When I enquired about the year-end psychologist visit that my partner attended at the kid’s school I certainly wasn’t ready for what I was about to hear.
‘L. called you a step mum’ he said.
Wait…shock, terror….. ’what?’
‘Yes, when asked about any news in her life L. shyly mentioned and addressed you as her step mum.’
‘Dear god!!!!’, my jaw dropped. Inside, an intensity of feelings and emotions rushed past as if the marshal had sounded the alarm but no one knew where the meeting point was so everyone run in different directions.
It took me a couple of deep breaths to pick up the pieces of my dazed self.
When I allude that I am a step mum I say it as a joke as I see myself as their daddy’s girlfriend and that was the way I assumed that I was perceived by the three nuggets (my partners kids).
The realisation that they may (at least one of them) see me as a step mum has added a sac to my back that I am not sure I am ready to carry. There’s a sense of weighted responsibility that I hadn’t truly thought about.
As a therapist, I know the impact that adults (and other children) can have on kids, a word, a look, a remark; in the formative years everything counts to the sense of self and the shape up of the personality.
My creative imagination can already see this nugget 20 years ahead in the therapist chair saying: ‘So it all started when my step mum moved in with my dad…’ .
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