🌼 Gratitude in April: Day 29

Thankful for silver linings

The other day I watched a Tony Robbins documentary on Netflix. He was talking to a gal from the audience whose father was a drug addict. And Tony Robbins said (I'm totally paraphrasing here), “You know, go ahead and blame him. Blame him for not being there, for being a jerk, all of that. But if you’re gonna blame him, you have to blame him for everything. So you better also blame him for creating such an incredible daughter. Because without that bastard, you wouldn’t have gotten to where you are today.”

I blame HCBM for a lot of things. For destroying her daughter’s emotional health and well-being, first of all. For giving my gentle-hearted husband PTSD after many years of her emotional and verbal abuse. For the constant conflict between houses, which poisoned not only SD's childhood but even spiraled out to affect my own daughter's as well. For alienating SD against her dad and me, and for so long. For raising SD to believe that only HCBM's family counted as SD’s “real” family. For making our first year of marriage a nightmare.

Basically thinking about HCBM sends me right to furious in about 2 seconds flat.

Yet that anger fueled me into sharing my story, creating Blended Family Frappé, and even writing this gratitude challenge. Fighting against HCBM’s negative influence shoved me into deep personal development, which ultimately made me a happier, more grounded person.

And I can’t forget to blame HCBM for bringing SD into the world, the kid who's the reason I'm a stepparent at all. Stepparenting has broken me open in deep and meaningful ways, and built me back up into something new. Even if that transformation has been far from easy, I love who and where I am today, and I don't know if I'd have made half the positive changes I've made if I weren't a stepmom to SD.

In short, without HCBM, I wouldn’t be here writing this post. Which means you wouldn’t be here either, hearing all the stories I share. So I guess, thanks for HCBM? 🤯

Ugh, it feels gross even thinking that. But if I’m going to feel thankful for my life at all and thankful for where I am right now, the reality is that HCBM's constant attempts to destroy us were the driving force that got me here. So I’ve gotta include her — however reluctantly — if I’m being thankful.

Nothing new can exist without destruction coming in first to break down the old. And we too created something better from HCBM’s attempted destruction. Our family might've born in fire, but man did that make us tough.

So suck it, HCBM.

And also thank you. Thanks for showing us just how very strong we can be. 🔥

TODAY’S PROMPT:

Even the worst things in our lives have good attached to them somehow. Today, think about one negative thing that's happened in your life. Then, thinking about where you are right now, trace all the positives that connect their way back to that negative and see if you can find gratitude somewhere in there along the way.

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