Her Dad And His Wife Are Terminally Ill And Angry At Her For Refusing To Adopt Her Stepsiblings When They Pass
She wasn’t raised with them. She didn’t grow up calling them siblings. But now, in the middle of two devastating diagnoses, she’s being asked to raise her stepsiblings as if they were always hers to begin with.
And while everyone around her is speaking the language of family and obligation, no one seems to be asking how much it costs to take on the weight of someone else’s life, especially when the person asking never truly showed up for hers.
Now she’s being called heartless for saying no, but all she’s ever wanted is to stop feeling like someone else’s backup plan.
For six and a half years now, this 26-year-old woman’s dad has been married to a woman named Charlotte. She has not lived with Charlotte or Charlotte’s children before, who were quite little when her dad entered the picture.
Charlotte’s kids lost their own dad when Charlotte was pregnant with her second child. Well, in a sad turn of events, Charlotte was recently diagnosed with cervical cancer, and her dad was diagnosed with brain cancer. Both are terminal, and Charlotte is now in hospice.
Her dad and Charlotte asked her if she could adopt Charlotte’s children and raise them as her own, as neither Charlotte nor her dad has family members who want to care for the kids.
The thing is, she hardly saw Charlotte’s kids, and she hasn’t been that close to her dad.
“Nothing has changed with his diagnosis, and a part of me has some resentment that he cares so much about these kids but not me, the kid who is his bio kid, who he always seemed mostly disinterested in,” she explained.
“Dad and Charlotte are going nuts that I would let her kids go into foster care, and they have told me time and time again that these kids are my siblings.”
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“Stepsiblings, yes. But they are in no way my real siblings, and I am in no way willing to essentially become their parent. My refusal has been met with so much hostility from both my dad and Charlotte, and now she’s scrambling to find someone else while trying to shame me into changing my mind.”
She’s left wondering if she’s somehow in the wrong for not wanting to adopt Charlotte’s kids.
What do you think?
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