Kinlee’s Krew: The Stinky Karter Foundation

08/21/2026

08/21/2026

Tonight we made our debut at our first Lufkin Chamber of Commerce event! We got to meet and talk to a lot of amazing people, and look forward to attending more events in the future!

08/15/2026

I opened a package today, and I cried the most happiest tears! I received this beautiful light up 3D printed image from Love For Logan . I just cannot stop staring at it. Thank you so much, sweet friend! Words could never express how much I love this!

08/12/2026

I had finally stopped crying this morning.

I knew today was going to be hard. I knew seeing all of the first-day pictures would hurt. Today was supposed to be Kinlee’s first day of middle school too.

I’ve spent so much time imagining what this morning should have looked like. What she would have worn. How she would have wanted her hair. Her backpack. The pictures I would have made her take even though she probably would have been over me before we ever left the house. Walking into middle school with her friends and starting this brand-new chapter together.

And then Kristin’s name popped up on my phone. I took a deep breath because I knew it was gonna be something that hit me, but I wasn’t expecting this.

I lost it all over again.

Because there she was.

Her besties took her to middle school with them. 😭

One of my greatest fears since losing Kinlee has been that the world will keep moving and eventually people will stop saying her name. That the kids who loved her will grow up, experience all of these things without her, make new memories, meet new people, and somehow my girl will slowly become someone they used to know.

I know that fear probably sounds irrational to some people. But when you are a mama whose child is no longer physically here, being forgotten feels like losing another little piece of them.

And then this happened.

On a morning that should have included Kinlee, her friends made sure it still did.

They got dressed for their first day of middle school. They put on their backpacks. They took the pictures that mark the beginning of this new chapter. And they brought their girl with them.

She wasn’t standing there the way she should have been. She wasn’t wearing her backpack or laughing with them. She wasn’t complaining about me taking too many pictures.

Instead, they held her.

And as absolutely heartbreaking as that is, there is something so incredibly beautiful about knowing that when they stepped into a chapter Kinlee should have been stepping into beside them, they remembered that she belonged there too.

Today is hard. Today is unfair. Today reminded me of everything DIPG stole from my daughter.

But today also quieted one of this mama’s biggest fears, if only for a little while. Because today, my girl wasn’t forgotten.

Today, Kinlee went to middle school with her friends. 🩷

08/10/2026

Five months.

I don’t know why this one is bothering me so much, but it is.

Five whole months since I heard her voice. Five months since I touched her, kissed her, took care of her, or heard her say “Mama.” Five months of waking up every day and somehow continuing to live in a world where one of my children is no longer physically here.

And then my brain did the math this morning.

Kinlee has officially been gone for more of 2026 than she was here.

I hate that. I HATE IT.

I hate that time keeps moving. I hate that the days without her keep adding up. I hate that eventually the number of days, months and years without her will become bigger than numbers I can even comprehend right now.

And maybe five is hitting me differently because five already has a Kinlee story.

When she was little and getting ready to turn five, she absolutely DID NOT want to be five.

She “didn’t yike five.”

She was adamant about it. We fought. We argued. We explained. And in true Kinlee fashion, we eventually gave in and let her have her way😂

She even took her brother’s phone and made a video pretending she was a YouTuber.
“Welcome to my channel, guys…”
And then proceeded to explain that she was NOT five because she was “already being six.”
Apparently, if you don’t like an age, you can just skip right over it.

That was Kinlee.

Funny without even trying. Sassy. Stubborn. Completely convinced that if she said something with enough confidence, the rest of us just needed to get on board. And usually, we did.

I would give anything to hear that little voice tell me again that she didn’t “yike” five.

Because today, baby girl, Mama doesn’t yike five either.

I don’t like five months without you.
I don’t like watching time put more distance between the last day I held you and the life I’m being forced to keep living.

People sometimes think grief gets easier as time passes. But there are moments when the passing of time is the very thing that hurts.
Every new month means we survived another one without them.
Every milestone is one they should have been here for.
Every flip of the calendar takes us farther from the last time.

And there is something terrifying about that for a grieving parent.
Because we aren’t trying to live in the past. We know time has to move.
We just wish our children were moving through it with us.

Today makes five months since Kinlee left this earth.

Five months of missing her.
Five months of loving her from here.
Five months of learning that a mother can keep breathing with a piece of her heart somewhere she cannot reach.
And somehow, even on a morning when five feels unbearably heavy, she still managed to make me smile.

“I’m not 5 because I’m already being 6.”

God, I miss that kid.

Five months, Stink.

And for the record, I still don’t “yike” five either.

I miss you, sweet girl 🩷

08/09/2026

Don’t give up. Someone went to Heaven believing in you 🩷

08/08/2026

Today I took Kylynn to the pediatrician.

I didn’t expect it to be hard.

We checked in, sat in the waiting room, and when they called her name, I stood up and started walking behind the nurse.

That’s when it hit me.

It wasn’t the office itself. It was the path.

The same hallway.
The same corners.
The same exam rooms.

My feet had walked that path so many times before.

Only before, I was walking it with Kinlee.

It’s amazing how grief lives in places you never think about until you’re standing in them again. One familiar hallway can hold years of hope, fear, prayers, conversations, and memories.

As I walked beside Kylynn today, part of me couldn’t help but remember all the times I had walked that exact same route with her little sister.

I don’t think people realize how many ordinary places become part of a grieving parent’s story.

A pediatrician’s office.
A school pickup line.
A dance studio.
A ball field.
A grocery aisle.

