As a Digital Editor of Love What Matters, I'm here to pull on your heartstrings and make you smile. After spending nearly six years as a Digital Reporter for ABC News' "Good Morning America," I'm thrilled to continue sharing touching and inspiring stories that the world is so craving. We can all use more love in our lives -- now you've found the perfect place to get it.
“A nerve injury in her small intestine has caused quite the turmoil in her little body. Every day she complains that her belly hurts. Every day she retches and throws up. This has become our normal. Foster care is hard. Medical needs are hard. But I’m here to tell you that these kids are worth every single sleepless night.”
“Ladies, there are amazing men in this world. Stop putting up with the B.S. and find a partner who loves and respects you.”
“At her 6-month checkup, the pediatrician casually asked, ‘Does she switch toys back and forth between both hands?’ When I answered no, she said, ‘Oh no. This really isn’t normal.’ In the center of her brain was a burst vessel. This was both shocking and devastating. We were done waiting for her to ‘discover’ her arm. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This was not in my plans, at all.”
“I know you didn’t mean for your words to affect me the way they did, for them to hurt me as much as they did. But here’s what you didn’t know.”
“I’d carried her 9 months and soon doctors would be taking her away from me to save her life. ‘When can I see my baby?’ I asked the nurse. ‘Not yet.’ I was finally able to gaze at her through a plastic incubator. There were wires all over her new skin and into her tiny little nose, tape securing them down. But nothing could ever steal away what she was. Beautiful.”
“We were given the news that chemo would cause us infertility. Always being the patient, I’d never known what it meant to be on the other side of it. To watch your loved one suffer and feel so completely helpless your insides were miserably aching. But that was all about to change. How did this happen? What about all our plans and the family we were going to have? I was headed down the road to be a widow before we even had a chance to experience marriage.”
“As I looked at the plate of cookies, sure enough, there was a cookie angel I had decorated. I smiled at my daughter as my eyes welled up with tears.”
“Now I was really scared. Here I am, 19 years old, with a kid – a special needs kid at that – and totally alone.”
“My honest thought when I first saw her was, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be this bad.’ Our doctor didn’t say anything. The nurses were silent. Emmy was silent. It was eerie and terrifying. We know she will always look different and will face bullies in her lifetime, but our goal is to always show her how loved she truly is.”
“This was not how it was supposed to be. I was grieving the perfect baby I had in my head for 10 months. I felt pity for not only myself, but her. I wanted to know ‘why us?’”
