The Courage To Be A Stepmom: Finding Your Place Without Losing Yourself Paperback – March 7, 2013

The Subtitle (Finding your place without losing yourself) is an accurate description of what the book is about. When I first started looking into the literature out there about blended families, I became quickly discouraged because much of it was negative and discouraging. In fact I would encourage anyone looking for a book about this topic to do a little research and read a few reader reviews before choosing the book lest you find yourself reading something not right for you.This book had some great reviews and from the beginning I felt encouraged rather than discouraged. The author gives some great and practical advice gleaned from both her own experience and from numerous interviews with other women who had experienced the myriad joys and pains of stepmotherhood. Two points that stand out in my memory most are the importance of focusing on your relationship with your husband (This relationship will remain once the kids have grown up and moved out.) and the importance of being true to yourself, knowing your own strengths, weaknesses, and limits. Basically the importance of learning to give yourself a break, take things slowly, and not be too hard on yourself when things don't go perfectly (something I am still learning how to do).While I did not always agree with every word and found that some of the advice and scenarios did not apply to my particular situation, I found it to be a helpful way to begin my journey into stepmotherhood and will return to it in the future to peruse the pages filled with my highlighting of those valuable pieces of advice and encouragement I found while reading.I would recommend this book to any woman who has chosen to be a part of a blended family, whether she has her own children already or not.

My new husband teases me good-naturedly for my collection of 16 stepparenting books (and counting), but it's important to me to do the best I can. I've read a ton on this topic, and though I think it's important to do that, the reading often drags down my spirit and I find myself anxious and saddened by the enormity of this undertaking. It's particularly difficult and overwhelming as a never-married, no children wife.This book is has been an incredible relief. Ms. Thoele manages to candidly acknowledge the difficulties faced by a stepmother and to offer some accurate and helpful insights without ever losing her underlying message that this is possible, we CAN do it, and there are steps you can take to make this a positive adventure. She reminds us that the rewards we reap often correspond to the effort involved, and so there is great hope.I find myself wanting to highlight far too much of the text to make highlighting worthwhile! I'm tremendously relieved that this book arrived shortly before my wedding, and I rate it in the "top 5" stepfamily books in my growing collection. Do yourself a favor if you're a stepmother: grab this book, sit down with a cup of coffee, and allow yourself some grounded encouragement from someone who has been there.

As a new and completely unexperienced stepmother, this book was completely useless.The author does make the point that for most stepmothers, with or without previous children, the first times are going to be rough. What she doesn't tell is why and how. She quotes lots of stepmothers delivering the advice of "hang in there". Unfortunately she doesn't tell us WHY those years are rough (other than the obvious) and HOW these women got from point A to point B.The book is full of half-told stories and "nice" advice of women who had a difficult time at first but conquered everything with love and patience. There is not enough background on the stories to make me identify with any of them and there is zero advice on the how they reverted the situation. We only get to hear the final thoughts of the people the author interviewed as in "I wish I had known this 20 years ago". Duh!The other missing point is that it aims at being too general, again not giving enough separate advice for the women who don't have previous children of their own, the ones who do, and the ones who need to mix his, her and their joint children. Mixed is also the advice for stepchildren living with the stepmother and the ones visiting weekly or even the ones visiting sporadically. Too broad a spectrum and not enough meat.Only Chapter 5 "Embracing the kids" has *some* particular advice instead of the general tone of the rest of the book. All in all is a "feel good" kind of book. The best advice was "find a stepmothers support group". Do I need a book for that?This book left me scared to death of being a stepmother because I still lack the information I was looking for (the why and the how). Hopefully other books will give me at least a clue.

Like several other reviewers, there was enough of an underlying message contained in the pages of The Courage To Be A Stepmother that I forced myself to finish the book. Theole attempts to support many of her points by using personal examples from her own experience- a little too much. I often found the messages to be “fluffy”- too spiritual for my own personal taste, painted with a rosy brush of faith, blessings, and guardian angels- some of which I have learned to overlook in order to reap the benefits of the material, some of which I rolled my eyes and skipped the rest of the section. The book could have been more organized, Theole seems to hop around on subjects and then revisit/repeat key points all while using a lot of words. Overall, I found the book helpful in demonstrating that I was not alone and offering suggestions on different ways to handle the transition to Stepmotherhood. I enjoyed the examples of other Stepmothers and their different experiences; without those stories this book would have seemed more like a journal of Theole’s journey.

Excellent book! It really helped me at my hour of need! Thank you for sharing some excellent opinions and stories from other step mums.

This was a great insight to recognise that im not going crazy and some things that stepchildren do to stepmothers (as horrid as they are) not always the stepmother fault. Realising that we try so hard to recieve not much in return and its ok to take a step side ways and focus on yourself. Hoping that in time all step families have that happy ending.