Love What Matters

Love What Matters For sponsorship inquiries, email [email protected]

The premier platform for feel-good stories that remind us to Our pain. Successes.

OUR STORY

A resident of New York, Colin Balfe founded Love What Matters back in 2015 after his mother passed from ovarian cancer. Knowing he would have a difficult time with her death, his mother prompted him to find a way to use his grief, creativity, and sensitivity to create something beautiful to bring to the world. Amid his personal journey with grief, Colin developed a new perspective on life and found he was not alone in his feelings of grief, loss, and heartache, or in his search for meaning. What started as just a page with extraordinary stories, Love What Matters grew into a destination media platform. We now operate across multiple platforms, site, newsletter, YouTube, podcast, print, and so much more. Here at Love What Matters, our mission is simple: to spread real stories by real people just like you far and wide that celebrate the love, compassion, kindness, and overcoming. In doing so, we hope to remind others that these things do not happen by default; they’re a daily choice.

➣ Visit our website: https://www.lovewhatmatters.com/

OUR MISSION

These stories are bigger than any one of us, yet they represent every one of us. Our vulnerabilities. Weaknesses. Flaws. Generosity. And, of course, our hopes and dreams about who we aspire to be. One of the first of its kind, we are a positive news movement that yearns to be the much-needed bright spot on your feed or device, balancing out the seemingly inescapable dark and heavy news we are struck with in our everyday lives. With our new and improved newsletter, Living Better, which has amassed over 210,000 readers to date, we aim to provide evidence-backed advice, actionable steps, and moving stories to inspire and rally you to live your most fulfilling life.

➣ Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.lovewhatmatters.com/newsletter/

OUR EDITORIAL PROCESS

Subject matter:

Whether first-person stories or highly-researched articles, we cover a range of topics including love and relationships, kindness, grief healing, family, and parenting, all with one common denominator: to remind you what matters most in life. How we publish content:

At Love What Matters, you are our top priority. We want our editorial process and standards to be clear and transparent, so here are some important highlights on how it all works:

Small but mighty, our highly-skilled editorial team discovers, curates, edits, and publishes compelling first-person stories from first-time or recurring contributors, making sure they are grammatically sound, accurate, and up-to-date before our cursors hit the publish button. In addition to first-person stories, our outstanding and seasoned freelance team crafts articles that provide highly-researched and accurate tips, advice, and information pertaining to our audience-favorite topics. Submissions process:

In addition to the hidden gem stories our editorial team discovers, we accept first-person story submissions through our website’s submission portal for publishing consideration and development, no matter what stage you are in your draft. Once you submit your story to our submissions portal, our editorial team will get back to you as soon as possible via the email address you’ve provided with requests for additional details, photos, or crediting information as needed. Once all the necessary materials are obtained, we will begin building your story behind-the-scenes until it is fully edited, polished, and ready to go live on our site. We cordially invite domain experts and individuals with a powerful story to share to submit any time.

➣ Submit your story: https://www.lovewhatmatters.com/submissions/

Diversity pledge:

As an editorial team who specializes in publishing first-person storytelling, inclusivity is extremely important to us. We believe in the value and importance of sharing stories from all walks of life, and the power it has to foster a more empathetic and kind world. For this reason, we are deeply committed to elevating stories, voices, and perspectives from individuals across all races, sexes, gender identities, sexual orientations, religions, ages, body types, cultures, abilities, and experiences. HAVE FEEDBACK? We would love to hear from you! If you have a comment, suggestion, or question, please feel free to contact us any time at [email protected]. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

“My daughter just finished her junior year of basketball.Her number of varsity minutes played all year? Very few.Her num...
09/19/2026

“My daughter just finished her junior year of basketball.

Her number of varsity minutes played all year? Very few.

Her number of varsity points scored? Zero.

But I’ve never been more proud of her.

HOWEVER, let me be truly honest for a minute, if I may. When the season started, I was struggling. I mean, I was on the STRUG. GLE. BUS. I’ve never had a kid sit on the bench before. I have had 2 kids go on to play college sports, by golly. My kids don’t sit on the bench.

Now, let me be perfectly clear. I was NOT mad at the coach. I did NOT hold it against any other player. I was able to be honest with myself about her abilities, but I was just plain irritated because I didn’t know how to be the parent of a kid who didn’t play. I didn’t know how to get excited for the team when my kid wasn’t on the floor. It was a new role for me, and I didn’t like it. Not at all."

