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In January 2010, my divorce from Swizz Beatz was finalized in a New York City courtroom. Our son, Kasseem, had just turned four years old. When my ex-husband remarried, my son gained a stepmother, Alicia. Soon thereafter, he was gifted with a new sibling.
At the time, I was not immediately prepared to accept this new family dynamic. There were a lot of emotions that I had to deal with first: heartbreak, denial, anger, bitterness, and, ultimately, fear. I rotated through all those feelings. Around and around. One big circle. I was damaging my spirit and stunting my growth. I was exhausted by my own unhappiness. I wanted to be better and do better, but I was stuck.
It was my son who pushed me to begin the work of setting aside my ego and committing to improving the relationship between his father and me. I knew that in order to be fully present, healthy, and emotionally stable for my son, I would first have to accept that I was wounded and in need of some self-love and -care. My child needed me. I wanted him to perceive me as his nurturer and healer, not as one who needed to be healed from her past. I began to compare my childhood to my son’s. I forced myself to remember things that I’d experienced growing up, all the lessons my grandmother taught me about life. And with that, I was able to put everything in perspective. I knew I had the power deep within me to change, to fix myself, to become whole again.
Once I found peace and stability within, I was able to create a bridge between myself and my ex-husband, and later with his wife. The three of us set the stage for real communication. When we were able to respect and honor one another, we were able to blend as a family.
Our family is unique, but we are not alone. There are millions of families just like ours in the world. Almost 75 percent of the 1.2 million Americans who divorce each year remarry and create new family designs for their children. These are people who have been brought together unwillingly but ultimately need one another in order for their children to thrive emotionally. This book is about blending these families.
Is blending easy? Absolutely not. For my family, the passage of several years, a lot of inner work, and many open and honest conversations with Alicia, Swizz, and our son, Kasseem, were required for us all to begin working cooperatively. And the process is continuous. The truth is this: Swizz, Alicia, and I don’t always fully agree with one another or understand one another’s perspectives and opinions. No three adults ever do. But we now know that we can agree to disagree and simply rely on the balance of acceptance and a good middle-ground decision.
Ultimately, when everyone puts in the effort, when everyone does the self-work, everyone wins.
You win because releasing unhappiness and discontent is always better than holding on to those feelings. Once you’ve healed, the amount of love available to be given and received multiplies because of the newfound love you will have for yourself.
You win because parenting is easier when former partners are able to communicate with each other freely and without rancor. Face this reality: when you share a child with someone, the other parent is not going to simply disappear. You will regularly interact with them during drop-offs and pickups from visits. You will often need to discuss and agree on important parenting decisions. Isn’t it better to have these interactions be pleasant, rather than feeling as though a Band-Aid is being ripped off an open wound each time? (And yes, someone with whom you have a child can simply disappear. That absence negatively impacts your child and is the least desirable outcome.)
Most important, your children win.
In a blended family, children are able to enjoy love from all the people intimately involved in their lives without feeling as though they are betraying anyone. Children from blended families have more peace, more confidence, and a deeper sense of security.
We’ve all heard about parents calling each other every nasty name in the dictionary in front of their children. Or the parent who continually hauls the other parent into court over money or visitation. I’m sure you know at least one adult who will lambast the other parent while the child is within earshot. No matter how much a person may think they are shielding their child from animosity, it’s simply not possible. The child soaks up the negativity, and it will erupt in some way at one point or another. Perhaps they will be angry and self-destructive young adults. Perhaps they will become master manipulators, have a debilitating fear of commitment, and/or be unable to trust people in adulthood. Some reports say that 41 percent grow up worried, underachieving, deprecating, and often angry.
With so much at stake, why wouldn’t a parent seek to take another path, pursue another way? I suspect it is because they don’t think there is an alternative. When you’re in the middle of a breakup, it can be extremely difficult to see cooperation and friendship with your former partner or his or her new significant other as a future possibility. But it is possible. And given how many stepfamilies exist, we need a new paradigm of behavior. We need to learn how to blend. This book was created to help you become a parent who can save your child’s future just by being an example of love and wholeness.
When I first got divorced, I was a woman in need of love, information, and guidance. That’s why I’m sharing my journey. I hope that this book will serve as a toolbox for anyone who has experienced a breakup or divorce and is co-parenting with an ex. It is also for those people either married to or living with a partner who has children from a previous relationship.
In the first couple of chapters, I share personal experiences that will resonate with many women who have gone through a breakup or divorce, and I hope my triumphs will inspire you. I’ll give you an inside look at the solo journey I took through deep oceans of my lost self before I eventually drowned my ego in conscious healing. I’ll lay out my healing step by step—the parts when I used a therapist and the parts when I did the work on my own. Regaining your sense of self and your power is essential if you are going to be a successful parent and effective co-parent.
