I’ve been a stepmom for over 20 years.
I’ve walked the walk, so to speak.
Here’s what I want to share. The world of parent education and parent support is very much centered around a very particular specific situation.
This situation doesn’t match my lived experience as as an adult in a blended family.
Where can stepmoms find help?
Most resources like books, magazines, tv shows, online programs, play groups are for people with young children under about 10 years old and those who have one male and one female married parents in their first marriages.
For anybody else, single parents, second marriages, blended families, widows, parents of children of special needs, same gender couples, unmarried couples … even just parents of teenagers and young adults …and anything else I haven’t listed anything outside of that very small world there are much few resources.
For example, Parents magazine massively popular mainstream magazine for parents but very very very few articles for stepparents, single parents, blended families.
As a stepmom, I personally struggled to find good helpful support.
Trust me… I tried a lot of different things.
I worked with therapists, doctors, rabbis and priests, life coaches, medical doctors, books, magazines, pamphlets … and a lot of random advice from well meaning friends and acquaintances.
For me as a stepparent – a lot of the support I found wasn’t geared toward geared toward making it work or helping me to be happy in my family.
What do I mean? I mean that most of the support options seemed to start with the idea that a blended family was by itself a problem. I didn’t feel like I was sick or needed a psychological diagnosis. I didn’t feel like there was anything wrong with my blended family. I did want some help being happier in my blended family.
My experience was that it can be a challenge to find help, support and community if you are in a blended family.
If you look at my list of resources above you’ll notice that lawyers, mediators, social workers and judges are not on there. Wonderful people doing all of those very important jobs. In my experience, the legal system is not really designed to be helpful in keeping families together or happier. There are definitely exceptions to this. Overall as a general statement I think that just not the purpose of those resources. The disconnect – in my opinion – is that these are the resources often given as an option for help and support.
I think that’s definitely one reason why I feel so passionately about offering coaching services for adults in blended families.
What is life coaching for adults in blended families
There are coaches for everything and one of those things is parenting. I work with stepparents and parents but I do not teach or recommend specific parenting style. There are coaches who do this. There are coaches trained in gentle parenting or peaceful parenting. Things like that.
I do offer plenty of different parenting tools but my primary goal is a more content and joyful life for you in your blended family.
If you’re interested in learning more about my coaching click here.
Also, I’ve written a book. You can buy the book here.