Losing a parent is so sad that words can’t really even describe it, but it helps to have things to remember them by.

In today’s story, before the mom passes, she makes videos for her children and husband for their birthday and other milestone events like weddings.

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

Let’s see how the story plays out…

AITA for calling my stepmom selfish during family therapy?

I’m (17f) in family therapy with my dad and stepmom.

My dad wanted us to talk through our problems because my stepmom has been really upset lately that I have shut her out of my life in a pretty big way and she just wants to be closer.

My mom passed when I was 5, and I have two older brothers who are 20 and 23.

My stepmom moved in when I was 8, and she and my dad got married when I was almost 11.

We always got along okay.

But I never thought of her as like a second mom or as the strongest mom figure in my life.

Her mom made videos for her family before she passed.

My mom left videos for each of us.

My dad got some birthday ones and a Christmas and wedding anniversary video.

My brothers and I got every birthday until 18 that she’d miss, milestone birthdays, Christmas, and big events like our own weddings and babies.

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

After dad remarried, I started to watch mine more at Christmas and I’d maybe watch my birthday videos twice.

My dad remarrying made me think of mom more and made me miss her more.

It felt more real that life had moved on without her and dad really fell in love with someone else.

My dad watched his whenever his birthday or Christmas would happen too.

But a year after he remarried he turned 40 and she started making faces whenever one of us would watch a mom video.

And whenever dad would smile watching the video she would look annoyed/upset.

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

Her dad stopped watching the mom videos.

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

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

Dad compromised that he would watch his less and she wouldn’t say anything to us.

I saw my dad struggle with that for years.

I saw him go to watch one of mom’s videos and stop himself.

She shut the stepmom out because of her attitude about the mom videos.

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

She was also upset when my brothers did backups of all the disks so we’d always have the messages even if the originals were broken.

She told us we valued those more than we valued most people.

Dad told her to leave us alone.

But I stopped being as friendly with her as I was and shut her out.

I left her out of prom stuff last year that she wanted to do with me and I always say no to hanging out with her.

The stepmom was upset when she voiced her feelings about the mom videos at therapy.

This brought us to therapy and last week I spoke my mind and said I think she’s 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’d want him to have them.

But she doesn’t like knowing she came second and yet she joined the family anyway.

I also mentioned why I never trusted her with mine.

She was so upset because she had no idea I had picked up on and heard so much.

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

AITA?

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

She may not like thinking about the fact that her husband was once happily married to someone else, but that’s the truth.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

This reader calls the stepmom “selfish and petty.”

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

This person is thinking about it from her mom’s perspective.

The stepmom knew what she was getting herself into.

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

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

It will be even better if she actually does something with the information.

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