“Oh! Is This Your Sister? The Long, Drawn-Out Story Always Appalls Everyone”: Ex-Wife Tackles ‘Sharing Her Daughter’ With Ex-Husband’s New Wife With Grace

For us, the hardest part of co-parenting is sharing. Some days, we just want to keep her all to ourselves. It seems even harder after shots and when she’s sick or when we have something planned, but it’s not our day and the other parent also has plans. One thing that is easier, though, is we have more than enough babysitters! We have counteracted a lot of the bad by attending things together when possible. We attend the same church and do lunch together every Sunday, so one day a week we spend a lot of the day together. One thing that took a bit to get the hang of was holidays. When you have four parents, nine grandparents, a handful of great-grandparents, and 72 cousins (okay, maybe the cousins were a bit dramatic- but you get my point), it is hard to not wear yourself out when you’re stretching so thin.

We almost have it down to a science now, though. For our big holidays, we either celebrate together or split the day in half. This year, for Thanksgiving we celebrate with my side of the family, then go over to my husband’s side where my ex-husband and his new wife will meet us and we will celebrate together there, and then they will head to Zach’s families for another dinner! On Christmas, we have even more places to go, so we split it up! On Christmas Eve day, we go to my families, on Christmas Eve we celebrate at home with whoever would like to join, then the five of us (only the five of us) wake up early and open gifts from Santa. So much of our holidays are shared and we felt it was only right to give us five a little solitude and a chance to celebrate more intimately – then it is on! We then go to David’s family’s house to open gifts, then we join Zach and Bailee at her family’s function. After all of is said and done, we reconvene back to have dinner with the five of us! We love all our family and traditions and want to make sure we’re creating traditions as well! It’s a busy time during the holidays, but the last thing we want to do is allow Avery to miss out. All of our family systems have worked together to make sure we are doing our best for Avery to have the most time with all her family.

My biggest advice is to remember life isn’t always going to be the way you’ve planned it. So often we have this magical, perfect life planned out and when a wrench gets thrown into the plan, it’s hard to remember how great life is and can be. They say divorce leads to a broken home, but I hate this verbiage. Just because a home doesn’t include a biological mommy and daddy, doesn’t mean it is broken. There is just more love, more cuddles, more family, more playing, more happiness, and more homes. My hope is everyone who is in this situation can take some pieces of advice and apply it to their own journey! It is okay to respectfully disagree on some things, but it is not okay to disrespectfully disagree. We are all humans and we all deserve kindness, understanding, and love. Avery Grace constantly reminds us how important it is for us to work together so she can continue to be the sweet, fun, spunky two-year-old she is!”

**This story written by Kyla Burke of Claremore, Oklahoma and originally appeared on Love What Matters. You can follow her journey on Instagram, Facebook, and her blog.