Not Your Circus, Not Your Monkeys
The Frustrated Stepparent's Guide to Reclaiming Personal Peace
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“I bought your Not Your Circus, Not Your Monkeys book — sat, read, highlighted in one read. It is my life on paper. Thank you for being a light in this tunnel.”
🙋🏻♀️ Raise your hand if any of this sounds familiar:
➡️ Trying harder to win your stepkids over has only made your relationship worse
➡️ The more you help out, the less appreciation you get — from your stepkid or from your partner
➡️ You feel more like a scapegoat than an actual part of your stepfamily
➡️ You’ve tried everything you can think of to “blend” and nothing seems like it’s really helping
ALL of that was me in my earliest stepmom years.
Then I learned how to disengage, and stepparenting got so much easier.
Disengaging wasn’t easy, and the results weren’t immediate. I couldn’t find any info anywhere about the best way to disengage from stepkids (or even if there was a “right” way to disengage from your stepkids!) and I made a lot of mistakes along the way.
I researched like a woman obsessed, trying to crack the code of this whole disengaging thing. The more I studied and the more I implemented the new aspects of disengaging I learned, the more blended family life felt easier— the calmer and more normal our day-to-day life felt.
Over time, I shared the tips I learned with other stepparents and got to hear their success stories, along with their own tips for the best ways they’d found to make disengaging work for them and their families.
AND NOW I’VE PACKED ALL THAT INFO INTO
NOT YOUR CIRCUS, NOT YOUR MONKEYS: THE FRUSTRATED STEPPARENT'S GUIDE TO RECLAIMING PERSONAL PEACE
“It’s like you’re speaking my own words. I wish I had read this sooner.”
“Every stepparent struggling out there should read this book. THANK YOU!”
“I just started reading your book and have never been so comforted by anyone’s words before.”
Hi, I’m Maarit! My stepkid & I actually get along now if you can believe it!!
A DECADE AGO, OUR FAMILY FELT ABOUT AS FAR FROM “BLENDED” AS IT WAS HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO GET.
Then I found the Disengaging Essay and everything changed. Not overnight — and there was still one hell of a learning curve — but with time, disengaging really did replace resentment with love and turn chaos into calm.
Anyway, if we haven’t met yet — oh hi, I’m Maarit, single mama turned stepmama and involuntary expert on all things disengaging. Please use this ebook as your personal shortcut to the sanity-saving lessons I learned the hard way.
“Thank you so very much!!! We are 3.5 years in and I’ve been overwhelmed with discouragement. But these articles, your Monkeys book on disengaging, and the encouragement is like food and drink to a starving stepmom! Many, many thanks!!”
IN THIS STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO DISENGAGING, YOU’LL LEARN:
🧡 What it really means to disengage from your stepkid (spoiler: disengaging isn’t mean, and it doesn’t mean you don’t care)
🧡 Why we over-engage as stepparents, and how disengaging restores balance when we’re feeling overwhelmed
🧡 Why disengaging is, at its heart, an act of love (even if you’re not feeling super lovey dovey)
🧡 How disengaging can improve the dynamics of your entire blended family… even when no one else changes
🧡 The best way to disengage from your stepkids, plus what not to do
🧡 The two types of disengaging and why you need to understand both before you disengage
🧡 What makes detachment-based stepparenting an effective way to blend your family, and why going all in isn’t always the best approach
🧡 How to disengage from other aspects of blended family life, like disengaging from the ex, or disengaging when there’s high conflict
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By the end of this book, you’ll understand why so many stepparents have felt exactly the same way you feel right now, and you’ll know the precise steps you can follow to pull yourself back onto solid ground by disengaging in a positive way that benefits you and your entire family.
While there’s no magic wand anyone can wave to make blended family life suddenly feel simple and stress-free, disengaging can be not just a game-changer, but a life-changer.
For me, disengaging replaced resentment with love, turned chaos into calm, and created a family when I thought that was impossible for us. When trying my hardest kept us fractured, stepping back saved my sanity and helped us finally, finally feel blended. 💕
need more help? start here!