Work In Progress

I have often felt the step parent label we attach to men and women who marry into families where children already exist, was coined merely for the simple reason that we need to call them something.  It is mostly because it is a huge "step" in their lives taking on someone else's children and making a completely new living environment. At least that is how I used to feel many years ago when I first became a stepmother to my husband's children. They for the most part lived with their mother but for a number of years we were honored to have his eldest son live with us at the beginning of his most sensitive years. The teen years! I was already privileged to have my own daughter who was 4 years younger. With that much of an age difference and the gender difference there really were no battle lines to draw between the two of them just between the two of us. We did learn to adjust and grow together as a family over the years to adapt to our new family arrangement and to become comfortable with each other. My own child also going through her own issues shuffling back and forth every other weekend between me and her fathers place(material for another blog there) but this actually helped because I was able to spend one on one time with my "step" son and that drew us even closer. However, I still felt somewhat like an outsider, infringing on foreign territory. There was a definite boundary that could not be crossed. Since my husband and I had no children between us I often lamented on what I would never know. Modern tools of communication however helped to bridge this feeling of alienation. When our son moved back home, thousands of miles away we were afraid that we would never hear from him again. That he was done with us but through texting and social networking we were able to continue communicating with him as well as other family members, and with great importance my daughter because she had grown so close to him and looked up to him. Things are still working themselves out he is a senior this year and we are keeping the lines of communication open. It is a work in progress so we will see where the road takes us.Helpful Resource