Resources that are making me a better stepmom

If you’re reading this because you are a new stepmom who doesn’t know where to turn when you find yourself triggered or confused, I see you.

Sometimes you feel like an outsider, or maybe you are fatigued from adapting to the constant curveballs, and you are learning that your blended family feels different than a first family.

I’ve been there. Sometimes I am still there.

My partner and I have been together for about five years. I moved into the home he shares with his two daughters who live there half the time a little over a year ago. Even with a few years of experience blending during what I now look back on as our honeymoon phase during Covid (when things were simpler), I thought I knew what to expect. It turns out that I didn’t really know.

While biomoms and stepmoms have unique experiences, some of their experiences are similar — for example, both experience rebirths in their identities as they become parents. Stepmoms — especially those like me without biokids when they blend — must reprioritize their life around the kids in short order. Their capacity for care and love shifts drastically and yet slowly over time — a newfound sense of responsibility for the growth of other humans emerges (this love manifests itself as uniquely on a spectrum for stepparents as it does for bioparents). Stepmoms’ homes and financial decisions suddenly look different with kids. And they come face to face with newly unearthed stressors from their own childhood — traumas, values, expectations, and ideas around families, parenting, and mothering they might not have known they were carrying (and that might be at odds with the preexisting culture of their family).

When you become a biomom, our society has rituals for initiating and preparing you for your motherhood (even as we fall short of providing families with the structural support actually needed). Loved ones shower new biomoms with gifts and show up to provide advice, meals, and all kinds of support (including the uninvited, unwanted kind) to help them manage it all through the longest, shortest time. And as their child grows, their network of support grows outward from their built-in family and friend support system through situational proximity with other parents (for example, becoming friends with parents of your kid’s school friends).

When you become a stepmom in your late 30s, you might encounter crickets and closed doors, and sometimes active resistance to your existence. You measure success in the tiniest of moments and gestures, of things not going catastrophically wrong. Every kindness or extended hand means something so much more.

Stepmoms weather the changes of becoming a stepparent not only with less help but more stigma (unlike stepdads, who are often seen as exceptionally honorable just for stepping into the role). But you don’t have to go it alone as a new stepmom, nor should you. To succeed, you may find, like me, that it is worth it to put the effort in to create your own rituals and to build your own support systems.

In this post, I’m sharing some of the resources that have most helped me become a better stepmom with the goal this reaches others who are early in their journey.

Stepmom coaching

One of the first things I did after moving in with my partner was book a coaching session with Brooke Leslie of The Struggling Stepmom. I found her, and other stepmom coaches like her, through social media. As professional coaching helped me overcome a toxic job experience and launched me toward new opportunities, I sought out stepmom coaching because I knew there would be a learning curve and I wanted to get ahead of it.

The coaching call with Brooke made me feel, for the first time, that everything I was thinking and experiencing was normal. I remember feeling so nervous going into the call because even though I felt like things were good — I knew my relationships with my partner and the girls were strong and there was minimal conflict with biomom — I hadn’t before said any of what we talked about out loud with another human who understood the fullness of my experience.

Brooke reminded me that even if I felt triggered, it was important for me to keep issues in perspective and think about the long term. She offered me the following helpful advice:

1. Biomom will not change and she doesn’t care about your opinion so focus on yourself and your home dynamic.
2. Take comfort in your relationship with your partner because you are in a healthy relationship with them, they trust you, and they are a positive influence who wants the best for you and your new unit. It’s important to support them and be a united front when you can.
3. It’s not your job to make things work, and you will get stuck if you try to jump in to do everything all at once.
4. Your influence on your stepchildren matters and you will be shaping their lives regardless of who makes parenting decisions.
5. Kids don’t rank the relationships they have. There’s no one parental relationship that is “better.” They’re just different. The kids are their own people who will one day make their own decisions and have adult perspectives of their lives.

This early session with Brooke was more important than I could have imagined then. It laid a firm foundation for the lessons to come and opened me to a new mental framework and network of stepmom resources.

Stepmom podcasts

Most media continues to focus on opposite-gender nuclear families, with stepparents rarely getting represented, especially in a positive light. Chances are the journalist who writes about the challenges of parenting during Covid probably interviewed a mom but not a stepmom (please reevaluate your choice in movies if the stepmoms you see on screen are portrayed in a good-versus-evil binary). That makes it critically important for you to search out your own media and shape how you consume it.

I found Jamie Scrimgeor’s The KICK-ASS Stepmom Podcast through Brooke and her podcast, Step Struggles. I listen to both on a regular basis. I can’t tell you how much I have learned about myself and what is possible through these stepmom-specific conversations. Scrimgeor started her stepmom journey 10 years ago and has grown a successful podcast, online support community, and coaching business. Her hour-long KICK-ASS Stepmom podcasts feature conversations with parenting experts, experienced stepmoms, and, recently, a biomom who wrote a letter to the new stepmom in her life. In Step Struggles, Brooke shares her own experience as a stepmom on the podcast like it’s a diary and peppers in themes and advice that come up through her coaching calls.

I became an avid listener of We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle, featuring Glennon’s wife Abby Wambach and sister Amanda Doyle, after reading Untamed (thank you, book club friends). It is not a stepmom podcast. But for me, Abby has become a role model. Abby says “my kids,” she is super involved in her kids' lives, talks about the ways her kids have changed her, and brings her perspectives of being a stepparent when speaking about all kinds of issues.

I also highly recommend listening to The Mother Wound episode of the Gathering Gold podcast, hosted by Sheryl Paul, a counselor informed by the Jungian depth psychological tradition, and Victoria Russell, who I am lucky enough to call my friend. It opened up questions in me that have helped me in my transformation while offering a deeper perspective on the role of mothers. And it reintroduced me to Kahlil Gibran’s poem “On Children” which offers a sacred, liberated view of parenthood, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” (Sweet Honey in the Rock has a beautiful version in song.)

Stepmom communities

After experiencing stepmom coaching and listening to hours of stepmom podcasts, I wanted to become more intentional about building more and deeper relationships with fellow stepmoms (to the stepmoms already in my life, you have been amazing beacons helping me through).

As a follower of Stepfamily Magazine, I discovered editors Beth McDonough and Cameron Normand also host The Stepmom Summit, a three-day virtual gathering featuring 20 speakers offering workshops on stepfamily life. I attended the sessions last summer, coming away with new tools to navigate all aspects of stepfamily life, specifically providing a roadmap of questions around finances.

Soon after the summit, the pair launched Stepfamily Circle, an exclusive community for solidarity and support for stepfamilies. While this community is new, I have already felt the benefit of engaging with stepmoms through this connected part of our identities. I look forward to the additional coaching and support this community promises, and further exploring stepmom group coaching programs offered by Beth, whose coaching business is called The Inclusive Stepmom.

These resources are helping me peel back the insecurities at the heart of conflicts I experience and remember the tools I have to move through changes. They have helped me to feel more positive about my blended family and to take accountability for the things over which I have control. And they have helped me think proactively about setting the intentions, boundaries, and vibe in our family’s life to keep us strong.

If you’re a stepmom with resources to share, please leave a comment or message me to add what has worked for you.