WBUR Podcasts, Boston.
The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart sick.
The sugars are here, speaking straight into your ears.
I'm Steve Olman.
I'm Cheryl Strayed.
This is Dear Sugar's.
Oh dear song, won't you please?
Share some better sweet days with me.
I check my bedbugs every day.
Oh, and this sugar, you see in my way.
Hi Cheryl.
Hi Steve.
Well today we are going to talk about step children.
And this is because for long time listeners you know we've talked about step parents and a couple of different episodes.
And each time our letter writers thank you basically filled our inbox with questions about whether we're going to handle the experience of being a step child.
Right.
It's a fraught relationship.
And I think that it's one of those really rare times that we're forced to be very intimate with people sometimes that we don't even like.
We don't even know.
You know suddenly you look up and your mom or dad is married somebody else.
And that can be beautiful or it can be complicated.
One thing that does get I think overlooked when we talk about step parents and especially we've heard on our step mother's episode.
You know we've got the evil step mother in every fairy tale.
And then we've got this sort of shady predatory step father.
But I think what does get overlooked is that there's also beautiful relationships sometimes.
There's love between step children and step parents.
And I can speak personally to kind of like both sides of this, the hard stuff and the lovely stuff.
I did have a wonderful step father for a time in my life.
I didn't have a good father, but I had a wonderful step father when I was like 11 my mom married this guy who I call Benny.
And he was really the father I never had.
He loved us and nurtured us and he treated us like we were his own.
And you know I think that that experience has been one that deeply transformed my life because I did have the love of a man.
And I think that my father's father figure I think that that helped me in so many ways heal the wounds that my father made by his abuse and abandonment of me.
Now you know my step father also ultimately did end up hurting me.
He ended up wounded me too after my mom died.
When I was 22 he couldn't go on being a father figure to me.
Now Cheryl you know as listeners might know my mom passed away a couple years ago and my dad has met a wonderful woman.
Your dad who's been on the show.
Who's been on the show doctor. Dr. Rick.
That's right. And actually has known this woman for years and they fell in love.
And they're going to get married and I realized oddly enough in my early 50s I'm going to be a step child.
I'm going to have a step mom and obviously I want nothing but good things for my dad and for his wife to be who I adore.
But even with that good outcome my feelings as a step child to be are complicated.
And somewhat mixed because of course inevitably the step child and the step parents are stepping into a very complicated and fraught situation where they're suddenly very intimate with somebody who is not the parent that they were used to and desired the love of.
Let me read the first letter. I think it speaks directly to all of this.
Dear sugars. I'm a 26 year old female whose parents got divorced when I was a junior in college.
We all saw it coming but this didn't make it any less painful.
My parents marriage was probably doomed from the beginning by the combination of them being so young having kids right away and my mom's drug and alcohol abuse.
My mom was an addict for all of my childhood and most of my adult life.
I'm haunted by memories of me and my siblings having to drive her before we had a license, her reeking of vodka and cheap wine, finding random pills in her pockets while doing laundry, her sleeping all day, her never staying at a job longer than six months.
My dad working all the time to try and keep our lives normal.
My mom's failed suicide attempts, their constant fighting and the denial of our crumbling family.
I basically grieved the loss of my parents' marriage all my life. I watched it slowly burn all around me until it came crashing down when I was 20.
What followed was even worse. They separated and my mom hit a car while she was drunk and went to jail while I was at my college graduation. It was horrible.
But this letter isn't about all that. It's about my parents' remarrying.
My mom found a nice man with a good job on a dating website and I really like him. He's quiet and very kind and he seems to be able to deal with my mother's bipolar disorder way better than I can. Let's call him Stuart.
My dad married a woman we were called Donna, who he'd worked with for several years.
His way of introducing her was to bring her to our Thanksgiving dinner, no warning, no asking if it was okay, no nothing. She was just there.
I don't know how to say this nicely, so I'll just say it. I don't like her.
My first interactions with her were watching her sit on my dad's lap, watching them slap each other's butts, kissing all the time all over each other in front of me.
She's very loud and talks over me. She never asks me anything about myself. She never lets my dad and I have alone time.
She'll even get mad if my dad chooses to sit next to me at a restaurant instead of her. My dad and I live in different parts of the country, so I see him maybe once or twice a year if I'm lucky.
As soon as they got married, he kicked me off his medical insurance and phone plan and talked to me about paying my student loans myself.
I'm an adult and happy to do all those things. I just find it ironic it all came within 72 hours of them being married.
I used to be such a daddy's girl and talk to my dad about everything all the time.
I didn't know how to handle the loss of my mother's health and felt like he was the only one I could talk to.
I had such empathy and heartache for him and all he had to go through in his marriage with her.
I respected him so much for trying to give me and my siblings a normal life with money and resources so he didn't have to focus on her mother's crippling addiction.
I used to filter everything I did and set around him so as to not hurt his feelings because I love him so much and I'm so grateful for all he's done.
But I feel like he's allowed this woman to completely take over his life.
I feel distant and angry every day and don't want to visit him anymore.
I feel like he doesn't have a clue who I am or what I want or what I need.
I get so jealous of my friends and even my boyfriend and how much their parents care about them and their lives.
As far as my mom goes while I like her husband I live in fear she's going to do the same thing to him that she did to my dad.
She's been sober for a few years but I fear her bipolar behaviors will return and drive her toward drugs or suicide.
It would crush me to see her do it to another person.
So what do I do?
How do I handle the future with both sets of step parents?
How do I like Donna Moore and continue to have a relationship with my dad?
How do I spend quality time with my mom and Stewart when I have to keep myself from crying just thinking about them?
I've been to therapy and read the boundaries books and tried so hard to forgive and forget but I can't.
I have so much empathy some days and some days I want a punch a wall and never get out of bed. I dread Christmas and birthdays.
I can't even think about how I'll handle my own wedding day.
I've gone from being someone who wanted to be a mom to being terrified of having children.
How do I move forward?
What book am I not reading or what pill can I take to make this easier and less hurtful?
Signed wounded step child.
Oh boy.
Wow.
Wounded step child.
I feel your pain.
That's really it is a hard thing and I wish there were a pill that you could take to make this better.
There isn't but what I will say is that you are very much in a transition period right now, especially with your father and his new wife.
And I think that whenever things are new, they can be especially difficult and tumultuous.
And so the optimist in me wants to say clearly she sees that the two of you are close and she's doing very classic, very immature things that sort of betray her inner turmoil about being threatened essentially by the bond you have with your dad.
No adult gets upset who's next to who in the restaurant if she's of a reasonable mind. And part of that is because your dad kind of botched the introduction.
He botched that bringing Donna into your life moment and you know you can't go back in time.
But I do think that it would be useful for you to at least try to talk to your dad about these wounds essentially that he's causing and bringing Donna into your life moment.
And Donna and to your family that didn't take into account both Donna's feelings, you know after all there is a reason she's feelings written and your own feelings of being shut out by their new union.
And you know you say that you're angry and hurt and it makes you not want to visit your dad right now.
But I would say that the only way that this divide is going to be bridge is if you try to reach across it in a very I think intentional way and in a very serious way that you say to your dad, I love you and I and I value you and you say to him essentially all the things you said to us.
And without really casting aspersions on on Donna say you know I'm feeling really distant from you and I want to get together and talk to you about it and I want to do it alone.
And you know I know that that's going to cause problems in his marriage because as you said he doesn't Donna doesn't approve of that.
And I think that if you can somehow get to your dad and make him understand that you are not questioning his decision to marry this woman you are not even saying that you don't want this woman to be part of your life.
But that you first need to have a heart to heart with your dad about all of the big changes that have happened in this recent period of your life.
I was put in mind to David Copperfield and the inherent difficulty that happens when a step parent comes into the life of a child.
There's a moment in David Copperfield where Edward Mirdstone that the stepfather is first introduced to David Copperfield and his feeling instinctually I think speaks to how you feel about Donna.
David Copperfield says he padded me on the head but somehow I didn't like him or his deep voice and I was jealous that his hand should touch my mother's in touching me which it did.
I put it away as well as I could.
Now what matters is not that Edward Mirdstone ends up being a bad guy.
We don't know really what Donna will wind up being. Hopefully she'll be somebody who's at least neutral if not loving and positive in your life.
But what matters is she is arrival for a great love in your life which is your father somebody you revere and connect to and that is something you need to be honest and in reckoning with no matter who it was and what their personality would be when somebody comes into a beloved parents life and is now their partner.
That's tough for the kids. We don't like to talk about it because it's too equally edible or whatever but that is tough to absorb whether you're 10 or 20 or 50.
Yeah and I mean it's especially tough when it's up to you know you you don't like Donna you say with clarity and my plan is you know okay Donna is just really in a hard patch because she she does feels written by you.
Plan B might be that it's going to get worse and you need to grieve the loss to some degree of your father and move on and when we become adults there is a way that we have to reckon with our parents own humanity and independence in a way that we don't have to when we are actually dependent children okay when we're children our parents really are expected to put us first.
And when we're adults they don't always do that and they certainly don't do that when they marry people we don't like right as your father did you know the wedge between me and my stepfather is a spouse that's threatened by my relationship with him she did various things that are you know not so different from some of the things you described would have stepped out and I did make the play to my step dad I did say hey I love you whether I can have a relationship with your spouse or not I want a relationship with you he.
He opted not to do that and that was a big heartbreak on my life I had to let it go we are estranged and I had to come to terms with that I had to let that go and so you know plan A is that it's a hard time and you can heal this even if it's not perfect plan B is you might have to get used to the sorrow and rage you feel the jealous you feel about other people having loving parents to represent for them.
What I know having gone many miles down down this very road myself is that you know that there is a way that we can all of course come to terms with these kind of losses and sometimes a parent marrying somebody new really that's the beginning of the end of a certain kind of relationship you get to have with that parent yeah I do think that some of what Donna has unconsciously awakened in you is the trauma of your mom's own.
Solipsism and destructively selfish behavior that what's happening in a sense is your dad is being taken away from you by this self-involved woman who has no interest in who you are and whether you're doing okay and I think that feeling that the mother figure is not looking out for you is a very old and familiar one for you I think it's being awakened by this new mother figure.
I also think that you're not going to be able to rescue your mother or whatever demon she's battling with that's her set of demons to battle with and I think you need to to the extent you can realize you can't continue to take care of her and lead your own life and I specifically want to say that you know you in your childhood and we do this with family members we typecast them but you know the types were that your mom was all selfish all self involved all self destructive and you know you are not going to be able to take care of her and lead your own life and I specifically want to say that you know you in your childhood and we do this with family members we typecast them but you know the types were that your mom was all selfish all self involved all self destructive and you know you are not going to be able to take care of her and lead your own life and I specifically want to say that you know you in your childhood and we do this with family members we typecast them but you know the types were that your mom was all selfish all self involved all
you had to become the adult and your dad's paradigm was that he was all selflessness all love and connection and sacrifice and your deepest fear here is when you write I feel like he doesn't have a clue who I am or what I want or what I need and that feeling so familiar because I think that's the feeling that you got in relation to your mom and what I would say part of what will help this be a better outcome no matter which way it goes is if you step back and say okay my dad has a right to be a little bit selfish
I don't mean to accuse him of being selfish but for you it's very out of character when he's suddenly flirting and expressing his happiness and his connection to this woman you're used to him being somebody who's there for the kids who's trying to hold the family together who's a sacrifice and who is particularly attuned in that sacrifice to your needs
some of this is inevitable he wants to have a good time with his new wife he has a right to that if you will grant him that and grant him the ability to give himself some love and pleasure it might help you be less angry at him for doing that and by extension less fearful that Donna is going to turn him into your mother in essence
there will come a time hopefully where you and your dad will be able to reconnect and you'll realize he hasn't disappeared forever but he's also not exclusively there just to take care of you and your siblings he's also in the time that he has left on earth trying to bring himself some pleasure and happiness
and one of the things that has been really healing to me in my own process of trying to come to terms with letting my stepfather go as my dad that even though it didn't turn out with him the way I wanted it to and my adult life I really feel genuinely grateful for the love he gave me when it mattered most
and that is when I was a kid and I needed a dad and wanted to step child you had a really great dad as you as you say and this isn't to say it all that like you have to let your dad go and that he's not going to continue to be a great dad but I think in some ways what might be meaningful for you is to draw strength from that you know remember the father who nurtured you and protected you and and was everything to you and you know that some of those skills he gave you
are really things that you might call upon to navigate this difficult moment where you do in some ways have to see him in a new light and relinquish parts of him to his new wife we wish you luck
we should do
did you kill Marlene Johnson I think you're one of the first people to have actually asked from WBUR and ZSP media this is beyond all repair a new podcast about an unsolved murder that believe you questioning everything somebody should be in jail for murdering my sister a woman who's never been believed as long as they think I have done this then they're not looking for who actually did this and that's what makes it a cold case
no it's a botched case and a search for the truth once and for all wow it just gets more interesting beyond all repair listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts be careful you're digging in a place that's been very peaceful for a while do it anyway dig
so we're back and we have our guest actually in the studio the amazing Theo Pauline Nester she's the author of how to sleep alone in a king size bed and writing is my drink she lives in teaches in Washington state and coaches writers everywhere her blog is called writing is my drink calm
she also had an article in a host called fighting for custody of my stepfather which really compelled us to invite her here today the welcome to do sugars it's so great to be here hi Cheryl hi Steve hi so I actually know you in real life to know as humans that's right west coast writers yes we stick together so anyway it's an extra thrilled to have you and I wonder if you can share with us and our listeners your experience as a step time
so my parents divorced when I was 11 months old and after that I had very little relationship with my father I call my stepfather my dad and I call my biological father my bio dad so my bio dad and I had very little relationship I'd see him like maybe once a year he essentially moved to Mexico after my parents divorced
taking my sister with him so when my mom married my stepfather it was actually a really happy time in my life because he chose to completely envelope me into his pretty stable wonderful nuclear family and extended family
he has he had because they've actually everyone in the story has passed away sadly to children and they became my stepbrother and step sister but most importantly here is that my stepfather stepped completely into the role of being my parent and how old were you when I was 10 okay and even though you know I was too old to be like this is my dad
we were both so willing that we really like made it as much as we could like he was my father and he did things like help me with my math homework which was let me tell you not easy he taught me how to drive he taught me how to ski and he would get me up at 4 30 in the morning we would drive up to a slur and go skiing
he represented to me someone I want to be like neither of my parents graduated from high school and my stepdad went to a really good university and he had a really good job and he is family was known in our community so it was like he was my hero I got to kind of socially rise in the world because of the family in the home that he offered me
and even though there was always something a little bit off about that it's never like oh I was born into this but still it was about as good as you could hope for so fast forward to when I'm 30 and my stepfather and my mother never had a great marriage
there was a lot of fighting and by the time I was 30 it seemed like it was coming apart I would phone home and he was never there that had been semi normal because he traveled a lot for work but then there was a certain point where it was like no I've he's never there what's going on and my mom said well I think this is it I think we're splitting up and I said okay so where is he and she was like I don't know
what you don't know and like there's no number she's like well I have some ideas but I don't know and there's nothing I can tell you
it was kind of like I was that girl waiting for the boy to call like I was like waiting for my stepfather to phone me and say he still wanted to be a part of my life I was hoping
and then some ways him leaving your mom he was leaving you yeah he didn't get in touch and say yeah no okay we're breaking up but here's right no he didn't do the thing that we hope that grown ups would do right and even though I was a grown up and I had my own life it hurt very much because I was so attached to him but one day the phone rang and he's sort of acted like things were semi normal
and I made a decision in that moment that I was going to like you talked about with your stepfather make a play for him I always with him kind of deferred to him and let him say how relationship would go but I decided no I'm not going to do that I'm going to say I want you still to be my father are you still going to do that right and I was kind of shocked that that that
point in my life I was able to summons the courage to do it but the stakes were really high and he said of course I want that the problem is I don't want your mom to know where I am and I was said where are you and he said I'm in Florida and I'm with another woman wow and I was like okay so I won't tell her where you are I don't want to be in between the two of you but I still want you to be my dad
and that conversation was the changing moment he ended up marrying that woman and he ended up very quickly getting diagnosed with lung cancer and very quickly getting very ill and he only had a few more years to live
and he and I were very close during those years I had my first daughter during those years he was her grandfather and then as he was dying I spent the last six weeks supporting my stepbrother and his family who were the main caretaker
so my dad with his new wife and I got to be in the room with my stepbrother and his family when my dad died so it was really meaningful that in the end I was a daughter and I got to be a daughter
yeah yeah you're lucky I know I am lucky and I I feel the luckiness
dear sugars I grew up with a very loving hard working and amazing mother my biological parents divorced when I was two my mother met my stepdad a year later and married him when I was five
they had a child who's now 14 and she and I are very close over the years I separated myself from my drug and alcohol addicted biological father although my stepfather was not an overly loving or affectionate father figure he was the only father figure I ever knew and I loved him for treating me like his own
we had nicknames and inside jokes and he never made me feel like I was less than his biological child for that reason I changed my last name to his when I turned 18 this was a big emotional step for us I thought it would bind us together and admittedly
idealistically help heal my wounds for my biological dad more than anything though I craved a feeling of belonging of not feeling like the black sheep three years after I changed my name my mother told me she was splitting up with my stepdad
she was tired of his workaholic tendencies and worried he was either cheating on her or about to I felt heartbroken and devastated for her but also for myself
after all it wasn't just my mom who married him I helped him pick out her engagement ring I danced with him at the wedding cut the cake with them changed my name to his I felt as though I was getting divorced too I could never have guessed how accurate that feeling would be he immediately cut me off in every way financially emotionally all of it
there were even a few months where I thought I was going to have to change universities right before I was set to graduate since the divorce was finalized a few months ago my ex stepdad doesn't return my calls or emails the most I've gotten is a hallmark birthday card with his name signed at the bottom
my younger sibling was hurt by the split but she's still close with him I don't want to burden her with my feelings of abandonment I know the divorce was hard for everyone and after losing my own biological dad it would pain me more than anything to know that something I said affected their relationship
but it's hard for me to see photos of them going on trips together my mother knows that I was torn up by all of it but she has so much of her own pain to sort through
the adult part of my brain knows this is not my fault and I can't carry the burden of someone else's shortcomings but the child and me who looked up to this man for 18 years has no idea how to handle being cut off from someone I thought of as family
this is also an isolating problem one I find difficult to talk about with most people being a step anything is a hard path to walk the roads are unclear and every situation is so different
but I thought of this man as a father and now I feel utterly abandoned and ruthless I changed my name to feel a part of something but now every time I introduce myself I feel hot red anger and even embarrassment
how do I heal myself after this how do I not resent my sibling for her continued relationship with a man I thought was a father to both of us
please help shine a light on where I go from here signed no name to speak of
wow so what a letter yeah I mean the only sense this woman has lived out a kind of nightmare version of your scenario what did you feel and think as you are reading
yeah it's funny because there's actually this other level of similarity in our letter and I started thinking about how when there's anything with the father there's always something with the name
my biological father named me after him when I was born so my name's Theo pulling nester his name was Ted nester and then when my mother married my stepfather you know it was the early seventies and there was a lot of shame around
divorce then and she wanted us to appear as a normal family so back then you could just scratch out your kid's last name and put in the last name you wanted like it wasn't like today where it'd be like computers you know going like
error error so she's scratched in my stepfather's last name for mine and I used it until I was eighteen and so the letter writer and I are kind of like mere opposites in that way so I
didn't it wasn't a legal thing and it wasn't my choice and when I became eighteen as much as I loved my stepfather it was actually really uncomfortable and weird and problematic to have a last name that none of my documents
reflected and so when I went to go to college it's like I actually want to go to college with the name that's on my birth certificate and I decided then like that was going to be my name forever
so one of the things that I wanted to suggest to this letter writer well first I want to say I really feel for you because I know the anguish of being cut off from the person that you you know know as your
father and that you chose to be your father and he chose you and to have that relationship in jeopardy is really painful and I felt that pain and I felt it again when I read your
letter but I do think there's a few separate issues in your letter that are getting a bit conflated and that if you could tease them out a bit from each other it might help you to move forward
so I think there's the experience of your last name which you change to be your stepfather's there's the experience of being a stepchild in the world
and people not necessarily understanding even in your own family what that means to you because your half sibling is not a stepchild and your mother is busy with her own troubles
and then there's the relationship with your stepfather a separate thing to be dealt with and the first two are things that I think that you have a certain amount of control over
you have some control over your last name and if you choose to keep his last name you are also choosing to keep the name that represented the love that he gave you when you were a child
and so one thing you could think about is that that last name will represent the love that you were given by choice I never knew the luxury of having a biological father who just like loved you because he was your own kid
and I knew this other thing that I almost thought was sweeter which was I was chosen and I was loved by choice and that there is something really dear about that no matter what happens in the future and we can't control the course of relationships but the past is unchanged he did give you that
so you don't that that's consoling to me yeah I wonder I know that to be true because I said it and yet hearing it hearing that sentiment from you in your advice to no name to speak of is very powerful
I think it's I think it's a it's beautiful so thank you
well and it's funny that you say that because there's something that you've said about your stepfather that really touched me which was in some interview about wild you said that you'd written the whole book you handed it in and then you remember that he was the person who taught you how to camp
yeah and then you were like oh no I've got to add that in yeah and I mean I was very powerful is this the last edit I made in well I forgot you know that this man who I lost
yeah and part of that grief journey and wild I didn't write a whole lot about my stepfather because for for various reasons but part of that journey was was grieving my loss of him too not just of my mother and when I remember that it was it was he who gave me the skills I needed to go
hike the Pacific he taught me how to make fire he taught me how to camp he taught me how to to be self sufficient in the wilderness he really did and I mean what could be more fatherly than the line he taught me how to make fire right that's right almost
mythic right is so the name represents that but also represents this bond to your half sibling and that's a bond that's forever and if you choose to keep that name you will
use this affinity with your half sibling now the other thing is though you have a choice you can change your name back to what it was before you can change your name to
anything I changed my name and I know I didn't want my dad's name my name growing up with Cheryl Nyland and yeah I'm Cheryl straight you know it's interesting because like I've noticed a lot of
women writers have something about their name because our words are so important to us and so you know maybe you feel this too
letter writer that well in her she signs her letter no name to speak exactly this is clearly a very powerful words have power
even more power there are word that's attached to our identity right and I and I and having that as her signature rather than no father to speak of right
yeah that this is the thing that she could look at well yeah it's a letter partly about identity and you know what's what's beautiful is that your
father no name to speak of treated you like one of his own you felt like you were biological child not only that you had an
independent relationship to him and the downside of that is that in this time I suspect that he's pulling away from you
because he's in pain because his marriage is broken up and because you were so strongly identified with that family and that bond
it's painful for him to be in touch with you we don't know exactly what your stepfathers motives are but I would say that unconsciously
or consciously he might be ashamed but also he might be punishing you for your mother's actions after all she sounds like she initiated
the split based on his work of all like tendencies or his maybe straying from the marriage and what might be important for him to
hear is I'm not my mom and I do not share her feelings about you I was your daughter and I am your daughter and I want to
remain your daughter that's my hunch we don't know because we don't know we don't know but I mean she says I feel as though I'm
getting divorced too and I wrote right next to that sentence don't name to speak of yep because the thing is is you are that is the
strangest thing about being a stepchild who's present for that romance and marriage like I was to you know my siblings and I we
in the wedding party you know we were the the bridesmaids and the ring bearer and then you know all of that stuff and we felt that it was
our wedding because it was our wedding this was your wedding no name to speak of so it's also your divorce yeah and so I think that
to keep faith keep reaching out to him keep saying I am your daughter and I want to be here for you even if it has to look
a little bit differently now that this divorce is final I mean honestly the play might be to send him some version of this
letter you might say I feel as if you've disappeared from me and I'm distressed by that because you are somebody who
helped give me the identity that I've grown into now whether that is successful or not it least represents the most
that you can do in this moment you know we have to accept to some extent that especially as children you know parents
will make up their own minds we can't control them we can't control the future we can't control their
course of action but at least you will have said what you need to say to him I totally agree and I I think that
step for me even like if my stepfather had recoiled from me it was actually a fundamental step in my development
yeah because it was you know just me standing up for myself and saying this is what I want whether you want to
give it to me or not it you know it molded me in other areas of my life yeah you know I think to your sibling
no name to speak of can be a great source of comfort for you and maybe might help be a conduit through which you can
come to a better understanding with your stepfather and I pick up on in your letter that you know you're very reluctant
to sort of drag her into this to make her the go between her the mediator she is only 14 so of course I understand
it I think you're correct and and being cautious about that but I think that you might be overly cautious when it comes to thinking
about sharing your feelings with her yeah certainly she would understand why you would be distressed that suddenly the man who you both
knew as your father is suddenly shutting you out and you know I think that she might be a really wonderful
resource for you if you open your heart to her and share share your feelings and again you know I think it's
really important to keep out the sort of jealousy piece you know obviously that goes without saying that you feel jealous
of the time that she gets to spend with your dad but I think that you know really just talking about what your feelings are
what your hopes are that you want to continue this relationship with your father after the divorce and see what she has to say
she might be able to give you some insight into why your stepfathers making the choices
and I would just add to that that she's feeling this too she may be kind of uncomfortable and sad and maybe
angry about the fact that there's a silence between your stepfather and yourself and actually bringing it up with her
might be a relief to her that's like okay good we're going to talk about the elephant in the room
and it also does something that's really important which is to try to undo the hovering ghost of step
because of course fathers sudden withdrawal from this has reopened the idea of like who am I am I just a step
to him do I really matter right yeah in the letter you talked about like feeling ruthless abandoned like a black sheep
and longing for belonging and that was part of why you had wanted to change your name and you talked about how
you know there's it's kind of a lonely experience to be going through this because not everyone has this experience
so both my biological parents were married three times and then my stepfather was married four times
so I've like been through a lot of this and I always felt like a weirdo black sheep like everybody else is fine
but I'm not and part of that got exacerbated by the fact that I've been drawn in my life to people
who have these like amazing families because I wanted to like sit from the nectar of their family
and I wanted to sleep over at their house and have like breakfast there because I liked it there
and also because they had so much stability in their life they had a lot of love to give
but that caused a lot of comparison in my brain and it was still a problem for me grown up and going through divorce
so one of the things that I do to combat this even now is I have myself really look at all the families I know
and kind of list how they do have something kind of off right you know every family has something
and that there are a lot of step parents and there are a lot of people who you know are adopted
or might feel alienated for another reason or their dad died or you know like something
and to realize this experience of feeling a need for belonging is actually super universal
and this feeling of rootlessness is sadly pervasive one in our culture
and so that by focusing on how you're alike with other people rather than that you're different
that might help you through this period too.
And in closing really one note you know it didn't turn out well for me
and as hard as that was as hard as it was to become an adult without those people behind me
who were my mother and my father figure I made it through and so will you both of our letter writers today
I think about you know if the worst case scenario comes to pass you're going to be okay
because the beautiful thing about being a grown-up is you can build a family of your own
you can build your new family and it doesn't have to be step it doesn't have to be somebody who you know
abandons you it can be a sturdy structure that you build yourself on the love you make
and create in new relationships in the world.
Yeah I also think no name to speak of this stepfather was your father you are so clear-eyed about what you're feeling right now
it's a very painful truth but the people who are lost in this world lost to themselves
and lost to their families are the ones who can't articulate how they feel and why they feel that way
and you understand exactly that is a measure of your love for this man and your trust in him
that is reacting with sorrow and grief at his sudden and precipitous withdrawal from your life
but you might sign that letter that you're going to send him with your full name with his name
because that will tell him that you are there waiting for him to summon the part of himself that's ready to step back into that role in your life
and I hope he does that for both of you.
Yeah we wish you luck. The O. Polly Investor thank you so much for joining us under-siggers.
Thank you so much for having me here with such an honor to be part of the show.
If you want to see a picture of Theo and her stepfather we have one that we're going to put up on our website
you can find it at nytimes.com slash deer sugars.
deer sugars is produced by the New York Times and partnership with WBOR. Our producer is Alexander Lee Young,
our editor and managing producer is Larissa Anderson, our executive producer is Lisa Tovon and our editorial director is Samantha Henning.
We recorded this show at Talkback Sound and Visual in Portland, Oregon with our engineer Josh Millman.
Our mixed engineer is Brad Fisher. Our theme music is by Wonderly with vocals by Liz Bice.
Please find us at nytimes.com slash deer sugars. You can send us your letters at deer sugars at nytimes.com
that's deer sugars plural at nytimes.com or leave us a voicemail on our hotline at 929-399-8477.
And please check out our column, the sweet spot at nytimes.com slash the sweet spot.