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“This is a sneak peak into a night of bereaved parents. It’s not glamorous, but it’s real and honest. From an outsider l...
09/19/2026

“This is a sneak peak into a night of bereaved parents. It’s not glamorous, but it’s real and honest. From an outsider looking in, this may seem silly, but the effect a trigger can have on someone is real and it’s valid.

My husband Tommy and I were coming home from visiting my parent’s house. I ran in as soon as we got home to use the restroom. TMI? Maybe, but here we are. We had run out of toilet paper the day before and Tommy was supposed to go to the store today while I was at work to grab some. Of course, this did not get checked off of his to-do list for the day. On top of that, he used the little bit we had remaining. Irritated, I asked him to go get something for me to use. I was thinking maybe we had some extra toilet paper in the spare room or even a paper towel? Just something. It takes him a few minutes and he finally walks in holding a pack of wipes. They were a very specific kind, they were Huggies all-natural wipes. Needless to say, it was all downhill from there."

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"Around 4 months old, we noticed she had a ‘rash’ that would come and go, along with uncontrollable itching. We took her...
09/19/2026

"Around 4 months old, we noticed she had a ‘rash’ that would come and go, along with uncontrollable itching. We took her to multiple pediatricians, a children’s urgent care, and an ER. Every time, we were practically laughed at for being frantic over ‘just eczema’. We were told to change our laundry soap and use extra lotion. I finally had enough of the runaround and demanded an allergy test. Her pediatrician reluctantly agreed. It came back positive for milk, peanuts, and hazelnuts. She was reacting to these foods from being passed through my breast milk. The pediatrician wasn’t concerned, didn’t offer an epi-pen, and told us, ‘You just need to avoid those foods and give Benadryl to help with itching.’ That wasn’t good enough for me.

I knew about food allergies but had never had first-hand experience with anyone who had hives or a history of anaphylaxis. I called Rady Children’s Hospital and got an urgent referral to an allergist. I truly believe our allergist, Dr. Susan Laubach, is the only reason our daughter is still alive today. She did skin prick testing to confirm the allergies, offered tons of advice, created an anaphylaxis plan, and prescribed us Auvi-Q epinephrine auto-injectors. I left her office thinking… ‘Ehh. Milk will be easy to avoid. I don’t even like to drink milk and don’t care for cheese other than a random slice of pizza. Peanuts… Well, we just won’t eat them.’"

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“‘You are never given more than you can handle.’ It’s a common response I get when people search for the right words to ...
09/19/2026

“‘You are never given more than you can handle.’ It’s a common response I get when people search for the right words to say to me after losing my son to cancer. I am going to go ahead and refute that belief. We are given more than we can handle. The Tate family has been given more than we can handle.

In September of 2014, my wife and I sat in an OBGYN’s office staring at a screen that appeared to have 3 black and white circular shadows. Yep, 3 shadows stared right back at me as my face turned white and I began to lose circulation.

‘You two are really good at making babies,’ she said."

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“Dear husband,I think I’ve forgotten.I’ve forgotten you.And maybe just as importantly, I think I’ve forgotten me.Oh, thi...
09/19/2026

“Dear husband,

I think I’ve forgotten.

I’ve forgotten you.

And maybe just as importantly, I think I’ve forgotten me.

Oh, this season of parenting.

Man. It’s different.

I feel like we are on the same team. But we are kind of playing a zone defense.

You doing your thing. Taking care of your area.

And me doing my thing, taking care of mine.

With not much overlap.

Both of us putting effort into making sure everything is covered…but it feels as though we are doing it separately."

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“I was 28 years old when I got the phone call that destroyed my life. I was sitting at my desk, when my cell phone start...
09/18/2026

“I was 28 years old when I got the phone call that destroyed my life. I was sitting at my desk, when my cell phone started ringing, displaying the name of my stepmother. I’d only spoken to her a few short hours before, so I remember finding it odd she was calling me so soon after our last chat. ‘Are you sitting down?’ she asked, before following up with, ‘Your brother is being life flighted to Indianapolis. I don’t know what happened, but it seems your father hurt him.’ The next few hours were a blur, bouncing between phone calls, trying to figure out what happened – was it an accident? Was it purposeful? What was his status? Would he be okay? Part of me believed this was all a huge mistake and I would get a call with a more rational explanation of what happened.

