This has been long coming and ever so carefully pieced together. For three years I have been the recipient of cold, calculated and pure hatred. I get it. I understand it. I know what it's like to watch someone walk into your children's lives and watch them step in next to the person you created those children with, granted the difference was I didn't ask them in. I have bit my tongue and I have held back. There has been so much I've wanted to say and yet, I've refrained. Why? Because there are children we are dealing with.
I always said with my own children no matter what came my way I could handle it because I was an adult, but my children . . . it was unfair to expect the same of them. They couldn't use adult coping mechanisms or understand the psychology behind why someone acts the way they do. And then I became a step-mother. And not just a step-mom but a step-mom to kids with different mothers. The relationships I have with each are darkly different. My husband's ex-wife is gracious, humble, loving. I will never forget the first time she was faced with BK and mine's son. We were getting ready and loading up the SUV, she was dropping off their youngest son shortly after G was born. And she got out of her truck and walked over, she willingly and purposely made it an intention of hers to acknowledge her son had a baby brother and she was ever so amazing in those moments. She asked if she could pick him up as he was strapped into his car-seat and I said yes. She picked him up and snuggled him in and said how yummy he smelled and she said how beautiful he was. And I looked at her as her son and ex-husband looked on and I thought what an amazing woman she was. She was able to look past the realities her and BK had survived and still just love this amazing little creature for what he was. Pure, wholesome, new, innocent - a beginning. Ever since then she has failed to disappoint and has always acted in the best interest of the children we co-parent, going so far as to befriending me and me her. And I am ever so thankful for the love we share for the kids. That ultimately is what binds us.
Turn the lens over to the youngest child my husband had before we met and it is polar opposite. Their falling out is dark and sad. She left and repeatedly has made it clear it was her decision to walk away. We knew each other through online communities, we had had interactions twice before and were friends online. I knew who BK was, she had done nothing but spoken highly of him. She had willingly walked, for reasons of her own, reasons I do not judge. I do believe that people are either a fit or they are not. I also believe it's not a competition, and this world where women fight against each other because they were not a correct fits is petty bs.
But never the less, much to our dismay, we are a part of each other's lives. There is so much I want to write, to say, to type. But I hold back. And despite what one may think, it isn't the bad I want to notate. No, I want to be able to be vulnerable and real and honest. Why? Because there are children involved and THEY deserve all the world more than this. She deserves what the others have. There are 6 others that have a similar story to her, and their parents have managed to figure it out. They have grasped that THEIR needs are nothing in comparison to the kids. Their parents have realized that really, it's not so hard to get along for the betterment of the children. THEY have realized their kids are not pawns in a game of chess, to be held and possessed or put in the middle.
And so I say this to my husband's ex-girlfriend, to the mother of an amazingly sweet, innocent, spunky, adorably witty and cute three year old that I have the joy of getting to love:
I believe deep down, in the depths of my soul you know this isn't a game and it should be different than how it is. I understand you're scared and frustrated and all those that you have loved deeply have been taken away from you. TRUST ME. I get that, but the world has never been allowed to know about it. I too, carry deep dark soul changing secrets of loss. I've just not allowed the world, or much of anyone aside from BK to know it. So I empathize your fear, pain, trepidation.
And so, while I know you'll never ever read this, I must type it. I know you hate me. I know you curse me. I know that you believe something of what BK and I have was a way to hurt you or betray you or get back at you. Because all you have ever known, your entire life is that women betray women. I know that you think I'm going to try to replace you. I know that you think my sole purpose in life is to turn people against you. I know that you think I judge you and raise your daughter by those judgments.
So for once and for all hear me, and hear me now, completely and intentionally. She is yours and BK's. And she is delightful and fiery, and loving and ever so vulnerable. She isn't mine and I don't for a second think so or take that from you. I was this little girl. I was D. I know exactly what she is going through and so my sole purpose in HER life is to do whatever I can to make it smooth and easier while keeping her connected to both you and her father. To be the least amount of friction while still maintaining the boundaries of our family. It isn't to replace you. I CAN'T and DON'T want to be you. Because I was her. I grew up hearing how awful it was to be the daughter of my father. I grew up hearing all my faults that were attributed to that father. The father who betrayed my mother. The father who left. The father who simply wasn't happy in the relationship and was broken by traumatic experiences of loss. I was told the name to use for my father, that confused me because I couldn't simply call him daddy like I wanted to. I was sweet D many, many moons ago.
So, I say to you - bury your hatchet, leave it in the ground and save it for when you really need it to rally around your daughter and protect her. Know that she is loved and cared for. Know that you are a part of her life here, even when she is not in your presence. And when you ask why? The answer is because it is what I would wish my own daughter's to have in their father's home with another woman. Because you knew who I was and you know the way I operate and love freely. Because it is the promise I made to your daughter when I married her father and became a part of our blended family.
Think back to when you lost your J and how I behaved. That was because of D, I gained nothing from it but she grew to see two women getting along and loving HER. Much like her beautiful blue eyes are from you and her quick wit carries over from your side and she hears how special and unique she is because of those attributes. And when people comment on those beautiful blue eyes, we give credit to you or when someone comments on her slender piano fingers I quickly and quietly insert they are perfect just like her mothers. I wish that my own children's father could forgive the shortcomings of my dna and focus on the good parts I passed on. I wish my own parents had been able to treat the parts of my father as good parts of me. And this is part of why I repeat to sweet D about how her height comes from her mom and those long legs will do her good in soccer. You see, I'm not the enemy you've created in me and I have zero desire to replace you. I am good and whole and loving because that is what drew you to me in the first place and you know it. I am an amazing mother and an ever better step mother because I have faced this and have witnessed what happens when someone is a crappy step parent.
You are not my enemy. You are the mother of a child I love, and one who is beautiful and pure, happy and healthy and has so much potential before her. She only needs us to work together to make this right. Dare I say she needs you and I to work together even more than she needs you and her father to, because this is the base of molding that will follow her through her life about her beliefs of how women treat each other and how to trust other women. All I ask and pray for is you continue to put her first and love her as if she is the only light in your entire world and to make some room for grace for each other. I ask nothing more of you and I pray your heart finds comfort in knowing she is loved with the understanding of what y'all are going through.
Trust me, I have many a conversation in my head about how you've treated me over the past three years. But really, none of that matters an iota compared to how this little girl turns out. So really, I guess what I want to say to the woman who hates the woman loving her daughter is this - none of it matters J, none of it. How she turns out and how she avoids the pitfalls and deficiencies that we couldn't avoid are what we need to work together as a team on, she needs to know that we all came together no matter how we felt about each other. That's what I want to say the most. She deserves a better outcome than your boys and us and she deserves us being able to adult just like her older siblings do. So, I guess this is where i ask you - what are you willing to do and bring to the table for her? What heart wounds can you bypass for her?
I have faith and I believe you can bypass those heart wounds. I believe the three of us can really dig deep and offer her more than any of us got in our own lives. We can do this and we can do right by her. It just all depends on how much each of us is willing to put by the side and how much each of us can focus on her. I believe you've got the ability, you've just never been give the opportunity. I believe you love her just as much as you say, and I know you know BK loves her just as much as you do. Don't make her pay for him moving on and you moving on. Make her life better than anything any of the three of us ever had. Let's show her that grace and hope and kindness in life can become something better. Who are we to short change her?
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