Saving / Recovering Boards on Freeform

so this isn't an ask, it's a tell for anyone who ran into the same issue:

I recently started using Apple Freeform as a virtual board to plot out ideas, but accidentally closed a board I had worked on for several weeks and thought it was lost forever as there is no 'Save' or 'Open' function in Freeform. So after scouring this message board in a panic, I found the answer but the thread was closed so I'm reposting the answer more clearly here:

Freeform has a sidebar where it autosaves all projects, so even if you close a board, it's available from the sidebar unless you explicitly delete it from the sidebar. Hope this helps you have less f-bombs than I had this morning.