Before her mother died, she made videos for her children and husband on their birthdays, wedding anniversaries and other important events, but her stepmother doesn’t like them watching them » TwistedSifter

The loss of a parent is so sad that words can hardly describe it, but it helps to have things to remember.

In today’s story, before she dies, the mother makes videos for her children and husband on birthdays and other important events like weddings.

The problem is that the father eventually remarried and his new wife doesn’t like it when he and his children watch the videos of his first wife, the mother of his children.

Let’s see how the story develops…

I (17f) am in family therapy with my father and stepmother.

My father wanted us to discuss our problems because my stepmother has been very upset lately with me cutting her out of my life so much and she just wants to be closer.

My mother died when I was 5 and I have two older brothers who are 20 and 23.

My stepmother moved in when I was 8, and she and my father married when I was almost 11.

We always got along well.

But I never saw her as a second mother or as the strongest mother figure in my life.

Her mother made videos for her family before her death.

My mother left videos for each of us.

My dad got a few birthday videos and a Christmas and wedding anniversary video.

My brothers and I got to see every birthday she missed until she was 18, big birthdays, Christmas, and big events like our own weddings and babies.

The stepmom doesn’t really like it when the family watches the mommy videos.

After Dad remarried, I started watching my videos more at Christmas, and I might watch my birthday videos twice.

My father’s remarriage made me think about mom more and miss her even more.

It felt more real that life had gone on without her and that Dad had truly fallen in love with someone else.

My father watched his shows whenever it was his birthday or Christmas.

But a year after he remarried, he turned 40 and she started making faces whenever either of us watched a mom video.

And whenever Dad smiled while watching the video, she looked annoyed/annoyed.

Afterwards she suggested that she could keep mine for me since I was so young, but I didn’t trust her to do that.

Her father stopped watching his mother’s videos.

After three years of noticing this, she told her father that the videos made her unhappy and uncomfortable and that she felt like an outsider at Christmas when he looked so in love with my mother.

She also said she felt like the videos were a barrier between her and us (me and my brothers).

Dad compromised that he would pay less attention to him and she wouldn’t tell us anything.

I watched my father struggle with this for years.

I saw him watching one of Mom’s videos and holding back.

She excluded the stepmother because of her attitude towards the mother videos.

Then my stepmother and I started arguing because I didn’t want her to touch the disks on which the messages were recorded.

She was also upset when my brothers backed up all of their drives so we always had the messages, even if the originals were broken.

She told us that we valued them more than most people.

Dad told her to leave us alone.

But I stopped being so friendly to her and shut her out.

I excluded her from the prom things she wanted to do with me last year and I always say no when I want to spend time with her.

The stepmother was upset when she expressed her feelings about the mother videos during therapy.

This brought us to therapy and last week I expressed my opinion and said that I think she is incredibly selfish for making Dad feel bad about watching the videos Mom left for him.

I said Mom was his first wife, the mother of his children, and if she really loved him, she would want him to have her.

But she doesn’t like knowing that she came second and still joined the family.

I also mentioned why I never trusted her with mine.

She was so upset because she had no idea that I had noticed and heard so much.

She cried and said I didn’t have to destroy her feelings like that.

AITA?

The stepmother doesn’t seem to understand how important these videos are to her and her family.

She may not like to think that her husband was once happily married to someone else, but that is the truth.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

This reader calls the stepmother “selfish and petty.”

Therapy is the perfect place to explore how you really feel.

This person thinks about it from their mother’s perspective.

The stepmother knew what she was getting into.

Here’s the perspective of another teenage girl in therapy…

It’s good that the stepmother finally knows why her stepdaughter is pushing her away.

It would be even better if she actually did something with the information.

If you liked this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary for all the wrong reasons.