I must
admit, the past couple of months have been pretty rough for our little
family. At one point I took a step back,
realized that I while I may not be drowning; I was flailing, and decided that I
needed to take action.
I went
online, and started searching for resources.
I admit, I was a little disappointed by the resources available. Most resources about being a stepmom kind of
assume that you have/want kids of your own and focus on the blending of the
families, which is not the case for me.
The stuff I did find, however, was pure gold. I must admit that just the realization that I
am not alone has done me as much good as the meeting with my lawyer.
A couple of
articles that particularily helped were:
http://stepintheblender.com/2011/03/02/here%E2%80%99s-a-news-flash-i-don%E2%80%99t-wanna-be-friends/
and
and
I also
bought myself a copy of The Happy Stepmother by Rachelle Katz, and A Career
Girl's Guide To Becoming A Stepmom by Jacquelyn Fletcher. The first I chose because it was one of the 2
most recommended books I saw. The second
because when I read the description I felt it would be a good match.
I think a
lot of people make one very bug mistake when it comes to self-help books, they
tend to focus on book that are all the rage thinking that it must have the
answers. Me, I tend to read the
descriptions (and the preview pages when possible) to see if the subjects apply
to me. There is no sense in me buying a
book that spends most of its pages talking about balancing my kids with his,
when I don’t have kids, or one that focuses on difficulties with the step kids
when that is a non-issue for us (for now at least, I’m crossing my fingers and
touching all the wood I can find on that one).
I guess you
could say that most of October was spent on recon by my BF and I. He went to see his lawyer too, as well as
made calls to all of the social workers, doctors, etc. that are involved with
the kids. We both wanted as much
information as possible to get a really good idea of where we stand before
going any further.
All of this
mostly just confirmed that we are on the right track for the most part, and
that other than the babymomma drama; things can’t get much worse than they have
been. She can’t get any more child
support than she currently gets (which is a lot, 40% of my BF’s net paycheck,
not including the health insurance he pays for them), she can’t touch anything
of mine, and as much as she may threaten and bluster, she has absolutely no
grounds to prevent him seeing his kids.
This pretty much covers our worst fears, so this confirmation has really
gotten rid of the huge elephant in our home.
So I guess
now that we know where we are, we can start thinking about where we want to go.
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