Great Expectations

On this Monday's Stepmoms Toolbox Radio Show, Peggy and I talked with Susan Wisdom about the expectations stepmoms have about their roles and about their families.

As we talked, I was laying in my bed with my favorite fur-baby, Puppy Cat, who was trying to find the perfect position from which he could drift into his kitty slumber. (dirty little online radio show secret: most of the shows we do feature me wearing my pj's while I walk around the upstairs of my house trying to fit in some excercise) So here I am, laying in bed all alone in my big empty house talking about expectations. My own personal thought bubble eclipsed any real philosophical thoughts I had on the matter although I did have something to say about external expectations.

Anywho....

My personal expectations, when I was growing up, included getting married and having kids. I dreamed that I might have a loving husband who would give me back rubs every night along with a glass of wine and a bubble bath while also helping the kids with their homework.

If you're a stepmom,  you know how rest of the story turns out...blah blah blah, I'm with my guy but I also have non-biological kid(s) in my life, too. The baths were only a means to get me to fall in love with him and I'm the one that yells at the kids to do their homework while they roll their eyes at me and mumble under their breath. The only time my husband gets me a glass of wine now is to ply me with alcohol before he tells me what his ex thinks of my latest involvement in the kids' lives. 

I bring up the dream versus the reality because I believe it's worth illustrating how even competent, capable,  strong-minded women can fall into this trap of "this isn't what I expected my stepfamily life to be like."

Raise your hand if this sounds like you at all.

Susan -- along with nearly every stepfamily expert I've talked to -- had the same advice: readjust your expectations.

I have extremely high expectations for myself. Ask my Karate instructors how high my expectations are. When I can't master a kata in a day, I apparently get this look on my face that cries out: "I'm hopeless!" Yeah, that's just Karate. For things like marriage and parenting, I've always felt like if I can't make everyone love me to pieces then I've done something horribly wrong.

I have such high expectations that it's almost like a disease and frankly I don't want my drive for perfection to land me in heart-attacksville. So I've been ever-so-slowly releasing my grip on my high expectations.

The first person(s) to see my lower expectations: my stepkids.

I used to drive myself mad trying to make sure they liked me and loved me and wanted to share their secrets with me. I'd be the best friend, the personal shopper and the cooler-than-cool Lady McSteppington but then I'd feel sad or disappointed in myself when I'd hear through the grapevine something going on in their lives. I took it personally that I had done something wrong.

Once I learned to lower my expectations -- to simply love them without the razzle dazzle -- I realized they did love me and that I wasn't ever going to be the secret keeper or sharer. That's their mom and she does a great job at it. She knows when to reveal and how; whereas if I learned something, I always felt like I was stepping on people's toes. 

I'll write soon about other people's expectations of me and how I'm working on that in an upcoming post.

Now I'm curious about you: How have you successfully readjusted your expectations and how do you feel now?

Taking my own advice on focusing on myself

I've been neglecting this blog for the past couple of weeks. I admit it. It has sat back in the corner of my mind like Baby at Kellerman's final show.

There's good reason why my blog has gathered dust. I've taken the advice I and my fellow stepmom pals have dispensed over the months and have focused on myself rather than everything and everyone else around me.

I've needed to focus on me. Not because I'm a self-centered selfish bitch but because I've developed some health issues that needed my attention more than my blog did.

I'm in the process of meeting with my doctors to conduct tests and get official diagnoses, but over the course of the past 2 years, my stress hormones have sucker-punched my liver, my ovaries, my hypothalamus and every other metabolic and insulin-related organ in my body.

I know that they've done this because almost two years ago I had thinned down a little (about 20 pounds). I remember a picture of me on my 33rd birthday. I didn't have a double chin and my skin had a certain glow to it. My lips were a ruby red -- even without lipstick -- and I looked somewhat fit. Within a few weeks after my birthday, all hell broke loose in my life and without really trying, I gained 50 pounds.

Fifty pounds.

That's a hell of a lot of weight for someone whose mom says she "eats like a bird." I confess that I dipped into the ice cream container a few times a week when my stepkids were with me more and we were medically required to have ice cream on hand (long story), but not enough to warrant a 50-pound weight gain in 18 months. For all of you mathematical folks out there, that means I would have needed to consume 175,000 extra calories in 18 months to gain this much weight by my own doing.

My mom, who is a nurse, remembered that she (and I) both suffered from PCOS. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It's essentially a "disease" where your hormones are all mucked up and your metabolism won't play nicely with your body nor will your insulin. You can workout numerous times a week (like I have for the past 18 months) and your weight will not only not go away, it brings its unfortunate friends with it. It's responsible for miscarriages and inability to conceive among other things.

My mom doesn't suffer from Cushing's Syndrome, but it's possible that I do. Cushing's, like PCOS, causes a dramatic weight gain and practically mirrors the same problems that PCOS brings with it, only Cushing's has more to do with Cortisol (a stress hormone) than PCOS does.

If you've read this blog since early last year, you'll know I've had a shitload of reasons to have extra cortisol racing through my veins. We had to hospitalize one of my stepkids; within a week, my husband was sent off to the other end of the country to save his job. That was just within a few weeks. I've had other stresses lurking about that I don't even talk about on this blog.

I'm not trying to dodge the responsibility of my weight gain, but there have been other "symptoms" that have been concerning to me for the past 6-9 months. Only when that fateful "I think less of you" comment came about because of my weight did I start to string everything together.

I'll try to keep y'all posted and "hopefully" will have some positive progress to report. In the meantime, please, go do something for yourself today. Get a manicure, pet a dog, take a few extra minutes driving home so you can get some peace and quiet, but please....do it for you.


photo: Wikipedia

I'm a Rockstar! Q&A with Jenn Mangino of Rockstar Copparenting

I'm through with standing in line
To clubs we'll never get in
It's like the bottom of the ninth
And I'm never gonna win
This life hasn't turned out
Quite the way I want it to be

Okay, I'm not Nickleback nor am I really a rockstar, but there is a Q&A between Jenn Mangino of Rockstar Coparenting that was posted today.

Read it, enjoy, comment here or there and let me know what you think (particularly about those kick-ass shoes). http://www.rockstarcoparenting.com/2010/09/03/jam-session-erin-erickson/