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.
“I felt like I had been hit with a bag of bricks. I was sad, angry, and felt very defeated. When you care for someone with Alzheimer’s, it’s a constant grieving process. You grieve at the diagnosis, you grieve at every ‘milestone.’ I was dealing with grief even though my dad is still alive.”
“Here we were in a tiny town, in the middle of nowhere with very little support, a child with a new and scary diagnosis, and a baby who never stopped screaming. Just to be funny, I took a pregnancy test. It was positive.”
“At 14, I first told a friend of mine I was gay. Her reaction? ‘I knew it.’ I felt like a massive weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Boy, was I wrong.”
“My feelings and emotions explode and my brain explodes and my eyeballs explode. It feels like losing myself in myself, losing control, falling apart like a melting iceberg.”
“I wanted nothing more in this life than to be a mother, but he gave me only six years to get my life together. I felt so broken and angry.”
“‘Mom, we need to talk.’ When I agreed to support my son’s choice, I didn’t even think of the heartbreak I would feel being thousands of miles away from my only son on Christmas.”
“But how do you come back from that? How do you rise from such an ugly, demoralizing, and damaging mistake, to finish the work you set out to do in the first place? These were questions the internet did not have answers to when I went looking 4 years ago, as my life imploded around me.”
“I lost 56 lbs. in a month. Every time I moved my head, my vision went black, and I was in so much pain. I threw up vomit drenched in blood. That’s when I knew I was seriously ill.”
“I don’t get the laundry done during the day. I don’t get to pre-heat the oven. After the kids are in bed, the house is still a mess.”
“My friend spilled that he had five children. On the day we planned to meet, my daycare unexpectedly closed. ‘Bring Landry along!’ he said. I knew I had met my future husband and my son’s future bonus dad.”
