Dear Bio Mom,

When I first met my husband, he briefly told me the situation - you were currently in jail where you had been spending most of the last four years. You were an active drug addict. You had constantly lied, stolen from him and your other family members and even the children. Your mother was your biggest enabler. I immediately related to him, because I had been going through a very similar situation with my younger brother. I knew that people could always change for the better, so I made a vow to myself that once you got out of jail and cleaned yourself up, I would try my damndest to get along and co-parent with you. You were not even out of jail 72 hours before you went right back. I was shocked. Did your children not mean more than the drugs that you bought with the money you stole from your own sister? After you were court ordered rehab, I thought to myself "Surely, this will be her wake up call." I stepped up and played the mother role to your children. I listened to your daughter cry for you, angry at me for "taking" her father away from you, not understanding why Mommy and Daddy weren't together anymore. I dealt with your son who choose anger and acted out for attention. I took care of these children when they were sick, took them to school, picked them up from school, took them to doctor's and dentist appointments, helped them with their homework. I washed their laundry, cooked their dinners, took them to band practice and football practice and cheerleading practice and dance class, went to their programs at school. They never woke up in the morning not knowing where I was.They never went to bed wondering if I was going to leave.I offered them stability. I put them first. And yet, your daughter still cried over you. Your son still didn't want to accept me. I remember getting into a screaming match with him one night because he kept assuring me you were "doing better," only for you to be arrested a few months later. 

A wonderful thing finally happened - my stepson accepted me. We got much closer. He decided that he didn't want a relationship with you and you were in fact, not a mother. But as for my stepdaughter, things never got any better. She still holds resentment towards me. Your family(mainly your sister) has constantly guilt-tripped and gas-lit her, even when she was still a child.I will be honest - I really do not care that you carried them in your womb for 9 months. That does not automatically make you a mother. You were never THERE. You missed out on so many birthdays, Christmas, you missed your daughter's first day of school, losing her first tooth, preschool and middle school and high school graduations. You missed SO much that you will never be able to replace or replicate. Deep down, they both still love you. No matter how much you neglected and abandoned them and picked yourself (or drugs) over and over again. And I didn't want to - but a part of me hates you. A very small part of me feels pity for you, but it is mostly hatred. I have worked so hard, beating my brains out, but you will always have the biological mother card to hang over my head. And I'm sure you hate me too, though you don't know me at all. I have heard from everyone - your ex, your children, your former friends, your family members - I have a folder full of all your arrests and a timeline of events and messages to my husband. I have all the proof I need to prove that at the end o the day, you don't truly love those children. You don't want to be their mother - you want to be their best friend. You want to leave all the hard shit to me and my husband and be the "fun" parent. I am resentful of you. Do you realize how lucky you are - to be able to just leave the house whenever you want, when I was constantly needing to find childcare? Do you realize how much money I spent on the children and not even on myself? 

