My family can be found in characters from the family sitcoms today– and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Mrs. Goldberg (The Goldbergs) – My Mother: The typical helicopter mother who will do anything to protect her children and anything to get that much more intertwined in their lives. She always has a story for everything: like how you can’t play football because she knows a kid who played football and now doesn’t have a head or how you can’t go to Coachella because she knows a girl who went and was never seen again. Bottom line, she lives and breathes for her children and as well as she’s prepared them for lives on their own, she’ll still treat them like her babies if they need it.

Andre Johnson (Blackish) – My Father: He’s got a cool job in media advertising and wants to make sure his kids grow up to be as cool as he was when he was killing it in high school and as cool as he is now that he’s killing it in the real world. He’s really funny, values culture in all forms (music, television, art etc.) and he wants to be involved in his kids lives as much as possible– even if sometimes he can’t do the basics (ex. keep track of the schedules, take care of sick kids etc.) when mom’s gone.

Luke Dunphy (Modern Family) – Jackson: He’s the biggest jokester and comes up with the most outrageous shenanigans– and yet, everything always seems to work out for him. He’s good at everything, everyone likes him and no one knows how he does it because you’ll never catch him practicing or studying like a normal person. It just comes to him.

Now, what a lot of the sitcoms left out was just how hard it was to get to these picture perfect little households. The tough, complicated, winding history that has led up to this point is something that cannot be forgotten. Creating this family was not as easy as writing out a script and taking multiple takes: they had one shot, so they planned it out and made sure they had the same desires. And they accomplished exactly what they wanted. People write entire feel-good series about families like mine and I think that’s pretty darn cool.