Experiencing Micro-Aggression

After weeks of reminding, cajoling, negotiating, and incentivizing, I finally got my teenage stepson to apply to our local community college’s dual-enrollment program, which allows high school students to earn college credit while still in high school.

I sat beside him as he scrolled through options. I helped him narrow down programs that matched his interests. We worked through the essay portions together, drafting and revising multiple times. I coached him through deadlines, logins, uploads, and the anxiety that shows up when something matters.

When he finally clicked “submit,” I felt the familiar mix of exhaustion and pride every parent knows.

I emailed his high school counselor to let her know that he had applied. She responded enthusiastically:

“Yeah! Good for [him]! Congrats, [stepson], on being so responsible! Your mom gave you the tools you need to succeed in life.”

His mom died more than five years ago.

I have been the one raising him. I am the one who has taught him organization, follow-through, responsibility, and resilience.

Ordinarily, I might have chalked this up to a careless assumption. But context matters.

This counselor is part of a social circle that has never accepted my place in this family. A group that resents the fact that I married his father. A group that sees itself as “team biological mom,” as if families were sports teams and grief were a competition.

Over the years, members of this group have questioned my role, minimized my contributions, and at times actively tried to undermine my relationship with both my husband and my stepsons. They were friends of the boys’ mother, and they refuse to acknowledge me. In that context, the counselor’s comment felt less like a mistake and more like an insult.

This is how micro-aggressions work. They rarely announce themselves as hostile. Instead, they arrive wrapped in praise, cloaked in politeness, disguised as encouragement, while still managing to erase the person standing right in front of them.

The Quiet Erasure of Not Quite Moms

For Not Quite Moms, this erasure is constant. We occupy an uncomfortable space: fully responsible, deeply invested, emotionally bonded, yet frequently dismissed.

People default to “mom” without considering who is actually parenting. People speak as if the past and present are interchangeable. People give credit for a child’s growth to someone who is no longer alive, while overlooking the person who did the work.

Each comment seems small in isolation. Together, they form a pattern.

And when those comments come from people who already resent your existence in the family, they carry extra weight. They become less about language and more about allegiance.

Praise That Reopens a Wound

What makes moments like this particularly painful is that they leave no room to respond. Correcting someone risks appearing bitter or disrespectful to the dead. Staying silent means swallowing yet another reminder that your role is unofficial, inconvenient, or unwanted.

So many Not Quite Moms learn to absorb these moments quietly.

But inside, they linger. We do not need applause, but the insults reinforce a message we hear far too often: You don’t count the same way she did.

For the children, these moments matter too. They subtly teach them that the parent who shows up every day is less real than the parent who lives in memory, or worse, that acknowledging the present somehow dishonors the past.

Carelessness or Control—Either Way, It Hurts

Sometimes these comments are born of thoughtlessness. Other times, they are acts of quiet resistance to hold onto a version of the family that no longer exists.

Intent doesn’t erase impact.

Micro-aggression is exhausting. They chip away at belonging. They ask Not Quite Moms to carry the full responsibility of parenting while denying the legitimacy of their role.

We Are Not Replacements. We Are Parents.

Not Quite Moms like me are not trying to replace anyone. We are not rewriting history. We are not competing with a memory.

We are raising children through grief, adolescence, milestones, and uncertainty. We are teaching them the tools they need to succeed in life, not symbolically, but practically and daily.

When someone refuses to acknowledge that reality, it hurts, even if you understand and come to expect micro-aggressive resentment.

It is not nothing. It is a reminder that for Not Quite Moms, the hardest part of parenting isn’t the work.

It is being allowed to exist.