Integration Three A Home for Hearts They say that home is where the heart is, and if there’s anything Amanda had a lot of, it was heart. Perhaps because of this, she wanted to make every place she went feel like home for herself and the people around her. This is in large part due to her first home, a loving family nestled right at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Littleton, Colorado. It was here that she first learned the invaluable importance of love, support, compassion, a good work ethic, and many other principles that would go on to define her life. These lessons were further expanded upon by the many schools Amanda attended throughout her life. The first to profoundly impact her was St. Mary’s, which she attended from second to eighth grade. She discovered many things there including the indescribable worth of true friends, a very time-consuming love of reading, and her first real encounters with the Catholic faith. After that it was Mullen High School, which her dad and uncle had both attended when it was still an all boy’s school. Here, she really began to hit her stride, making friends whom she kept for all of her life and exploring talents and activities that would come to shape the way she looked at the world. It was here that she was introduced to the concept of being “Christ with skin on”—something she would strive to be from there on out. ("Tattoos on the Heart" by Greg Boyle – Moreau FYE Week Seven) After high school, Amanda joined the ninth cohort of the Holy Cross-Notre Dame Gateway Program, which landed her at Holy Cross College for one year and the University of Notre Dame for three with some study abroad thrown in the middle. She majored in English and secondary education while also obtaining a minor in theology. During this time, she met lifelong friends, discovered her passions, and grew as an individual. Despite initial worries about choosing a college, the four years that Amanda spent in South Bend, Indiana, and studying abroad proved to be some of the most formative of her life. https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40291/files/523827?module_item_id=167955 Amanda always strove to give back to every community she was a part of. She was well known for her kindness, willingness to lend a hand, and ability to see what other people needed, sometimes before they knew it themselves. This was recognized by her unexpected win of the Outstanding Student Award and “Best Personality” superlative in eighth grade, followed by the Esprit de Corps Award upon graduating Mullen. The members of the Mustang Class of 2021 had it right when they nominated her for “Most Likely To Become a Teacher.” After working with charities and traveling for a couple years after graduating college, Amanda returned to Littleton to teach English and theology at Mullen, much to her parents’ joy. During this time, Amanda met the love of her life and married him after a couple years of dating. They raised several wonderful kids who all received her love of kindness, strong faith, and dedication to giving back. Although she chose to make her home and raise her family in Littleton, she had friends and chosen family all over the world, especially in the Kitchener-Waterloo area of Ontario and in South Bend. Vacations were often spent traveling to visit some family friend or another with plenty of bookstore trips beforehand. In her free time, Amanda enjoyed volunteering and being outside. She found it a welcome break from the business of everyday life. ("Why we need to slow down our lives" by Pico Iyer – Moreau FYE Week One) She was also a huge movie nerd, an avid reader, and an occasional writer. It remains to be seen if she fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming a semi-famous writer. Regardless, I know that as the end drew near, Amanda was proud of all that she had done and all that she had become. ("Meet the nun who wants you to remember you will die" by Ruth Graham – Moreau FYE Week Three) Despite others’ high opinions of her, Amanda struggled to achieve all that she did. She tended to get in her own head about a lot of things, which often made https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40291/modules/items/147209 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html it much harder to do the things she wanted to do. ("The Right Way to be Introspective (Yes, There's a Wrong Way)" by Tasha Eurich – Moreau FYE Week Six) She considered herself to be a relatively average person with a larger-than-average heart and an outsized ability to do what she thought was right, regardless of peoples’ reactions. She saw herself as someone who was comfortable being comfortable and didn’t find overcoming fear natural. Despite all of this, she knew that nothing good was ever rooted in fear ("Hesburgh" – Moreau FYE Week Two) so she did her best to overcome it by going out and experiencing the things she found daunting, like going to college out of state or leading groups when she was asked to do so. ("Navigating Your Career Journey" by Meruelo Family Center for Career Development – Moreau FYE Week Four) This focus on growth gives me hope. I know I’ll never see another room brightened by Amanda’s smile and I’ll never get just one more hug, but it gives me hope that we can carry on the things that we’ll miss about Amanda. As for me, I’ll miss her hugs. I’ll miss the Sticky-Note messages she left just to let you know that she was thinking about you. I’ll miss the gifts that took her months to pull together, but were totally worth it in the end. We may never be able to hug like she could. We may never be able to offer a stick of gum in quite the same way when someone was upset. We may never be able to know what people need like she did, but I think she’d want me to believe that the essence of these acts can still be carried forward by the people in this room, the people whose lives she touched. We can pass on her kindness and the way she led by example. We can pass on her willingness to lend a hand and her humble sense of leadership. We can pass on the faith, the compassion, the quiet strength. We can pass on her love. We can be for others what Amanda was for us. We can continue to give her heart a home and that is a beautiful thing. https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40291/modules/items/147595 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40291/modules/items/147595 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40291/modules/items/147286 https://undergradcareers.nd.edu/navigating-your-career-journey---moreau/ Side Note: I didn’t incorporate actual quotes from the readings, but if you want to see the quotes that their essences were found in, you can look here: Integration Three Prep Also I don’t have a hyperlink for the conversation activity from Week Five. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zr5wbNHgyVWsOTiuKk8Fpvbtx3fao_1s-kANsrpzLxU/edit?usp=sharing