When my husband Jeff and I started dating, our respective life circumstances made starting a new relationship as dangerous as old trees putting forth leaves during a warm spell before the last frost. We were willing to nip our initial attraction to each other in the bud if it prevented another deep shock to our root systems.
And so our first dates were coloured with temperance. We talked about the things that break new couples; finances, jobs, politics, religion, temperament towards conflict, and - children. I didn’t have any biological kids, and he had three. Would they be enough for me, he asked. Would I consider them as my own?
At that moment, I faced the same questions my stepmother would have considered twenty years earlier. When I answered yes to Jeff’s questions - and yes to a third, to marry him - I began to see my stepmother in a new light. There is nothing that prepares you for the job.
For me, being a stepmother has meant learning to navigate through the existing family dynamic between Jeff, the kids, and their biological mom, all while overcoming my lack of parental experience, building my relationship with Jeff after our previous divorces, and providing the kids with love and support while figuring out what my place in their life is. This constantly evolving process has seen big joyful moments and massive failures on all our parts - including mine.
But all of that has sometimes seemed easier than figuring out how society views my role in our family. I didn’t give birth to those kids, but I’ve been around them a hot minute. To some, I’m a reminder of the failure of a marriage. To others, I’m a necessary aspect of modern life. But when the kids started intoning my name with a meaning that went beyond “dad’s wife” to something along the lines of “woman who is there for me,” nothing that anyone else thought mattered.
Getting to that point has been a learning experience for me about myself. Becoming a stepmother has meant uncovering places where I’m unreasonably selfish and learning (the hard way) how important it is to set those aside to create sorely needed peace and stability in our family. Conversely, I’ve also had to learn to set boundaries for the same reason.
I’ve also discovered a guttural place inside myself that I frankly didn’t know existed - a wellspring of desire to do everything to protect those kids against harm, even when that harm comes through their own self-inflicted life lessons. In all the titanic public clashes I’ve had during my time in politics, in all the negotiations I’ve had in businesses, I’ve had no more significant growth experience than this.
Today, many women will celebrate Mother’s Day. For many, this means more than giving birth to a child - an act that deserves to be celebrated. But for some of us, it also means celebrating the act of blending families of children together, or learning how to share access to their children with a former spouse’s new partner. And for others, it means becoming a mother to humans we didn’t birth.
During a time in politics where parts of our society seem fixated on enforcing deeply polarizing perspectives around the agency of women and the act of motherhood, most women want nothing more than broader respect for those who push and struggle beyond all that to create a loving and joyous place for our children to grow up in.
So to all my fellow stepmothers and bonus moms, happy Mother’s Day.
It’s your day too.