Claudette's Blog

After being with my husband and his daughters for twenty years, we are doing something really significant for our relationship. We are renewing our vows.

We have been through a lot in that past several years and celebrating our family's journey was really important to us. We wanted to mark it by renewing why we are together and share it with our family and friends.

I know that I've not been very active lately and I will share with you in the coming days why that is. But for now, I just wanted to share with all of you the joy that I am feeling with my husband and family.

This is an important milestone for us as a stepfamily, to celebrate 20 years together. May you experience this kind of happiness in your lives, whether it's been 1 year or 30 years or more that you have been together.

Talk with you soon.

Summer is here. School is out. Kids are at home and sooner than you really would like to know, they are getting bored and looking for something to do (mainly you telling them what they can and cannot do).

Oh no! This is not at all how you were hoping your summer was going to go right? For many of us, summer time is often viewed as a time to have fun with family members, going on picnics, hikes, family events, outdoor parties, swimming, camping, etc. I’m sure that many of you have fond memories of your own summer vacations.

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I am sitting here in beautiful Roanoke, VA in our RV. This is part of life that I enjoy the most...working remotely in our RV and enjoying the scenery around me.

This morning, I gave a presentation to a moms group here in Roanoke on the Powers of Effective Communication and how it helps to build and strengthen relationships. I believe that any relationship needs to be tended to on a continuous basis. My husband and I both work quite a bit. It seems that when the kids grew up and left the nest, we thought that we would have so much time together to do what we thought we couldn't do before.

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All day long,I've been trying to get some work done, thinking of my next best thing. How can I help others be better parents? How can I help improve on couple's relationship? Here I am looking at my emails and reading some posts on the web and the same message kept coming up for me...Breath!

I know, we all breath. We do it without thinking. But what I am referring to here is to actually take some real deep breaths, or the Buddha Belly Breath as I've heard other coaches say and see what happens.

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For years, stepmoms have been struggling to be validated and recognized as an important part of the children's lives. They do many of the same things biological mothers do, except give birth.

Through the strong dedication and work of Christy Tusing- Borgeld, Founder of National Stepfamily Day (which is on the 16th of Steptember), President Obama had included stepmoms in his Presidential Proclamation for Mother's Day.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-proclamation-mothers-day

This is a major milestone for many women that do so much for our future generations. These children are not just children but they are tomorrows leaders and parents of future generations.

I wish to give a great round of applause to Christy and again wish a great Mother's Day to all women in the role of mother.

This is an article that I wrote for my members of Info Step, a newsletter for stepfamilies. I decided to share with you "What Is A Mother?" in honor of Mother's Day.

If you would like to read more articles like this one, you can sign up for my monthly ezine called Info Steps at www.coachingsteps.com.

Many women struggle with the idea of one day becoming a mother, when to become a one, if she will, how many kids, etc.

As little girls, we often played with dolls imitating our mothers, taking care of our "babies", playing house, pretending to cook, clean, and more. Play is where children learn to be adults and the kind of adults they will become. They also learn what king of role in life they will play through role modeling from the adults around them.

So what is a mother? Is it only the person that gives birth to you or is it more than that? There is strong debate in the stepfamily communities (and in other relationship communities also) about what it means to be a mother. Let me share my perspective and experience on this.

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A while back, in November, I wrote that I started reading my journals after 20 years of being in a stepfamily. I was amazed at what I read. This poor woman, struggling to keep her family together, to find an identity within this new group and to feel as if she belonged.

Nothing is more important to human beings as a sense of belonging. That was what was missing for me. I didn't belong anywhere and it was terribly hard. My friends didn't understand because they had no idea what I was going through. My family wasn't much help either because they weren't in my shoes.

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MILLIONS!!!

That's right. There are over 1300 new stepfamilies being created daily (just do the math). And it's not just when you get married that you become a stepparent. Steprelationships start when you are seriously involve with your partner and started to include the children, whether you are married, living together or seriously dating one another.

There are many stepmoms in the media as well as in our day to day lives. The good thing about all of this is that they look nothing like Julie Andrews from the Sound of Music or Carol from the Brady Bunch.

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