I understand that your main excuse is that your father died when you were very young and that you were sexually assaulted when you were young. I am truly sorry for those things, but that is still not a valid excuse to choose drugs and your own selfish needs over your children for 12 years straight. I was also sexually assaulted when I was young - did you even know that?I very easily could have chosen drugs or alcohol, but when my own son was born, I made a vow to put him above everything else.Why couldn't you do the same? At the end of the day, I don't think there is anyone you truly care about and love more than yourself. Your children were just mistakes to you and you never really wanted to be a mother. It is one of the hardest things you will ever have to do and you have to make so many sacrifies. Am I a perfect mother? Far from it! I have made mistakes and falter, but I would take a bullet for all of my kids, biological or not. I have been there for them for the last ten years and plan on being there for the rest of their lives. I really don't appreciate you crying to your sister about things, leading her to guilt-trip and gas-light the children. You're not dumb - you know that's what happening. I'm glad that she was so quick to forgive you for all the shit you've done, but not everyone is so forgiving. Did you ever stop for a second and think that the best thing for your children might not be you? They needed consistency in their life. They needed stability. You may be able to offer those things now, but isn't it too little too late? Why it take you over a decade to finally get at a good place in your life? Are they just supposed to forgive and forget? Are they just supposed to act like nothing bad ever happened and that you all are just one big happy family? I have wanted to reach out to you so many times, but I am still so angry over that incident that happened years ago, I just don't know if I could even face you. And it really makes you wonder why you've never tried to reach out to me? We could have potentially been friends. We could have co-parented together. We could have saved these children so much heartbreak and trauma. You say that your daughter needs to go to therapy - YOU are the main reason she needs therapy! I know that you just want that opportunity to lie to her and place blame and play the victim. You have never honestly been sorry for anything you've done. You always blame everyone else for your mistakes. You are almost 40 and I feel you should be way more mature than you are. I've heard every excuse in the book and there is nothing you could say to make things better or truly explain why you did all those things to your children. Those are your children! Your own flesh and blood. How could you betray them over and over again and now you want to act like everything is fine? Why did it take you this long to finally decide you want to be a part of their lives and their mother? How do you think that makes me feel? I would rather you spit in my face. That is exactly how it feels. You have not only damaged them - you have damaged my husband as well, your former friends, your family members. I don't know how you sleep at night. I feel the same resentment towards you I have for my own brother - everyone says "You need to forgive him, he's your brother"- but I don't think that way. I have not spoken to him in three years and it might be thirty more. I hold a grudge. I went nearly four years without talking to him before.  My grudge against you is the same - it's been going strong for a decade. I kept hope. I truly believed you would change, you wanted to change. But every time I turned my head, you were back in jail or prison or rehab, you were homeless, you were back on drugs, you were lying.

Please stop threatening my husband. That is going to get you nowhere. We know what happens in your house. We know you are still using. We know that your boyfriend sells pills on the side. We know all about your step-son that now lives with you, how he is smoking pot and getting in trouble at school. Why can't you raise him? You want to be a mother so badly - his mother is dead, be a mother to him! I am doing my best with your children, focus on him! How could we trust you with your daughter when you are so blatantly failing your stepson? How can we trust you when you were drinking and smoking pot with your son when he was around the same age? How can we trust you when he's seen bags of pot out in the open in your kitchen? My husband's trust in you is completely broken. And you can only blame yourself for that. My trust in you is at a 1% -I just don't know what you could possibly say to me to make me believe you are genuine and you've truly changed. I know what's happened - you want to be their best friend. You want to be the "cool" and "fun" parent. You've managed to avoid all the hard shit with raising them and now you want to hang out, get high, go shopping. How is that fair to me? I'm the one that had to deal with parent teacher conferences, trying to get them to pass their classes and stay out of trouble, grounding them, cleaning up their puke, driving them and their friends around, doing everything and more - and now you just want to swoop in and do all the fun stuff? What about the hard stuff? Are you going to be the one to scold them or punish them when they're wrong? Of course not! That's supposed to be on my shouders.

I have anxiety. I am mentally ill. I find no shame in admitting that. I don't have the money to afford therapy and medication, but here I am scrounging up what I can to get your daughter therapy for the trauma that YOU caused. What about what I need?  I have put their needs before my own this entire time and what do I have to show for it? They will never call me "Mom." Your son tells me he loves me, but your daughter will never utter the words, even when I say it straight to her face. I will never be their actual mother and that kills me inside. They deserved to have a better mother. Why do I always have to be second best to you? Why couldn't you have changed sooner and wanted to be a better woman for them? Why couldn't we have been friends and co-parented together? Do you not realize what the last ten years has done to my anxiety and mental health? It kills me inside. I just want to scream at you and hit you and make you realize what you've done, but I don't think you'll ever truly feel bad or sorry for anything. In the end, it is someone else's problem and your mistakes were because of someone else, never you. You want to blame your mother, your abuser, your father's death,my husband, point the finger at everyone else but yourself. Why have you never once apologized to me? I feel like I'm owed an apology. And then maybe I could try to hate you a little bit less. All this hate in my heart is not good for me. You have caused SO many arguments between me and my husband and the children. How are you planning on fixing everything? Spending money on them? Saying you're sorry?  To me, there is nothing that can resolve this.

Sincerely, 

ME