I am so thrilled today to share with you that my audio preview is live and ready for your prime time listenership! This is the first dedicated resource I know of for stepparents coming into a family where a parent has died. In today’s post I also inform you about a few other stepparenting and family resources.
For the [...]
I do encourage comments and friendly debate on this blog, but I have to admit I was surprised to receive a comment this summer from a reader nicknamed Daisy: ”I came here for comfort, and instead find an outrageous display of selfishness.”
Daisy, who is herself grieving the loss of her adult son, felt that the [...]
Because my 21-year-old stepson has moved back in with us for a while, I thought this was a good time to re-visit the topic of zigzag evolution. This was the child who moved out of the house before his senior year of high school, which was a huge zigzag at that time. His moving back [...]
This is the third in a Wednesday post series about the role of the parent in stepfamilies. Stepfamilies might feel more cohesive if the parent is able to:
Be the central hub of the stepfamily.
Be the main disciplinarian in the stepfamily.
Be physically available (present).
Be emotionally available (interested).
Today we’re looking at how grief and loss can block [...]
I think I picked up this term, zigzag evolution, from Patricia
Papernow’s foundational book, Becoming a Stepfamily. The meat of
this concept is that stepfamilies do not evolve in a straight, predictable,
line. Rather, they zigzag, more along the lines of the one-step-
forward, two-steps-back analogy.
While it’s true that all families zigzag to some extent, stepfamilies
typically have more obstacles [...]