What does it mean to be blended? When you think of the word blended, it usually implies all ingredients combined fully into one complete mixture. That is definitely NOT my definition.
We are blended in a different way; five unique individuals, two different biological family lines, all loving one another and coming together to create a family. That’s my kind of blended.
Life happens in the way that it does. And sometimes relationships don’t work out the way we intended, but they work out the way they were meant to. Love grows apart and then grows together with different individuals and suddenly there’s a need to blend.
Five years ago we found ourselves starting over, introducing my kid to his kids, introducing him to her and me to them, planning a date here and an outing there and time to get to know one another. I’d be lying if I said we all fell in love at first sight.
Sure, the Mr and I were adults and knew what we were getting into and knew there would be high emotions and intense feelings, fear and excitement too. We have always known that no matter how beautiful our best days were as a blended family there would also, most certainly be brutally painful and challenging days.
We’ve experienced it all. And children have a way of intensifying the bad while down playing the beautiful. They have a way of throwing curve balls into the mix at any given point in time. They have a way of interrupting the most important adult conversations while being bored during the most special moment planned just for them. They have a way of humbling us.
Our beautifully blended family is chaos and conundrum, it is love and laughter, it is fire and rage, and it is a family. We work daily as individuals and as a team to make this unit as beautiful as we can. We discuss each child as an individual, ensuring that decisions are made in the best interest of their uniquely beautiful and chaotic soul. We also make sure to take the entire family into consideration with many of the decisions we make.
We are imperfectly perfect in every way a blended family can be. We fight over attention and movies and dinner locations. We laugh about burps and jokes and funny little mistakes. We are driven apart by anger and jealousy and differences of onions. We are pulled together by shared love and respect and an understanding that we are an imperfect clan.
To all other blendeds out there; we know it is hard and painful and ugly sometimes, we know it is beautiful and loving and joyous most of the time, we know.