"Listen...you’re grieving not only for the husband you lost but for the life you had envisioned. You’re grieving for the future and all the plans and dreams you had in your head. Now that’s all…gone. There’s a wonderful saying  -  'you have give up the life you planned to find the life that’s waiting for you.'  All our lives we grow by giving up things, by loss and moving on, big things, little ones. How we handle those losses really defines who we are….If you don’t acknowledge [grief] and feel it, it will never get out of your way. Unacknowledged feelings are like a drunken cousin at a family reunion; they never shut up so you can hear anyone else. And you have to be able to hear what’s next in your life, what path you might wanna travel down…you have to be able to see what’s right there, right there, right in front of your eyes."--Nora Walker from Brothers & Sisters

I love this show, and I love Nora. Sally Field is an excellent actress, and I always felt she was perfectly cast in this show. The sad news is that I just found out the show was cancelled. As Nora says, "all our lives we grow by giving up things, by loss and moving on, big things, little ones," and though it's just a TV show, my heart aches for its demise. For me, the show came to life, not only from the actors' abilities to capture their characters, but from the writing. I loved Nora's monologues, her moments of adoration and rage, her spastic nature of wanting to love her children unconditionally while allowing them room to breathe on their own. Her children drove her crazy, and vice versa, but the writers encapsulated what it means to be in a family that is not picture-perfect. All families are flawed, heavily layered.  There were many ups and downs on the show and moments when characters had to let people go before they were ready to say good-bye. I'll miss the Walker's. In their honor, I think I'll go have a glass of wine.