30 Days to a Better Stepfamily – Day 14
She talks and talks and talks. She can talk for thirty minutes straight and never take a breath. My head is spinning and I want to put duct-tape over her mouth for just a few minutes and give my head a break. I need just a few minutes with my own thoughts so that I...
30 Days to a Better Stepfamily – Day 13
Suppertime is a stressful time for me in this stepfamily. Before we became a stepfamily, I was considered a reasonably good cook by my children, but these new children, they don’t like much at all. Everything I serve them is discussed and suggestions made about how...
30 Days to a Better Stepfamily – Day 12
We went to see the production of the play, Next to Normal, last weekend. The whole time I was watching the production, I was thinking about one of our children. We have been through so much trying to “fix” this one. This one, this beautiful child now adult, is a...
30 Days to a Better Stepfamily – Day 11
My angry words fly like red-hot embers propelled from a slingshot, creating collateral damage for anyone in their path on their way toward my husband. I want him to take my side, to set the record straight and do it where I can have the satisfaction of hearing it...
30 Days to a Better Stepfamily – Day 10
I walk into the room, and morning light spills soft and glowing across tiled floors and a rug of robin’s egg blue. Pulling back a silky, chocolate comforter and shaking floral sheet, I watch crumbs of food smuggled into bed after hours, fly through the air, like...
30 Days to a Better Stepfamily –Day 9
They are sisters by marriage and not by blood, yet their mannerisms are so similar. Last summer we had trouble telling them apart in photographs and needed to look at their swimsuits to tell who was who. I study them closely trying to really know who they were...
30 Days to a Better Stepfamily – Day 8
It is 2:45 in the afternoon and I have been working for two days trying to prepare for out of town guests who will be arriving in about three hours. There is a lot I would still like to do, and at this very moment I am trying to cook a really great meal when I...
30 Days to a Better Stepfamily – Day 7
One of the most difficult things to do is live in a stepfamily. Scars on our soul and voices of the past can torment our sleeping and waking hours. All who come into a stepfamily bring with them wounds, and images from the past. Some images are of a family that...
30 Days to a Better Stepfamily – Day 6
She is an angry teenager – Half woman, half child and her maturity is not ready to face such difficult times. She is trying to work through a life she never wanted. I am in love with Doc and married him, and though our lives are better, she feels like she is in...
30 Days to A Better Stepfamily – Day 5
I do not have a PhD in physiology, though there have been so many times that I wished I could download such a degree for immediate use. But even a PhD in physiology does not have all of the answers we need to deal with a Stepfamily. Like it or not, an Ex is a part of...
30 Days to a Better Stepfamily – Day 4
Turf wars were raging between my stepdaughter and me. She was determined to be the woman of the house and dictate what would, and would not happen, and I was sure that this would not be the order of our lives. Knowing that this eight year old ruling the roost would...
30 Days to a Better Stepfamily – Day 3
I love you. Each child hears these three words each night before sleep wrestles those busy little minds, and bodies, into angelic slumber. Why are they not this darling all of the time? Each morning Doc and I make breakfast for the children – bacon, eggs, biscuits,...
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