Note: This will be the only post this week due to Thanksgiving. I will be back next week with my regular 3 postings
In writing this, I realize that many of my stepmom sisters are dreading the holidays. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make your dread disappear. Only you can make your dread disappear. Most of it is between your own ears anyway. Instead of resisting what’s been thrown your way, have you thought of just going with the flow and being a bit more like water? Water doesn’t appreciate or like the rock that’s in the middle of its path, but it doesn’t try to go through it…it goes around it…and still arrives at its destination.
by © amykiwi
What can you do this Thanksgiving to go around some of the obstacles and challenges you face in your remarried life?
If you’re a new stepmom, what new tradition can you establish?
If you’re a veteran stepmom, what traditions will you be celebrating? Who will be at your table – or whose table will you be at?
After the whirlwind of people and food comas, what one thing will you and your husband do together to decompress and reconnect?
Happy Thanksgiving Peggy (and BIRTHday)!
I know I’m not a step mom (yet) but….this year is my first year celebrating with Jason, his girls, his mom, AND my mom at HIS MOM’s house!
We are very excited. He asked his mom if it was okay if my mom came, and do you know what she said? “This is WONDERFUL, her mom needs to know she has family here too.”
Awh! This made my Thanksgiving. I can’t wait for my new tradition and my mom to meet his little girls.
Hi Peggy
Peggy, I read your last blog post about people pleasers and that was such a good precurser to get through this holiday season sane and joyfully.
I do think that especially in this time I need to stop pleasing everybody, THAT is the first step for me.
I do not celebrate Christmas with my daughters as it is far too complicated, so I hope at one point when things have settled down in the ’step’ department to have our own type of Christmas ritual at another time during the year.
And in the meantime I have learned to accept that and I have stopped making me wrong for not finding a way to make it happen.
I have to talk about Christmas as we do not have thanksgiving in New Zealand.
Love Wilma
The only new tradition we had for Thanksgiving was baking a cake that the kids got to decorate. They had a blast! We had a “small” meal (by small, I mean we have been eating left overs for 4 days and still have some left-it was just hubby, me, DS2.5 and DD1.5). We also decided that Thanksgiving night we would be putting up our Christmas tree and decorating it. That may become a tradition-depends on if we got to relatives’ houses in the future. We are trying to come up with new traditions for our family for every holiday.
Happy belated Thanksgiving to you. We celebrate it in October as I am Canadian by birth.
Hi Ang! I so hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving with Jason, his mom, your mom, and all the girls!
Hi Wilma, I seriously believe that the first step towards resolving remarried/step/family issues is to stop making yourself “wrong.” I’ve so been there. I lived upside down because I felt bad/wrong/conflicted because my first husband walked out on me and my girls. It truly was a blessing in disguise.
Hi Bloom! Your new tradition sounds like so much fun!
Hi DJ! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving in October!
Hi Peggy,
Great idea about taking some decompression time after the holiday, especially since this season has only started!
Hi Annie!
Decompression is so very necessary during the holidays! Thanks for stopping by today!
Peggy