the battle
/2016, when my mom called me to tell me my dad died unexpectedly from a heart attack minutes before, wasn’t the hardest year of my life.
2009, when my support system forced me into a treatment facility for anorexia and I weighed 90 lbs, wasn’t the hardest year of my life.
2007, when I finally left a 7-year physically and mentally abusive relationship, true details of which only Dave really knows, wasn’t the hardest year of my life.
2019, when I divorced my husband and everybody thought I was making the wrong choice, and I lost almost all of my friends in the process, and eventually really lost them all after they slowly dropped off in 2020, wasn’t the hardest year of my life.
2020, COVID, losing income, losing sanity, while trying to coach others through their loses of sanity, quarantining with my brand new family and having zero idea what I was doing, wasn’t the hardest year of my life.
2022. Currently. Hardest year of my life.
I have a plethora of things in my life to be grateful for. A plethora. By no means am I lacking life experiences and privileges and joys. I think that’s the hardest part of all of this to accept… the fact that i’m in the most stable and abundant relationship of my entire life, the fact that my business makes me happy and I’m living my career in my most authentic way, the fact that our coaching practice is jumpstarting and I’m training people all over Colorado about being strong and vulnerable, the fact that we have an amazing camper and are traveling the states at least once a month all year round, the fact that I’m in the best physical shape and strongest shape of my life, makes me feel even crazier saying that I’m having the hardest time being alive than I ever have before.
Becoming a “mom” without any primal attachment to the humans you are momming, is the most absurd thing that exists on this planet. I’m not even kidding.
That’s not to say that I’m going to change my mind about momming, or that I would go back and tell myself not to do it, because Dave is the best thing I could ever imagine having in my life. But holy shit, this role is insane. And after 3 years, it hasn’t gotten easier, I’ve just gotten crazier, and it’s just gotten harder.
Now. I FIRMLY and WHOLEHEARTEDLY believe that challenge and discomfort is what makes us who we are. Therefore, this challenge that I’m up against is one that I believe will propel me into a more mature and aware version of myself, and for that I am already grateful for the experience. And. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve literally thought, that if I just died tragically, I wouldn’t have to deal with this excruciatingly helpless situation I find myself in everyday.
Disclaimer: I am not suicidal and I do not want to die. And it’s not something I’m making light of or joking about either. My reality is, that sometimes parenting these kids while trying to manage myself, find some joy in my days, and find myself again feels so impossible and so far from reach, and I feel so stuck, that I’ve imagined it ending. And the only way it would end, is if I died, because I will NEVER give up on Dave and our children.
That’s the truth. That is how incredibly hard it is to be a full-time, custodial stepparent to adolescent children who’ve lived and experienced tremendous trauma before you were a part of their lives. And whose trauma is not only devastatingly sad and floats around us at all times, but whose trauma has made it almost impossible for them to learn and incorporate how to be productively their age and consistently good humans. It’s not their fault. And it couldn’t be more exhausting and maddening.
My intention in blogging about this particular life circumstance that I’m living, isn’t a call for help. It isn’t a plea for pity, and it isn’t a ploy for popularity. I hate all of those things, especially asking for help. I’m writing this because I’m tired of my own thoughts going around and around in circles in my brain and I need resolve. In his book Tribe, Sebastian Junger talks about the sharing of stories and trauma, and this sharing is an unburdening that allows us to feel connected and to gain mastery over our hardships. Not because there is a solution. There is just a simple release, and even a little camaraderie.
I’m writing this because the ONE thing I’ve learned about any of my struggles is that trudging through them allows me to potentially help others trudge through their own, not because I am wise, but because I am equal. Otherwise, what is the fucking purpose of all this? If I can help one person feel heard and understood, then I’VE MADE ONE PERSON FEEL HEARD AND UNDERSTOOD… and all I had to do is practice vulnerability and unload some of my own shit. It may not be directly and specifically related to any of your situations, but maybe I can touch one of you, by just digging into my soul a bit, regurgitating some of my demons, and showing you how imperfect, and messy my insides can be, and waving at you from across the room so your demons know they are in good company. I see you. Life is hard.
Being a stepparent is like stuffing a mirror in front of your deepest darkest demons. The ones you’ve thought you’ve overcome, the ones you thought had left you, the ones you thought you were stronger than, and the ones you didn’t even know existed. You are triggered in the most unnatural ways, you are picked, and prodded, and judged, and manipulated, and taken advantage of, and misunderstood, and double standard-ed, and held to ridiculous expectations, and then pressured and expected - on top of all of that -to love the children as a biological/birth parent would. It’s insanity. We do not have a primal connection, one that outshines choice, and the benefit of the doubt, and repetitive forgiveness, and doing our best. Primal ALWAYS wins, you can’t fake or learn or create the primal attachment. Birth parents spend years growing WITH their children. Learning the good and the bad, and the hard and the ugly. They transition with the transition. Stepparents are never afforded this luxury, this grace. Nobody says to a birth mom after complaining and struggling over the first year of newborn life, “Well you knew what you were getting in to! You signed up for this, didn’t ya?!!” We empower, and compliment, and lift up, and support, and help out our newborn moms, don’t we? But stepmoms, hell no. We’re not going to give props and support and encouragement to the ladies giving up their lives to help raise and parent another person’s children out of the love they have and the goodness of their hearts, instead we do the complete opposite. We tell them how mean they are, and how controlling they are, and how much better they should be at transitioning into PARENTHOOD, and we definitely don’t let them vent about how hard it is! Cause ya know… “they chose this!”
