Friday, January 26, 2024

Guest Blog- Mamacadabra by Carrie Monroe O’Keefe #Memoir #BlendedFamily #StepParent


I started dating my husband in 2007 when his two little girls had just turned three and four.  Within four months, we knew our relationship was serious, and I moved into their house.  I was an instant mom in a serious relationship and I had no idea what to do with myself.  I started looking for books that might give me even an inkling of an idea of how to do this right and well.  I found several but none of them resonated. 

I went from living alone in a condo I owned, working 60 hour weeks in a job I loved, and living a life that was designed exactly as I wanted it, to living with an already formed family and simply trying to get to work on time after dropping the girls off at daycare.  Where, by the way, the daycare workers were mean to me because clearly I was an imposter.

I didn’t know where I fit.  I didn’t know how to be a good mom in this scenario, let alone a good partner to my husband.  I had zero idea how to still be a good employee in my job which, suddenly, seemed a lot less important than it had before.  I was lost.

I started writing a blog to help myself process these feelings.  My goal each day was to try to look at things a little differently, or do things a little differently, in an effort to feel better about any of it.  Once people started reading, I realized that the things with which I was struggling weren’t just stepmom problems.  They were parenting, marriage, and life problems.  Challenges that most of us living as part of families have to face.  I started making connections with readers and understanding that, man, parenting and marriage are not for the weak at heart.  

As time went on, and I continued to write, I also started to understand that I wasn’t as lost and inept as I previously thought.  Many of the answers were already within me – I just had to give it a beat and listen to my gut.  It’s hard to trust yourself when you feel so completely lost and out of your comfort zone.  But as I continued to try to reframe things and look at our situation, the right way forward became a little more clear.  My role in this new blended family began to solidify.  While in the beginning it felt like I was thrown into this already-existing family, I started to see how my very own choices landed me here.

It's hard to see the way through struggle when you think you’re the only one experiencing it.  When we start to see that others, in fact many others, are facing the same things it feels just a bit more manageable.  A tiny bit less scary and uncertain.  My goal in publishing this book was to connect with readers and make people feel less alone when they too are feeling lost and uncertain.  Hopefully it does that!



Mamacadabra
Carrie Monroe O’Keefe

Genre: Nonfiction / Memoir / Parenting / Blended Family / Stepparent
Publisher: Mamacadabra Press
Date of Publication: 11/22/2023
ISBN: 978-1733629935
ASIN:  1733629939
Number of pages: 200
Cover Artist: Leah Kent

Tagline: Poof! You’re a mom now!

Book Description: 

Starting her third year of marriage, Carrie Monroe O'Keefe had already been on the roller coaster of extreme highs and lows of a newly blended family.  Thinking she could do a better job of navigating marriage, step-motherhood, working full time, and all of the things, she embarked on a year of "what if."

Settling into her role as wife and mom, she tried to find ways to do things better, see things differently, and reframe her thinking to create a better home for her family and to feel more at home herself. With humor, unwavering honesty, vulnerability, and sarcasm, Carrie finds her way through the year and to her true self.

Amazon     BN     Bookshop

 

 

Excerpt From Chapter: This House is Not a Home (Currently)
         
It’s a bright Saturday morning and I’m looking around my kitchen wondering when, exactly, I let it get THIS bad. The dishwasher has been run, but nobody has bothered to unload it, resulting in piles of dirty dishes in and around the sink. There are empty cereal boxes lined up, I assume, so I can cut out the Box Tops for Education labels…because I’m the only one who can what…use scissors? Break down the boxes for recycling? Throw away the empty bag inside the boxes that once held cereal?

Speaking of recycling, there’s a bag of recycling on a stool waiting to be taken out on our “next trip” out of the house. It’s been there for three days and we have, in fact, left the house several times in those three days.

The clincher, though, is the kitchen table. Our puppy has a best friend that lives next door. He comes over to our back deck door and barks for Sullivan to come out to play. They wrestle, run around, investigate, bark at each other, bark at passersby, lay down to rest, and then start over. When they’re out and I’m working or writing, I bring my laptop up to the kitchen table so I can check on the dogs from time to time.

At this very moment, I’m sitting at my kitchen table and surrounding my laptop are:
     
        One little girl’s black shoe.
        One little girl’s gold shoe.
        One little girl’s pink slipper.
        The Nancy Drew book we’re currently reading.
        Large bag of colored pencils.
        Pair of my husband’s dirty socks.
        Empty napkin holder on its side.
        The art project brought home by my littlest little girl.
        Pad of paper with my work notes scribbled on it.
        Three place mats (one was a casualty of yesterday’s juice fiasco).
        One black marker.
        Work documents of my husband’s.
        A partially completed drawing.
     
My kitchen table isn’t even big! How, or perhaps a better question is WHY, is there so much sh*t sitting on it?!! And does anybody else find it a teensy bit disconcerting that there are two shoes, a slipper, and dirty socks on the table at which we EAT OUR MEALS? Anyone???

If I told you about the kitchen counter, you’d have a nervous breakdown, which I’m on the verge of, but I’m trying to hold it together. Here’s the deal. We do not have the little girls this weekend, so we should be able to get everything organized, cleaned, and put away, but there’s more…

My husband is in school. He was in school last night and again this morning. Also, have I mentioned he has a small business on the side that he’s owned since he was 18 years old? After he bolts from school today, we’ll be frantically preparing for his trade show tomorrow. Any ‘free’ time otherwise used for sanity-saving-house-organization will instead be spent on trade-show-preparation-in-hopes-of-finding-new-clients. Ugh.
     
Our dog is even looking at me with disgust. Yeah…YOU’RE one to talk, Sullivan…I believe that pile of firewood on our back deck is YOUR doing. It looks like the frigging Blair Witch Project out there.

I take issue with a disastrous house for many reasons.

      A – When it’s disastrous as it is now, I feel totally out of sorts and stressed.
      B - It wouldn’t be like this if some people didn’t refuse to put dishes in the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher, hang-up their coats, put away their shoes, and so on, and so on, and so on.
      C - We don’t have the square footage to allow for unusable space…and as far as I’m concerned, this kitchen is NOT USABLE.
      D - It’s FREEZING outside which keeps us INSIDE this war zone of a house.
      E - I believe our home is supposed to feel safe, and cozy, and comfortable, and lovely, you know, as opposed to chaotic, dirty, cluttered, and filled to the brim with crap people haven’t put away.
     
Therefore, on a day I technically could have slept in, I’ve been up since 6:30 trying to get this house back in order. I’d rather be sleepy from a late night and an early morning than be CRAZY because the house is so awful. For me, sleepy is less dangerous than crazy.
     
Which brings me to the real question: is this my gig from now on? Husband in school, swamped at work, busy with small business, little girls here half the time, so while they’re willing and eager to do chores, it only happens every other weekend, leaving me to take this on and be sure this house is in fact a home and I AM in fact sane? No, seriously…REALLY?
     
Chalk this up to a question for which I did NOT want the answer.


About the Author:

Carrie Monroe O’Keefe started blogging about her life by sharing stories of marriage, stepmotherhood, and how to navigate it all on mamacadabra.com in 2012. People said they loved reading the posts, so she kept writing. In addition to blogging, she released her middle-grade fiction book, The Whole Truth, in 2019. 

Carrie lives outside of Minneapolis with her husband, two daughters, and dog Finlay. 











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