Blending families is one of the biggest causes of
divorce. My very own blended family
growing up is now divorced and has been for years. Being a step-parent and
raising someone else’s child is one of the most challenging jobs any person
could ever take on. It was something I never understood until I grew up to
marry into my second blended family… the one consisting of my husband, his
daughter, and our son. And let me tell you it is not as easy as looks. “Easy?”
you ask “Who said anything about it being easy?” Well no one ever said anything
about it being easy but my step-father (Daddy Paul) made it look so effortless
that I believed it to be easy. He made it look like something off a 70’s sitcom
about a blended family where every problem is solved with a heart-to-heart and a hug.
I’ll never know how he dealt with his three children from a first marriage, a teenaged stepdaughter, a toddler stepdaughter (That’s me!) and a newborn baby boy. I don’t remember much from that time because he & my mother got together when I was three years old and divorced when I was kindergarten-aged. The marriage may have ended there but our relationship didn’t. I knew I had a “real” daddy who I would see a few times a year. I knew Daddy Paul was not my biological father but there was a bond there that could not be broken. I never felt like a step-daughter or what I really was an ex step-daughter – amazing enough being one of four daughters, he still made me feel like daddy’s little girl. I would still visit him and my step-siblings often after the divorce. I would stay a whole weekend at a time with him and my step-siblings. I would not want to come home to my mother. It always felt like family. My Daddy Paul once told me, “The parents may divorce but parents don’t divorce children.” There were fights and making up. There were tears and laughter. I even got in trouble more than a few times. When I would go back to my mom’s it was just the two of us. Even years after the divorce it felt so lonely, so empty, so quiet without my Daddy Paul and my siblings.
Since being an adult and becoming a step-parent myself, I have had a few conversations with him about parenting and step-parenting. I expressed to him on one occasion that I wasn’t sure if I was a good step-mother. I further told him that I did not know how he had done it with 6 children including 2 steps. He said to me, “When you all were kids and I had a bad day I would come home from work and seeing you kids and being with you kids made it all better.” I continued to tell him that I have my days when I worry that I’m going to “mess” my kids up. He then said to me, “That’s how you know you are doing something right because you are worried about being a good parent. The ones who don’t worry are the ones who need to worry. All you have to do is remember one thing... Just Love Them. That’s all they will ever need. Just Love Them.” The words seemed so simple “Just Love Them,” but again coming from Daddy Paul everything seems so simple and so easy.
I struggle with parenting as most of us do. I have an internal battle because I know there are days when I am much less than what these precious children deserve. I want my step-daughter to grow up and say the same thing I say about my Daddy Paul. I want her to say that she never felt like a step-daughter. I know that I have my weaknesses and I have my low points. But on those days I pick myself up and I remember the words “Just Love Them.” After all my Daddy Paul just loved me and that made all the difference in my childhood and in my parenthood.