As a stepparent, you have no real say in the outcome of who the children are, or even will be, because for most of us stepping in, the child is at an age where their personality type and demeanor has already been formulated and locked in, and most of their behavioral issues stem from the family dynamic that you were never a part of. Their mess becomes your mess, whether you stay out of it, or whether you try your best to change the outcomes or not, their brokenness is now yours, no transition time for you or feelings considered…this mess, their mess, it lives inside your house, and it lives inside your marriage, and it lives inside your safety and your space, and inevitably it begins to live inside your heart. BUT all we ever hear is… “don’t try too hard Stepparent, and don’t care more than their birth parent does, Stepparent, BUT do love them just the same!!!!”. Pure insanity. And pure ridiculousness and an inconceivable expectation of us. The funny thing is, we allow this to happen for awhile. Because most stepparents are Type A’s, or fixers, or people pleasers, or helpers, or perfectionists, and we believe we can do it and it won’t begin to live inside our hearts because we believe we’ll either have changed it for the better, or we’ll have figured it all out by the time it starts to creep in. The truth is we don’t, we can’t, we won’t. And we ALL end up here. In this lonely land of insanity and resentment… and mostly helplessness.
There are a million things I’m learning now. Now that I’ve hit rock bottom, I’ve realized that I am not alone in the journey, that I didn’t do something wrong to get to this place, but more so that I just didn’t know. WE didn’t know. We weren’t given tools or taught how to navigate this island of insanity, because no one realizes they need tools and navigation until they find themselves shipwrecked. And sadly, the stereotypes and societal pressures that are placed on blended families and stepparents are woefully outdated and horribly misguided. But there ARE tools, there ARE people out there who are experts in this, there ARE support groups and podcasts about this crazy role we’ve found ourselves in. And there is our WHY’S… our partners. For me, that is always my guiding light.
While I would love to give some closure and lessons learned about this island I’m attempting to live on, I can’t. I’m in the weeds of it. And I have yet to cross the valley to the other side. It maybe a few years before I get there. But what I can tell you all is that we need to educate ourselves on the understanding of blended families. 40% of us are blended. It is becoming almost as prevalent as the nuclear family is, but we are not even close to operating, feeling, thinking, or functioning, as nuclear families do, yet we are pressured to do/be just that. Be normal. Be happy. Be “blended” but yet, be the same. WHAT?! There is NO education around what that looks like, what that means, and how to accept the hardships that come along with this collision of messes, the colliding of people over love. There is only reactive measures that take place. And a cultural shift begins with us educating each other on what this is like for those involved, and not educating through the lens of what a normal family looks like, with normal roles, and normal expectations. Treating my Team Freyta as a “normal” father, mother, daughter and son team is literally the worst thing you could ever do to us, and it’s what everyone does. We are learning to be okay with being unnormal, and unnuclear. Learn with us. We are 40 percent, yet we are living on that lonely island.
Everybody’s fighting a battle you don’t know about. I can’t tell you how many times Dave and I said that on-stage during our relationship retreat to the 50 couples we taught all weekend. My marriage to Dave is exceptional, I am honored to be his wife and we work our asses off everyday for each other and at our jobs so we can play harder and experience life together. But. Our lives are pretty fucking hard right now at home. We haven’t had a day together void of tears, or arguments, or exhaustion from endless hours of redirecting and over-parenting and endless discussion, for months now. Even our “honeymoon” was filled with hours of discussion about our blend, and our worries, and gut-wrenching fears. We are battling. A lot of us our battling. I get paid to help other people work through struggles. It’s literally my job, and many of you would say that makes me an expert in helping people through struggles. Yet, here I am, fighting through the hardest battle of my entire life, daydreaming about giving up because sometimes feeling helpless is just too much. Struggles don’t avoid us, and they don’t discriminate. They find us all, even the us whose job it is to teach the overcoming.
This season of ours is long and it is hard. But Dave and I know we aren’t alone. And we know that in times like this, there is an even greater call for us to practice what we preach… THERE IS NO GROWTH IN THE COMFORT ZONE. COMFORT MAKES US WEAK. DISCOMFORT IS WHERE WE FIND OUR STRENGTH. THERE IS PURPOSE IS PAIN.
So. Now that I’ve shared the pain with you all; I’ve unburdened myself of it; I’ve hopefully helped one person feel heard and seen and not alone; And I’ve advocated by encouraging those who don’t understand stepparents and blended families to educate themselves and to show us some respect... Now, I’ll invite the pain.
Bring on the battle, I’ve got my Team behind me.
The picture I posted is a photo of my tattoo that is a work in progress. Dumbledore refers to the Phoenix as a bird who can carry immensely heavy loads, and whose tears, heal. While my work as a therapist and my connection to my clients resembles this analogy, so does my personal life. My load is what I’ve shared, and my tears are these words. Thank you for hearing me.
“The pain is where faith is born… Are you alive yet?“ Listen to: CHANT by Macklemore Ft. Tones and I
PS. A thank you to my friends and clients who asked me how I was yesterday and when I wasn’t good, they listened. My clients and friends are literally the best humans in the world, and I’m so incredibly lucky. Your listening and care encouraged me to get this out. I would thank you by name, butttttt confidentiality and all. I can thank my BFF Brooke, what up girl! Love you all.
Stepparent Resources:
https://jamiescrimgeour.com/kickassstepmompodcast