Reflecting On My Time As A Step-Mom Over The Last Several Years.

I hear people say things like, “My mom would never have done that,” or “My dad always knew better,” or “They understood what mattered to me.” And when I hear those stories, I feel something gentle and aching in my chest. Not jealousy… more like reverence. I think, That’s beautiful. That’s rare. Hold onto that. There is nothing bitter in me when I say this… I genuinely love that for them.

But that wasn’t my story. And if I’m honest, it wasn’t the story I knew how to give either.

Most of us don’t become parents, or step-parents, after years of preparation, emotional safety, and healed wounds. Most of us stumble into it carrying entire histories we haven’t yet learned how to set down. I was around 22 years old when my life split open and rearranged itself without asking my nervous system for permission. I moved in with my best friend, I had to, I had nowhere to go, he was my safest person at the time, still is… and he was in the middle of a separation and eventual divorce from a marriage that had lasted over fifteen years. He had stayed longer than he should have… trying to keep a family intact for the sake of his children, until it began to cost him his mental health. Leaving was not selfish. Staying had become dangerous.

And then, almost all at once, the kids came to live with us. Not because it was easy. Not because it was planned. But because they couldn’t stand living with their mother (the 2 older ones at first and then over time the 2 younger ones as well) and because she didn’t want them there either. That detail still lands heavily when I say it out loud. Children know when they are unwanted. They feel it in the air, in the silences, in the way doors close too easily behind them. And, even still, whether it be frequently or rarely, all four of them, at their own individual degrees and levels, still try to gain their mother‘s approval, love, genuineness and vulnerability. It’s the blood connection that gives her that immunity to the harsh distance I as a step mom am heavily bombarded with. As is my fate I married into.

What happened after we all started living together, instantly and continuously felt like whiplash. One moment I was a newly young woman with unresolved trauma, barely learning how to regulate my own emotions, leaving the working world with friend groups but also deep depression, panic, agitating childhood wounds and consistent fear and the next I was standing inside a life that demanded steadiness, maturity, and consistency I did not yet possess. It felt like falling into a pit with absolutely no ladder, no warning, just free-fall. My nervous system was already flooded long before this. I was chronically overstimulated, confused, panicked. My body lived in a near-constant state of alarm. I didn’t yet have the language for it, but I was drowning in my own history while trying to show up for children who were drowning in theirs.

All the wounds I thought and fought to believe I had survived quietly came roaring back. Childhood trauma. Emotional neglect. The kind of pain that doesn’t announce itself but bleeds out sideways… through irritation, fear, hypervigilance, and shame. My heart and my brain were exhausted from carrying things that predated that loving situation, that relationship, those kids. And instead of gently asking for help, I bled on people who didn’t cut me. Children. A separated/divorced grieving man who was/is my best friend.

That truth is hard to say, but it matters that I say it.

Until around age 28/29, I took too many things personally that were never about me. I honestly still do. Not as much by da but again, mistakes are still happening. I interpreted distance as rejection, silence as judgment, behavior as a verdict on my worth. When the kids struggled… as kids do… I sometimes felt it as an indictment of my failure. I made mistakes. I said things I wish I could reach back and soften, or undo entirely. I mishandled moments that deserved more patience. I squandered time I can never get back.

Regret is a strange thing. A little of it can teach you. Too much of it can hollow you out. I know myself well enough to know this… that if I live inside regret, I shut down. I stop trying. I avoid effort because effort risks more mistakes. And fear of mistakes has never made anyone a better parent… it only makes them smaller, quieter, and less present.

Here is the tension I live with… I am an adult, but there is a wounded child still living inside me. The difference between me and those who raised me is not that I am unbroken… it’s that I am unwilling to remain unaware. I grew up surrounded by adults who were themselves wounded children, people who never learned how to look inward, who never developed the capacity or desire to change. Lacked the desire or willingness to apologize after analyzing their own behaviors. They said “well that’s how I grew up no body was there for ME.”, Their pain hardened instead of healing. Their patterns calcified. I refuse to let that be my legacy. True empathy as a parent is calling yourself out even when your kids are adults.

I refuse to confuse intent with impact… but I also refuse to pretend that having wounds makes me unworthy of love or growth.

If I leave any kind of legacy for my stepchildren, I want it to be this… that they know…deeply… unmistakably… that I loved them. Not perfectly…. Not gracefully at all times. But sincerely. I want them to know that even when my fear leaked out as irritation, or my panic sounded like control, my heart was always trying to protect something fragile… connection, safety, belonging. I stood beside their dad because I believed in the family we were trying to build, even when I didn’t yet know how to build it well.

There were moments when I saw my past child self reflected in them… the confusion, the defensiveness, the longing to be chosen. But I also saw them clearly as themselves… distinct, complex, worthy of being known beyond their pain. I cared about who they were becoming, not just how they behaved. That mattered to me more than I ever knew how to articulate at the time.

I hope they understand that my mistakes were never rooted in malice or hatred. They came from fear… fear of doing the wrong thing, fear of not knowing what to do at all, fear of being exposed as inadequate. I wanted their openness and vulnerability so badly, still do…. and at the same time I was terrified of offering my own, and still often times am… I was asking them to do something I was still learning how to do myself.

That contradiction is one I am still working through.

I have so much left to learn. I believe I always will. That doesn’t disqualify me from being a parent… it makes me human. Every parent is winging it to some degree. Some are just more honest about it than others. Growth does not require perfection… it requires humility, accountability, and the courage to keep showing up after you’ve fallen short.

This is not a plea for absolution. It’s a declaration of intent. I am not done becoming. I am not finished learning how to love better, listen longer, react less, and repair more. If my children… step or otherwise… carry anything forward from me, I hope it’s the understanding that mistakes are not the end of the story. Avoidance is. Silence is. Unwillingness is.

I choose awareness. I choose repair. I choose to keep trying, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it exposes my flaws. Because love that refuses to grow is not love at all.

And that… more than anything… is what I wanted to give them from the very beginning, to my end.