I am a stepdaughter and stepmother both and well understand where you are coming from LMO. I'm so sorry for your hurt.

As a stepmother I make sure to put myself "behind" my stepson's mother, I don't compete at all! Their mother is still alive though, it's a divorce not a death that caused the stepedness. My stepson and daughter-in-law asked my husband and I what we wanted the grandchildren to call us and neither of us "cared" much but left it up to the grandchildren pretty much. I just more or less add "Gran" or "Grand" to the front of my given name. Maybe you could try something like that; either let your daughter figure it out (since presumably she'll only be as close to her stepgrandmother as you are and only see her when you do?) I think she will see the whole picture a little simplier and more "naturally" as she won't be burdened by your past history, it won't be hers. She'll just not see or make a very great connection to her grandmother is all, kind of like some children do where their grandparents are out of town if the grandparents don't make an effort (like it doesn't sound like your stepmother will)?

I had 3 sets of grandparents; my father's, stepmother's and mother's. Because my mother was dead and her parents lived across the country from me I only saw that grandmother once after the age of two or three, when I was twelve or thirteen. I didn't see my grandfather at all after "seeing" him as a toddler. We were pretty much strangers but I have my grandmother's writing desk from 1910 or so and subsequently know a lot more from my study of my genealogy and conversations with other relatives. A lot of my knowledge is because of my stepmother's hard work (she got my father to write my uncle for the desk; made me write grandparents "thank you" notes after holiday gifts were received, etc.) But it was my father's mother who cared for me when I was very young but she lived across the country too and when my father remarried, I was fortunate in my stepmother's mother. Of the three, she is perhaps the one I remember "truest" (although my father's mother was important to me too).

The lesson I think is that your stepmother holds in her own hands how your daughter might think of her? I wouldn't "chase" your stepmother if you're not inclined, wouldn't "call" her much of anything when your daughter is learning to think of her, see what your stepmother does in that direction in her own behalf. I have a friend who calls one of her grandmother's, "Grandmother #2" but with great affection and love, it just turned out that way. I called my mother's mother, "Mrs. Cardin" her married name :-) because she didn't want to be an "old grandmother" and she and my mother's names were the same. The family story is that my oldest brother heard our mother calling for her mother, upstairs, a bit in jest, "Mrs. Cardin!" and picked it up.