If you thought I was going to get all personal and share secrets from within the walls of a blended family, guess again. That isn’t my point to this article at all. In fact, I want to focus more on the situations that have brought me to where I am right now. I am hoping it will help you understand my experience with step families and blended families, etc.
Let’s start from the beginning. I grew up in a regular nuclear family. I had one mother, one father and one brother. Interestingly, my brother and I were adopted. No, we are not blood related. My adoptive father passed away when I was a teenager. My adoptive mother eventually (after forever) remarried and now I have four step-sisters from that marriage. Confused yet?
Then you already know that I am the mother of five children (a son and four daughters), and we are a happily blended family. We have gone through most of the growing pains that a blended family sees in their first few years together and we seem to be evening out quite nicely. Three of the children are making me a step-mother, and the other two make me a biological mother. Still following?
With that, my two biological children have three step-sisters and my step-daughters have a step-brother and step-sister.
Obviously my step daughters have a biological mother also, and while they don’t see her regularly, they do see her often enough. She chooses not to be as active in their lives as we would have hoped, but that has actually been fine – an adjustment, but fine. Their biological mother has not remarried yet, but is living with a gentleman who we all wonder if someday she will tie the knot with. That man will become my step-daughters’ step-father. They have no children, so no step-siblings there, and I don’t believe they would have anymore, so no half siblings possible there either. Are you still following along?
Then there’s my ex-husband, also known as my son and my daughter’s biological father. He does not live near us, in fact he is hundreds of miles away in another state, however we do hear from him. He is remarried and they just celebrated the birth of their third child, a daughter. So my children have a step-mother, and three half siblings (two half sisters and a half brother). Now are you confused?
It just goes on an on, and the traditional nuclear family is falling by the wayside (not completely) and is being replaced by step-families and blended families. Sometimes it is due to death, but more often than not it is actually due to divorce. The divorce rates are so high, and the instances of blended and step families is growing everyday.
I’d love to hear where you fit into the picture in a blended or step family.