A quick note

I have decided to password protect certain posts that discuss the more “intimate” details of interactions with IR. I want to be as open as I can on this site without needing to worry that somehow she will find it and get pissed. I may mention her in posts, but if I am discussing a current battle or something I’m upset over, then I’ll protect it, just to be on the safe side. If anyone is interested in knowing the password, shoot me an email at practicalstepmom@gmail.com and I’ll reply. Thanks!

Protected: my very anti-climactic come back post.

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pro-choice

“Whether first families are formed via adoption or childbirth, they are essentially and fundamentally different from stepfamilies. Stepfamilies can be healthy, satisfying settings for adult and child development, but they are virtually never easy. And stepfamily and first family dynamics are extremely different from one another as copious clinical and anecdotal evidence shows us. No one is drawing a distinction here between biological and adoptive children. But stepfamilies are not first families, and the measure of a stepmother’s success should never be that she “loves them like they’re her own.” They’re not her own. They already have parents, and denying that is fundamentally confusing and damaging for the kids.”

Dr. Wednesday Martin, Psychology Today, “Let’s Stop Expecting Sandra Bullock to be a Stepmartyr“

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I’ve read a lot lately about how being a stepparent is different than being a biological/adoptive parent because stepparents don’t “choose” to have their stepkids. I choose to be a good, involved, loving stepmom to my stepkids; I choose it every single day.  Yet, it seems like a lot of posts in the stepmom-blog-world focus mainly on how to protect yourself, your heart, your time, etc because the stepkids will wind up resenting you and besides, you’re “not their parent” anyway.

Why is there always a presumption that the stepmom did not choose the kids just as much as (albeit in a different way) she chose the husband?  I know my situation isn’t like many stepfamilies; I feel incredibly lucky to have the relationship that I do with Calvin and Cupcake.   I don’t hold it against anyone who doesn’t want to be involved in their stepkids’ lives or doesn’t love them as much as their bio-kids or who doesn’t get along with their stepkids, but I feel belittled when I’m told that I can’t possibly love my stepkids the way I would love an adoptive or biological child.  In my mind, I did adopt these kids. The only thing that’s missing is a legal obligation to them (and yes, I know that is a big thing, but I think that if the love and choice are there, anything that would come from a legal obligation will follow anyway).  Can we not fully love a child that doesn’t come from our own flesh?  Can we not fully love something that comes from two other people?

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For what it’s worth, my two cents on the Sandra Bullock situation:  If I were in Sandra Bullock’s shoes, I would be devastated by having to choose to “respect myself” by leaving my adulterous husband and – by doing so – effectively leaving my stepkids, who I’ve come to think of as my own.  I wouldn’t think about staying because I “owed it to the kids,” I would consider staying because I love the kids and would have no rights to see them if I left. I’ve read a lot of commentary about Sandra’s predicament, and many - including the Wednesday Martin article linked at the top of this post – have opined that Sandra should leave James in order to respect and take care of herself – and that that choice would not be selfish. While I agree that Sandra should look out for herself, what if looking out for herself means keeping Sunny (her stepdaughter) in her life? That choice should be OK, too.

I found this post on Sandra interesting – stepmoms have a lot to lose when they choose to love their stepkids.  The last thing the stepmom community should do is make stepmoms feel guilty or deluded for deciding to do so.

this is my life on IR

“The most telling thing that narcissists do is contradict themselves. They will do this virtually in the same sentence, without even stopping to take a breath. It can be trivial (e.g., about what they want for lunch) or it can be serious (e.g., about whether or not they love you). When you ask them which one they mean, they’ll deny ever saying the first one, though it may literally have been only seconds since they said it — really, how could you think they’d ever have said that? You need to have your head examined! They will contradict FACTS. They will lie to you about things that you did together. They will misquote you to yourself. If you disagree with them, they’ll say you’re lying, making stuff up, or are crazy. [At this point, if you're like me, you sort of panic and want to talk to anyone who will listen about what is going on: this is a healthy reaction; it's a reality check ("who's the crazy one here?"); that you're confused by the narcissist's contrariness, that you turn to another person to help you keep your bearings, that you know something is seriously wrong and worry that it might be you are all signs that you are not a narcissist].”

Taken from: http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/traits.html#contra

The last two or three weeks have been really, really hard.  Like, to the point where I get a knot in my stomach everytime I get an email because I think it’s more craziness from her.  Too much has happened recently to describe here, but suffice it to say, there’s some messed up shit at hand and it’s taking a toll on a variety of parties.

Reason doesn’t work.  Kindness doesn’t work.  Anger doesn’t work.  Honesty doesn’t work.  Nothing gets through to her.  We really don’t know what to do and it’s not as if we can just ignore her.   But things can’t keep going like this…

i love my kids.

They are amazing and special and precious.  I thank whatever-powers-that-be for letting me be a part of their lives.

I ask those same powers to please, please, help me be a good mom –  a fair mom, a woman they can look up to, a source of comfort, love, and trust.

They teach me something every day.  They inspire me. They are generous and innocent. I adore them.

who am i today?

“We have to keep reinventing ourselves, almost every minute because the world can change in an instant. And there’s no time for looking back. Sometimes the changes are forced on us. Sometimes they happen by accident and we make the most of them. We have to constantly come up with new ways to fix ourselves. So we change, we adapt. We create new versions of ourselves. We just need to be sure that this one is an improvement over the last.”

