Save Yourself - to Save Everything

How many parts of you are getting lost in the 7,000 mile an hour swirl of the crushing ninja sharp blades of blended family?

Dear, dear stepmom, how the hell do you, facing powerlessness, confusion, or loss of connection, save yourself and not lose everything and everyone in the process?

And, can you bring yourself to detach enough from your stepfamily situation to see it for what it really is?

Let's find out. 

There are things you must know, that I must tell you.

First

If you're struggling, how much are you experiencing thinking about how you fit in or don't fit in the family? Feelings of anxiety or rejection, ineffectiveness, guilt? Hostility? Exhaustion? Are you experiencing loss of self esteem and the stress of overcompensating, trying to make it appear as if all is alright, as if you can handle it - forever?

If so, I invite you to give these feelings a number. If you added them all up and five would be the limit, what number are you at now?

As you write that number down or put it in the comment, What happens is, your limbic brain, it will get flooded with neurotransmitters. As you name your feeling, your limbic brain will get flooded with neurotransmitters. And as that happens, your neocortex will get more of the energy it needs to see your options.

If you're struggling or you want to avoid burnout, then you are ready for what I have to say. I've stepmothered twice. The first time was my dark night of the soul. The second has been redemption. There are dark places in the psyche that too many of us stepmoms fall into. I'm angry about it. I'm sad. The world, it needs you. It needs you.

Second

You matter. Step family stress too often hijacks that spirit of the woman who cares.

Too often stepmoms are generous women. We take pity on a partner who's broke or overwhelmed. We trade our comforts and freedoms for a sense of doing the right thing by everyone else, which seems like the right thing for us because it's kind.

It keeps us in the relationship. It adheres to society's idea of a woman. Or it defeats the evil stereotype of the stepmom. And so on. Let me tell you, friend, more often than not, the house wins. And winner takes all.

It's time to stop gambling. It's time to save yourself. And the good news of this is that you don't have to give up everything to be a good stepmom or to be a good you.

Whether you stay or whether you go from your stepfamily, you have you. Save her. You have you.

Third

You are not crazy. Childless stepmom or stepmom with children, we are all prone to more depression and anxiety, more suicidal ideation, more identity crises, and powerlessness than biomoms are. Those are the hard facts, but I know you already know them.

The woman in you, the woman beyond the stepmom fog, she can do something about it.

I get it, easier said than done. When I lost myself, my ability to walk up and down stairs without falling, when I lost my ability to go through a doorway without walking hard into the jam, I actually broke my nose doing that. When I lost the memory of where my car was every time I'd go grocery shopping.

And when I lost my ability to even recognize my own face in the mirror, living in a house of mirrors as a full time stepmom in constant crisis mode, having paid $120,000 for the education, when I lost myself in the throes of caregiver burnout, stepmom burnout, even then, I stayed. That is until..., but it's too soon for that part.

I asked you three questions at the start. The answer is all about waking up from a kind of fog. How much emotional pain? How much financial pain? How much professional pain? Loss of your friends, your health, that weight gain, loss of hope. How much of all of that does it take for you to announce? I'm done, not with life, but with living this way.

When is that magic moment when you are done living this way? That magic moment, it's uniquely yours. You have a stepmom limit. We all do. It's different. It's different for each of us. The thing about a limit is that it has margins. We have some capacity for changing the situation up to a point. Then we just don't have any more rocket fuel left.

Even getting out of bed in the morning can feel like lifting one ton. So there are warning signs before we reach empty. There are warning signs. We can still get out of bed, but we know that day is coming, right? Those high stress symptoms I asked you about earlier, those are the alarms warning you that this cannot last as it is.

I am a woman on a mission to prevent and help heal stepmom burnout. I have created special resources just for you so you can reduce your stress. They're tailored to stepmoms who want more well being, more aliveness, more hope in blended family life.

Fourth

Your limit is sacred. And I am here doing this work, talking with you now, because I have Experienced the sacredness of that limit? I have witnessed it in other stepmoms. It's when that life force within you uncoils for all to see. It is fiercely committed to the next 30, 40, 50 years of your life being absolutely on point with your healing and your purpose.

It is your clarity. Your limit is your moment of truth. So welcome it. All of this struggle is leading up to that moment. You are here seeking advice, seeking validation, seeking the truth of your situation because that clarity, it's within you. It's coming. I say, fuck the role ambiguity that plagues the stepfamily research results.

It's everywhere in the stepfamily research results that we stepmoms don't know our role in the step family, and other people in the step family don't know our role. There's all of this confusion around it, and it shows up with stepmoms reporting depression, anxiety, wanting to end their lives, because identity is that important.

