Definition: Given a real-life anecdote of a complex ethical situation, generate a suitable title that describes the main event/root cause of the situation. Imagine that the given text is a social media post, and you have to write the title of the post, so the users can decide to read the main text or not.
Input: Obligatory long time lurker, I’m on mobile, etc.

There’s a lot of context to this. To start, when I was three months old, my mother passed away from horrible lung cancer. No one knows how she developed it, and she was taken from the world far too soon. I have only a few pictures and don’t know much about her.

A year after her death, my dad remarried. We’ve always referred to it as “our wedding” because it was the start of a new family with the three of us. I was only just over a year old at the time.

Growing up with three branches of family was weird. I’d get confused in elementary school, trying to expand my family trees. Because I had two moms and one dad. We’d visit all three parts of the family and I just assumed it was normal after awhile. Sure, it was hard to explain, but it’s how I grew up. Now that I’m older, I know it’s not normal. I don’t know a single person who calls their step-mom “mom.”

It’s a bit different for me. My parents made the decision when they got married (again, I was only about 1 at the time) that I would grow up with her as “mom” and that was fine. I don’t have many memories from childhood, but I guess they were good at explaining it because I wasn’t confused. I had mom, dad, and Anna, my real mom who I referred to by name.

Now that I’m older, I hate not knowing much about her. I only learned of her birthday two days ago. We never bother celebrating or doing anything. It was never even mentioned to me. Maybe I’m just too emotional about it, but I would have liked growing up celebrating my mother’s birthday. Similar to this, I’m sick of calling her by her name. It’s so impersonal and I want to respect her as my mom.

I’m not religious, but if she’s up there watching me, I want her to know that I think of her as more than an entity that means nothing. She’s my mom, and I think it’s time I can call her that. And just like that, I will say that the decision to call my step-mom “mom” that was made by my parents is no longer sitting well with me.

I’m not sure if this sounds like a validation post so far, but here’s where it gets complicated.

My step-mom has a lot of problems. As someone with diagnosed depression and anxiety, I see some of my own symptoms in her. She has celiac and meineries (?) disease. Without going into what those are, it basically just means she can’t do anything. She stays at home, does laundry, occasionally goes shopping, watches soap operas, and takes her daily nap. To me, it seems like a miserable existence. I don’t know how she does it, living.

She’s very sensitive about all matters regarding the fact that she’s not my real mom. Any jokes or lighthearted comments I make about her “not being my real mom” or “they might think you kidnapped me because I’m not adopted” are always taken horribly. I know that some of those might have been dick moves, but I only mean them as a way to poke fun at our complicated family situation. She doesn’t see it like that.

And now that I’m 17 and old, I want to connect with my real mom more and part of that for me is respecting my true family connections that have been kept from me. And the idea of calling my step-mom “mom” just doesn’t seem right anymore.

WIBTA for telling her this? I don’t have to stop calling her mom, but I know she’ll be heartbroken no matter what I say if I bring it up. Thank you for any responses, no matter what the feedback. It’s been hard a hard topic me lately, and I just want to move forward with the least amount of damage.

telling my step-mom I'm no longer comfortable calling her "mom"