Did we just become best friends?

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My life has been touched and blessed by incredible people. Special friendships. Deep connections. The real deal of good folk. 

There’s been seasons of change and steady friends for life. There’s been comers and goers. There’s been leech-on kinda friends and phlegmatic passers. But most of all, I’ve had the genuine, fill-your-cup, bleed-your-heart-crying, pee-your-pants-laughing kinda friends. 

My friends come from school days, soccer days, uni days, work days, met-through-a-friend or network days and all walks of life. 

But until I realised I was moving in to the stepmum days, I didn’t have stepmum days friends yet. Until I met and fell in love with Mal, I hadn’t needed stepmum days friends.  

So I got deliberate.

I stripped through my existing network looking for anyone who might know how to battle the wild world of being the bonus parent. I knew a couple of bio mums who were living in the not quite nuclear world, but they were playing nice with the bonus parents in their situation – nope, that’s not the friendships I need right now. They will only show me more of what I don’t have. 

I wanted to chat with someone who was taking on the stepmum role, but didn’t have any kids of their own. That was holding together the barrel of emotions that comes in that early stage of learning to stepmum and could hold my hand and lead me through to the leprechaun/rainbow/pot of gold = blissful harmony.

I’ll spare you the crazy that went on in this period and run you clean into the spoiler… there wasn’t anyone. None. Zip. Nada. 

I declared myself lonely and went back to the battlefield, armour a little dented, but determination running hot. 

I poured in to my husband. But most of all, I carefully measured the existing friends I had based on how they responded when I told them about some of my new daily goings on. 

Me: “I was carrying the 6-year-old back from the beach on the weekend and he squeezed my cheeks, his eyes penetrated my soul and his lips parted just enough to ask me: “why do you love me so much?” and it took all my strength not to cry as he burrowed into the very core of my heart, waiting for my response”.

Friends: “kids are strange like that hey?” “Wow, he’s such a sensitive kid, isn’t he?” “You need to be careful loving them so much, they’re not yours”.

All of these answers are fine. They really are.  But at the time, I think I just wanted someone to start their response with “oh, I remember how that felt, here’s how I dealt with this stage”. 

He’s learning to understand how you love. 
He’s working out his place in your heart, in your world. 
He wants to know you’re sticking around. 
He’s enjoying your attention. 
He’s an affectionate kid and you’re meeting him where he’s at. 
You’re new and new is often fun. 
His Dad very obviously loves you and he is working out how to love you too. 

If I was approached by back-then-me with the things I know now, I think those are the things I would say. And then I would say, “It’s okay that it struck you to the core. This is all new for you too and you’re doing a great job of holding it together for Mal and those little hearts, even though I know it’s really hard sometimes”. 

Fast forward, my reflections from the Friendship Review Era look like this:

• The friends that I already had were still the right friends for me; I didn’t need specific stepmum days friends, I needed hugs and my existing friends already had heaps of these.

• Tell your friends. Tell them you’re struggling. Tell them you’re learning. Tell them you don’t know what to do next. Tell them it’s hard.  Tell them it’s scary. Tell them your character is under attack and it hurts. 

• Any friend that asks “is it all worth it?” when you’re having one of many falling apart moments is worth screening into the next layer. Not all of them will be telling you to run.  The real ones will be nudging you to understand that it could be like this for a long time yet – “are you ok to keep fighting, cos it’s ok if you’re not”. The less real ones are definitely just sick of you talking about it and are not likely to be the people still in your corner when you reach the leprechaun/rainbow/pot of gold = blissful harmony. That’s cool. 

• My friends were grieving I had gone from being single and free to dating a man with 5 children. I was in a new relationship with 6 people at once – because I needed and wanted to learn every single one of them, their personalities, their hearts.  And it left little room for the freedoms of singledom I’d had. 

• Usually, you choose the right moment for your friends to meet your new date and then you give them opportunities and space to get to know each other.  Multiply this time and space by a million for each new heartbeat you’re introducing.  In my case, it was 6.  And my friends had so much “getting to know you” to do.  Be patient when they mix up the names of the kids.  I’m the person who is likely to call your new partner your ex-partners name – no, but actually.  So, patience and grace while your friends learn your new family, and the new version of you as a part of a family, is important. 

• Not every friendship will survive.  You’ll eventually be making decisions about what serves you and your new family for your new future.  And some of the friendships of the other days you’ve lived may not be the right fit anymore.  It’s ok to grieve some of that.  It’s also ok to move forward without it, knowing the season has changed. 

Stepmum world has layers. But if you feel like your support system doesn’t get you, try sharing where you’re at.  God knows, the shame and internal bullying that comes with feeling like you’re doing woefully in this gig as a stepmum will eat you from the inside out if you don’t. 

BRB – going to message all of my friends to tell them I love them and couldn’t have survived new stepmum warfare without them. Or all the other days of stepmumming and mumming since.