Biological Moms, Stepmoms: Can we really get along?

Let me ask you a question. I love it when you ask me questions. Did your mom and your stepmom get along well?

I don't love it when you ask me questions. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson, and I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on the Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. Did your mom and your stepmom get along well?

Not at all. I don't even know if they had a conversation. I'm guessing they did in private. But at our wedding, you know, that was going to be the first time they ever met. And it was the worst stress you could add to a wedding because they were fighting like it was terrible. It was bad. My mom did not want to be any part of my dad's new wife's life. Do you think that's typical that most moms and stepmoms, do you think they get along well? I would guess so.

But I think we need to ask somebody that knows what they're talking about. And that would be Ron Deal. Ron Deal is with us on Family Life Today. Welcome back, Ron. How you doing? I'm doing well.

Thank you. It's always good to be with you guys. And you are smiling because as the director of our blended family ministry, you know the answer to this question. Do bio moms and stepmoms typically get along? You know, I think there's tension. I think that's the common experience, whether one of them is perceiving that or imagining that or there's really been some exchange between them.

Generally speaking, there's some tension. Well, it's going to be interesting today because we're going to listen to part of your Family Life Blended podcast, which is episode number 80 with Charlene Roberts and Chazzy Carr. So tell us about them. Okay, well, let me tell you about Charlene.

First of all, Charlene and her husband, Steve, they're friends of mine. They have a blended family of five. They started a educational outreach called the stepfamilynetwork.com. It's an educational platform for people.

I'm one of the featured guests on their network, and they have other speakers as well where people can get good content. Now Chazzy Carr sells beauty and wellness products, and she's a mom and a stepmom of three. Chazzy is the stepmom of the shared child that we're talking about here, and Charlene is the biological mom. Now here's what really got me turned on to this conversation with these two people.

About a year ago, I saw a Facebook post where Charlene posted talking about Chazzy and how they at one point in time had a very toxic competitive relationship is what she said. She went on to say, we were one another source of a lot of emotional pain. All right, so so far, I'm thinking, hmm, what's new? Well, then she turned a corner and she said, but by God's amazing grace, we have found a way healing our past, forging a new path forward. We now share a heart in forgiveness. We've built a friendship.

We even run a beauty and health and wellness business together helping other women feel confident about themselves. I was hooked. I was like, that's a story I got to hear.

How did you go from a toxic mess to something where you're working together on a regular basis? So I pursued them and said, can we talk? They sat down for an interview with me for the Family Life Blended podcast. And let me tell you, it is a great story of bitterness and fractured relationships and how they healed that and turned that animosity into a friendship all for the sake of their family.

So let me just set up this first clip. You know, there's an old little joke that says every marriage lives in a two story house, his story and her story, right? Well, I often think that bio mom, step mom tension conflicts is also a two story house. They each have their perspective. Everybody makes sense of what they're seeing from the other side, the way they want to make sense of it. And, you know, it just leads to animosity and pain between the two of them.

So that's going to be where we start this conversation again. Charlene is the biological mom. She felt rejected and judged by Chazzy, who is the step mom in this blended family two household scenario.

Let's pick it up there and hear Chazzy's point of view. Well, I think we actually did meet before I married Scott. Just briefly, we didn't spend time together. I remember it distinctly actually.

We'd gone to pick Chandler up from Charlene's house and we had met briefly then. But of course, I had just the information from Scott about how their marriage had been, what kind of relationship it was. And I made my own observations. It felt chaotic to me the way that they were managing the kids' schedules and things like that. So I was making my own judgments based on what I was observing and then just was prideful about, well, I know better because I have a background in education.

I know what kids need and they're doing it wrong. So I had a lot of that judgment even before meeting Charlene and it didn't serve me in building a relationship with her immediately. But I just didn't trust that we would come from the same perspective and would have the same goal, I guess, because they were doing things so different as far as how I thought it should be.

So I think that just kind of started. And I am a pretty boundaried person in general. I'm not a big hugger. And so coming into a situation where there was like this familiarity really fast didn't make me feel comfortable. And that was just my temperament to start off with. So it was just kind of a lot of different factors all at once. And so that may be why I was a little more distanced at the beginning. I just wasn't quite sure what I was stepping into. I only had some information that may not have been valid information. So that's kind of, I think, was a rocky start just from the beginning from those things. I'm hearing a couple of really big things. Just from a personality standpoint, you're not a natural hugger, affectionate sort of thing.

Plus new people. Yeah, that's an awkward space for you. That's what it sounds like. And then you had two impressions as the incoming stepmom. One was, I have a little bit of information and based on that, I kind of have some judgments of who Charlene is. And then the other side of you was, I want to help. It sounds like you were like, hey, I have something to offer here. I can help out this young man and his dad and I'm going to bring some good into this scenario. And it might mean some things have to change or something, but it sounds like that was sort of your heart in the beginning in your journey as a stepmom. For sure.

