Joyfully Raising Grands is a podcast for grandparents raising grandchildren with a focus on community, resource, and love. We hope to shine a light on the positive actions we can take every day to become our best selves, serve our grandchildren well and find joy every day.
We are always up to something and YOU can always find out what we are up to at Laura Leigh (lauraleighllc.com), on Instagram @lauraleighllc or Facebook at lauraleigh
We are so excited to introduce you to the Joyfully Raising Grands Grandfamily Nation which opens on March 1st! This membership community is just getting started and I am holding a space for you and your grandfamily! The community is built in a private Facebook group for now where members can freely interact with me and each other on all topics related to raising grandchildren in a positive and caring way. Each month, there is a Guest Expert Meet Up held in a live interactive format where members can listen in, ask questions, and discuss these topics, AND there is a monthly Family Night which will also be a live gathering with a range of collaborative activities. The Family Night event is built as a way for grandfamilies to spend time together with other grandfamilies engaged in games, crafts, or other fun activities. Both the Expert Guest Meet Ups and the Family Nights are recorded and videos are available to members. The membership also gets what we call Joy Gems – short conversations with podcast guests that are only available to the membership.
The Joyfully Raising Grands Grandfamily Nation Membership Community is a place where grandfamilies can join hands and hearts to come together. We offer this community for the benefit of combined resources to increase joy, boost competence, raise confidence, and enhance family connections. Our community desires to decrease the stress, anxiety, and isolation sometimes involved in the huge responsibility of raising our precious grandchildren. I hope to see you there when the membership opens on March 1!
On today’s episode, we chat with Tina Fumo, Author of Fancy Prison who tells her heartbreaking and hopeful story with us.
Tina is the first-born child of Italian immigrants. Her home growing up was busy, loud and according to Tina had the best meals known to mankind. Though Italian was her first language, Tina became a stellar student all through grammar, high and eventually continuing her education at university in Toronto. She moved west in Canada, then spent the bulk of her young life in Banff where she became a mom, raised her child and worked for 30 years. After living for a few years with the 'empty nest' Tina met her future husband and moved to Edmonton.
Though not the biological grandfather of Tina's newborn grandchild, her husband bonded with the baby in his own way. Whereas Tina and her daughter experienced an emotional roller coaster of trauma and joy when dealing with MCFD (ministry of child & family development) it was her husband who was the rock throughout it all and made the decision to return to BC to face the social workers in court.
Fancy Prison details for us an instinctual pull as old as time - a grandmother wanting to hold her newborn grandchild – and pulls readers into an unbelievable ordeal. Author Tina Fumo travels to a small Canadian town and finds herself in the most stressful ordeal of her life. The 'authorities' have apprehended her two week old grandbaby and what her and her family go through to get their baby back will absolutely shock you. The book, Fancy Prison, will surely make you cry. Maybe even laugh. But make no mistake, Tina reveals what she calls out as calling BS on the child welfare industry in Canada.
Find Tina's book, Fancy Prison here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GR375LC
