When Mother’s Day comes around, stepmoms everywhere cringe in anticipation. Some stepmoms are treated to love and presents from their stepkids. Others are forgotten completely. As stepmoms, we sometimes don’t know what to make of this holiday, this day to honor the role of mother as we find ourselves in a role we never expected to play.

Regardless of your situation, and I hope it’s one of affection and respect with your stepkids, we can remember that we come to Mother’s Day with a different frame of mind than the “real” moms. We mother our stepkids by choice, and that makes us powerful and strong. We’re old and wise enough to make our own choices and then live out the responsibility of them the best we can. As moms of C-H-O-I-C-E, we’re

Clairvoyant . . . well, not exactly, but we often see what others in the family don’t. We can spot a manipulative child a thousand pouts away. We can see a missing parental backbone without need of an x-ray. We can sense a problem brewing like animals know hurricanes. It’s amazing how clever stepmothering makes us! We learn quickly what we’re dealing with, and even if it’s tough, we remain

Hopeful because we learn that sometimes things don’t turn out as badly as we feared. We hope because we see glimmers of the possibility of all we’ve dreamed coming true. We hope because we treasure the tiniest bit of progress we make with a stepkid. We hope because we don’t forget what brought us to this choice and we still believe we were right. And then, on those especially tough days, when our hope dares to fade a bit, we become

Obsessive and unwilling to give in to the despair. We want an explanation for what’s going wrong and we’ll turn everything inside out to find it. We don’t want to give up, so we trust there’s an answer to our ills. When life gets messy, we look for ways to clean it up. We look for solutions, whether that means reaching out to each other, getting professional help, working on our own issues, making new family plans – whatever we need, we’ll do our best to find it because we’re

Invested in our marriages and we don’t want to fail. We all know failure of some kind, so struggle isn’t something new or something we’ve never overcome before. But this struggle is a big one, and our kids and stepkids are part of a package now that stands only about a 30 percent chance of survival. We’ve come so far in the fight already. We know the odds and we know the challenges, so we learn all we can, compromise where we can, and do everything we can to make our choice work. We’re deeply invested, but we’re not

Crazy. We can’t allow ourselves to be abused or mistreated or to become everyone’s dumping ground and scapegoat. We learn to fight for our families while we protect ourselves. We’re not the “real mom,” but we’re not a glorified baby sitter, either. We owe our stepkids and their mom respect, but we deserve that same respect in return. We work to remedy our part in the problems we face, but we can’t fix everybody else or take on others’ responsibilities. We go as far as we can go to build a safe, happy, successful family because we’re extremely

Eager to make it work. We’re impatient for the calm after the storm. By the time any stepfamily reaches a place where life begins to feel relatively normal, they’re exhausted. Making it through the difficult years, and they can be many, takes more stamina and forgiveness and love than we ever imagined, and we always want to get to the safe place sooner than it happens. But that eagerness helps to fuel us on, to quickly resolve issues where we can, to seek creative solutions and embrace new beginnings. Like a mom eagerly waits to hear her child’s first words, we walk in anticipation of our family’s milestones.

Remember that your CHOICE, today and everyday, empowers you and sustains you through the holidays and the oh-my-golly-days. Celebrate all you are and all you’re becoming. I wish you every happiness!