He was five and so, so young. And I felt like there was something I could help bring to it. And the reason I point that out is, you know, I just love your commentary on that. I don't know if you've talked with other stepmoms or not, but I think that's a common experience that stepmoms have. They have goodwill. They come in and they're going to try to help. They're going to contribute something good to this child, to the family, to the scenario, whatever it might be. And sometimes that eagerness is a bit of a setup in terms of then how the adults meet one another and try to deal with each other.

I'll open that to either one of you. Can either one of you relate to that if you talked with other stepmoms? Oh, absolutely. I talk with stepmoms quite a bit, Ron. And I think, you know, when Chaz and I were talking about the podcast and what we wanted to discuss, I thought, you know, it's really important to be open and honest about our situation and our, you know, our journey over the last several years. Because I think it's more common than not that stepmom and biomoms really have kind of this clashing dynamic. And so, yeah, I can definitely attest that I'm a biological mom and I'm also a stepmom to my husband's daughters. So I definitely know both sides. And as Chaz was telling me some of her insights, I kind of laughed a little inside because I thought, my goodness, we're really not that different. We've actually been through a lot of the same emotions and the same frustrations. It does depend on which side of the fence you stand.

Right? If you're the biomom, that's the side of the fence that you're on. And this is my kid. And, you know, don't push me out of my throne as the biological mother. And then as a stepmother, you're on the other side and you've got goodwill and you're trying to come in, you're trying to please your new husband.

All of that sort of is rolling forward. And you can see how you would end up on opposite sides pretty quickly. So Charlene, back to your side of this, that first meeting or maybe the first few meetings, what thoughts did you have? What was your posture coming in, meeting Chazzy? You know, if I'm being completely honest, so I'm a people pleaser and I had never really had an experience in my life up until the point where I met Chazzy, where I felt really rejected by Chazzy. I felt like I wasn't given a chance. And I don't know why I took it so personally, but I had the side of me that I really wanted her to get to know me and I really wanted her to like me. That's the people pleaser side of me or was, but just being completely honest, like I felt like I didn't have a fair chance to prove like who I am. And I thought if she ever got the chance to know me, she might actually like me. And so I felt rejection, Ron. That's what I felt in the beginning, just that I had never really experienced it on that level with another person. And so to come in and just have this utter, you know, like I don't accept you kind of emotion, it was hard. I really struggled with that.

Okay. So personally, the way you're wired, that means a lot to you to win the approval of other people. What did that do in terms of your fear as it related to Chandler and parenting and, you know, parenting between households and your ex-husband and Chazzy?

Where'd that go? That had a definite trickle down effect. I think it created a space where I felt she didn't trust me and then it created this where I didn't trust her, her intentions. And so it did.

It had a definite trickle down effect. My son Chandler definitely felt that between the two of us. He felt that. In what way did he feel that?

I think there was obviously a sense of competitiveness. Like I very much felt like I'm the mom and I wanted to respect Chazzy's role again. I was a step mom. And so I very much was coming at a perspective that I wanted her to treat me. You know, we have this expectation of how we want to be treated. And when we aren't being treated that way, we become upset. And I think when we're stuffing those emotions or hiding those emotions, we're not really good at hiding those. Like those do come through in our family relationships and especially to our children. You're listening to Family Life today, and we're listening to a portion of the Family Life Blended podcast with Charlene Roberts and Chazzy Carr. So Ron, they didn't start off on the right foot, did they?

No, they did not. And I must say their dynamic is a little bit atypical. It's usually the step mom who's hoping to connect and be accepted by the biological mom. But in this case, it's the reverse of that. But they still end up in the very same place. That is, they're at odds. They each have their little story about the other, right?

And they're sticking to their story, which means there's a great distance between the two of them. And notice, they saw a trickle-down effect, as she called it, in Chandler. Charlene's son was obviously impacted by this. You know, I was struck at the top of this broadcast. You asked Dave about his mom and step mom, and he noticed the trickle-down effect. He made a comment about that.

He said, your wedding was really stressful because you knew they were in the room. It always affects the kids. The conflict is never just contained between the two individuals.

It always impacts the children, which is obviously a reason why we would love to see people figure out a way to close that gap, to maybe apply a little love and forgiveness or whatever it takes to get there and see if they can't cooperate at a much higher level on behalf of the children that are involved in their life. So, you know, the question we're all asking is, OK, how do you change that? And, you know, we're going to find out, but what changed their relationship? Yeah, well, Dave, that is the exact question that I asked them. And I got to tell you, I went out on the conversation.

