Part V: The Stepmom’s Self-Deception
Stumbling Awake
Sometimes, stumbling awake can be a painful, but necessary, experience. My journey as a step mom often flies in the face of my journey as a mom. Having a central role in my remarried family dynamic has been illuminating, frustrating, wonderful, perplexing, strange, odd, weird, and most of the time, down right fantabulous. I love my husband, I love his kids. And just like nearly every other stepmom, I struggle with or have struggled with boundaries, schedules (or lack thereof), my role as a step parent, am I doing too much / too little. I’ve struggled with feelings of resentment, anger, and yes, even hostility. As a stepmom, I am the same as every other stepmom. Our differences are nothing more than the degrees of intensity each of our challenges present in our circumstances.
Deep Inside We’re All The Same
But I”m not just a stepmom. I am also an ex-wife and with two kids of my own from my first marriage. Which makes me just the same as my husband’s ex-wife. The problems and challenges we both faced with failed marriages and split families are the same as every other ex-wife with failed marriages and split families.
If, as in Judeo-Christian teachings, we are all made in God’s image or if, in yogic and Buddhist teachings, the Divine resides in all of us, then as the song goes, “deep inside we’re all the same.” However, it is our distorted reality through self-betrayal and self-deception that compels each of us to find our differences which keep the mom/stepmom relationship in a perpetual state of internal and external conflict.
One Saturday night in June, as I stood and listened to Styx belt out “Welcome to the Grand Illusion,” I realized that Richard’s ex-wife and I are more the same than we are different. We have more in common than I’ve ever cared to acknowledge. The most obvious thing we have in common is that we both picked Richard…the only difference is that I picked him twice.
As I get ready to click on the publish button, I have a few questions for you to think about before you tune into Styx…
- What if you checked your ego at the door for the day?
- What happens if you leave the “I’m better than her” mantra or your “what is she thinking” question alone for just today?
- What would your day be like without this internal conflict?
Welcome to the Grand Illusion
Written by Dennis DeYoung
Lead Vocals by Dennis DeYoung
Welcome to the Grand illusion
Come on in and see what’s happening
Pay the price, get your tickets for the show
The stage is set, the band starts playing
Suddenly your heart is pounding
Wishing secretly you were a star.
But don’t be fooled by the radio
The TV or the magazines
They show you photographs of how your life should be
But they’re just someone else’s fantasy
So if you think your life is complete confusion
Because you never win the game
Just remember that it’s a Grand illusion
And deep inside we’re all the same.
We’re all the same…
So if you think your life is complete confusion
Because your neighbors got it made
Just remember that it’s a Grand illusion
And deep inside we’re all the same.
We’re all the same…
America spells competition, join us in our blind ambition
Get yourself a brand new motor car
Someday soon we’ll stop to ponder what on Earth’s this spell we’re under
We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are
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Oh that ego. The ego wants to fight AND it has a very loud voice.
AND that is its downfall. Because it is loud, I can hear it talk and observe what it is saying AND then when I feel safe I can share it with somebody else to dissect what it is saying and to dismantle its logic.
On my own I had no show though, because my ego was fierce and it could fight dirty alright.
It even attacked me when I questioned what it was saying!
What has been my saving grace it that I now know ego sure means conflict.
I realized that better after reading Eckhart Tolle, ego is trouble and now I know that, it is a lot easier to recognize it.
And letting go of internal conflict is bliss and for the children as well.
That has been my driver, my ego even wanted to drag the kids in and that is where I drew the line. That would make me just as bad as everybody else I was going to blame, right?
Curbing the ego also gives me a clear conscious and that is bliss, I feel so much less guilty about the divorce this way as well.