Kate

Hi all, The old version of this board was a lifesaver when my partner Joe died in 2012. At the time our kids were 3 and 6. A few years later I got married and had a baby pretty quick after that. I wrote about explaining my big kids dad to my littlest for Huffpost, so I thought I'd share that here since some of you may be dealing with similar things. Hope that is ok! https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/explaining-blended-family-toddler_us_5c34b57ae4b01e2d51f78951

I think I recall your user name from the old board! Thank you so much for replying. I ended up with a man who had not had kids of his own and I really dithered about having another. But I haven't had to navigate blending kids, just a new stepdad which is complicated enough. I can only imagine how much more so if children are involved on both sides. Amazing how fast six years can go and that your nine month old is now seven... Sending the warmest of thoughts, Kate

Hi Steve, This was so powerful to read. I have also had very different responses to my partner's death and to my mother's. My partner died suddenly at 40 when our kids were three and six. Then 18 months later my died of the cancer she'd had for 8 years at 69. The day after the second anniversary of my mom's death I realized I had forgotten it. I have the date of my partner's death seared into my head. A woman I know pointed out this made sense since the first death was a kind of trauma that the second just wasn't. Even though my mom was way too young and it came so soon after this first loss. At this point, six years after my partner's death, it is my mom who I miss more on a day to day basis. But it is a different kind of missing to be sure and thinking about those differences helped me feel better about the different ways I have grieved. What a bumpy ride all around! Kate

Oh Maureen! Thank you for filling me in I the trajectory - I thought it felt like the same familiar place. And - oh - to lose someone again. A second husband. That is just so much. thank you for responding.

Hi all, This is my first post here since the first year or so after my partner died suddenly. I think it is the same board but I am not even sure. That was November 15 2012, six years ago. Our kids were 3 and 6. Now they are 12 and 9 and I have a 3 year old with a new partner, someone I met and married less than two years after that death and a month after my mother's from cancer. And now I am trying to explain our family to my youngest. I say things like, "before Bryan was everyone's daddy, Rose and Jacob had a different daddy but he died." But everyone's daddy or not, she calls him "daddy" and the big kids call him Bryan. I hadn't thought about this board in a while but I often tell people how it sustained me in those first awful months and years to come on here. But it came up again. An aquaintance, pregnant with her third, the older two both under 5, lost her husband today and I directed her here. So I guess I am beyond active grieving, but I sometimes wonder, if I didn't have the big kids would I even believe that the first part of my life existed? That my decade with him was real? I felt so young when he died. I was 37 and he was 40. But if ever there was a marker to end youth that was it and if ever there is anything that made me feel my age it was having a baby at 40 after already feeling like I had lived a life I choose and was happy with. Thank you for still being here...