After over three decades of step-family blending, this woman is once again left watching the invites roll out to her husband’s kids, while her own children get left off the list by the stepdaughter with the big house and short memory.

This woman’s holiday season looks like a rerun: every Thanksgiving, «forgotten» invitations seem to skip one whole branch of the family tree. The apologies are polite, the explanations thin, and nobody actually fixes the gap, no matter how many reminders get sent.

Her husband tries to play peacemaker, texting his daughter just to keep the peace, but somehow the basic act of including everyone is a bridge too far. Blending families for thirty-six years apparently comes with conditions: sometimes you’re in, sometimes you’re just not their kind of holiday people. The result is always too many conversations starting with «maybe next year» and too much hoping someone will suddenly get the hint.