A 17-year-old girl recently shared her story online, sparking debate as she described the heartbreak within her blended family following her grandparents’ passing.

On Reddit, she explained that her father and stepmother married when she was seven, blending her family with her stepmother’s two young children.

Since her only extended family was on her late mother’s side, her father insisted that her step-siblings be included whenever she and her brother visited their grandparents.

However, the teen revealed that her grandparents reluctantly agreed, only doing so to maintain a relationship with their biological grandchildren.

When her grandfather passed away in 2020, and then her grandmother last month, family tensions reached a breaking point.

At the funeral, her aunt and uncle kindly but firmly informed the step-siblings that they couldn’t sit in the “grandkid section.”

After the service, each biological grandchild received a carefully crafted memory book from the grandparents—something her step-siblings did not receive, leaving them heartbroken.

Her father and stepmother were furious, accusing her and her brother of lacking empathy and pushing the teen to “show sibling love and loyalty.”

But she stood firm, arguing that her grandparents had done nothing wrong.

“I told them none of this was my fault and I would not turn away from my family over it,” she recalled.

Adding that her stepmother should have been transparent with her children about their limited relationship with her grandparents.

Other commenters sympathized with her step-siblings, acknowledging how hard it must have been for them to grow up believing in a connection that wasn’t reciprocated.

One user with a similar experience as a non-biological grandchild shared, “I never expected anything from my grandparents. They were good to us, but we knew they weren’t family. That honesty saved a lot of pain.”