We don't have time to hear everything from that podcast. But they had a lot of conflict, a lot of hurt. They had a lot of battles in court. They talked about how their inability to get along the two households just led to court and mediation and lawyer bills.

And all kinds of stuff. So I asked them that very question. OK, how did you guys move past all that and get to where you are now?

Let's hear what they had to say. So for me and in my perception, how I saw the path forward in getting through to the other side was just always genuinely wanting to have the sweetness of forgiveness. Like I really wanted to have a relationship with Chazzy and with my son's dad. And I think sometimes we do that because it makes us feel good. And so I want to make sure like I've actually been through a long process over the last few years and learning about codependency and, you know, carrying the emotions of others. And I kind of had this addiction where I'm like, in order to feel good, I, you know, I have to I want to make sure other people feel good or other. You know, it's just kind of this. But for me and moving through forgiveness with especially with Chazzy, because I will honestly say Chazzy was my hardest relationship.

And I really wanted to figure this out. I'm like, I want to have a relationship with her and I want to I want it to be genuine. And it kind of came unexpectedly.

But I know for me, Chandler got married about a year ago. And prior to that, I had been through my own recovery program and just trying to heal some of the traumas in my past, because I think sometimes what we don't understand is that we carry traumas from our childhood that come into our our marriages. You know, how we raise our children, how we contend with and deal with our interpersonal relationships. And there was a lot of self-realization when I decided, you know, really, I surrendered. I was living in such a broken place and it wasn't just with Chazzy. I looked at a couple of my relationships. You know, my marriage with Steve was struggling.

My relationship with my stepdaughters was struggling. And I was just all my relationships to kind of seem to be having this conflict and this struggle. And I just remember just being so distraught and just pleading and praying to God to please help me find a path to healing and to better my life. And it's a long and personal story, but really it was in the surrender and deciding I didn't want to live like this anymore. I was so miserable.

Like I on the outside, I look like this joyful, happy person, but inside I was just in so much pain because I felt like my relationships were like I had been self-sabotaging myself and I was self-sabotaging my relationships around me. And I needed to take accountability for that. And that was really hard to look in the mirror and understand that maybe the problem wasn't Chazzy. Maybe it wasn't Scott. Maybe it wasn't my husband or my children or my step kids.

It was me. And so when I got intentional and I actually went into a program called Celebrate Recovery and I kept thinking I was in complete denial. I thought, I don't belong here.

This isn't for me. But I had read this book over and over called Codependent No More. And in the book, it talks about going to a recovery program. And I thought, I'm not an addict.

I was in complete denial. Well, I went and I spent a year in recovery and it was the best thing I ever did for myself because you start doing inventory of your relationships and where the damage was. And really it starts back in our childhood. And there were a lot of self-realizations and a lot of being able to forgive ourselves is first and foremost the hardest thing.

You connect those dots from your family of origin and previous relationships and you can see how it brings you to who you are today. And you know, there was so much that I was unaware of and so much that had shaped me into this, to where I was in this space. And I always thought forgiveness came easy. I thought it's easy to forgive people. But I didn't know what true forgiveness was until I experienced that with Chazzy and with Scott. And when Scott reached out to me to apologize, he said, you know, I'm going through recovery. He's like, I'm in this program where I'm learning about recovery.

And I just about lost it because I thought, so am I. And he was asking for forgiveness. And I said, Scott, you're already forgiven.

Like I forgave you a long time ago, but it felt nice to have that. And he also conveyed to me that Chazzy was supporting him in that. And that meant so much to me to hear that she was supporting him in the two of us being able to move forward in forgiveness. And for Chazzy and I, that came at an opportunity last year at our son's wedding. And my son asked, he's like, could you help Chazzy put a dinner together?

You know, that was like our side of the family was taking care of the dinner. And I was a little apprehensive because I didn't want to step on toes. And again, there was a history there, but I thought I would love to do that for you. And so I reached out to Chazzy. And how did that go?

Chazzy, so you're on the receiving end of this. What were you thinking and feeling? Well, I had done a lot of work to get to this point.

You got your own little journey going on behind the scenes? Well, just before Chana graduated high school, I started thinking about my place in his future life. And I have pretty deep relationships and I don't have a lot of surface relationships. Like I, I hold relationships close to me.

And so when I do extend myself and let someone be part of my life that way, like it means a lot to me because I am genuine with it. But at the end of his junior year, senior year, I just started thinking about like, he's going to leave home and he may choose to never come back. And that is not the kind of relationship I want to have with him. And then he's going to get married.

I'm a bit of an overthinker. Then he's going to get married and have kids that I'm never going to know about what's going on. And I just went forward in my brain about all the what ifs if I didn't make something different. And I thought about Charlene and Steven and my relationship with them. And I really came back to how it impacts Chandler and that he's not going to want me around if I make it difficult, because he doesn't really like difficult situations. And I knew this about him and wanted to change something within myself in order to be included. And maybe that's self-serving, but I really did want him to know that he could love all of his family.

