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Jennifer Newcomb Marine and Carol Marine co-wrote the book No One’s the Bitch: A Ten-Step Plan for the Mother and Stepmother Relationship. They are two local moms- Jennifer is a freelance writer, Carol is an artist. Carol married Jennifer’s ex-husband and they found that working together as a unit makes life a little easier for everyone involved. They decided to write No One’s the Bitch as a way to help other women in the same mom versus stepmom predicament. They also offer FREE meetings for local moms and stepmoms as a way to connect with others going through the same thing. The meetings are held every third Tuesday of the month at Central Market Cafe on North Lamar from 7:30- 9:30 p.m.

The book is available for purchase on their website or from several online book retailers. Or…. If you would like to win your very own copy, leave a comment here for a chance to win! Jennifer and Carol are giving away an autographed copy of the book to three lucky winners. So, if you need to read this to put you and the “other woman” on the road to unitedness or if you know of someone who may be able to use it, leave a comment to be in the running. The deadline for entering is Friday, July 24, 2009 at midnight. The winners will be contacted via email. Enjoy the interview!

Can you tell us a little about No One’s the Bitch.

Jennifer: We’re trying to take moms and stepmoms from a really crappy place to a good place, in ten simple steps. Okay, so they’re not so simple, but we think the steps accurately reflect the progression from being totally out of sorts and at odds with each other, to creating an actual working partnership, however formal or informal.

We talk about taking responsibility for whatever you may be contributing to the conflict, imagining the benefits of working together, some concrete actions steps to experiment with, and some refinements to make.

At the end, we focus upon strengthening your family and celebrating your achievements, so it does end on a nice, rosy note where everyone rides off into the sunset together (without the Thelma and Louise ending).

The book was written by yourself and Carol Marine, your ex ­husband’s new wife. Were the two of you instant friends or did it take some time to get along?

Jennifer: Hooboy, no way did we instantly get along. Like most women in this situation, we circled warily around each other like cats with raised back hair and barely exchanged two words with each other for about several years. We avoided eye contact, hardly ever addressed each other by name, and were both guilty of a horrible lapse in basic manners. Par for the course, unfortunately.

After about two years or so, I decided I just couldn’t stand the tension anymore and began reaching out to her. That wasn’t necessarily a roaring success either, because I know part of Carol’s brain was trying to figure out what in the hell I was up to. Eventually, she figured out I was genuinely trying to improve things with her, and once she did, she started reciprocating. But in the beginning, it was pretty nerve-wracking. For both of us!

Tell us about the first time the two of you met?

Jennifer: There’s a funny section in the book about this. We each have completely different memories about how we met. How can that be? We have no idea. Let’s just say, if we were needed for a police line-up, there’d be some scrambled stories and the bad guy might end up back on the streets, much to his delight.

We left our differing accounts in the book because we wanted to show how subjective each person’s perspective is. No one’s right and no one’s wrong, although we still have a very healthy segment of our audience that is trying to prove to us that the other woman really and truly is the bitch and none of the problems they have with her are their fault at all….

Was it difficult to share the role of mom with another woman once your ex-­husband remarried?

Jennifer: Absolutely. I had no idea how much it would hit me on a core level. I thought I could be all mature about it. After all, I was the one who’d initiated the divorce and we were well and truly “done.” But having another woman on the scene – interacting with my children – imposing order and structure and rules. Whew. I’ve used this analogy before and I know most stepmoms might find it incredibly insulting, but it was like hiring a babysitter who was going to have a ton of power – that I didn’t know at all and hadn’t vetted. Carol understands what I mean when I say this now…. luckily. It was a lot more emotional than I would have expected. I felt threatened, jealous, indignant, angry sad; it ran the gamut.

Carol, how did you cope with becoming a step­mom? Did it change your life drastically or did you try to let your husband and Jennifer do most of the parenting?

