After My Daughter Was Born

Once my daughter was born, I realized the love I have for her will always be deeper than what I can ever feel for my step kids. I hid my feelings around this point from myself because I felt guilty for having them and thought having them made me “bad.” But now, I’m sitting here, saying loudly- no, this is normal. I am okay for saying this. It makes sense. Oh my goodness the softness I have needed to give myself with this and denied myself for too long. I realized, being a step mom was easier before I had my daughter. I could love and show up for my step kids, and then I'd get my husband to myself when they left. I could enjoy their presence because the time together with my husband was untouchable.

When they left, we were two adults that didn’t have to be parents. I got some version of my “early years” in my marriage. Don’t get me wrong, being a step mom wasn’t easy then either. It took a lot of work, and my husband and had to navigate parenting together in the first months of our marriage to one another. Wow, that’s a lot to do after just having said “I do.”

It was a lot to grieve that my husband and I could never have the time, the years of building love and trust, together before bringing home our own kids and learning how to raise them together. That’s a lot. Someone who accepts and takes on the role of step mother is highly compassionate, empathetic, accepting, strong-as-fucking-hell woman, and even when she breaks, she is a force of nature. I’ve never known stronger women than those who are both step mothers as well as mothers. And quite frankly, you won’t change my mind on this account. Clearly I’m biased, and I like it that way.

Four months after we were married, my daughter was born. That love I had for her superseded everything and everyone around me, and it made it nearly impossible for me to be okay with my circumstances of being newly married, having step kids built-in to that new marriage, and now a baby in that new marriage. It is single-handedly, the hardest thing I have and ever will go through in this lifetime. It broke me. Over and over and over again. I think it will be a lifetime of accepting this as it continues to change form over time. I am still learning how to be grateful for these hard years. Learning how to shift the lens from "this happened and hurt me" to "this happened in order to create me." It's a powerful shift, and it's okay if that shift takes longer than you expected it to take.