IMPOSTER!!!!!

Secret Step Mummy has written a wonderful post – Warning! Warning! 24 hours to Mumsnet Blogfest! – on her first jaunt to blogfest this weekend and the words

“I am not a mother I am a stepmother so am I going to be allowed in?”

knocked me for six! Bang on the money!

This is how I feel around every single one of my friends with children whenever I open my mouth to offer an anecdote about Whirling Dervish, opinion and even sometimes, advice.

I fear, totally irrationally, that they will turn and point hooked fingers at me and drive me from the village!

“You have not struggled to conceive” “You did not give birth” “You do not have a traumatic birth story” “You have no stitches” “You have no sore nipples” “You did not baby wear” “You have no school allocation woes”…..

You have not, you did not, you will not, you ARE not.

I am invalid.

Allergy to the S word

I hate being called a stepmum or stepparent. It freaks me out when people refer to Whirling Dervish as my stepdaughter/ stepchild.

My brother, in his thirty-something years of maturity (!) likes to sing “Stepmum, stepmum, you’re a stepmum” to the tune of Tom Jones’ Sex Bomb (which obvs also applies to me). The last time he did this he got told, in no uncertain terms, to go forth and multiply.

My dig-in-and-kick-back reaction is partly (mostly?) bullheadedness on my part and self-ingrained habit from many MANY years of having to explain that I don’t want children of my own, which has gone from a lengthy speech in my early twenties, to a “because they freak me out/ scare me/ bore me/ I’m the centre of my universe” succinct response as 40 looms.

The whole ‘what business is the activity of my uterus to you?’ discussion is for another time.