What Remains by Teresa Thompson

Sep 12, 2010 by Peggy Nolan

If you haven’t met Teresa Thompson on our website Infinite Yoga and Reiki, I am pleased to introduce you to her here. She is an amazing stepmom and teacher. I am privileged and honored to share a piece of her journey here.

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I began my journey as a Stepmom almost 7 years ago when I eloped with my husband after 31 blissful days of knowing one another. Sound crazy?

Well it was…crazy spontaneous, crazy fun, crazy love, and crazy excitement. I appreciated and adored the whirlwind beginning of my marriage and used it to help me swim through the treacherous emotional waters that embodied the high tides to come.

As soon as I said, “I do,” I was gifted with an 8 year old stepdaughter. She moved in not long after the rushed nuptials and solidified my role as a custodial stepmother. I obviously did not have much time to adjust to my new life and what it meant to be caring for another woman’s child full-time, but I’d plunged in head-first and now I had to learn to swim…and fast!

When I first began to tread water, I did so with force and vigor. I had that “save the day” attitude, as so many women do when they are learning how to blend a family. I was quickly overwhelmed and exhausted. I was concentrating so much on care taking for everyone else, I forgot about myself. These feelings and attitudes left me paddling down the rapids of jealousy and resentment and I directed all of that energy toward loathing my stepdaughter’s mother.

I was so busy getting to know my husband, trying to help my own daughter adjust, getting a healthy dose of someone else’s daughter, and simply trying to blend a family in the best way I could, that I lost track of myself.  I had no idea how to fit my own needs into my life. So, I let them go by the wayside and my “save the day attitude” quickly turned into a “please don’t let me drown” daily existence.

In the mean time, my seething jealousy began to grow. It was upsetting to me to have to be the one taking care of someone else’s child every day, feeling exhausted and frumpy, only to show up at a sporting event and watch this woman breeze in with perfect hair and a cup of coffee.

I was jealous of her free time. I was jealous of her carefree attitude. I was jealous of her entitlement toward the child I was raising. I was jealous of the fact that she had a cup of coffee and her clothes were ironed!!! IRONED!!! Are you kidding me? I didn’t even know where my iron was! And my coffee?… most of the time I forgot it on the counter in the mad rush out the door.

Then, to top it all off…she would have the audacity to make demands, criticize how my husband or I did things, throw out the “I’m the mom” card, weasel her way out of a weekend, or make a big deal out of driving to a pickup/drop-off site that was more than 10 miles away from her house. I felt like she wanted all the credit for being a mom without doing any of the work. I was so angry!

I wanted to be the one who could come home from work to no mothering responsibilities yet have the right to make all the demands, get all the credit (along with a mani/pedi and vodka drink), show up only when I wanted to, and otherwise lead a fabulous life.  I wanted the vacations she took, the new car she drove, the cute shoes with the hand bag to match, and the fun nights out with the girls sans the demands of finding and paying for child care.

But most of all…I wanted HER to be raising HER OWN DAUGHTER!!!

These thoughts consumed me until I felt like a slave to my situation.

Everyone began to suffer. I knew I couldn’t go on like this emotionally or I would destroy my marriage and hurt my children.  I knew I had to stop thinking about “her” and start focusing on me. I needed to make myself a priority in my own life. “She” was never going to change in the ways I wanted her to, so the one who had to do the changing was me.

I started with coffee. I made it my top priority to never again sit through a hockey game without the warm goodness of Juan Valdez. Once I accomplished that, I worked on other things. Slowly but surely, I made the changes I needed in order to feel calm, vibrant, and joyful in my own life. I made it a point to focus on my family and myself, regardless of what anyone else, especially my stepdaughter’s mother, said or did. It was hectic and challenging, but I learned how to float harmoniously in the waters of my life.

Fast-forward a good five years to just last week…

I dropped my children off for the first day of school, and as I was driving away, it hit me. My daughter is a senior this year and my stepdaughter is a sophomore. The eve of their childhood is quickly approaching, and soon, these days will be over. They will no longer need me to drive them to school, sit through sporting events, help with homework, bring forgotten lunch money to school, remind them to do their laundry as well as their dishes, buy them that necessary item they just can’t live without…all of that is winding down as they peer into the sea of womanhood.

They’re growing up, and I’m beginning to be left with what remains of that process. In my life, it wasn’t free time, or new cars, or fancy manicures, or cruises in the Caribbean. It wasn’t pulling the entitlement card or making demands just because I could. For me, what remains of my daughters’ childhoods are the memories, the pictures, and the stories. I’m left with the gift of knowing that every day I spent sharing time with my children was a day they spent bonding with me. I’m left with the knowledge that they know, without hesitation, that they were a priority in my life. I’m left with the warm glow of love and inspiration as I watch my daughters take their first independent steps into the world. I’m left with the satisfaction that my life was fabulous after all.

Once I began to focus on ME…my life, my family, my happiness…I inadvertently set myself up for the beauty of what remains. I will eventually have time to vacation in the tropics, be carefree, do my hair, and find that damn iron. Those things will most certainly be there in just a few short years when my girls are gone. In the mean time, however, there are a few more pictures I’d like to take and stories I’d like to create…

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Now it’s your turn. What are you doing today to focus on YOU? Your life, your family, your happiness? Have you set yourself up for the beauty that remains or are you swallowing your resentment pill day in and day out?