I try each birthday to reflect on the kids and write them a love letter. It is a harder goal most days. This place is less of a commitment to myself and more of a place to go when I need to sort or process my life. I have ninety drafts. I come often enough, but sometimes, I’m hesitant to post. Sometimes I lose focus. But the love letter has been, while belated, an easy benchmark promise to uphold.
The kids don’t know about this place– its for me and when they are older, maybe then, them. I don’t know how to find the brightness and the benevolence some days writing about being blended. I sat down to write about H turning 11, but this year’s letter is hard in a lot of ways. All that wants to come out is an “I’m sorry.” Maybe regret is just love too. Those pangs of knowing this is not the best I could give her are just love. So this letter is what I have this year. Even this feels like it could be better or differnt. I can just hope it is what it was suppose to be.
Dear H,
Eleven.
You are starting on your second decade in the world. This is a big one. I hadn’t thought about life in periods of ten years prior to you turning 10, but now I do some days. I look ahead in a huge chunk of time and see all the little tick-marks that might fill the timeline of your life. Eleven is the start of things like middle school, driving, high school. dating, choices about who you think you are, and the years where you’ll figure out a lot of things about being an adult the hard way. I love that we’re here, but also feel that bitter sweetness of watching you grow up. You are officially in the big, wide world and you aren’t attached to your parents by the hand while you navigate it.
I’m very honored that I get to have a close to front row seat. The H show is one to behold. I try hard to make sure we do the best we can with parenting you– which similar to your sisters–some days feels not good enough. There are limits of time, distance, and ignorance most days that I have learned just have to be. That is what the situation is for us. There are making choices that don’t feel natural or right because your two homes just aren’t aligned in trajectory. It is hard when we hit these forks in the road and you can’t come along with us until we meet again. I just trust that loving you and making sure you know it is enough in the end.
I love you. Not the exact way your Mom does. Not the exact way Dad does. In a way that is a little harder, H. It is the kind of love that has to surrender to whole host of almost insufferable things. It is parenting without legal rights, with being disregarded often, and with the mixed message that even though I’ve been around for 9 years that we’re not family. I get it. I’m accepting of the circumstances. That sometimes I am a person who’s existence shifted shit around into a new structure. There are cycles of being valued and being dismissed in my relationships that are connected to your relationships. Yet, while difficult, it is how things have been the past few years. So, when I’m not sure of anything, I go back to what I do know with certainty: I love you and my house is home to four children.
There are a lot of things you might read one day about being a step daughter or a step parent. I often go through pile and pages of material looking for some guidance as to how to do this whole blended thing. Mostly when how we do things isn’t working. I’m of the mind most ideas have already existed in the world and someone lived them. So when you are unsure of how to be, there is usually a book or words in the world that echo your insides. I find that once you feel connected, understood, and not alone that finding your way becomes much easier. Even if your path is different than the one the author took. Yet, in the material on how to properly be a step-parent, I don’t find a lot that every fits exactly the dynamic here. There is this general notion among the blogs and books that step parents choose to help raise and choose to love their step kids. As if I made a decision about the whole thing or the option to not want the best for you was floating around out there. Listen, H, here is the thing: This is the gig for our lives. Two homes. Part-time hours together, limited choice in a lot of things– but in a sea of things that might seem unclear, just know that, like your parents, loving you isn’t a choice. It just “is.” There is no step removed in this house. You are just a daughter. You are just family and just loved. Titles don’t live here. The only thing that ever feels different is that we don’t get to go through it with my DNA calling to yours. Our relationship survives without that biological buffer that smooths a lot of things over. It grows in soil that is not a natural habitat for your roots.
Despite all the things that makes blended a minefield that occasionally blows everything the hell up– I think you we are all okay . We’re all intact even though the landscape shifts.
I hope that you know a few things as you start this chapter in your life. I will do my best to remind you:
- Things might start to shift as you grow older. You might feel awkward or unsure. You want to look different or be like someone else. Or admire another family. Or want something you can’t have in your actual life. Or have someone do something unkind to you and not understand it. Or you may do something unkind to someone and not understand it. So, at the root, you must KNOW that you are a really good and beautiful person. That is what you are inherently. That those two facts can never change. That those are your bones to build your life on.
- That every mistake is not the end, but the beginning. Life will keep going despite start to despite all the things that make you feel like you don’t know anything or are missing something or don’t have enough— you have a firm place to always come back to if you need it. You have two homes actually. You have a lot of people who are rooting for you, there for you, and going to be there through all the great stuff and stupid stuff you do.
- You won’t get everything you want in life. The sting is gonna feel a little more. I can’t fix that. I shouldn’t really. It is how things are. I can promise that we do out best to make sure you have enough that you aren’t in need.
- The adults in your two homes have different idea of what is a need and what is a solution to problems. I’m sure that’s gotta be hard. I think it is a brutally hard thing to live with as an adult who has more choices in the situation, but also lives with the fall out. Honestly, though, this situation would still exist if you lived in the home with both your biological parents. The separation saves them and you from those conflicts reverberating throughout your home. At least, with two separate homes, while different, they are contained and flourishing. Here is the thing: This is your life and you were made for it. Somehow the vast disparities in perspective will have an important place in your life. Both your parents are doing their thing differently, but successfully. They wouldn’t be able to have that with each other. They get to give you two good, solid different ways of doing life by being apart. It seems a really wonderful gift. Make sure you use it in life.
- I hope you know you as you get older to pay attention more to what people do then what they say. When you don’t underhand why they do things, we tend to think the worst. Try not do. It’s usually a story we tell ourselves. The truth always shakes out. If is the worst, you’ll find out anyway. Those things never stay hidden. The universe pushes the truth and accountability.
- You don’t always say how you feel. I don’t know what secrets or weights or small lies you weave when all you feel you can share is “I forgot” or “I don’t know.”I hope you know you can tell us anything. That the reaction we’ll have– mad, sad, hurt, happy– and whatever consequences it creates will pass. We will all still be here after the dust dies down.
- I don’t know what kind of person you’ll be at twenty, but most likely you’ll have to work out some issues with people you have relationships with. I hope you will know that the magic of conflict is that is usually lets everyone move on to where they have to get going instead of being stuck. Dad and I never want you stuck, kid.
I hope you know I’m sorry every day. I spend a lot of time wishing that I could fix the thing with your Mom and I. That’s my nature to mull things that aren’t resolved over and over. Everything is more transaction centered now. I know you like the old way better. I miss the good stuff too. I know that changed things between you and I. I don’t know how to fix it, but I know that I can’t mirror that tolerating that cycle of behaviors for you. I don’t know if it’ll make a difference. I do know that I tend to sit with things until I get that spark of inspiration. The closest I’ve gotten is that your move to the city was a sign. It was sign that we were on the outs, truth there is fluid, and it is irreparable for now. I hope you know this: I love you and I love that you love your Mom. I just can’t keep loving and caring for someone who makes life more painful on purpose. I have that with M’s Dad too. Commonalities. Sometimes friendship doesn’t call louder to them than pain. Therefore, I’m sorry, infinitely grief filled, that I can’t give something different to two of the most importance people in my life. I have hope though that if it isn’t the right thing one day the universe will push the truth out. Until then, this is a better way to spend our days.
You are beautiful. Kind. Smart. Funny. You’ll only be more so in all the imperfection and moments that are coming as you grow older. Eleven seems like it suits you. You make us proud to know you. You make the world and this family brighter with your presence.
Happy birthday, H.
Your unofficial step mom.
Lori
Love, Mom 