Chip Chick
This 18-year-old girl’s parents had three children together– her and a set of 22-year-old girl and boy twins.
Growing up, her mother suffered from a lot of mental health-related issues that ultimately led her mom to be a poor partner and mother. At five-years-old, her parents split up, and while her father had full custody of the children, they were still able to visit her mom whenever it was deemed safe to.
Later on, her father began to date a woman who is now their stepmother. In the beginning, she and her siblings were fond of their father’s new partner and had a fun time hanging out with the woman. They viewed her as a fun aunt, and their relationships were good.
However, the longer that her father and her stepmother were together, the more he would compare her stepmother to the children’s birth mother. He would compare things like their parenting, their cooking, and just about everything imaginable.
“At the time, it wasn’t an issue. Stepmom herself didn’t overstep any boundaries, we still had a relationship with our mom, and our mom liked stepmom, so all was well,” she explained.
But by the time she turned 13, things with her mother started to take a turn for the worse. After she turned 14, she lost her mother due to her rapidly declining health.
She doesn’t remember much from that year, but she recalls that when things started to return to a new normal, her father started to compare her mother and stepmother even more. He would continue to make comparisons to prove how much of a better mother their stepmother was to them, and just overall created an uncomfortable environment for everyone.
“He’d say stuff like ‘she’s your only mother now’… and when mom was alive, it was no big deal. Now that she’s gone, it really felt as if he was forcing us to move on from our mom,” she said.
This behavior and commentary directly impacted the children’s relationship with their father and stepmother. Recently, her older sister became pregnant unexpectedly, and while her sister shared the news with her siblings immediately, she held off on telling their dad and stepmother.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
