💐 To the stepmoms who never stop trying
… which is every stepmom out there. Happy Stepmother’s Day! xo
Today is Stepmother's Day, a very real holiday that doesn’t seem to quite show up on anyone’s radar. Stores don’t carry "Happy Stepmother's Day!" cards. You’re not gonna see an ad like “Get Stepmom something as special as she is!”
Technically the holiday exists… yet we're not actually acknowledged.
Sounds about right. 🤦🏻♀️
If I'm honest, though, I don't know that I've ever given myself that much credit for being a good stepmom to my stepkid. I've magnified every mistake I've made x10 while minimizing my positive contributions. Any victories I've gained have never felt significant enough to outweigh all my fuckups.
I’ve never stopped trying though. If there’s one thing I'm really good at, it's sticking with something till I grind it into dust. Like I WILL crack this stepmotherhood code and get this kid to like me, and I WILL figure out how to make us a family, goddammit.
I know you know, because I know that's you too. Stepparents embody the verb "try" like no one else.
We try, we fall short of our own impossibly high standards, and then we think we’ve failed. Do we quit? Hell no! We just try even harder the next time. Then more falling short, followed by another promise to do better, followed by more trying.
It took me about a decade of churning through this cycle before it occurred to me that maybe — just maybe! — all that trying, in and of itself, counts as its own type of success.
I spent years raising my own kid while building a relationship with Dan and his kid and learning the hard way about high-conflict co-parenting. I coordinated summer travel plans and weekend camping trips and endless family bonding activities. I created playlists for road trips with irresistible songs that even the grouchiest of tweens couldn't resist singing along to.
All of this was on top of working crazy long hours at a physically demanding job, helping Dan remodel our house and his parents' house, and still getting dinner on the table every night by 6... a nutritionally-balanced dinner that took everyone's special dietary needs and preferences into account.
In my spare time, was I relaxing? Of course not! How could anyone relax when there was a stepkid to win over and a family to blend!! Any spare time I had was spent searching for yet more resources that would help me figure out how to blend our family faster, how to be a better stepmom.
Kinda like what you're doing right now. Reading this post on a short break from the insane amount of things you do every day just struggling to maintain.
We try so much and so hard that trying becomes our default state. We don't even recognize that we're trying anymore; we become desensitized to just how much effort we're putting in and how often.
And all the while, we think we're failing because we haven't met whatever benchmark we've told ourselves means success.
But there’s no goal you need to achieve or milestone you need to meet to be a good stepparent. You're already here.
You're in the trenches full-time, no matter how often you have your stepkids physically. You stress about your stepkids when they're with you and you stress when they're not. And in your free time, of which you probably have very little, you're busy looking for help and support — for yourself, for your partner, for the kiddos.
If there's a single quality that defines the stepparenting role, it's that we keep trying and trying and trying. Beyond all reason, and maybe even to our own detriment.
So today, give yourself credit for trying. And let trying, in and of itself, be enough.
🧡🧡
— Maarit.
Thanks, I really needed to hear this today.