A bond doesn't have to be biological to be meaningful; it's built on the love and effort invested in it. One Reddit user, u/ThrowRAdeimater25, shared a touching tribute to his stepmother, expressing how close he was to her—so much so that he called her "mother." The post came after he found a letter she wrote when he was six, meant for his 18-year-old self. Moved by the letter, written twelve years earlier, he felt compelled to share it with others.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Cottonbro Studio
He shared that his biological mother passed away while giving birth to him, and his father met his stepmother when he was 3 years old. “They got married months after my sixth birthday and they have had four more kids. My mother always treated me like her own and never let me feel like an outsider or 'half-sibling.' I was always her son and big brother to all my siblings,” he remarked. Sharing the core memory he got to experience on his 18th birthday, the boy mentioned that his mother left him a letter on his pillow. “I opened it, and it was a letter my mother had written to my 18-year-old self the day before she married my father,” he mentioned.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Cottonbro Studio
The letter, written twelve years earlier, was filled with heartfelt hopes and wishes for the 6-year-old boy. She promised to help him honor his biological mother’s memory, respect her, and never try to replace her. She added that she would be as best a mother figure as she could for the boy. Furthermore, the mom mentioned how she planned to be a part of the boy’s life as he grew up and fulfilled her duty. “She promised to kiss my forehead every morning before I got on the school bus, to always encourage my interests, and to try her hardest to come to every practice and game of mine,” he wrote. He added that she promised she would never differentiate between him and her biological kids.
The letter contained many more heartfelt promises that she had worked hard to fulfill. Sharing a hopeful concluding message, the mom wrote, “You’re an 18-year-old now - an adult and are hopefully heading to college soon and you no longer have any formal reason to maintain a relationship with me but I truly hope that in these last 12 years, I was able to be a loving mother and fulfill all my promises to you. I can only hope that you will continue to give me the privilege of being your mom because you will always be my son. I love you.”
The young man teared up as he read the letter again and again, overwhelmed by the gesture. Moreover, realizing that the promises she made 12 years ago had been fulfilled throughout the years was a priceless gift for him. “She opened her arms and heart to a boy who she had zero biological responsibility toward and has been the most loving and supportive mother I could ask for,” he exclaimed. u/Lucy-La-Loca remarked, “This is a true inspiration to all step-parents and children.” u/Hiker2190 wrote, “You take that note to her, you hug her, and you tell her that you could not have asked for a better mom.” In an update, the man shared that he talked to his stepmom after reading the letter and they both cried their hearts out, as well as expressed how much they love each other.
Image Source: Reddit | u/GualtieroCofresi
Image Source: Reddit | u/YourGlacier
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.