There is no place like home for the Hellidays!!!!

I know this time of year is rough for a lot of my fellow CSMs. Honestly, it's even hard for nuclear family women as well. Relatives that gets on your nerves, the pressures of gift shopping, the arrangements, food preparations...I could go on and on. It takes the fun out of the season sometimes.

Add steplife in and it's just a cauldron of crap soup.

Have some cocktails and hang in there my sisters.

I leave you with a great and FUNNY Step article. Some good and honest advice here.

Have a great Holiday and remember, you can always bitch here!

A very good Step Mother article

Mostly for people who are going to have bio kids but still, it outlines what we feel is normal.

http://jilldeibel.hubpages.com/hub/Why-Nice-Women-Dont-Like-Step-Kids

"Act like the cool Aunt"

OMG if I read this in one more time in a Step Mom article, I am going to scream. "Don't pretend to be the Mom; more like a cool Aunt". Well guess what? An Aunt is RELATED. There are NO loyalty binds. If you do not have a good and/or strained relationship with the BM and be the "cool Aunt" exposing the child to something different you are met with either two setbacks. One is resentment for not being the first to do that cool thing with their child, or anger for doing something they did not approve of.

My God, can't we just be a Step Mom that provides love and shelter, etc? Why does it have to be so defined by a role that is CLEARLY not the same!

So while reading one article...

I found some of the comments interesting in this online piece. The article is about how you may not be ready to own a dog. A couple of the replies about how people should make sure they are prepared for children as well made me chuckle.

article

Probably the best childless article ever!

This article is not only for the CBCers, but for the ones who can't have children. The ones that are childless by circumstance or because they made right choices. It gives a positive nod to step parents and aunts/uncles. It's basically saying what is very true. Being a Mother does not make you maternal. LOVE is all you need.

I want to hug this woman.


Finally!

article

12 things a Stepmother should never read

Oh, Oprah.

As a childless woman, you should really approve more of the articles that get published in your magazine.

This article is how evil Stepmothers are created!

12 things a Stepmother Should Never Say

I am back from teenage hell

Well...that is not 100% of the reason why I was gone for a while, yet, there are so many reasons why I am back.

I wanted to shake off this feeling only a CSM can understand. I started to pursue goals and dreams only the childless woman can achieve. Let's face it, having kids changes your life and amount of free time. It's changed mine and I am only EOW.

I have achieved a lot of positive things. I have done stuff for ego/monetary gain and some of compassion because you know us CSMs, we have TONS of compassion.

Yet I still can't shake off this feeling. It compounds more and more in my head and heart. It is definitely better than it was 5 years ago, but it rears it's ugly head whenever my MIL smiles at a baby, my DH cries at something his daughters does, or the one that cuts the most; someone gets pregnant.

I don't want to give away too much but someone in my friends circle is pregnant. She has no business having another child. She gets many, I get 0. The injustice is painful and makes it hard to get up sometimes. It would be a heck of a lot easier if I wasn't a SM.

I try to focus on the positive, but I am not an Aunt or something like that.  I have no blood connection to a child. I don't know that "feeling" every woman talks about. What I do know is I have no one to blame but myself which makes it harder. I didn't want kids in my 30's and met my husband later in life.Not too late, at the cusp of too late and it was either leave him or try to get pregnant on my own and that would be stupid for so many reasons. Plus,, he is undoubtedly, the love of my life.

I am back to posting and trying to be positive through the pain. I would love it if people commented more. I see the search words through my tracker. I see women from all over the world and probably all walks of life.We are here. Just silent in our agony.

My positive of the day and what I will leave you with is my Step Daughter told me yesterday:

"You are not just a 'Step Mother' and I love you".

If only the adults in our camp thought the same.

A great article for those of you who feel alone

Help For The Childless StepMom

#4 is why I have been MIA. Trying to find what makes me happy for once, as should YOU!

Celebrity Step Mother throws us under the bus; a rebuttle!

So Jada Pinkett Smith posted something on her Facebook page PUBLICLY that has stirred the Step Mother pot.

Here is what she said:

"Blended families are NEVER easy, but here's why I don't have a lot of sympathy for your situation because... we CHOOSE them. When I married Will, I knew Trey was part of the package...Period! If I didn't want that...I needed to marry someone else. Then I learned if I am going to love Trey...I had to learn to love the most important person in the world to him...his mother. And the two of us may not have always LIKED each other... but we have learned to LOVE each other.
I can't support any actions that keep a man from his children of a previous marriage. These are the situations that separate the women from the girls. Your behavior is that of an insecure child who needs to recognize her own weaknesses that MUST be strengthened to take on the task at hand. We can't say we love our man and then come in between him and his children. THAT'S selfishness...NOT love. WOMAN UP... I've been there...I know. My blended family made me a giant... Taught me so much about love, commitment and it has been the biggest ego death to date. It's time you let your blended family make you the giant you truly are. J."

Well, let's just say, that opened up a BIG can of worms.

The BEST response was via Huffington Post by Marriage and family Psychotherapist Mary T. Kelly, M.A.

I especially loved this quote: "Would you be as judgmental if you understood the loneliness and perpetual feeling of being an outsider when you are a childless woman partnered with a man with children?"

Huffington Post response

Happy New Year, MOM!

Happy New Year my lovely ladies!

Something was mentioned on a Facebook group I am a member on.

The question was, how do you feel when a stranger refers to you as the "Mom"?

I thought about this.

Although it hurts, being childless because I am NOT the Mom or A MOM, it makes me happy for people to think a) my SD looks like me (not a vanity thing; just to feel a connection to my husband somehow), and b) someone recognizes my Motherly duties.

If the stepchild does not correct the stranger, why should I?

It only makes my SD feel uncomfortable and it is not like I SAID it.

Besides, a child can have many "Moms" and in this day and age, a child really needs several.....