When WOW took on a whole new meaning

My friend Mandy recently shared a humorous blog post about the difficulties of parenting and I found I could really relate to the blogger's feelings about her parenting experiences - both negative and positive. One of Mandy's other friends commented on the blog with "Isn't it amazing how just reading that someone else has the same struggles as you makes those struggles just a little bit easier?" Oh how true that is. That's why I have been devouring books about step-parenting and being the wife of a widower in the last two years!

Writing about our experiences also helps us make our struggles just a little bit easier. Journaling and blogging is therapeutic because it helps us pull our anxieties, worries, feelings and confused thoughts out of our heads so we can make space for other things. It helps us process our experiences -- frustrations and joys -- and work through them. It's like a dialogue with ourselves, which is really helpful when we don't have other people to talk to who understand or who we can trust.

Having trusting friends during our life-changing or transitional periods is crucial to our mental well-being. I am fortunate to have many good friends, a great mom and a sister who are good listeners, and caring daughters whom I can trust and who understand, to a point, what it's like to be a divorced woman, a mother to a young child later in life, a step-mom to kids of several ages (child, teenager, young-adult), to live in another woman's home, and to have their own children leave for college and miss them terribly. However, I don't have close friends who are WOWs -- Wives of Widowers as my books tell me -- so I'm kind of alone there and have to depend on books and the internet to get guidance on that part of my life when I'm feeling alone or frustrated.

I often want to blog about my experiences here on Dishman Hill -- as a therapy for myself, to help others understand what life as a WOW is like, and as a resource for other woman who are grasping for supportive stories about others who feel like me -- those who feel they've been dropped out of an airplane into someone else's life, who have been expected to hit the ground running and who are not allowed to stumble. But in a small community where everyone knows everyone I feel like it's an invasion of my family members' privacy to do so with complete candor. I wear my heart on my sleeve for everyone to see but Craig is much more private. He often tells me I should write a book about our romance but that romantic, almost fairy tale-like story, was preceded by and has been followed by a reality that includes many joys, but even more struggles, and I would feel dishonest by not including the whole story, not just the pretty parts, in my writing. I don't think he would be as comfortable as I am with sharing the whole story.

One of the "Stepping" books I'm reading now states, very clearly, something that really resonates with me and something I wish I would have read before joining the family. Other women I know might benefit from it too. But I wonder how others -- Craig and his kids, and his late-wife's family & friends (especially those who seem to judge me/us frequently) -- might feel about it.

"We are stepmothers for one reason and one reason only: we love the father of these children. In the fullness of time, we may also grow to love the children, but that is not our first priority. Next to caring for ourselves, loving our man and strengthening our marriage are of the primary importance because both increase our happiness and create a secure foundation for the children involved. As the poet Rilke emphasizes, love is not easy. And love that comes with a ready-made family is even more difficult. Therefore, we need to faithfully make time to rekindle our love and remember why we married."

"We all want our marriages to thrive. To insure that they do, we need to make a conscious commitment to the challenge of nurturing our union. While children can bring us closer, they can also create divisive chasms. It is in the best interest of all to first build a joyful and stable relationship with our husbands and then invite the children to join in. Children crave the security and modeling of a companionable and cohesive partnership. Your unity as a couple, as well as your commitment to yourself as an individual, will be a tremendous boon in helping the kids develop into caring and self-confident adults."

With the above statements in mind I want to honestly relate them to my own life and ask others who can also relate to comment if they feel comfortable. Adjusting to living in a home full of children who are not mine, especially with one whom I feel should be living on his own by now, has been my second greatest challenge and frustration. Living in a house built, furnished, decorated and organized by another woman has been my third greatest challenge. These two combined have a huge impact on my first greatest challenge -- building a solid relationship with Craig -- because they affect my whole being. They put a huge burden on my schedule, my energy, my comfort, my efficiency, my mood, my creative spirit - and most of all time to take care of myself, nourish my relationship with my husband, and meet the needs of my own daughters.

Life has changed drastically for me since I moved from my beautiful, quiet, roomy old home on West Madison Street 2 1/2 years ago. But life changed drastically for me a year before that, and a few years before that, and I survived: A career I loved vanished, a daughter left the nest, a young person I loved died, another job was lost, my husband chose to leave our family unit to love another, I had freedom to find myself, another job was lost, I met my true love, another daughter left the nest, then I abandoned the nest to help rebuild one, but found other birds there resisted rebuilding, I lost myself and I struggle daily to find me again. It's been wonderful, it's been horrible, it's been fun, it's been exhausting, I've grown, I've regressed, I've laughed and I've cried. I know there is a lot of work ahead but I know I'm up for it and I know in the end I will look back and know it was the greatest experience of my life.

I invite other women who have had similar experiences to share, either as a comment on this blog or privately to me at julie.dishman@gmail.com. We might be a help to each other.