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| Living with Teenagers |
Or, at the very least, how to keep from being a wicked stepmother
By Fiona Soltes
My stepmother was the first Christian I ever met. I don't mean a Christian in name only. Patty Simmons really tried to live a life that shined brightly for her King. And at 17, I hated her for it.
Let me explain: Patty served a God I'd never really heard about, much less personally encountered. And it was the same God I was still angry with for allowing my mother to die. The same God that, as far as I could tell, was going to let this woman steal my father's heart. Talk about having the cards stacked against you.
This is a scene most stepmothers easily recognize: Walking into a field of hidden land mines, encountering children who may be angry, resentful, indifferent, or simply confused about this new woman's place in their lives. To make things worse, there's that cultural understanding (perpetually propagated since the first copy of Cinderella was read) that stepmothers are by nature wicked, cackling shrews with lists of housekeeping chores and unrealistic expectations in the folds of their over-starched skirts.
That's certainly the mindset I had when Dad brought my stepmother into my world. Even now, 20 years later, Patty still can remember the sharp sting of my rejection.
Kali Schnieders also can remember that harsh sting. When she fell for Larry, the package included 8-year-old Elizabeth. Kali had no children of her own.
"I wanted a family, and it seemed God had answered my prayers," she said. "Until I woke up from that dream and found out it was a nightmare."
Power struggles. Grudges. Misunderstandings. It was brutal.
But today, with 15 years of hindsight, Kali and Elizabeth Schnieders have come together - not only as mother and daughter, but also as friends. And they've combined their wisdom in the recently released book, You're NOT My Mom (Nav Press), as well as its companion Web site. It's a rocky story, but also one that's jampacked with God's grace, lessons learned, and supernatural wisdom for mothers and children of every kind.
"We really want to give people a sense of hope," said Elizabeth, now a 23-year-old graduate student. "As mad, dark, and sad as things can get, we want them to know that things can still work out."
Patty tells me she's always had a "heart for the down and out," and I'm glad for it. Meeting me and my older brother, she was struck by the empty places, the hurts that needed to be soothed. God had filled her with compassion for us - so much so that she was able to understand that our anger wasn't really directed at her. That doesn't mean there weren't arguments. But she was always able to step back and pray that God would do what she knew she couldn't. I remember asking her so many questions about her faith. Hard ones. I wanted proof of God's existence and love, not understanding that, at that very moment, proof was standing right in front of me.
Dr. Michele Marsh, a psychologist and senior staff therapist who directs two offices of the Philadelphia-based Council for Relationships, said blended families often face common issues. Near the top of the list is the fact that stepmothers usually are ready to pursue the relationship with the stepchild before the stepchild is ready to receive it.
"Stepmothers can rush in too soon with their own ideas about what that relationship should be like," Marsh said. "However wellintentioned, stepmothers might have expectations that are too high about how quickly that relationship can develop."
Elizabeth, whose mother died five years before her father's remarriage, recalls feeling "stuck" with her new stepmom, not at all the kind of person Elizabeth wanted. The idea of warm, home-baked cookies on the table after school rapidly went out the window.
"Elizabeth wanted a woman whose life goal was to be a mom," Kali said. "But I was a career woman who happened to fall in love with a man with a child ... Elizabeth's vision of a stepmom was a cross between Martha Stewart, June Cleaver, Marge Simpson, and Mother Teresa. Instead, she got judge Judy." And yet, through a series of what she calls magic moments, Kali had a revelation: First, it takes only one person to change a relationship. And second, as an adult, the responsibility to make it work fell more on her than on her stepdaughter.
"Looking back, there were three main areas in which we failed: At first, the failure to blend, then the failure to bond, and finally, the failure to bless. And that's where God came in," she said.
"He helped me see it clearly. I was in the Scriptures, and I read the words 'Children are a blessing from the Lord.' He didn't say, 'your children.' He said, 'children.' All of a sudden, it dawned on me that He meant Elizabeth to be a blessing; and if she wasn't being a blessing to me, I needed to turn to Him to see what was stopping that from happening.
"I told myself that even though Elizabeth doesn't act or talk like one, God says she's a blessing, so it was up to me to figure out what He meant by that. It was a subtle shift but a major one, and it affected my attitude toward her."
Previously, Kali had been counting the days and years until Elizabeth was old
enough to leave home, not realizing that she was "missing the beauty of her presence along the way."
"One day, my husband Larry said a key thing that knocked it home for me," Kali said. "I told him, 'I've done my last for Elizabeth. I'll do it for you, but not for her.' And he said, 'Don't do it for me. Do it for yourself. She may be all you have one day.' It dawned on me that if anything ever happened to him, we maybe all either one of us has."
At my college graduation, a year and a half after Dad and Patty married, she brought me a corsage. It was a gardenia, as fragrant as any I'd ever smelled. What she didn't know was that it had been my mother's favorite flower. At that moment, I felt a sense of continuity, a sense of God's hand in the grand scheme. Even though it had been hard, I was starting to see that it could be worth it.
Without God's help, Kali said, there's no way she could have survived the first nine years of her relationship with Larry and Elizabeth.
"Without God, I couldn't have stayed in this for so long, waiting for her to love me, accept me, even tolerate me," she said. "The most tragic thing in stepfamilies is when they don't wait for the blessing. They simply encounter the rejection and the pain, and don't wait long enough to experience the love. I ask myself, 'What if I had left in that ninth year?' I would have missed so much."
The book she and Elizabeth wrote is full of sections titled "What I Would Have Done Differently," and "If Only I Had Known." Writing it, the women said, was a cathartic experience that continued to reveal how mother and daughter viewed the same situations so differently, and how easily even the best of intentions were misunderstood. "And you know, at first, I really questioned God," Elizabeth said. "I didn't understand why He had to put this evil woman in my life, one who would just mess everything up. But Kali has shown me so much and we've come so far. I was at a meeting with her recently, and it just slipped out. I said she was my best friend. And it's true. She is."
Not so long ago, I asked Patty about the moments that stood out in our almost 20-year relationship. Of course, she mentioned the time I actually tried to persuade her not to marry my dad. But she also spoke of the days I'd come home from school and we'd sit and talk. Sometimes we laughed; sometimes we cried. Sometimes we were frustrated or insecure or uncertain of what would come next. But she knew, even then, what I was yet to discover: God had a plan, and she was willing to hang in there long enough to see it come to pass. It was a beautiful gift she gave me. It wasn't just that she pointed me to the Father; it was that she used her own hands to do so, hands that touched, held, and loved as only a mother's could.
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