Amanda Doulos is a digital editor for Love What Matters based in New York City. She will graduate from Binghamton University with a Bachelor of English Literature and Spanish in Spring 2023. She loves staying involved as vice president of the mock trial team and secretary of Spanish Honor Society. In her free time, she loves reading, traveling, and spending time with friends.
“You can be married to a Korean man and have biracial children and still have internal racial biases. You can have a neurodivergent child and still be ableist. I can’t escape my privileges, but I can try to learn and work from them.”
“‘You can jump off the wagon now,’ they say. But the moment we wake up on January 1, we have to ‘get back on track’ with an extreme diet to ‘undo’ all the ‘bad behavior’ of the holidays.”
“We wanted our children to learn about kindness and being part of this outreach.”
“My heart beat violently in my chest and my face prickled hot with anxiety. ‘I think I might actually be autistic…’ It could’ve cost me all I held dear: my husband, my daughter, even my independence.”
“A beautiful Christmas doesn’t need much. Sometimes all it takes is two strangers playing a few rounds of cards with you.”
“It represents my family. It represents my family’s history. It represents a new life. A better life. A life of survival and freedom.”
“Many people struggle during the holidays from losing loved ones, and we wanted to let other families out there know it’s okay to talk about it. It’s okay to be hurting during this season. You are not alone.”
“Even at 2 years old, he would tell me to leave and get away. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual, and that goes for being a stepmom and having a blended family.”
“When we became parents, I knew what I didn’t want our holidays to be filled with. We have no agenda but to be together and make memories.”
“I sustained terrible wounds from escaping over a barbed-wire fence, and yet my girlfriend rushed me to the doctor, not him. I’ll never forget crying on the phone when one of his family members said, ‘He really struggles with empathy.’”
