Being a Stepmother in a Family - Essay Example

In the year 2001, my husband was in the process of getting sole custody of his two daughters and thus, since I had gotten married to him recently, I was going to be a part of a ‘package deal’. Today those two children are like a blessing in my life, they have helped me a great deal in learning a lot of things about life and gaining experiences. Sometimes however, I do wish that I was their real mother because it is a tough task to watch these children grow up with a ‘friend’ rather than with a mother or a guiding light in the true sense.

Despite these adversities, however, being a stepmother is a very difficult thing to do, and accomplishing this task over time is an even tougher aspect of life. It was extremely sad to know that their mother abandoned them because no child wants to grow up to question why their mother left them; these children still have a void in their life which I have been trying to fill every single day. In the beginning, it was difficult for me to converse with them knowing that I would have to be their mother for the rest of their life and that it was their choice whether or not to accept me as the same.

It is not easy for young girls, especially ones whose dad was in the army and had thus grown up against the backdrop of a hard life, to be able to accept someone into their hearts so easily. Knowing this, I plunged into the situation trying to become their friend rather than their mother because I knew that the only way I could teach them and help them along their journey of life was by letting them know that I would be there as a friend first and that I was not trying to replace their mother in any way.

Even though their mother abandoned them, the children were not furious about the situation; had they been so, they would have been extremely reluctant to accept another mother in their life for fear of losing out on her as well. However, they took me in as a big sister or a friend first, and slowly with time have come to terms with the fact that I am to play the role of the mother in their lives. A stepmother has a wicked stereotype in today’s world, and even though it is easy for children to accept stepfathers today, being a stepmother is hard because of the immense number of stories that a child hears these days about bad stepmothers.

Since both the daughters were at a young stage in their lives, scared and vulnerable concerning their emotions and feelings, it was indeed very difficult for me to sort out my feelings concerning them and adopt them as my own. For me as well, I wanted to give birth to children rather than to have them already blossoming into young girls, however today I have realized the importance of raising a child; it does not matter what the child’s age is but how the child responds to their parents and what kind of a human being the child has been shaped into by the parents, from whichever age onwards it might be.

I was extremely scared to be rejected by my daughters initially as well, however, with love from both sides, we were able to make each other understand that this change that was going to be taking place in all our lives would be a significant and successful one with lots of love and affection as well as understanding being delivered on a mutual basis.