A mom and a stepmom share stories, ideas, friendship and family
Posted in Co-parenting, Divorce, Holidays, Love, Parenting, Peacemaking, Remarriage on Apr 26th, 2008
I was selling my book at the LA Times Festival of Books today, when I heard a woman’s voice say “Don’t I know you?” After about five minutes of cross-referencing, we figured out that we had shared a cabin at a church camp about 12 years ago, had had Thanksgiving together at my old [...]
Posted in Co-parenting, Love on Mar 6th, 2008
“[O]nce you willingly have a baby with someone, there is always love – somewhere.” — Peter Ehrlich
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” — Elie Wiesel
I think we struggle so much across houses in extended stepfamilies because we feel a connection we don’t know what to do with. We have needs we aren’t [...]
Posted in Co-parenting, Love on Mar 5th, 2008
Are you thinking this?
“That’s nice that Kathy and Jill sing Kumbaya together every weekend while braiding daisies into each other’s hair, but they’re just lucky! I would love to have such a reasonable mom/stepmom in my life, but mine is just a whole different kind of person.”
Or this?
“I don’t want to be friends with the [...]
“The word ‘love’ is so overused in our culture today and frequently misunderstood. I do believe, however, that the fountainhead or foundation for success in [...]
Posted in Love on Feb 20th, 2008
“Honor any resistance you feel inside yourself.” — paraphrase from a yoga video
What if we applied this to our stepfamily situations? In yoga it’s important to honor the resistance we feel because we need to be careful not to injure ourselves while stretching, and because change and trasformation happen gradually. (I’m an occasional yoga video [...]
Posted in Love on Feb 19th, 2008
That’s my favorite line I’ve ever thought up on the fly.
The kids were rough housing. I heard glass break. I came out and saw a blue handblown vase I’d bought from my local Mexican folk art store broken on the floor. The kids were sitting still with wide eyes looking scared — both of the [...]
When I was little and I got sick, my mom would tuck me into my bed or under blankets on the couch and give me a bell so I could ring for her when I needed her. My mom’s bell had a stained glass handle and lived on the bookcase when everyone was healthy. Mine [...]
“When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong along with the fearful, the true mixed in with the facade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.” — Fred Rogers
“Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.” — Fred Rogers
I used to think something like this was possible:
I used to think that the amount of happiness at one house or the well-being of one house could be separate from the amount of happiness or the well-being of the other. One house might be doing better or worse than the other and it shouldn’t have [...]
“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” — Fred Rogers
Posted in Love, Perspectives on Dec 29th, 2007
We get a lot of comments about how nice it is that we work together for the sake of the kids, and it’s true — it is nice for the kids that we work together, but it’s not just for the kids — at least from my perspective. It’s for me, it’s for G, and [...]
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