🔥 Stepparenting while the world is on fire
Is holding your center even possible at times like this?
The peak (or would it be the low point?) of Dan’s custody battle ran parallel with the economic recession / housing crisis that finally caught up to us in Las Vegas sometime in 2009.
I remember sitting with my work crew at lunch, shooting the shit like “Man things are getting bad in Florida/Michigan/wherever!” while feeling so disconnected from it all. I mean of course it was very sad to hear about so many folks losing jobs and houses and such. But those stories felt unreal compared to our everyday lives. We were all busy cashing fat overtime checks; our shop had 3 years’ worth of back-to-back contracts lined up after the current job finished.
By a few months later when that current job did wrap up though, those contracts had vanished like they never existed. Investors pulled out of Vegas like casinos had developed leprosy overnight.
It was roughly at this point — both of us suddenly out of work with no prospects of re-employment, and less than 6 months into our marriage — that Dan’s ex filed paperwork to move hundreds of miles away, and taking Dan’s kid with her.
To say the following 12 months or so passed in a nightmarish blur would be an understatement. I’ve shared a lot of stories about many of those days, but haven’t always included this full background. I can never decide whether the economic context adds to the horror of the high conflict and court battles and parental alienation or detracts from it. Because wow we do not need to add more misery to that equation! But boy howdy was that misery present and active! And it’s surely overkill if I include all the bits about how my physical and mental health were in tatters by then, between the literal toxic chemicals at my job and the proverbial toxicity of Dan’s ex.
Anyway, you get the picture. So when I say things like “That’s when I dropped everything that didn’t serve me like a hot potato and started focusing on what I could control,” you now have a more precise idea of what ‘everything’ entails. I’d curled up so fetal, I’d forgotten what it felt like to stand upright anymore.
I’m telling you all this so you can really hear me when I say this next bit:
I know firsthand how it feels when the home and family that are supposed to be your refuge from the world instead feel like an uncertain alligator pit. I also know how much scarier and more depressing and more unfair that alligator pit feels when the world itself is on fire.
Which is why I believe the absolute best and most important thing you can do right now — for your stepfam, for the world that is on fire, and most critically for yourself — is to hold your center. What keeps you sane and grounded? Do that more. What leaves your worries on the doorstep? Double down on those things.
I don’t mean for any of that to sound flippant. I’m giving you the advice that I am presently following myself: right now, I am dropping everything that does not serve me like a hot potato.
And one of the things I’m dropping is I’m not gonna try to be carefully neutral about the dystopian shitshow currently unfolding in our country. Which is once again on fire.
This is not a political Substack so we don’t talk about politics here. But please don’t mistake our lack of discussion for ignorance, uncaring, or hiding our heads in the sand. Dan & I are horrified at the fascist-trending state of our country and the world — our values are clearly stated on our website.
However. Our primary goal here is to support stepparents. So for those of you who are here to escape the news of the world, or to get help with what little you can control during these insane times, we want this to be a safe space for you. We want you to know we’re 100% committed to keeping this a 100% hate-free zone for you as you begin this incredibly hard work of transforming yourself and, (hopefully) by extension, your family.
Holding your center not only benefits you, but also your partner and this family you’re building together. Even if it does feel like a stupid alligator pit a lot of the time. You being happy and whole creates outward ripples that uplift your neighborhood, your community, your town. Everyone around you will benefit from you holding your center, and no one more than you.
We spend a lot of time and energy wishing others would change. But even the most outward-seeming change begins within, with us.
I remember back when COVID hit (a different world-on-fire time!) and we were all doom-scrolling Instagram from our respective quarantine nests, I read some post that said how those of us in stepfamilies are uniquely positioned to navigate all the uncertainty that goes along with living in such a tumultuous time because we're already so used to constant last-minute changes. Not to mention living under the weight of a million factors being outside of our control.
I guess if relentless change and a total lack of control are things a person can get used to, then yes. We're real pros at dealing with crap like that.
But that doesn't make any of this easy.
I do agree that stepfamily life has prepared me for world-on-fire times like this, though. Not because I’ve gotten used to uncertainty, but because stepmotherhood knocked me so flat and for so long, I finally learned that prioritizing my emotional health and well-being is a non-negotiable. And I learned that holding my center changes the orbit of all those around me, even when they do not seem to change.
So in the face of a world on fire, where there is very little meaningful action at all that I can take, I am choosing to hold my center.
I encourage you to do the same.
Dan & I are sending you and your families ever so much love right now. We’re here if you need us.
🧡🧡
— Maarit.
