The hotel was owned by a large extended Indian family who did a lot of cooking. They filled the building with the sweet spicy smells of cinnamon, cardomom, chili, and cloves.

Ruffled looking men and women, in various states of intoxication, knocked on our hotel room door at all hours of the day and night, begging for money.

It was one of the happiest times of my life. My daughter's dad was able to pay our rent at the hotel, so I was able to stay "home" with her. I was in seventh heaven.

Once a week I went to a new moms' support group in a neighborhood about 2 miles, and a million light years, from the Tenderloin. Only one of the moms in the group, besides myself, was single. But she seemed to want nothing to do with me. She was fairly high-powered. She had a first class nanny picked out and living-in with her already. She clearly wasn't one of "those" single moms. And certainly not slutty. I got the distinct impression her child was conceived both expensively and immaculately - with a sterile syringe.

The rest of the moms in my new mom support group were financially secure college educated women, happily married to magnificent brilliant college-educated men, who were the most eager and devoted fathers in the whole wide world. Gag.

As you can imagine, I felt right at home.

And this may be the trouble some people have with Mommy Bloggers. Because, let's face it folks, not all Mommys are created equal.

There are, in this culture, Good Mommys and Bad Mommys.

The Best Mommys are married, upper-middle class (or better), have a college degree, worked before staying home with the children, speak english, and are both white and heterosexual.

Good (not Best) Mommys may be black (non-ebonic speaking) or hispanic (english speaking), or Asian (english speaking, culturally assimilated). But the income, education and marital status is non-negotiable.

In "liberal" communities, the sexual orientation may be negotiable, but in too many parts of the United States, it is absolutely not.

What I ask Mommy Bloggers to remember is this: If you are a married, educated, financially secure, upper middle class mom writing a blog directed at other married, financially secure, upper middle class moms, please acknowledge the fact that you are in the minority.

And you are EXTREMELY privileged. Motherhood is never easy. In your case, however, it is EASIER than it has been in any other place on earth at any other time in human history.

When you are writing about the struggle to keep romance in your marriage while toilet training a toddler, or about choreographing your child's social life on the playground, or about trying to maintain the brain cells you worked so hard to accumulate in college -please take a second to acknowledge the rest of us. Acknowledge the vastly different levels of struggle we face. And if you can, acknowledge it without judging us.

We're your sisters, too: the single, the slutty, the low-income, the illegal, the lost, the struggling, the uneducated, and clueless. We love our children just as much as you love yours. We want every bit as much for our babies as you want for yours. We are exactly the same in those ways. We just don't have (or get) all the props.

Can you be a good mother if you can't afford a crib? Can you be a good mother if you can't figure out how to find a good husband? Can you be a good mother if you never finished high school? If you can't speak english? If you live in a developing country? If you're homeless?

If not, why not?

How much is the ability to consume related to the ability to mother?

These are the questions that lurk between the lines of the typical Mommy Blog.

The Mommy Blogger's voice is privileged and rare. It can be a funny, entertaining, and enlightening voice. But it mustn't be used to drown out the voices of the vast majority of mothers on this planet.

Most mothers on the earth today are poor, uneducated, and deeply in love with their children. And they are buried in shame and silence.

So Mommy Bloggers, please - take a moment to look and see the mommys who ring up your groceries, who clean the toilets at your children's preschool, who empty the waste baskets in your husband's office. See them, notice them, reach out a hand.

They are Mommys, too.

Is Your Marriage Making You Sick?

Is Your Marriage Making You Sick?

I think this is highly relevant to step-moms. I like the idea of thinking about hurtful comments as preventing healing.

'I need to think about what I'm doing to my health and my partner's health and make sure I'm fighting well to stay well.'