He could have all of his family around without it being contentious or without it being uncomfortable even. And so I had looked at that as like, OK, you have to change you. You're the only one that can shift this relationship.

It doesn't matter what Charlene chooses to do. All you can focus on is what you choose to do. And so I started just thinking about how can I show up the way I want to show up. And this shifted in some other relationships in my life. Charlene was the one where I had the most regret about how I treated her in our earlier part of our relationship and how I felt just guilt about that just because I was not kind many times. But that was a point, and I don't know if you remember this, Charlene, but I reached out to her about the time he was graduating high school, and I talked to her about doing graduation announcements if she was OK if I did that for him and also tried to coordinate so that we could sit together at graduation where it wouldn't have to be this thing where he had to coordinate two different events. And unbeknownst to me, she wasn't quite in that same space of trusting me yet. And so we didn't come together for that graduation. But we didn't have full communication. It was funny, though, I was just thinking about I used to ask Chandler when he was a teenager, I'm like, do you think your mom and I could be friends?

I asked him that a couple of times, and he's like, you know what? I think you could be friends. And I was like, OK. So it like had already started of like, OK, there is possibility there. If my son thinks we could be friends, then maybe in the future that would happen.

So that kind of shifted for me right about when he was 17, 18. And I had reached out to Charlene and sent her an email just apologizing for not handling things better when Chandler was younger. And she had responded, but it didn't start a relationship of any sort. But at least I tried to make amends in the best way that I could in hopes that going forward with the life events that we could work together and make it a place where Chandler felt loved and cared for. So then when he got married, yeah, I remember thinking about that wedding dinner and I wanted to be involved, but I didn't want to take over anything at all and finding a way to work together. It took a lot of guts for me to call her. I remember just being so nervous of like, OK, Chazzy, just do it. Just call her.

Just dial her number. Have a conversation. It's OK. And getting to that point was challenging, but it was worth it. And then we did work together and we were able to communicate and use each other's strengths. And it ended up being a wonderful wedding. And I remember even on his wedding date just feeling so much gratitude that we got into a place where we could be in the same space and feel love and gratitude together and with Chandler and for one another. I mean, at the mother-son dance, he danced with Charlene and then he danced with me. And it just brought up all kinds of emotions of just feeling like that unit was complete and that it was worthwhile. And it was really healing to go through that opportunity altogether. Well, you're listening to Family Life Today and man, I'll tell you, Ron, that interview that you did on your Family Life Blended podcast with Charlene and Chazzy. Honestly, that last little picture I have in my mind of the wedding dance is so far from the reality of our wedding, where my stepmom and my bio mom would not talk or would not even be in the same room.

And my mom didn't show up at my dad's funeral because my stepmom was going to be there. It's the opposite of what Charlene and Chazzy just modeled for us. What a beautiful picture. It's the gospel. It's super encouraging to hear stories like this, isn't it?

It is, absolutely. It can be done. Now, notice one of the things they had to do to make this possible is they had to leave the door open that God may be working behind the scenes. And of course, neither one of them knew that there was recovery effort going on by one, and the other ones having this heart connect to God and softening, and they had no idea. So when they started making little small moves, I call it, towards one another, hey, would you be willing to this?

Could we maybe work together on Chandler's wedding? Lo and behold, they discover a lot had changed, and now there's an opportunity for them. So it took courage to reach out. It took trusting God to think that maybe something could be changing with the other person. And of course, they had to be working on their own heart.

That's an equation that adds up to forgiveness and a new relationship. It's really a beautiful picture. Well, not only that, it's now their business partners, which is amazing.

And I even think of Chandler. I'm sitting there thinking, what was he feeling as he saw his stepmom and his mom in a loving relationship? That's a beautiful thing. We started earlier saying, this will affect down the legacy, down the family, and it sure does.

It does. We've said this a thousand times on this program, the gospel redeems not just our soul and spirit to God, but our human relationships as well, and in this case, for the next generation. You're listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Ron Deal on Family Life Today. You know, maybe you're in a blended family and find that you have some complicated and stressful relationships. If so, we'd love for you to join us for Blended and Blessed, our live event and live stream just for couples in stepfamilies. It's coming up April 29th, and with Blended and Blessed, you don't even have to leave home to attend. You can learn more under the show notes section on familylifetoday.com.

Just look for Blended and Blessed. Tomorrow, we'll have Harvard graduate Shanti Feldhahn and Dr. Michael Seitzma discussing the question I think everyone has thought about in their marriage. Is our intimate life normal? That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.