Because sometimes your the bomb and they love you and sometimes your THE BOMB (tick, tick, tick) and want to blow the whole thing up!
To be perfectly honest, this topic was supposed to be my first book. But my experience as a Step Mom left me fragile and I decided not to spend my time focusing on something that was painful and disappointing for me. My initial intention for my book was to be positive and share my learnings, but I realized that I wouldn’t be able to achieve that without being incredible snarky, in turn hurting my family and bringing more angst to the situation. I chose instead to focus on my own young children, my friendships and my husband. I had a great life, so I chose to move forward and put my energy into people and places that reflected the light. I decided to #followthelove.
I will share my personal opinions on being a Step Mom here, sparingly. If you are like me, the lens of criticism and judgement that falls upon those of us lucky enough to earn the title of Step Mom, often outweighs the desire to openly share the truth. I rarely spoke about my experience except for to a small group of trusted friends, who still to this day support me and understand the dynamics of my situation and all the players. It’s important to acknowledge that everyone involved in a divorce with kids, plays a role and typically shares in the blame for the disturbances and success of the positive outcomes. I detest the “blame game” but I dislike the “victim game” even more. Poor Me does not fly with Mrs. Honey. I take responsibility for the role I played in my situation. My role was highly unusual and very tough for a long time …. I was driving the struggle bus at about 100 MPH with no brakes. My struggle was not out of malice, but rather because of a total lack of understanding of what to expect when stepping into the middle of a family in crisis. The dynamics of dating and then marrying a man with children in a high conflict divorce is a lot for anyone to manage. Never mind a career middle aged career woman with no children. Just managing a new marriage and 3 new relationships with kids and extended family plus my own pretty fabulous life was overwhelming. To say the struggle bus was speeding is accurate. To say I thought about jumping out is dead honest. If not for the love of my husband, and his total commitment to personal/marital growth, we would not be here. I am married to a great man, that has been through hell and back … and keeps dishing out love. I’ll talk about the difficult divide for parents of step children who are required to constantly balance the emotional warfare that comes when children start playing power games. There’s nothing quite like a 14 year old trying to humiliate you every week! #smileseveryone That’s when you take your struggle bus and do everything in your power to take the high road when all you really want to do is let it speed off down the hill … no hands! But seriously, parenting is very hard, especially when you have forces working against you at every turn, undermining you to your children and creating parental alienation all the while accusing you of it. #goodtimes.
To wrap this up …. I will offer advice that I wish I had known when I started dating my husband. Early ground rules and boundaries. I will share personal experiences when I can do so in humor without harm. I will try to help others avoid my pitfalls. I will allow for people to post and discussions to roar here ….. everyone’s experience and circumstances are different and we can all learn from on another. But we can’t get crazy in the super fun “One Up Ya Game”. That’s not what this page is about … the purpose here is to lift one another up, vent a little and look for the silver linings. I will celebrate the Moms who are doing it well (on both sides) and help parents on both sides learn from one another. Hateful and mean-spirited posts will not make the page, nor will publicly shaming others. I had enough of that during my first 10 years of marriage b/c of the never ending conflicts, to last me a lifetime. It’s not apart of my life anymore and it’s so unhealthy and harmful on every level, that I won’t allow that forum to exist here. BUT, we can use this page to talk about solutions that worked for your family, help foster understanding and empathy and perhaps help some new step Moms avoid many of the traps we have fallen into. #thestepbomb #tickticktick
learn, laugh and lighten up,
Mrs. Funny Honey