n junior year of high school, my dad got remarried to the woman he’d cheated on my mom with several years prior.

As an angsty teenager, I was none too thrilled with his new marriage and was honestly pretty cold towards her whenever we saw each other.
A year later, my dad was taking me to the airport on my way to college, and my stepmom took off work to meet us there and send me off with a care package.

She hugged me and told me that she was proud of me, and when she stepped back, I saw that she had tears in her eyes.

It was at that moment that I realized that she wasn’t a bad person, even if she (and my dad) had done some bad things in the past. Our relationship improved dramatically after that, and now she’s like a second mother to me.