🔥 Stepparenting while the world is on fire

Is holding your center even possible at times like this? [updated for 2026]

Jan 26, 2025

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. Double down on those things.

I don’t mean for that to sound flippant or bypassy. 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~~. *Which has now become an even more surreal and unrecognizable inferno since I wrote this post a year ago, back in January 2025.

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 as you navigate this incredibly hard work of transforming yourself and, by extension (hopefully), your stepfamily.

Worrying about our personal lives, including blended family problems, can feel both more challenging and less critical when held up against headlines that make 1984 sound like non-fiction.

Like so much about stepfamily life though, please remember it’s not an either/or; this is a both/and situation. The world is on fire and prioritizing your own mental health still really, really matters. Some serious foundational changes are far overdue in this country and the latest bullshit from your partner’s ex feels totally overwhelming.

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 staying grounded creates outward ripples that uplift your neighborhood, your community, your town — and we need those IRL connections more than ever right now.

I remember back when COVID hit (a different world-on-fire time!) and we were all doomscrolling 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. Stepparents are 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 non-negotiable. And I learned that, inexplicably, holding my center also somehow changes the orbit of all those around me.

So in the face of a world on fire, where there is very little meaningful action at all that I can take (and none of those actions feel like nearly enough), I am reminding myself constantly to hold my center. To actively look for ways I can hold my center and calm my nervous system.

For me, that’s recommitting to yoga and not skipping my somatic exercises. I’m taking longer dog walks with Dan. I’m working on more art projects. All of which sounds embarrassingly superficial in comparison to the bigger picture right now. How in any way does making some new collage change the horrors currently happening in my home state of Minnesota??

Then this morning I read this quote from Stacy Vajta:

So I continue finding ways to keep myself centered. Then I can take action from that place of centeredness while also reminding myself there’s so little I can truly control.

Our personal challenges as stepparents can feel trivial when the world is on fire, like our individual lives cease to matter when held up against the challenges faced by the collective.

But as Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it more eloquently than I could:

So if, after firmly affixing your own oxygen mask to your face first, you then choose to call your representatives, donate a bunch of money to the many good people doing many good things in the world, or protest loudly in an attempt to save democracy, I am all for it, and I am right there with you.

But listen, please do not beat yourself up if you don’t have a single extra ounce of energy to devote to anything outside of maintaining your own sanity. Recover your center first, then fight whichever fights you’re able to. That’s really the most any of us can do. We cannot all be fighting every fight all the time.

And remember that rest too is resistance. Creativity is resistance. Joy is resistance.

Dan & I are sending you and your families ever so much love right now. We’re here if you need us.

🧡🧡

— Maarit.