2022: The Birth of My New Title

Wooooo weeee. No one ever told me how challenging being a stepmom would be. To make it even more challenging, I have no biological children and didn’t picture children of any type being in the cards for me. Ever.

 I threw myself straight up into the deep end when I got married in April of 2022. Three teenage stepsons. Let me rewind a bit. We had already had them mostly full time since August of 2021 due to a substantial and material change in life. It took me a minute to mourn the life I once had, but I became okay with my bachelorette pad with the hair/make-up studio and guest room turning into an overnight family home. I knew how to shop for school supplies. I know that you don’t arm teenage boys with Axe body spray. I knew how to entertain teenagers, for the most part. Let me tell you, there are a lot of things I was NOT prepared for.

No one prepared me for the amount of Febreze and candles I was going to go through trying to get the scent of puberty out of our house. No one prepared me for the moments when the hormones are raging, and the boys turn into emotionally unstable lunatics that mimic exactly how I am three days before my menstrual cycle hits. No one prepared me for the amount of “that’s what she said” phrases I was going to have to quickly spit out to beat the others to it. No one prepared me for the times I catch myself sounding EXACTLY like my mother when she was parenting me at their ages. No one prepared me for the first time one of them would hug me and I tried not to panic because I was caught off guard and had no idea what to do. And no one gave me a heads up that I would secretly cry the first time one of them told me they loved me.

On top of that, you have to remember that you aren’t their parent, but you are a parental figure. There is a fine line between the two. I’ve spent hours scrolling through blogs about stepmom life and all of the dos and do not dos that go with it. Some of the lists I came across, I agreed with. Some of them, not so much. Time for a little game of true or false, based solely on my situation.

• You will be expected to the do the work of a parent without the recognition. True but also false. There are times where I feel like I am playing the role with all my might (booster club, chauffeuring, showing up to “mom’s practice” for football, hosting birthday parties, remembering to buy birthday gifts for other kid’s birthday parties, preparing lists for Christmas gifts, wrapping gifts, etc.) and there are sometimes *some* people whose names and titles will not be mentioned here will fail to give you the nod of approval or an appropriate thank you. However, my husband, my in-laws, my parents, my friends, my co-workers, my Facebook acquaintances all praise and acknowledge that I work my ass off as a stepmom.
• You will miss the life you had, but you won’t trade this one. True. There is something oddly fulfilling that cannot be put into words about being in a child’s life – especially as a stepmom. I am a caretaker. I am a mentor. I get weird, warm fuzzy feelings when I see my stepsons succeed and I am there to pick up the pieces if something falls apart. I also sometimes look through old photos or Facebook memories and think about the previous version of myself, and aside from being able to look really great in a tube top – I miss it less and less every time I look back.
• Get along with his ex-wife (and one article talked about including the ex-wife on family meetings – HARD PASS). False. I really beg to differ on this one. While I get along with my husband’s ex-wife enough to where we aren’t throwing punches in the front yard and she is on my Christmas list every year, people can co-parent without having to get along so long as both parties are civil in front of the kids. His ex-wife and I were not brought up the same way and of course I am going to parent her boys in a way that is different from the way she parents her boys. Guess what? That’s okay. They are learning from both parties and will have a vast array of takeaways from their experiences.
• Stepmothers should operate more as babysitters or aunts than as parents. F A L S E. Whoever wrote that can come fight me, alright? Yeah, sometimes I act like the cool aunt when I buy them stupid stuff or let one of them throw a spaghetti noodle across the table at the other. But babysitter? Hell no. I’d be the most underpaid babysitter on Earth. I am lucky to be involved in the upbringing of these boys as an internal figure, and not a third party. Now let’s hope that they are kind enough to choose a good old folks home for me when it is time.  

These blanket lists and statements are mostly pointless because you cannot put the idea of a stepmom (or Hell, any parent/guardian position) into a box or defined by any definite parameters. Not all stepmoms are created equal.