The Myth of the Evil Stepmother
A friend of mine who just started reading my blog wanted to share her story on my blog, she shared on her facebook and emailed me asking if I can post it on my blog for her, I loved it and wanted to share it with the rest of you as I know that our blogsphere is not used to these kind of posts, she lives a special situation a lot of us might not understand, she is a friend to our family and I met her a year back when she first came to Seattle, a newlywed mom as we call her here, a nice lady from Jordan trying to start a family here in the states….
Her story in her own words:
“” 
As a little girl I watched with starry eyes the stories of princesses. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow white, and I loved these stories and were dreaming about the day I will meet my prince the same way they did, to become this princess or queen in the end of the story. As a little girl, that is what I pictured.
Fast-forward ten years and here I am, not the princess or even the queen, I’m the *gasp* STEPMOTHER.
No little girl every aspires to be a stepmother. Not many of us enter the dating world thinking, “I’m going to find me a divorced man with kids.” But sometimes God has other plans for us.
There are bad people everywhere. There are bad parents of all sorts. But man, do stepmothers get the bad rap. And the truth is, a lot of us were not the other woman, are very much in love with our husbands and would go to the ends of the earth for our stepchildren. We often work harder to raise our stepchildren than our own children because it is so much harder to be a stepparent. AND we fight harder to keep our marriages together because we know the statistics on second-marriages and we have far many more forces working against us than the typical couple.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but sometimes I am embarrassed to admit I am a stepmom. Not because I don’t love my step son, but because there are some days when I simply lack the energy to deal with the “Oh’s” and inevitable “So how do you get along with the boy?” line of questioning. These exchanges always leave me clammering to prove that I’m really the good one, because let’s face it, whenever someone finds out you’re a stepmom, they immediately look at you sideways and dig for information so you can explain yourself. 
Here’s my beef: I never tried to replace my stepsons’ mom. I didn’t insert myself into her place and push her out—I filled in where she chose to leave. I have spent more time with her child over the past 2 years than she has. I took my stepson pants to school when he wet himself in Kindergarten. I wiped his tears on his first day of school last year when he was extremely scared to go. I helped him learn how to read. I stayed up so many night when he got his tonsils removed while he was crying from pain. Despite all of this, I am a second class citizen. People look at me sideways simply because I am the stepmom. They assume she loves them more. They assume I don’t love him at all. They treat me like I threaten his very parenthood.
I know it is all going to be okay in the end. I know that people have no clue what kind of bond I have with my stepson. I know what they think doesn’t really matter. I’m just feeling down in the dumps about it all today…..
I’m waiting for Disney to step up to the plate and make that loveable animated feature where the stepmom is the good guy. What do you think the chances are that they will ever depict a divorced family where the BM is psycho? I realize it isn’t very Hollywood, but it is very real for a lot of us. I would love to hear new script ideas……””
November 24th, 2009 at 3:55 AM
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