i heard a good quote over the holidays, it is great for when life gets hard and you feel like you have no control or things are beyond you
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"you cant control the waves, but you can learn to surf"
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the other poster's also had great thoughts on how we expect things to be due to the media's portrayal of things like weddings, announcments of pg's, engagements, births, birthdays, anniversaries etc.... life is real... those things are someone's idea of how they wish it had been or wish that it was for them or anyone.... frank zappa had a lot of great ideas and thoughts on this media setting the ideals in life for adults and especially for children and of course youth in his auto-biography. the love song, soap opera fall in love, fall out of love, life is filled with huge moments of excitement and terrible lows of disappointment...rather like main stream music/television/novels etc. i wish i could remember the name of that book,
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also like the other poster's said, do try to work on forming your own relationship with your dsd, that goes a long way in helping to feel as though you are becoming and eventually part of their 'little unit' rather than an outsider looking in and feeling like you have no place there. create your own place with her. i know that it really helped when an experienced smomadvised me to try that, and it has worked. i do have my own relationship with both of my sd's and although their main one is with their dad, we have our own special bond and relationship that is strong and trustful and loving on both sides... :family love:
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blending a family is a lot of hard work and compromise... on everyone's part, but i have found that the party coming in has the most work and compromise and trying to find their place or as i havew experienced 'make their own place' in an already existing unit. i have found that it has also been good advice for my dh with making his own relationships with my children... it has made blending our family a lot easier.... i am thankful daily for the advice that i have been blessed to receive in the past nearly seven years of forming our family. i learned a lot from lot of other smoms.
the most important thing i learned and heard repeatedly was to form my own relationship and bond with my schildren.
it made it easier for dh's family to accept me and truly appreciate my efforts to accept and love my sd's also, it raised their opinion of me and of what i was willing to to do, especially when it came to their darling neices/granddaughters etc... they could really feel that i wasnt trying to interfere or force my place into their already existing family unit, traditions and well expectations of what a smom might or might not expect or demand and therefore they eventually accepted me and allowed i have found that they have allowed me to begin integrate my traditons into theirs also.
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off topic maybe, but in my family there is a tradition where the lady of the house rings a crystal bell once the children have laid out cookies, hung stockings and the other things that are traditional to families, then the mother of the house does the bed check, hugs and kisses and good nights and the children would lay there and listen for that beautiful crystal chime of this beautiful bell and the children know that it is time to get to sleep because mom has let santa know that it is safe for him to come and do his work here. anyhow, as we had my dh's mom here on christmas eve this year, i explained just how this small ritual was so important to me and wishing my mom was here to share in this tradition. i told her that had my own mother been here, i would have deferred to her as the matriarch of my own family. this is the second year that we have held a Christmas Eve gathering, and really it was just mil and fil. But after explaining it to her, i asked her if she would please ring the bell in my own mother's place, being so far from my own mother we have become so close and in just this past year i have come to really feel that she has been there through a particularly hard year for me and that I loved her so much and how much it has meant to me to be able to feel as though i could really trust her to not judge me or the things that have been distressful and terribly hard and she hadnt once let me down. treating me as though i was her true daugher. she was there through spencer's birthe and my upset and heart break regarding that, in fact she was the only one in roberts whole family that i told he was on the way and told when he was born. i think that i didnt tell anyone until robert's dad just in the past month or so. anyhow, she really is like a mother to me and i love her.Â
she was very touched, my sd's loved it and loved having a tradition that i had loved and looked forward to as a child, it was like the last thing in a harry potter spell that made the magic happen
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maybe if you look at being a sd as sort of like being a dil, coming into a relationsip that is long term. that has it's special rituals and traditions, that have a history together... just like the one that you and dh are building together, and now you, dh and sd, you, dh, sd, and both sets of inlaws there is also the one that you are building with sd herself. maybe that one my prove the hardest... it involves so much being the 'outsider' not like having dh roll head on into our lives.. it is different somehow with women. i don't know why that it, it just seems to be that way. or maybe men feel it too, but they dont talk about it like we do.
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anyhow what worked for me was to think of how i wished or my favourite auntie was when i were little, or which story book character i wished was my nanny or if you are super lucky the same mother that your own was. and thentried to treat my sd's that way, how you wished another adult in your life could have been. someone they can totally trust to love them no matter what. to listen with a little bit less biased opinion a safe ear that she can talk about her true feelings about things. a good cand caring adult but no less true friend. i share such a close loving bond with my sd's. each access they seek me out separately and together and we talk and say nothing or craft or chat or what ever, cuddle, just be together. i no longer feel any of the jealousy or negative feelings that i felt in the beginning of our relationship. i changed and with that so did everythihngn else.
i think that really trying to come at it with that perspective rather than feeling resentment or jealousy at their relationship, make the time, plan it and make sure that dh knows that this will be special bonding time that is going to happen each access visit or once a week if he has more than eow access. and talk to sd about it too, how you want to form a relationship with her, because you love her dad and you truly hope that you and she can share that type of love as it grows with time, how it is important to you that you and she have your own separate relationship, just as she and her dad do, just as you and her dad do. then planthings to do together, anything or nothing... and do them. and talk and listen and you will find that you do form a relationship with her, and as that happens, as you make a bond all your own with her.. your feelings of jealousy will fade. because you will have what you feel you are missing, that speial connection, relationship, that thing they have that you arent part of.
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you have to power to do this, and it will make all the difference in your relationship with your dh, and perhaps his feelings about having another child, or just a good positive family change for the better if nothing more
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hth~
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