🧡 You will not feel like this forever.
Stepparenting does eventually get easier, I swear.
I first started writing about stepparenting the year after Dan & I got married, when our family was just about at its lowest point and I was trying to make sense of it all. (Without much success.)
We were already 5 years in but the gap between where we were and where I wanted us to be felt massive to the point of uncrossable. Where had we gone wrong? How had things gotten steadily worse instead of better?
I had no idea how to turn our ship around. I felt so lost. So unsure of a better future; completely unclear about how — or whether — we could possibly move forward.
Yet here I am. Writing to you from the other side.
So today, some reminders:
However you’re feeling right this minute, you will not feel this way forever.
However jacked your current family dynamics, you will not function like this forever.
However long and dark the tunnel stretches ahead right now, you will not stay stuck forever.
I can’t promise that everything in your stepfam will work out perfectly — or even that things will work out the way you want them to.
But I can promise that life moves on. Our relationships with our partners evolve and deepen. Kids get older and the way we relate to them shifts accordingly. The ex calms down… or they don’t, but we figure out more effective ways to deal with them.
Most of all, we change.
We learn. We grow. We rise to the occasion.
So hang in there. You might be in the messy middle right now, but you never know what the next week/month/year could bring. So much can change for the better so quickly.
🧡🧡
— Maarit.