If you had both a stepmother and your natural mother alive, you would honor and respect the stepmother too. But you would always turn to your natural mother for comfort and support. Let the court and your philosophy be like this to you. Turn to philosophy often and find comfort in it. Philosophy makes those other things bearable for you, and makes you bearable to others in return.
If it were that thou hadst at one time both a stepmother, and a natural mother living, thou wouldst honour and respect her also; nevertheless to thine own natural mother would thy refuge, and recourse be continually. So let the court and thy philosophy be unto thee. Have recourse unto it often, and comfort thyself in her, by whom it is that those other things are made tolerable unto thee, and thou also in those things not intolerable unto others.