I lived in Alaska at the time, where I served in the military, and I made the choice to take a red eye flight out the next night – a decision I regretted for years to come. Shortly after landing in Illinois, I received a phone call asking me to call the hospital, and I knew the worst was to come. After roughly 36 hours of varying degrees of rise and decline, it was determined that my brother had no brain activity and wouldn’t survive without the assistance of machines. The decision was made to remove him from life support, and he passed away shortly after. I never got to say goodbye, I never got to say how sorry I was. To this day, I wish I had left Alaska sooner, so I could have done those things."

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“I never would have dreamed that my 6-year-old daughter would have shed this many tears already regarding ‘friends.’ ‘No...
09/18/2026

“I never would have dreamed that my 6-year-old daughter would have shed this many tears already regarding ‘friends.’

‘No, you can’t play with us.’

‘Why do you wear dresses all the time?’

‘I don’t like that bow in your hair.’

‘You’re too little.’

These are all things my young daughter she’s already had spewed at her.

So, just like my mother taught me, I tell her to kill them with kindness. As a mama bear, I remind myself they’re just kids who are still learning their own ways of life.

But after a particular pair of older girls, who frankly know better, continued to be rude and exclude my daughter, I had to have a difficult talk with her.

‘Honey,’ I said. ‘Why do you want to be friends with these girls? Do they make you feel happy or sad?’"

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"I was unable to walk, I had to be carried everywhere, I was utterly exhausted from my trips to the toilet which occurre...
09/18/2026

"I was unable to walk, I had to be carried everywhere, I was utterly exhausted from my trips to the toilet which occurred about 30-40 times day and night. I was in unbelievable amounts of pain, and I was too sick to understand what was happening. I remember the car journey to the hospital; I was so weak, but I vividly remember the sick feeling in my tummy, worrying if I would make it to the hospital without needing the toilet. I was going in and out of consciousness, my dad carried me into my appointment where I was immediately admitted. The doctor told my parents that if 10 was dead, I was a 9. This is no fault of my parents, IBD can come out of nowhere and progress extremely fast.

I ended up staying in the hospital for a month. I remember every time the nurses had to change the dressing on my leg I would scream and scream and scream for somebody to help me and make the pain stop. I can’t even imagine how traumatic it must have been for my parents to see their child in such a state. I was so weak I needed a wheelchair to get around. I was on such a high dose of steroids I suffered from severe insomnia and was thankfully blissfully unaware I was rocking a ‘moon face.’ I was very close to losing my bowel and I clearly remember the day my doctor came in and took my mom to the side of the room and told her they may need to operate."

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“We all have chapters in our story that we’d rather not talk about. They’re the parts of our story we would rather push ...
09/18/2026

“We all have chapters in our story that we’d rather not talk about. They’re the parts of our story we would rather push deep down inside and deal with them internally, without telling the world how much they affected us. They’re the most personal paragraphs. The most private sentences. Sometimes these chapters so dark that we don’t want to relive them. Sometimes they’re so embarrassing that we could never ever admit we behaved so badly. Sometimes they’re so unbelievable it seems no one else would be able to relate.

But aren’t those the ones that are the most important?

This chapter of my book is probably the most important one in terms of me being forced out of who I was, and into who I’m meant to be. It’s the part of my story that ripped me down to my core and forced me to either step up, or tap out. This chapter shaped me in more ways than I could ever explain."

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“‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’‘A mama,’ I would say.I would have lots of them. Little blonde hair girls wit...
09/18/2026

“‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

‘A mama,’ I would say.

I would have lots of them. Little blonde hair girls with green eyes just like me. And they would call me ‘mama.’ I knew I would adopt one day, it was never a question. But first, I would feel a baby grow in me. I would take pictures with the positive stick. I would have the big gender reveal. I would wear the trendy maternity clothes and laugh with my husband about my silly cravings. That would be me. That was the life I dreamed.

Except, it didn’t quite turn out like that.

Instead, I saw one lonely pink line month after agonizing month. I would dread walking to the mailbox, because I knew there would be another baby shower invitation mixed in along with the bills. I would give myself shot after shot and take so many hormones I thought I was losing my mind. Another friend would announce her pregnancy and although I was so happy for the story God was writing in her life, it felt like a dagger, because His story for me didn’t seem so good. I just didn’t realize how good it was going to be."

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New York, NY
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