Hey, everyone. As you all know, I've been here for awhile but haven't found the time to actually post my story.

First of all, I want to say again that I'm not here to try to cause problems, but to learn from you ladies. I'm here to make sure that I don't do anything that will alienate my ex's gf as I want to continue to have a good relationship with her.

My ex and I divorced 7 years ago. There was a lot of abuse in our relationship, unfortunately, and I had to get out. Of course, everything was terribly difficult and there was a lot of fighting but everything got completely out of hand when the ex started seeing the most evil person that I've ever met. Even before I ever met her, she was making incorrect assumptions about me...saying terrible things to the kids about me and trying her best to alienate them from me. She would tell my daughter that I didn't give my son his meds and breathing treatments but when my daughter said that I did and she watched me do it, the loon would tell her that she was wrong and didn't know what she was talking about. It was constant sneers, custody battles, and other horrors for my kids and I for over 5 years with that woman. She was a monster.

We had a two year custody battle and during that time, she was busy telling the entire town what a horrible mother I was, which was not true at all. My kids are my life and they've always been very well taken care of. Anything that I wanted to do with the kids, she would convince the ex to do the exact opposite no matter how many professionals agreed with me. She would take my kids to the dr. and pretend to be me. She would intercept things from school, sign them and then pretend that she never received them. I had to resort to having the school send me every single important paper. She would go to the school and yell to the teachers that, basically, things would be her way and to ignore me. Thankfully, they knew that was BS. She would go to parent teacher conference and say horrible things about me in front of everyone.

She made my son eat his own vomit. She threw him against the wall and put bruises on him. She was verbally abusive with my daughter. For the record, my kids are really great kids and are well behaved and do what they're told. She would call the police on me at least once every couple of weeks...the funny thing is that she never learned from the police ending up telling her off because I was never doing anything wrong. Once, I was swarmed by the police for picking up my kids...once the cops figured out that her 911 call was bogus and that she called them before I even got there, they were mad. She once came to my home and when I wouldn't come out and told her to leave, she called the police. I mean, she basically called them on herself and she got into trouble for tresspassing!! She used to tell my kids that they were going to take them away from me and she would be their new mom and I would never see them again.

My kids despise her for all of her actions.

Anyway, some of this stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on all day about the things she did to my kids and I. The bottom line is that she was insecure and her cruelty made my ex even worse and made for 5 long years of hell for everyone. I don't know how I made it through without having a nervous breakdown.

A little over a year ago, they broke up and called off their wedding. Thank God!!!! Even the ex's family was thrilled! Now the ex has a great gf and she treats me and the kids with respect. That, in turn, makes me WANT to work with her. For instance, I won't mind if she wants to attend parent teacher conference or doctor's appointments because I know that she has the kids' best interests at heart and isn't doing it just to hurt me. I am thrilled to have her input regarding my son's ADHD (she's a nurse). She respects me as the kids' mom and I respect her as a very important person in my kids' lives and know that she just wants to help. At the same time, though, she's great about boundaries as is my husband. Neither one of them wants to overstep and that is greatly appreciated.

So that's why I'm here...I want to learn from the Stepmom's point of view so that I don't make any mistakes and continue to have a great relationship with the woman who is very important to my kids. They love her and I am so grateful for that!!! At the same time, while I'm learning, I'm still going to tell things from my point of view at times. Sometimes I think that people from opposite sides need to learn from each other to make things better and we need to look at how our actions may look to the other side.