I have always loved to go through the family photo albums. Even as a small child, I would spend hours staring at the faces and asking my Mom about each and every one of them over and over again. I was insanely jealous of my brother and sister who had been raised among extended family until they were teenagers. On the other hand, when I was only 5 years old we moved to Canada and the only nearby family I had was my parents and siblings. I so wanted to be the Waltons. I wanted a big family, lots of noise, lots of activity.
Since I didn’t have that, I started gathering family members for myself. In my world, family is a fluid thing. We are loud, we are goofy, and we all talk too much (often over the top of each other). The thing I love most about our family is our capacity for love. We may not always agree with each other, we may get angry at each other, we may hurt each other sometimes but we never ever stop loving each other. We passionately support one another and we will passionately stand up for each other.
Grace and Frankie, Netflix’s new hysterically funny, smart, and fearless original comedy featuring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, is a perfect example of how today’s families can shift, rearrange and blend in unexpected ways. When Grace and Frankie’s husbands leave them after 40 years of marriage—to be with each other—the women find themselves facing a change they never expected. They meet that change with strength, with humour, and with love and in doing so, they band together to form a new blended family. This show (which by the way I became so quickly enthralled with that I ended up binge-watching the whole season in one sitting!) definitely demonstrates that family is what you make it.
Other great Netflix titles that we love celebrating families (traditional or not):
For the little ones –
1. Curious George
2. Stellaluna
For the older kids –
1. Despicable Me
2. Full House (my daughter practically lived and breathed for this show when she was a kid and we loved to watch it as a family)
3. Yours Mine and Ours
And for teens and adults:
1. Fresh Prince of Bel Air
2. The Addams Family
3. Gilmore Girls – this is our all time favourite family TV show. We have always said we ARE the Gilmore Girls in real life and in fact, named our mother-daughter blog Gagen Girls.
Disclosure = Thanks to Netflix for sponsoring this blog post. I received compensation in exchange for this but all opinions and ideas are my own (aka, seriously, you NEED to watch Grace and Frankie. It’s sheer genius.)
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