Our role, our sense of purpose is that important.

The odds are that a stepfamily will break up. It's just the truth of it. The odds are that. When we don't do anything about the identity crisis, when we don't set boundaries, when we don't get expert insight, when we don't do self care, Right? When we don't put structure into the household with our partner, when we don't honor ourselves, when we lose ourselves, it's much more likely that we will be leaving the step family or be asked to leave.

Fifth

What I don't want is for you to leave yourself. I want you to find yourself in this stronger. I say, if it's going to end anyway. Because the fuel is running out. You can't keep going at this, this struggle pace, right? Change it now, change it now. Don't wait till you can't get out of bed. Don't wait till you run out of fuel.

Don't wait till all the relationships are shattered. You can choose to stay or to go. Either is totally fine with me, as what I want for you is to be whole within yourself. If there's more in you for staying, stay and do it differently. Take charge of your life force.

Whether you think of yourself as a stepmom, A woman, a wife, a partner, whatever you take the most centeredness in, take charge of your life force, define yourself around your own life force. It's yours, it's precious, you get to create boundaries around it, not just now, for the rest of your life.

Sixth

That's the magic of this stepmom trial, this stepmom initiation. Research has also shown us, for decades, that the stepmoms who make it through are clearer about who they are. And you can be too. We are clearer about what boundaries to set, and are much more confident about setting those boundaries because we've learned what's at stake.

And we know it can protect those around us as well.

The first time I saved myself was when I left my first stepmomming gig. I said I've done it twice. Well, the first time was horrific. And an old friend who hadn't seen me for years, hadn't seen me during the journey, came to visit from out of town. It was six years into it, and this was her first time seeing me.

She was very concerned.

She painted a picture of how I used to be. She painted a picture of my ethics and my integrity and pointed out I wasn't treating myself with those same ethics or integrity. When she did that, I stopped seeing myself through my stepkids eyes and their divorced father's eyes.

I stopped seeing myself through their eyes. I saw myself through my own.

It took years to have the courage to wake up and let go of all of the shoulds that I was trying to act out to be the perfect step mom, right? The ethics I thought I was carrying out by putting all my money into, you know, somebody else's child and all of that.

It took courage to let that go. And then it took courage after I left, took years of courage and healing to start again.

Seventh

I did it again, but I did it differently in a new step family. And let me tell you, from day one, what I'm asking you to do now, is to save yourself ahead of losing yourself.

I did that from day one and I've been doing it for 12 years. Every day that I wake up in blended family. I am my own ally, I am my own best friend, I am my own family, and I take full responsibility for saving myself ahead of losing myself.You know what: you deserve that, right? I deserve that.

We all deserve that. But also because of the people we love who are also trying to create some predictability and some stability. They need us to show up secure.

Other stepmoms have found their way too. It is possible to save yourself and to not lose everything. In fact, you can save yourself to save everything.

Eighth

In AA and other 12 step recovery programs. The rooms are filled with people who heard the voice of their own spirit when they bottomed out. What a wondrous thing that is. I've always marveled at that. We all have that spirit. You have that spirit.

Even when abuse, loneliness, loss of our money, total overwhelm, too much grief, any pain, it hap The spirit comes alive when those things force a part of us to come back online to stop sleeping at the wheel. Because there are choices that we are making, right, that are getting us into the situation deeper and deeper and deeper. So some, part of us comes online and we stop sleeping at the wheel.

Ninth

This is important. Just because you wake up, it doesn't mean you have to stop dreaming. No, no, no, no, no. You do not have to stop dreaming.

3 out of 10 blended families survive the first 5 years. 3 out of 10. That's millions of stepmoms who stay and Many of those millions of stepmoms stay because they found a way to be healthy, not just because they got stuck and trapped. And yes, millions, millions more do leave. I am here to honor your decision to take care of yourself.

Both decisions are welcome here, to stay or to leave.

What do you really want? I bet you've been addressing what everybody else really wants and maybe it reached a point where you had to start addressing what you really want, maybe even start begging for it.

When I heard myself begging, that was also an alarm bell for me in my head because I had lost something within myself when I started begging.

So, I am here to ask you, what do you really want? No worries about seeming maternal or not. No worries about other people's problems. Just for the moment. You're in a world where they do not exist. You're starting fresh. What do you want?

Three years from now, what would be your answer to me when we see each other in the supermarket and I ask, How are you? And you declare, "I'm happier than I've ever been because _______."