For the rest of the book, I describe how my co-parents and I came together to blend, and I share how our family works to maintain peace and cooperation. Swizz has written a chapter called “A Letter from a Father,” and Alicia has written the foreword. Their unique perspectives are key to understanding our family’s true story.
I’ve also included the experiences of other parents (some names you might recognize) who are walking or have walked a similar path. I interviewed several therapists and child care experts. Over the years, I’ve been asked tons of questions on everything from dividing holiday time and vacations, to encouraging the bond between siblings, to enforcing discipline in two households, to dating. Throughout the book, I’ll present some of my answers to these questions as sidebars in a straight and unfiltered way. There are Reflection pages at the end of each chapter giving you, the reader, an opportunity to journal your thoughts and ideas.
No two families are identical, but my hope is that you’ll be inspired by our template to find the best path forward for your family.
The first time Alicia and I ever met alone, just us two, was in 2012. I had invited her to my son’s sixth birthday party. She attended, and right afterward, she invited me out to dinner. It was a cute little Italian restaurant in SoHo. We met downstairs in the cellar, our own private area.
This sit-down had been a long time coming. We couldn’t rush this encounter. To get to the point where we could sit across a table from each other, we had to respect time and allow some of the wounds to heal. We didn’t know it then, but time would become our best friend in the years that followed.
We ordered wine and toasted to just being there. And then it got quiet. Very quiet.
I broke the silence first.
I thanked her for meeting with me and said, “You know, Alicia, I don’t want to talk about the past tonight. Let’s just start to figure out a way to create a healthy future, because one day we are going to share grandchildren.”
I look back now and realize that it was God speaking through me in that moment. That one statement transformed our entire relationship.
Today I refer to Swizz, his wife, and myself as the “awkward romance”—three people brought together for reasons that were not always clear but who ultimately became the best personal versions of ourselves as parenting partners.
That night in the restaurant with Alicia will always be considered our “first date.” We gave each other permission to slowly peel back the top layers of the armor that guarded our feminine spirits. With each hour that passed, we became more familiar with each other. And in every minute of our shared conversation, there was enlightenment. We saw things in each other that we’d never seen before. In that room, with no one around to judge us, we were the same. Two women with the same desire to love and be loved. Our voices had been heard by our own ears for the first time, and it was refreshing. We deserved that freedom. Every woman does.
That night, we joined forces to build a fortress around our family. We would never be able to deny who we were to each other again. Who would be proud of us? Our children, their children, and all the generations to follow. This mission was bigger than us. As women and mothers, we knew that we needed each other to successfully blend our family.
We live in a society that is guided by false imagery and high-tempered egos that require instant gratification for short-term pleasure. Our culture has pushed us to invest more in outside appearances than in our authentic, inner spirits. Social media is a blessing in many ways, but too often we use it to hide from our own issues. It’s very easy to get caught up in the gossip and drama that fuels media; one person’s unhappiness somehow holds the power to make another person feel better about their own life. There was a dark time in my past when my dysfunctions were played out for other people’s entertainment, when all the commotion of the public gaze fueled my ego and distracted me from doing the self-work. But once I settled in, I found the inner strength and wisdom to rise above public scrutiny and personal ego. So did my co-parents. We did it for the well-being of all involved, but most especially we did it for our children.
For too many newly separated couples, there is limited (if any) communication between parents. An empty stare at drop-off and an emotionless hello at pickup. Or worse: the dad rings the doorbell impatiently, the mother answers the door with an attitude from hell, and the small child stands there, eyes wide open, absorbing all this energy. It’s a business transaction—a sour one.
Is this the script you are currently playing out as a parent?
Why do we do this? Because we are overwhelmed by resentment, hurt, and distrust.
Who’s feeling the negative effects most? Our children.
Can we change this? Of course we can.
How do we change? We begin the self-work. We heal ourselves, and then we heal the relationships around us.
You see, the truth of the matter is inescapable: you can schedule a visitation, but you can’t schedule love. You can’t schedule comfort or happiness. Love, comfort, and joy spring up from intention—deciding to put in the self-work and seeking an improved relationship with your co-parents.
I hope this book will help you understand that it’s okay not to follow the crowd, not to stay stuck in the patterns of behavior that have limited you. I hope you can use this book to walk alone until you’ve found yourself. I want you to awaken to yourself, your true self, become one with your higher purpose. Once you accomplish that, you can be anything you want to be. Your child deserves a parent who is whole. Your child deserves to be supported and surrounded by love.
Blending is about healing, letting go, and evolving. It’s about giving yourself a true opportunity to be the best version of yourself so that you can prosperously raise your children and nurture the relationships that are formed around your parenting experience. It gets to the core, the nucleus of the situation and the souls of the people involved. This is a journey toward creating a bond between self and truth, between women and mothers, men and fathers, fathers and mothers, and, of course, with our children.