WHEN
THE STEP-MOTHER IS NOT WICKED
This story doesn’t have a happy
heart-melting ending. At least, it doesn’t have one yet. I hope I live long
enough to eventually, rewrite this and add, “They lived happily-ever-after.”
I wasn’t looking for marriage when
Randy came along, but he was too amazing to turn his proposal down. Framed
pictures of a brown-eyed doe of a girl resided on tables and hung on walls in
his home. He had a ten-year-old daughter the same age as my son.
Randy makes me laugh at the most
inappropriate times. With him, it’s okay to be human and show how I’ve been harmed.
Randy takes care of his own. He is kind. He is strong. He protects me from the
nightmares of PTSD caused by events of my past as much as he can.
He couldn’t protect me from his daughter
– I will call her Dee-Dee - or from his meddling ex-wife.
The first time I met Dee-Dee, I fell in
love with her. My heart opened and I loved her as my own. Somehow, I pictured
this little girl growing up with my two and being another kid of ours. For the
first couple years of our marriage, that sort of joy mostly happened. The
delusion didn’t survive long.
 |
| (doe-eyed-little-girl) |
She’s not a little girl anymore. She’s
a grown woman of twenty-six.
Almost a year or so ago, I asked her
why she hated me. These are her words, not mine: “You were too good to me. Stepmothers
are supposed to keep their distance and you didn’t.”
WTF?
When Randy and I married, we had plenty
of love to treat all three children, the two I brought with me, and the one of
his, as equals. One child was no more or no less special than the others. In
the blended household my husband and I made together, we wanted consistency and
accountability for behavior. We wanted them to set goals and plan for a
productive future.
 |
| (our-three) |
I knew I didn’t give birth to her. I
knew she had a living mother of her own and she lived in another home with a
different level of expectations every other week when she wasn’t with us.
I thought if I loved Randy’s child this
way, she would reciprocate. Truth is, I was guilty of being too hopeful and too
naïve.
Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and
Gretel had their struggles with wicked stepmothers. It seems as if the Brothers
Grimm, who first published these fairy tales in 1812, were prejudiced against
them. Were these brothers raised by a stepmother who abused them? I could find no
reference to that, but when they were children, stepmothers were often accused
of being wicked or witches.
In the 1800’s, a woman’s financial
security was dependent upon who she married. Poor hygiene, the lack of birth
control, and nonexistent modern medical interventions led to high fatality rates
for women during childbirth.
When wives did not survive, men needed
to remarry to have someone run the household and raise his children. If the
reverse happened and a husband died, his children would inherit the
possessions, land, and titles. The new wife would not. Therefore, the new wife
often saw the preexisting children as a threat to herself and the children she
bore. These new stepmothers and her husband’s children often found themselves
in an unenviable position.
As
recently as the late 1960’s, a woman and her children became her husband’s
property. No matter how badly he treated her, a husband would not be thought of
as wicked. He would simply be exercising his rights as a man to use his
personal property in whatever way he wished.
Today, women are entitled to an education
and a career, the ability to establish credit, inherit and accumulate their own
wealth. Death related to complications in childbirth still do occur, but they
are the exception, not the rule. Divorce is no longer taboo so the end of a
marriage is more often caused by voluntary dissolution rather than death.
It is now common for custody to be equally
shared between divorcing father and mother, with equal time spent in both
houses. This creates the opportunity for stepparents to become surrogate
parents when the child lives with them. Both parents and stepparents are
expected to play an active role in raising the kids.
This is the ideal world. Someone needs
to write a fairytale based on the truth.
Oh, the drama! Screaming, yelling, fibs
and falsehoods, running to mama, and having the police ring the door became the
norm in our home. Devon told the neighbors and teachers I slapped and beat her.
Panic and fear replaced peace far too many times for this short blog to go into.
The following became a
vicious cycle:
Dee-Dee complained to her mother about her wicked stepmother.
Dee-Dee’s mother, Randy’s ex-wife, complained to Randy.
Randy questioned me.
When he did this, I felt he questioned my integrity.
That triggered my PTSD.
Dee-Dee complained to her mother about her wicked stepmother.
Dee-Dee’s mother, Randy’s ex-wife, complained to Randy.
Randy questioned me.
When he did this, I felt he questioned my integrity.
That triggered my PTSD.
I
became a stepmother because I consented to be Randy’s wife. His daughter was
part of the package but what to do with
Dee-Dee nearly tore us apart.
 |
| (couple-torn-apart) |
We
talked. We prioritized: save our marriage, save our lives. We gave ourselves
permission to cry, regroup, and try again. We will never give up on Dee-Dee, our
child, but our marriage needed to survive.
Fairy
tales and memoirs deserve a good, “ahh
ha!” a warm and fuzzy moment that will lend justice to the time we spent in
reading or writing them. We don’t know how this story will end, but we pray
every day that Dee-Dee will see I’m the good stepmother that should have been
written about by the brothers Grimm.
********
As Long As I Breathe is
dedicated to:
survivors of emotional, physical, spiritual, or sexual abuse,
those who have had to bury a murdered child,
former members of a misogynistic religious cult,
children born with Cornelia de Lange Syndrome,
and anyone who was falsely accused of a crime.
********
Joyce A Lefler is the author of
From Miracle to Murder: Justice For
Adam.
She is a facilitator for Parents of Murdered Children,
a bereavement counselor, registered nurse,
and an advocate against abuse.
Connect with her on:
