Walking Through the Storm and Becoming Your Best Self

It’s not a coincidence that if you ask almost every stepmom you meet, she’ll admit to, at some point, “losing herself.” That’s because women have a survival instinct to sacrifice their needs and wants for those around them, in hopes of being accepted by “the tribe” and subsequently kept safe (yes, our caveman instincts are alive and well).

Needless to say, men don’t have this instinct. They have a different relationship to their needs than women. They’re VERY GOOD at honoring them.

Your Best Self

When they’ve lost themselves, I love to encourage women to remember those times when they felt their best; their most confident, most at peace, most relaxed, most kind, most loving – because those are actually the qualities that will help them the most in shifting their current experience of stress.

So when I pose a question like “What does your best self look like?” many times a stepmom will think back to a time before she met her partner, before she sacrificed everything for love, before she was faced with drama and challenges she never knew were possible.

Changing

When we think back to that time, it’s really tempting to wish and dream about being that person again. We remember how happy and carefree we were.

But here’s the thing, you can’t go back to being the same person you were before: conflict with the ex, before you were made to feel insignificant at family events, before you felt in competition with a child, before the emotional and financial stress of court, etc… before every unhealed wound, insecurity and survival instinct has been laid out on the table, glaring at you.

Stepfamily life forces you to either grow, or suffer.

It took me a few years to realize my mistake – of trying to be who I was before I met my husband, because I really liked myself, and my simple life!

But if I looked deeper, the truth was my life wasn’t nearly as rich without him in it. It wasn’t as meaningful.
I wasn’t challenged to learn how to accept someone right where they are, as they are.
I wasn’t learning how to open my heart when I felt like closing it.
I wasn’t learning how to release control when things felt so unjust.
I wasn’t helping thousands of stepmoms, changing lives and saving marriages – before I met him.

I used to say my life was so easy before I met my husband. And it was. But I’ve come to believe that life isn’t necessarily meant to be easy, it’s meant to be fulfilling. And that’s what I’ve found – as I’m walking out of the storm.

For many of you who are in the middle of the storm, it’s hard to imagine becoming a better person than you were when you walked in it. But you have to know that it’s possible.

In fact, facing challenges and learning how to overcome them is really the only way we grow.

When life is easy, we’re stagnant. We have no reason to change and become better people.

So you can choose to learn and grow, or you can choose to wilt and suffer. I don’t think you’d be here if you were choosing the latter.

Getting back to your Best Self

Since you can’t be the person you were before, look for the qualities you had, that you really loved, and start finding ways to cultivate them again.

Also pay attention to new qualities and strengths you’ve gained since becoming a stepmom.

These steps are going to be the key to you becoming a new version of your Best Self – thanks to this storm.