Being a step-mom is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was 21 when we got married and had strong ideas about parenting based on my own childhood, but zero experience. I saw a lack of discipline from both parents and decided I would show them the right way to do it! I admit now that it was absolutely the wrong way to go about things this way, and my “theories” didn’t stand up completely to reality (even with my own child now). I have since taken a back seat with parenting my step-kids and only step in when it concerns my things or space.

How did your relationship evolve over time? Was there a specific turning point when you knew that you were in it for the long haul and that the two of you need to be on good terms?

Jennifer: I hinted at how things started to change above. And I don’t know that I can really point to one specific turning point. It was more like a build-up of baby steps that started to create a cumulative effect. The more we each tried, the harder it was to slack off and be inflexible or snarky or petty with each other. We had to step up to the plate and be grown-ups, because the other side was already doing it.

Carol has said that me giving her a Mother’s Day card thanking her for being such a good stepmom to my kids was a big deal to her. I think our first Christmas all together (which was actually really fun) probably made us sit back and think, wow, we’re really doing something revolutionary.

Jennifer, as the mother of two girls, how do you feel your daughters view the blended family? Has it helped them to cope with the divorce better?

I think it’s given them a sense of stability and structure. They know that information travels back and forth freely between all the adults, and hopefully this gives them the sense that there are more people watching over them in their lives with love and care. I do worry sometimes that they might think, Gee, if everyone gets along so great, why couldn’t Mom and Dad stay married? How can I ever make a marriage work myself if they still couldn’t do it and they act like this now? Still working on that one….

There have been times when they’ve gotten very pissed off that punishments transferred from house to house, or news of their misbehavior. I must admit when one of our daughters was going through her crazy teenager phase and got busted for something, it was pretty gratifying to hear her shriek, “I HATE how you all talk to each other about EVERYTHING, all the time!” I knew we must have been doing something right.

Do you think that having successful, happy blended families will make young kids look at marriage and divorce in a different light, perhaps less negative than it is?

Jennifer: Great question. I’m hoping so. As a culture, we sure have gotten very divorce-happy and I’m guilty of that as well. We need to get better at conflict resolution and we need to push back against a corporate mindset that expects your job to come first, instead of your family, like it used to.

A reporter we talked to recently mused that happy extended families might be the new replacement for the traditional extended family, since families of origin are separated by so much distance these days. I know when we’re all together for dinner or a movie or whatever, it feels complete, which might sound really weird. I hope our kids are learning about how to work through problems with people they’re close to, how to extend yourself in the face of fear and confusion, how to form close and lasting connections that sustain you. A tall order… and I guess none of us will know how we did until they’re older!

Carol, after your son was born, did it change the way you parented your husband’s daughters? Did you feel any different after having a child of your own?

By the time my son came along, I had already stepped back from parenting the girls. If anything, parenting him gave me a better understanding of what I lacked in my approach with the girls. I parent Jacob with love and forgiveness, but with the girls it was always consistency and discipline that were foremost in my mind. I realize now parenting requires both, and as a step-parent, I couldn’t ever give that. I think more often than not step-parents lack the kind of forgiveness for their step-kids that parents naturally have for their kids, and likewise the step-kids lack that same forgiveness for the step-parent(s).

How did you organize the writing of the book? Who contributed what and when?

Jennifer: We brainstormed the entire outline for a proposal, before we sold it. I wrote it because I’m the writer and Carol’s a full-time artist with a toddler. We each wrote a story in our own words for the beginning of each chapter and I regularly called Carol during the week to get her take on different subjects or sticking points.

Was the process of writing the book difficult?

Jennifer: Foremost in my mind was that I was speaking for two very different perspectives, the stepmom and the mom, and doing so was often a challenge, like riding a bicycle across a tight-rope. I knew I could write about the juicy stuff that people would want to read about, the problems, the fears, the bitchy judgements and resentments from the mom’s perspective, but if the book was going to be balanced, I’d need to know that stuff for Carol’s side too.

