Forever By Judy Blume Adaptation
Netflix + Forever Chill
When I saw that my girl Zora from Greenleaf was about to be a FMC in a new Netflix series, I was all over that ish. The reminder was set & it was immediately added to my To-Watch List. Romance? Young love? & a predominantly Black cast. Say absolutely no more.
One of my close friends is convinced that I have read Judy Blume's book ‘Forever’, but the judge is still out on that because I have absolutely no recollection of reading this book. Apparently I read it during secondary school 😩 I started to wonder if I was too scared to read it after having Girls Under Pressure confiscated by my mum…
That being said I had no expectations for the plot of the story, I just knew that I had to watch it. The result: Spectacular viewing!
Keep reading for some thoughts that sprang to mind whilst watching.
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And they called it, puppy loveeee…
I enjoyed the depiction of teen love, in my opinion it was explored extremely well. The romantic relationships that we experience during our teenage years is normally trivialised by our peers, our elder & our parents. Our feelings & experiences of love are typically reduced to something that is labelled as juvenile, temporary, insignificant. But these early relationships play a huge role in our ideas of love, boundaries, intimacy.
At 16/17 I thought I knew what I wanted from life too. I wanted to marry my boyfriend & live happily ever after - I also wanted forever.
Love is a continum that governs us, changes us & comforts us, and we come to understand this from a very young age. We experience love in an array of ways, platonic love, familial love, romantic love. So is it any wonder that whilst we’re young that we believe that love is forever?
Love is something that sometimes we seek out, and as we come to see in Forever, namely through Justin's character, it can consume us in ways that we don’t understand, whilst also destabilising us.
Something else that really struck me during this series was Keisha's discussion with her father about Justin. Through this heart to heart, Keisha is presented with a very factual idea that Justin has centred Keisha in his life because asides from Keiaha Justin doesn’t know what he wants from life. Young love is about navigating the unknowns, challenging what we think we know about love & learning about ourselves through the act of love.
I say all this to stay that young love is real love.
Parenting Adolescent Teens
Parenting teens is no easy feat. You have the overwhelming emergence of hormones, personality clashes as they begin to ‘find themselves’, all while trying to guide them to being the best versions of themselves.
In Forever we are presented with a number of parenting styles:
1 - Avoidant
2 - Catastrophic
3 - Positively present
4- Toxic absence.
Justin’s father was probably my favourite in terms of parenting style. He was emotionally available & invested in his son. Would I say that he was a perfect parent? No, because no parent is perfect, we are infalliable creatures.
Justin’s mother - after nearly two weeks, I am still unsure how i feel about her. Her catastropic parenting unsettled me & felt extremely overbearing & controlling at times.
Keisha’s mother - Avoidant & traumatising. Imagine telling someone that you are a victim in a crime, and they run away. Awful. It is ok to expect greater for your children than what we have been able to achieve, but we should not pigeon hole them into successors or failures based on our own measures of success. I wasn’t a fan of that lady.
Keisha’s father - Despite his discernment and fatherly instincts, this man was extremely toxic, and unfortunately due to his own hindered relationship with his father, i don’t believe he was able to be the father that Keisha deserved.
This series gave me a lot of food for thouugh, in respect of young love, relationships, parenting, sex crimes and identity. I can’ot wait to see what season 2 brings to the table.
If you’ve watched Forever, what were your thoughts?