I’ve played the piano since I was four. It started as a way to make my older brother look bad. He also played and hated practicing. I, too, hated practicing, but you’d never know in those early days. I’d grit my teeth and exclaim, “Mommy, can I play some more? I loooooove to practice!” while my brother would roll his eyes and pantomime threats in my direction.

As I got older, I realized I genuinely did love to play the piano, and I stuck with it. It was my talent during my years of participation in the Miss America program, I’ve been the pianist for both churches I’ve attended in my adult life, and it’s still the most liberating, cathartic outlet for the blues I have ever found.

I’m often asked to accompany singers and other musicians for various things. I’ll labor over the music, keenly aware that one wrong note could throw off the whole thing. I want to do a good job for the people who ask me to accompany them, so I worry, and I fret and I practice my fingers to the bone. Even with 30 years of experience as a pianist, and with the love I have of music in general, I still worry that my accompaniment won’t be good enough, and I’ll somehow disappoint the person who is depending on me to perform to the best of my ability.

As is the case with most accompanists, I make it through the performance fine, pleased with the way it turned out, and proud to have been part of it. This moment is when I have to remember consciously that despite my hours of practice and worry, and despite the investment I may have in the music—right down to my soul, that I am just a player in the background. My job is to accompany the person who needs me, step back, and applaud along with the audience when it’s over.

I can choose to feel like chopped liver, or I can choose to cheer for the people who need me.

As a stepmom (and as a parent in general), it’s so tempting to feel slighted when you’re working so hard for the good of your family and it seems to go unrecognized and unappreciated. When you plan and fund an activity you know will create lifelong memories for someone, and he doesn’t even want to you to be there to enjoy it with him, it hurts. When you plan meals you know someone will like, and you are met only with sharp, nitpicky criticism, it hurts.

At those moments, I can either choose to be resentful or relentless. As a musician, I will never stop striving to be the best accompanist I can be for the person who needs me. As a mom and stepmom, I will count it a privilege to have people who truly depend on me—even when I might want to shake them a little bit. I don’t need the applause. I need my kids to have the confidence that they are loved, cared for and worth working hard for. At the end of it, when they are grown and making their own way through life, I’ll be standing in the background, applauding for them more loudly than anyone.

Sometimes the accompaniment is the most important part. You are doing good work, parents.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. I Corinthians 13:4-7

Originally published on the author’s blog