When I was 10, my mom remarried, and I gained a stepdad, Jim. I kept my distance, convinced he was just trying to replace my dad. One winter, I had a small solo in my school holiday concert, but my mom couldn\u2019t attend because of work. When I stepped on stage and saw the crowd, I froze\u2014my voice wouldn\u2019t come out, and panic set in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I heard someone shout, \u201cYou\u2019ve got this!\u201d It was Jim, standing up and cheering for me like I was the most important person there. Something shifted. I finished my song, and afterward he met me with hot chocolate and a simple, \u201cI\u2019m proud of you.\u201d That was the moment I realized he wasn\u2019t trying to replace anyone\u2014he was just showing up. From then on, Jim became more than my stepdad; he became family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was 10, my mom remarried, and I gained a stepdad, Jim. I kept my distance, convinced he was just trying to replace my dad. One… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":27368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":305,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27369,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27367\/revisions\/27369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}