So I asked her if she’d please send me a list of all the terrible things she used to think and feel about me, all the problems we used to have. Being the trooper that she is, she obliged, although she said that typing all this up made her actually feel sick — and also scared that she was going to harm our hard-won friendship. I have to admit, a few things here and there were hard to read, although I already knew or suspected the rest. It was two and half pages, single spaced.

It only seemed fair to reciprocate so she wouldn’t be blind-sided (and don’t be thinking, Ha! Here was your chance for revenge!), so I gave her a list too and experienced the same fear and worry. Man, there’s nothing like doing something like this to bring you closer. Now, I don’t think there’s anything we couldn’t talk out. It’s a pretty unique bond.

Did you work on a schedule with each other or did you just write when you had time?

Jennifer: The publisher wanted the book out by Mother’s Day, so I had a very strict schedule, all plotted out on a huge wall calendar. I called Carol throughout the book and especially when I’d hit a wall.

I also had weekly deadlines to make, where I sent chapters out to a team of reviewers who had volunteered to give us feedback. Their comments and insights were invaluable and strengthened the book immeasurably.

How long did it take to write it?

Jennifer: Four months! Plus time for revisions.

What served as inspiration to write the No One’s the Bitch?

Jennifer: WE certainly needed a resource like this when we each arrived in each other’s lives and it was nowhere to be found. What better way to learn than to try and master a subject? We just dove in. Our very first meeting alone was to discuss the book.

If you could go back and do one thing over throughout the course of your relationship with each other, what would it be?

Carol: I think it has gone as well as we could ever hope for it to have gone. I wouldn’t change a thing. We had to go through the crap and get all that stuff out of the way to get to the good part, which is now!

Jennifer: Perhaps I would have tried sooner to make things better, but I’m also happy with the way things have gone, overall.

Has the parenting style of the other changed or influenced the way that you parent?

Carol: Yes, I have learned from Jennifer to approach parenting with a bit more softness than is in my nature.

Jennifer: Definitely. I learned that I needed to be more of a consistent disciplinarian and less of a wishy-washy mom, out of fear of “damaging” my kids. She helped me see that having a structure be clearer was a relief for everyone.

Do both of you live in Austin?

Carol: I live in Bastrop, which is about one hour East of Austin.

Jennifer: I live in Austin.

Jennifer, what do you value most in the Carol?

Carol is honest and direct and she’ll never try to bullshit me. I know I can count on her to see the tough stuff through. She’s loyal and extremely reliable and I admire how she lives her life. She’s one of my dearest friends and I’m honored to have created what we have together. She’s the sister I never had!

Carol, what do you value most in Jennifer?

I value Jennifer’s great sense of humor and her ability to put a positive spin on just about anything. I value her generosity and kindness, and her willingness to share with me as a friend the details of her life. She has become one of my greatest friends.

With the divorce rate being so high, this book is certainly a much-needed aide to many moms and step­moms who are struggling to get along. Do you have any advice to share with them?

Jennifer: It’s pretty shocking: there’s a 75% divorce rate for stepfamilies, can you imagine? Granted, the stepfamily’s rate of survival goes up even past the nuclear family if they can make it past the five-year point, so hang in there, stepfamilies!

We need to do everything we can to help second families thrive because the last thing kids need is another divorce. Everyone is potentially struggling in this situation: the stepmom, the dad, the mom, and of course, the kids. Our culture is woefully outdated when it comes to how we view the American family. There are now more stepfamilies than there are traditional families. By some accounts, only 20% of families today are the old-fashioned kind.

I would say, get better at figuring out how to create and sustain connections, take the time to give each other your full attention — that’s one of the best and simplest ways to keep your family unit strong, but it’s so often overlooked because it’s such a cliche. Learn more about how to work through conflict so that you can keep your marriage strong and be a good parent.

Carol: Do everything you can to find out how this other woman is human. She is not evil – she has her own hopes and fears and baggage just like you do. She is trying to make the best of a tough situation. The more you can find out about her and connect with her, the better the situation can be. It is oh so much better and less stressful for all if you can just get along.

Posted by livemom on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 10:52 am | 4 Comments » You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.