-Grey’s Anatomy

I’m not sure if it’s coincidental because of my mood this weekend, but I found the focus of this article (sent to me by my dear friend) so interesting: focusing on being happy.  It’s worth your time to read it, in my opinion.  This post doesn’t quite respond to the article, but was prompted by it.

I went through a bout of depression over the last week or so (ugh, time of month) and finally broke out of it with a long talk with Pops.  It started with the question of “whether I am unhappy.”  The word “unhappy” caught me off guard because I didn’t feel unHAPPY; I felt like … there was no me.  I don’t derive joy from my work (though I do derive pride and I’m excited when I do well) and I don’t feel like I have much of a personal/individual life.  I think this is largely because I feel like when the kids are here, I have to be here (and I truly want to be here) and then when they’re not here, I feel like I should soak up the “grown up time” with Pops.   Sometimes I wonder where I am.  The girl who used to spend hours on a Saturday in a museum, or sleep until 1pm, or sit in the aisles of bookstores to read magazines.  When’s the last time I did those things???

If I think about myself as having “identities,” I can come up with a few: the stepmom, the lawyer, the poet/songwriter. The stepmom thing is always stressful and confusing (duh, for so many reasons); while I’m very thankful that I have a job – and one where I’m appreciated, at that – I’m not practicing the type of law I wish I was practicing, and that is hard for me to accept; I barely touch my guitar anymore – I used to spend hours writing and pushing myself to come up with new chords and better lyrics.  So none of these identities – none of these pieces – are complete, and as a result, I feel like I form a person, but that I have holes in places where I don’t want them.  I need something to feed ME – not Pops’ girlfriend, or Cupcake and Calvin’s practical stepmom – but me, the person I am and want to be.

I want to be clear about a couple of things:  my family brings me immeasurable happiness – deep happiness I never expected to feel at this point in my life (i.e. through children and a husband).  They are amazing and have brought me more joy than I could ever describe.  What I’m talking about here is beyond them – it’s a “me” thing.  There’s no one to blame for this but me –  I clearly could go do things I want to do anytime we don’t have the kids around; Pops has always been supportive of me taking time for myself.   However, I want the kids to think of me as a “full-time parent,” and not a distant step-mother figure.   In my mind, that means being home for dinner when they are here, doing homework with them, tucking them in at night, etc.  Same for the weekends – I don’t want Pops to feel like he has to do all of the parenting while I get to go hang out somewhere doing something fun.  I made a conscious choice to be as involved in their lives and upbringing as possible.

Pops and I had a really long and honest talk and it helped a lot in sorting out feelings and setting goals for ourselves. For example, I am going to try to do some of the things I used to do without feeling guilty if it falls on a day/night we have the kids:  go to a concert, attend a reading, visit that exhibit.  He discussed his goals, too, and I’m proud of him for being the kind of man who wants to work to improve himself.  We recommitted ourselves to making sure that we’re the best individuals we can be, so that we can be our best for each other and our family.

is it really so difficult…

…to not start a movie for your kids EVERY TIME THEY CALL THEIR FATHER???

bosses, help reduce heart failure: scroll all the way down.

I wish that every time I thought about writing a blog post, it would magically appear…

The last few weeks have been a little nutty – but mostly in a good way.  Since news broke at my firm that I am retaking the bar, I have been slammed with work.  Not slammed in the volume of work, but rather, the quality of the work.  I’ve had major client contact lately and was even told one day, “Congratulations, you have your first client.”*

That same week, I had one of my first real “lawyer moments,” in which I was frantically running around parts of the office, trying to get a letter for a client to the government out to FedEx in time.**  My boss told me that once I had made the changes to the letter that we’d talked about, I could send it (i.e. without having her do a final check – she was out of town and her only access to email was via her Blackberry).  I worked first on the chunk of the letter that we’d deemed most important, and copy/pasted it into an email, saying, “Good?” in the subject line.  I’d incorporated all the edits we’d discussed.  Since I didn’t hear from her by the time I had to send the package, I just went for it and trusted myself.  Of course, as soon as I returned to my desk from the FedEx drop-box, I got a reply from her, asking, “Where are the cases we discussed?  I thought you were going to add a section?  Send it to me, and I’ll help with edits.”  So, of course, I choked on the Diet Coke I’d just slammed (why don’t law firms keep Red Bull in the fridge?) and frantically wrote back, “I just sent the doc…DO I NEED TO INTERCEPT THE PACKAGE????”  When I didn’t receive a response 3 seconds later, I called my boss.  I said, “I put in the cases we talked about – did I not include enough discussion?”  and she said, “You did?  Oh, yes now I see….. [laughter] … Guess i didn’t scroll down far enough on my Blackberry!  Ok that’s great, thanks!”

I then walked down the hallway to find a defibrillator to bring me back from my massive heart attack.

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* Note: This client was for consulting work, not legal work, if any of you are wondering how that whole lack-of-license thing played into the equation.

** This is a legal client.  My boss is the lead attorney, but we’ve both been very actively involved with research, writing, and client interaction.  I even had to handle a couple of client calls by myself!

Protected: back and forth

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Protected: i think my brain might explode.

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