Six Minus Four Equals Two

School starts this week...sigh. We’ve recently returned from a quick family vacation in northern Michigan (fun video soon to follow), and I will officially have two high schoolers and two fourth graders. Truthfully, I'm looking forward to getting back some of that structure we've missed over the past few months of summer break. I love my children with all of my heart. I know that so much of who I am centers around being a mother and a stepmother. I sometimes tell myself that having an eldest child with special needs set the standard for the entrenched mommy lifestyle, but if I’m being honest, that’s probably who I would have been all along, regardless. I desperately want to be a good steward of the children that I have been blessed with. Some days I feel like I’m knocking the mom thing out of the park, some days I’m “ok” at that job, and some days are, well, some days.

Generally speaking, all is right in the universe when we have a house full of the laughter, boisterous play, and sometimes even fighting that comes with having four kiddos. Andy and I spend a lot of energy around raising our sons and daughter, managing day to day comings and goings, and all of the other shenanigans life tends to throw our way. So much, that we recently had quite the reality check when we happened to have a rare 5-day stretch without kiddos. Our teenagers are at home with us most of the time. With the exception of a couple of weekend days a month spent with their dad, we see Lora and Parker every day. This month Lora and Parker were gone on a weeklong vacation with their father. With Will and JJ at their mother’s during her parenting time, it was just the two of us for five days. Alone. Together. As a couple.

You would think, “Woohoo, no kids! Time to ourselves! Let’s do everything adult thing we can think of!” Right?! Yep...nope. I’m pretty sure Andy was seeing this as an opportunity for some quality husband and wife time (*wink* *wink*). I was fantasizing about an entirely different activity involving our bed, afternoon naps. While Andy was elbows deep in nurturing the beginnings of his new company, I was doing what any mother with an iPhone would do while her teenagers were on a Disney World vacation with their father, stalking them via friend finder (thank you, Apple, for making stalking your children’s GPS location socially acceptable), as well as grumbling to myself, and Andy, about how my children weren’t texting me with every exciting vacation detail. Well, maybe I wasn’t expecting a play by play, but I was so excited that they were able to take such a big trip with their father, I wanted to be able to experience just a piece of it with them. Early on in Lora’s diagnosis with autism, Disney was often our way of connecting with her. Much of her early verbal skills were imitations of lines from Disney movies or songs. Even at 16-years-old, I wanted so badly to see the expressions on my sweet girl’s face as she experienced Disney World for the first time.

I had my small, bedroom breakdown about midweek while they were gone, briefly shed my tears behind closed doors, dusted myself off, and let go. Because at the end of the day, they were having an incredible vacation with their father, something they all deserved. I did not need to insert myself into their memories. We have plenty of our own memories, and plenty of opportunity to make more. I relished my one phone call from each of them while they were gone, and I let them be. I let go only to realize that Andy I had some work to do as a couple.

We are a great team when we are busy. If we have a project to accomplish together, a big idea to discuss, parenting, management and organization…we are good. We are a well-oiled machine. These are the areas where our relationship truly shines. What we haven’t turned our energy toward is learning how to play as a couple, how to be lighthearted together. We need to rediscover what genuine joy between the two of us looks like. Creating a playful space that breathes freely between the two of us, allows the soul of who we are as a couple to grow in a gentler, sweeter way. When we came into this relationship, we were already all business. Navigating parenting, daily to do lists, paying bills, divorces…our noses were to the grind, and we knew how to do serious (darn that baggage). It’s funny, playing with our children comes so much easier. Even the teenagers aren’t nearly as self-conscious as we are. I don’t think there’s a textbook answer for what being playful with your spouse looks like. We clearly really have no clue. We know it’s an area we need to work on, and for us, I think the first step is recognizing that childlike spirit within one another. We are going to have learn how to drop the ego, the judgement for ourselves and one another, the expectation, and just be. And to laugh. And smile. And breathe.

Maybe the next five day stretch we’ll have it all figured out. Maybe?

~Stephanie

The Ugliest Four Letter "F" Word

This post has taken me a little longer to pull together than I would have liked. It’s pretty difficult to put words to the emotional chaos and mental rollercoaster that accompany surviving a divorce to find yourself back in a another serious relationship and try to pack that narrative into a tidy, little blog post. But here I am, giving it the good old college try.

