My life as a stepmom sucks. Now what?

So the other day I got some really shocking news. 😞

And I had all the feels about it – confused, overwhelmed, sad, ashamed. 

At first, I was like: I don’t know how to handle this. Too many feelings! This is awful! 

And then I remembered something…

It’s OK for my life to suck sometimes. I’m a human. This is part of the deal. 💖

And then I decided to host a legit pity party for myself – 

I said: OK. We’re gonna sulk about this for 15 minutes. Let’s go! 

I took out a pen and paper and wrote down everything that was going on. 

I cussed. I got teary-eyed. 

And after my 15 minutes was done, I took some deep breaths, and told myself:

“OK. This sucks. It happened. Now what?”

So I made a plan. 

And, even if I couldn’t change the sucky thing that happened…

I realized that I am 100% in control of:

✅  how I respond – I can choose to yell, or not

✅  my attitude about what happened & how to handle it – I can remember: this is hard, and I can do hard things

Just acknowledging what I can control👆 👆 👆 …made me feel so much relief.  

So, sometimes, life brings you to your knees: 

💥 Bio-mom throws takes you to court unexpectedly

💥 your stepkids ‘accidentally’ set fire to your back patio (yes, this has really happened to one of my clients!)

💥 you have the nastiest fight ever with your partner 

When this kind of stuff happens, there’s no point in trying to convince yourself you shouldn’t feel so awful (that’s called toxic positivity!)

But there is so much in your control (your response, your attitude). 

And maybe for you that looks like: 

✨ I don’t need to send that text/ email/ yell at my partner right now…I’m gonna take a bath/go for a walk/ journal instead. 

✨ I don’t have to make this awful thing that happened mean something bad about me as a parent, or spouse.

✨ No matter what, I can handle this. I can do hard things. 

You’ve got this.