Decompression

Lately I have noticed that I need a decompression period from dealing with stepmom stuff.  Not from Reagan, but rather from the baggage she carries with her in the name of BM.

Part of that decompression for me involves writing, as always.

I have never understood constant lying and deception.  It just makes life hard. And life is hard enough.

My husband and I have been been working with my stepdaughter for the last 5 years of her life to instill the value of honesty and truthfulness. She's struggled a lot.  Some of it has been typical kid lying. Some of it has been damaging, even coached attempts to destroy lives.  The latter is clearly learned.

Here we are all these years later and she's finally started stepping up to be truthful...even when it's difficult and she's scared.

I cannot imagine feeling so much anxiety and sick to my stomach about going to my mother's house each week.  That's been the case with her for the last month or so.  It's so difficult to have our hands tied to essentially send one of our children to the slaughter each week.

I'm amazed at BM's ability to twist events to make herself a victim at every turn. She writes to accuse, claims lies are spread about her, that we're jealous of her, that I'm obsessed with her, and whatever other myriad of delusional things she can come up with to make herself the victim.  In truth, she lies about nearly everything. She takes an actual occurance that she may know one piece of and she exaggerates, embellishes and twists it disturbingly so.

Reagan lies to BM.  She continues to lie to BM to this day because she's afraid of her. The threat of BM being angry causes her to appease her mother and she does that by lying.  She's done it for years. So when just recently she has started to do the right thing even when it's hard, that has caused a whole lot of unrest for her life at BM's which leads to the cycle of anxiety and fear for her. 

This week, Reagan lied to BM on the phone right here in front of us.  We were honestly stunned. She's been doing so great with honesty, yet the power of fear is something she simply cannot get out from under. 

Who does this to their child????

That's the part I can't fathom.

When you flat out write that you don't care who your daughter lies to, she just needs to fess up if she's caught, then I suppose you probably should expect that your daughter will lie TO you as well.  She's learned it from you.

It's emotionally abusive.

Spin it how you want, crazycakes, but the bottom line is that is what it is. 

Now, there's an 8 year old who is, despite, all efforts on BM's part, IS still talking.  Hopefully, she can start standing up and being honest with BM. 

She knows she is supported and loved at home and always gets to come back to that and in the meantime, we simply pray for her when she's not with us.