I was doing everything wrong. At least, that was what the nagging voice in the back of my mind was telling me. I had been separated from my first husband for more than a few years, in the midst of a divorce, living as a single mother, and I wasn’t fostering a career that would allow me to support myself and my children. I wasn’t concretely putting into place a plan as to what my transition as a legally single mother would look like. I looked at the single moms I knew who were busting their butts in jobs while trying to raise their kids and pay bills, and I felt “less than.” I’d invested so much of my energy into making sure my special-needs daughter and younger son were thriving through the storm, that I couldn’t get a grip on my own growth and self-worth. I needed to figure out what my new “grown-up” life was supposed to look like. I was struggling, and I was struggling hard. I was beginning to feel like I was operating from a place of desperation, rather than a place of self love and hope. On the flip side, and slightly paradoxically, I’d developed a strong sense of independence. I found myself in this routine of my children spending every other weekend with their father, giving me time and space that I fiercely protected as my own. Minus a live-in partner, I was strictly accountable to my children and myself.

Then I met Andy. Andy wasn’t the first relationship I’d found myself in during those years, because let’s face it, we all get lonely. Most of us want to find our value and validation in the heart, eyes, and soul of another. And, honestly, sometimes, the truth is, those relationships can provide a pretty effective distraction from ourselves. So, there were a handful of almost serious relationships over the course of those years, leaving the occasional emotional battle scar. By the time Andy came along, I’d nursed enough broken hearts, that I’d gotten to the point where I’d come to the conclusion that my only opportunity at building a new future for myself might look like moving out of state. I needed the opportunity to start from scratch, and a serious relationship wasn’t going to fit into that plan. But when I met Andy, there was something about his gentle yet fiery spirit combined with the humanity in how open he was with his brokenness, that captured my heart. His creative nature reached a part of myself that I had long buried with my childhood. Little did I know, that taking our relationship to a more serious level would trigger a less romantic characteristic from my younger years that had been lying just under the surface...Fear.  

Here I was, a woman, in spite of the distractions and chaos, who was just finally getting a true sense of who I was and who I wanted to be. Then, here is this man, asking me to move in with him. To pick up my children, myself, almost 15 years of another life, bring all the beauty and all of the grit I’d created with my life up until that point and rebuild a new life with him and two little boys...under the roof of his previous marriage (a can of worms for another day). Boy, oh boy, Fear was loving that. Fear latched on and found sneaky little ways to sabotage everything. I found myself dragging my feet when it came to moving all of my things into “our” home. I had been able to reside in my former marital home up until then, so I had the luxury of being able to gradually move from that home to my home with Andy at my own pace. Fear made sure it was a snail’s pace. I would find myself in petty arguments with Andy, repeating how I felt as though I was suffocating in the relationship, like the walls were closing in on me. I had days I felt despondent about the whole situation.

Then one day, Andy called me out on all of it. He called me out about not acting with intention in regards to the relationship, and he nailed it. He knew I was scared. Of course, at the time, I wasn’t about to tell him he was right, but he was more right than I wanted to believe. Fear was running the show. Fear had me walking through life in a mental fog. The fear list was long: fear of losing myself; fear of finding myself in a failing relationship again; fear of what this new life meant for my children; fear of being a stepmom; fear of who Andy might really be and what his personal baggage might mean for my life; fear of missing my life’s true purpose; fear of feeling beholden to someone; and the list goes on and on. However, Andy’s words finally gave what I was feeling a name, a simple four letter name. In that transition, I started to sense the tiniest amount of clarity. That clarity evolved into understanding. My mind began to process my emotional baggage for what it was, and before long, I really began to see how destructive fear could be when mismanaged. Fear had probably destroyed my first marriage…

Giving Fear it’s proper, healthy space has become almost a daily practice for me. It has been my largest obstacle coming into this blended family life. Naming, recognizing, and embracing it as one of my biggest flaws is allowing me to not only open my heart to my husband and our four children, but it allows me to be a kinder and gentler soul to myself.

~Stephanie

**If you haven't checked out our last video post, I highly recommend you do. It can be found under the Vlog tab, or if you prefer, we've also posted an audio version under the audio section of this site.

Next up, Andy!