Posts by: Colin Balfe

Colin Balfe is the Founder and Chief Content Officer of Love What Matters. Colin was inspired to start Love What Matters after his mother passed from Ovarian cancer. Through his grieving process, he saw the need to connect a like minded community around a deeply personal storytelling platform. He's proudest of the communities within LWM, strangers united by powerful and impactful experiences, underserved people connecting around mutual challenges, hopes and dreams. These communities include Adoption, Mental Health, Infertility, Addiction, Grief, Special Needs Parenting, LGBTQ+ and many more.

‘You’re too young. You’re making this up. It’s all in your head.’ She tortured me through the test, insisting I was fat and overweight, and THAT’S why I was having pain. I was done.’

“I was going through customs when I got pulled into secondary screening. I didn’t know why. I sat in a locked concrete room and was told all my wrong-doings and mistakes and what my options for consequences were. I had to leave the country.”

Colin Balfe - Feb 01, 2019

‘I received the stares, the looks and many of the glares. I knew what those looks were really saying. I understood my life was no longer my own.’

“Memories flood my head so fast they start to overflow as tears run down my face.”

Colin Balfe - Jan 31, 2019

‘Divorce. Maybe it’s time. I just don’t think I can make you happy anymore.’: Widow recounts time marriage almost ended in divorce

“There were a lot of conversations where I would literally tell him, ‘You don’t love me.’ On this rainy April day, I had finally worn him down. ‘No,’ I thought.”

Colin Balfe - Jan 31, 2019

‘That word changed my entire life. ‘There are no known cures.’ I would never ‘get better.’: Woman diagnosed with Gastroparesis, Elher’s Danlos Syndrome, ‘I’m going to enjoy the life I have’

“I was on a fully liquid diet and throwing up daily. I felt like the world was judging me for not being ‘normal.’ I genuinely thought I might starve to death. No one can tell me what my life will look like in five years.”

Colin Balfe - Jan 31, 2019

‘Many of Micah’s behaviors are out of the ordinary and at times downright bizarre. The reactions of others to Micah and his antics have been varied.’

“I suspect most parents have an inner radar that measures the character of others by the way they treat our children, but this is especially true for those of us who are parents of children with special needs.”

Colin Balfe - Jan 30, 2019

‘Hey Sweetheart, how ya doing?’ No one had to tell me, I knew what killed him.’: Woman’s dad loses battle with addiction, ‘He was so much more than an addict to me’

“At 10:30 in the morning my husband called me from my school’s parking lot. He was there to pick me up. I collapsed in front of my students and wept. Two 14-year-old girls picked me up off the floor and walked me out of my school. He was loved. He was wanted. He was needed. I needed him.”

Colin Balfe - Jan 30, 2019

‘We’d lie in bed with our backs towards each other. My husband got more comfortable on the couch than in our bed.’: After struggling with infertility, couple rediscovers intimacy

“We would sit there in our room, phones in our hands. We ended our time together with a simple, ‘goodnight.’ Intimacy no longer existed. When people ask us how we first met, we always tell them, ‘it’s a funny story.’ And really, in a way, it kind of is.”

Colin Balfe - Jan 30, 2019

‘We started seeing a fertility specialist when I was 33-years-old. My levels were, as my doctor put it, ‘that of a 48-year-old.’ One egg was actually black in color.’

“I’ll never forget the phone call from our doctor. She said, ‘I’m so sorry Victoria, your donor really is like you, even her eggs are like yours.'”

Colin Balfe - Jan 29, 2019

‘They can’t do anything else? That’s the only option?,’ people asked me shocked, wide eyes. Making the decision to saw off a part of my body wasn’t something I planned on.’

“I took a bad tumble off a horse when I was a kid. My greatest fear was that I’d awaken from anesthesia – and realize with sinking certainty I had made a horrible, irreversible mistake.”

Colin Balfe - Jan 29, 2019

‘I remember that day so vividly. You called me, asked me very calmly to come home so we could talk as a family. I knew.’

“I ran to my best friend down the street, collapsed in their driveway, and part of me never got up.”

Colin Balfe - Jan 29, 2019