“I’m telling you, I’ve never seen temper tantrums like these – grunting, throwing, kicking, screaming – never-ending….If my stepkid wasn’t in my life, it would be easier.” – My client, last week.
And hey, can we blame her? How many of us have thought this exact thing?
Or looked longingly at our friends and their perfect little nuclear families?
But here’s the thing: with or without our stepkids, our lives would still be challenging – people we love will pass away; our spouses will lose their jobs; kids will tell us they hate us.
And also, our minds LOVE to look for problems – it’s what they’re wired to do.
So regardless of our situation, we’ll always find that life is half incredible half terrible.
Here’s a question we can ask ourselves, to help us decide to go all in on our stepfamilies and make peace with our current situation:
If I knew that my life would be 50% wonderful and 50% shit regardless, would I stay in this marriage, with these children?
My answer is a resounding yes.
Yes, I’m all in:
for the bat-shit temper-tantrums and the move-night cuddles;
for middle-of-night projectile vomiting and the first: “I love you”;
for the fear of not being important to these kids and the joy of loving them anyways
I want all of it.
What do you want your answer to be?
