Guest Author - Pam Garlick
Turn on the television and somewhere you will find a show about step families, some more realistic than others. Or, are they all realistic in their own ways? My personal opinion and first hand experience says that each situation is actually as individual as the individuals in it, and that can sometimes make it all the more precarious.
Yes, personalities play a large part in how well these step families will blend. So does the history of each of the families involved. So, I can’t honestly say my thoughts on the subject are true in every case, but I can offer some of what I learned.
Metaphorically, I’m going to use rocks and stones to describe situations and stages of growth for some step families.
There are rocks. These are usually obstacles, too often things that happened in the past that one or another of the people in the family either cannot, or has a difficult time getting over. The rocks create walls or barriers, some wide and tall with no seeming way to get around them.
Getting over or around these barriers can be painful, but if avoided, one never knows what beauty they might find on the other side. They may have to walk exhaustively through miles of muck to find an opening, but if they keep looking, no matter how small a crack they may find, it is a start. Their desire to get to the beauty on the other side is what will determine how hard they are willing to work.
Or, it may take skinned knuckles and strength one never knew they possessed to climb or tear down that wall. It is a slow, tedious process, filled with sometimes painful moments. But the goal far outweighs the pain.
Then there are pebbles that skim across the river of a step family’s life. They can skip along and sometimes get to the other side, as with the wall, a side filled with beauty. But all too often they never make it to the other side. They just keep on skipping along the top of the surface, sometimes making ripples along the way.
These ripples usually start out small and grow. Just as disagreements often start out small and grow. And sometimes one ripple seems to blend into another, their collision creating circles of turmoil bouncing off one another, distorting the calm surface. Some ripples remain unmoved while others disappear in the disharmony. It sadly can be the same with the people who are part of a step family when the little ripples start creating a calamity in their lives.
However, there are also stepping stones. Those stones that can be used to grip or to use as footholds when one tries to climb that rock barrier. Or, stick up from the water enabling one to jump from one stepping stone to another to get to the other side.
Stepping stones sometimes have a way of being unsteady or slippery, but if one balances themselves and uses care, these stones are the hope that the determined soul upon them will get to see the beauty on the other side.
I’ve learned that each of us in one way or another can be, and can use, a stepping stone when trying to create a beautiful relationship within a step family. The children and grandchildren in my life have been stepping stones in building a better family relationship. Oh it’s not perfect, but perfection isn’t promised for this life.
Still, we have come a long way. I am part of a wonderful family. I don’t have to call it blended, though it is. It’s even easy for me to forget which children I bore, and which I was blessed with because of my husband. I’m still careful though, to remember my role in the family is not to replace someone else, rather to be who I am and to love them all dearly, and equally.
So, if you are part of a step family and still struggling to find that beautiful place of harmony on the other side, I suggest you try being a stepping stone. Not a rock barrier, nor a pebble causing ripples, but rather a means of helping everyone to get to the other side.
Here are two books on the subject of step families:
