Life in a Blender

I’ve been kicking around launching a blog series on life in a blended family for quite some time. As a matter of fact, when I went back to school in February of 2009, my very first class was a writing and research class and I wrote a research paper on step families and strategies for success. I caught the writing bug and launched my blog shortly after that, but I have yet to discuss much of my experience in a blended family… until now.

Although I lack a degree in psychology, I did take some classes back in the day.  What I think makes me as qualified as any PhD is my life experience.  I am a step kid, I have step siblings, I have had step parents since I was 14, I have a step daughter, a step son from my ex husband who is not technically my step son these days, but I love him just as much.  My kids are step kids, they have a half brother and step sister and their step sister has a half brother.  I am a second wife and my husband is a third husband.  Throw in some surrogacy and adoption on my current husband’s side and I think I am ever so qualified to write about this.  I’ll get into specifics in future posts.

As I launch this series, it is important to know that although our situation seems like a scattered mess in many regards if you read the above paragraph, we really do have common goals in raising our blended families.  We have strong communication, we genuinely like, and respect our exes and we all get that this is about the kids and not our failed relationships.  That being said, oh we have had our challenges.  Every one of us.  What we have now is the result of years of struggling, trial and error and doing the best we could for our kids.  I believe I have the objectivity to write about these very personal issues with compassion while giving hope to some who may be struggling with what I have dealt with.

Even though this is the first in this series and introductory in nature, I think it is important you know more about my current situation.  I am married to a wonderful man with a 13 year old daughter he shares custody with his ex.  My daughters are 14 and 11 and I too share custody.  The father of my daughters has a 19 year old son that I still consider my own.  His father and I spent years fighting for visitation while his mother broke many laws, yet we lost in court over and over.    All things considered we have fantastic kids.  All sports and activity oriented, all goal planners, great grades, community and church involvement- can’t ask for much more.

What will be interesting about this series is what has happened before today that got us here.  Blended families have unreasonable challenges.  A higher divorce rate, the exes, money and child support issues, my kid is perfect and yours sucks, why can’t my kid get along with your kids, why do you always take your kids’ side??   

We fight.  If you are in a blended family, you do to.  We do to this day, but less and less.  I think I can help.  Blended families are hard.  There is help.  And I will be back!