When I became a stepmom eight years ago, there were few resources to guide me over the rough spots in my new life. I read the only thin book I could find on the subject of parenting step children, and its bottom line was: “It’s the hardest job you’ll ever have and no one will ever thank you for it.”
Before step-motherhood, I thought I was a kind and thoughtful person. But based on my troubled relationships with my stepson, my in-laws and – as a result – my husband, I soon began to think there must be something inherently wrong with me. I imagined that someone else with a different background, a different disposition, or even a different hairstyle would have handled things better.
Recently I took Kathy Hammond’s course, How to be a Stepmom: 51 Ways To Save Your Marriage, Your Shirt and Your Sanity, online at Udemy.com and realized that even Mary Poppins wouldn’t have been up to the tough job of stepmothering without at some point thinking she was losing her mind.
Hammond is a business development executive and lifestyle coach living in Yorba Linda, and has mothered two stepsons for 23 years. Her course includes advice on money, legal issues, discipline, extended family and relationships. This is one woman’s experience, but I felt it addressed the most common situations a new stepmother will face.
The first lecture alleviated the guilt that had haunted me from the beginning of my marriage. Hammond said: “You can’t fix a hurt you didn’t cause.”
I went into my relationship with my husband, who was a widower, and his son, trying to soften the pain they had experienced with the untimely death of my husband’s first wife. I was never able to do that, and I wish now that someone had told me it would have been impossible for that to happen.
I wish I had had the benefit of her insight eight years ago. It would have saved a lot of energy and heartache. This 90-minute course was definitely worth the $9 price of admission.
Check out the course yourself at www.udemy.com.