Amanda Bouchard is an editor and content curator for Love What Matters based in Connecticut. She is a magna cum laude graduate of The University of Rhode Island with a B.A. in Public Relations, with minors in Communications and Gender & Women’s Studies. She is passionate about adoption and foster care. She enjoys reading at the beach, concerts, or traveling to new and exciting places.
“My joints are wonky, my nerves are broken, and my heart beats like I’m running a marathon when I stand up from the couch, but I now have the words to explain the experiences I’ve been having.”
“‘It’s all in your head, Jessica. It’s just your severe anxiety playing up. You CAN walk, it’s all mind over matter.’ No one took me seriously.”
“‘The judge signed off, and now we can go through with the adoption.’ It should have been one of the happiest days of my life. Instead, I was absolutely terrified. We’d just gotten some absolutely terrible news a few days before: James had cancer.”
“Not even 5 pages in, the author started to mention a term not many people hear of: unmarried widow. It felt so nice to finally hear someone say it, validating my feelings and the amount of grief I had.”
“When he passed away, he left me with a big void I didn’t know how to fill and a sadness I didn’t know how to cope with. That’s when I decided to honor his memory in a way that united us in his last months: cooking.”
“Now that my grandparents are no longer with us, when I’m in the kitchen making adobo, it’s comforting in a whole different way.”
“‘I’m sorry, I’m not detecting a heartbeat.’ What followed is a blur. I recall Reece shouting NO repeatedly, but I stayed silent. The world seemed to stop, and I felt like I was watching myself on a TV screen.”
“Certain foods invoke special memories from the past. In the case of Micheline and Leigh, this recipe represents the beginning of a new chapter in each of their lives.”
“During the car ride to the hospital, I prayed harder than I’d ever prayed for Ryan’s heart to start beating again. I didn’t know what I was praying for, being completely ignorant to the consequences of an individual being deprived of oxygen for so long.”
“These sandwiches became a family favorite and they are part of our story.”
