Reality or Fairy Tales?

It’s our choice to love ourselves in the Stepmom’s World

My friend, also a stepmom, said she could hardly sit through "Stepmom," although the movie is said to celebrate us. She was not alone. Many of us saw little resemblance between the film and our lives. I endured it mostly out of curiosity. Would this film address the guts of the matter, how we overcome lifelong emotional habits to make a stepfamily work? What have we all learned since the divorce revolution began, and how has this filtered into the mass media? How do others think of us, and how do we think of ourselves? Is Cinderella’s stepmother still with us? If so, are we ourselves keeping such mythical figures alive?

Though ambitious, the film took an unfortunate easy out, circumventing the problem of the two women’s discomfort, jealousy and insecurity by simply removing one of them. Biomom died and Stepmom replaced her in a safe and uncontroversial way. Although it is hinted that the biomom changed as she accepted death, Mom and Stepmom never really had to work out peaceful coexistence.

But the rest of us do. Too often, we are the only ones inclined to do the work. And when it is most tempting to act on ego, we are instead called upon to take the high road, while other family members go on prosecuting old agendas, while the kids struggle.

As a longtime biomom and new stepmom, I have discovered a hidden blessing in stepmotherhood: lack of support. Biomoms have lots of cultural backing for their self-love; stepmoms don’t. We can’t rely on movies, stories or other people to make us feel worthwhile. We must like ourselves. In fact, we must like ourselves unconditionally. It helps us to make better decisions. For example, my husband and I recently concluded that we could hope only for damage control in coping with the always-angry ex-wife. The choices became clear:

1. I could love the idea of making things right anyway, insisting
that all the adults behave better, and staking my health on it.

or

2. I could love myself and my marriage enough to embrace
    the realities, live peacefully with visiting stepkids, make our
    lives a model, and somehow coexist with another person’s
    need to keep chaos alive.

I chose number 2, and the work has just begun. It means I must remember to love myself for:

- Chosing a difficult situation
- Embracing my stepkids
- Making big, clumsy efforts to solve the
real problem
- Accepting years of tension, ambiguity and
proximity with a crazily angry person
- Having faith that craziness can’t win
- Failing frequently, but sticking to it

To return to the film, yes, it avoided real choices, but did face the fact that growing up means accepting divorce, death and change. Additional good news: If you go by Isabel, Julia Roberts’entirely sympathetic character, the wicked stepmother must be dead.

Self-love isn’t automatic for most of us. We need help to learn it. And it won’t remove pain, but will soften it. Perhaps the next movie will wrestle with such questions, though probably not. In the meantime, we each have to decide if we are wicked or wise. It’s our call.

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