To everyone else, they’re just places.

To us, they’re places where love once walked beside us.

If you’ve ever found yourself overwhelmed by a place that no one else thinks twice about, I hope you know you’re not alone.

Sometimes grief doesn’t come because today is hard.

Sometimes it comes because yesterday never really left.

And today, for just a few moments, I found myself walking beside two daughters—one holding my hand, and one holding my heart.

08/01/2026

Lately I’ve found myself thinking a lot about advocacy and what it really means.

The moment your child is diagnosed, life stops being about what you want. There were so many things I wanted to do with Kinlee. Trips I wanted us to take. Places I wanted her to see. Experiences I wanted to give her while I still had the chance. But cancer doesn’t care about our plans.

There were times we turned down beach trips, vacations, retreats, and countless other opportunities because Kinlee was tired. Not taking her to NYC for the tree will ALWAYS hurt, but just 3 weeks later, we found ourselves chasing a helicopter holding our baby down the highway. When her body needed rest, we rested. When she wasn’t physically able to enjoy something, my wants no longer mattered. My job wasn’t to make memories at any cost. My job was to protect her, comfort her, and give her what she needed most, even when it meant saying no to things I desperately wanted to say yes to.

That perspective didn’t end when we entered the advocacy world. If anything, it became even more important.

Advocacy is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children. It funds research. It educates families. It gives hope to parents who have just heard the words, “Your child has DIPG.” It creates change that our children may never have lived long enough to see, but that future children desperately need.

But advocacy also comes with responsibility.

Every one of us should be willing to stop and ask ourselves a hard question: Who is TRULY benefiting from the decisions I’m making? Is it the cause or is it me?

Because somewhere along the way, if the attention, the opportunities, the recognition, or the experiences become the goal instead of the mission, we’ve lost sight of why we started.

I would give back every donation, every interview, every follower, every invitation, every opportunity, every headline, every ounce of recognition if it meant I could have one more ordinary day with my little girl. None of those things compare to hearing her laugh one more time. To holding her in my arms.

That’s why I’ve always believed our children are not platforms to build OURSELVES upon. They are the reason we fight.

Their stories are sacred. Their diagnoses are not opportunities. Their battles should never become a means to an end or for personal or financial gain. They deserve advocates who will always put the child before themselves and the mission before personal gain.

If this post makes you uncomfortable, don’t ask yourself who it’s about.

Ask yourself why it made you uncomfortable.

The answer to that question is often where integrity begins.

07/31/2026

Bereaved Parents Month Chapter 31: Love Never Learned How to Die

When people ask what grief feels like, I don’t always know how to answer.

Some days it feels like an ache.
Some days it feels like silence.
Some days it feels like carrying a weight no one else can see.

But after everything this journey has taught me, I think grief is simpler than we often make it.

Grief is love refusing to become past tense.

For a long time, I thought grief was something I needed to survive.
Something I needed to overcome.
Something I hoped would one day become smaller.

Now I see it differently.

Grief was never the enemy.
Grief has always been the evidence.
Evidence that love existed.
Evidence that someone changed my life so completely that even death could not erase what they left within me.

Maybe that’s why grief feels so permanent.
Because real love was never temporary.

The world teaches us that everything has an ending.
Seasons change.
Children grow.
Homes are sold.
Voices become memories.

Even our own reflection changes as the years pass.
Everything around us seems to whisper that nothing lasts forever.

But love, love refuses to follow those rules.
It stretches across silence.
It survives empty spaces.
It reaches into memories and somehow makes them feel present.
It teaches us that absence is not the same as disappearance.

Because someone can no longer be within our reach, and still remain within every part of who we are.

I used to think love’s greatest achievement was bringing two hearts together.
Now I think its greatest achievement is refusing to be separated.
Death may interrupt conversations.
It may leave an empty chair.
It may create a distance that this world cannot cross.

But it cannot convince love that it is over.
Love simply finds another way to exist.
It becomes quieter.
Gentler.
Less visible to the world, but somehow even more deeply rooted within us.
Perhaps that’s why the people we love continue changing us long after they’re gone.
Because love never stopped speaking.
It just learned a different language.
It speaks through compassion we didn’t have before.

Through patience that hardship carved into us.
Through mercy.
Through courage.
Through the quiet ways we choose to love others because we once knew someone who loved us so completely.

I used to believe the greatest miracle was life itself.
Now I believe the greatest miracle is love.
Because life has an ending.
Love does not.
The greatest miracle was never that love could survive life.
The greatest miracle is that it survives death.

If you’ve walked through these chapters with me, I hope you don’t close this book believing you’ve found the secret to grieving.

There isn’t one.
I hope you close it knowing something far more important.
You were never grieving because you were weak.
You were grieving because you loved without reservation.

And love like that was never meant to disappear.
It was always meant to remain.

Perhaps that’s what grief has been trying to teach us all along.

Not that goodbye is the end, but that love has never measured itself by presence.

It has always measured itself by permanence.
Death changed so many things.
It changed our routines.
It changed our plans.
It changed the way we experience this world.
But there was one thing it could never touch.

Love.

It never learned how to take it.
It never learned how to silence it.
It never learned how to make it stop growing.

Because death may have ended a life, but it never learned how to die itself.

Love never did either.

So if there is one truth I hope you carry long after you’ve turned this final page, let it be this: the deepest love you have ever known has not ended.

It has simply become something the world cannot always see.

It lives in you.
It shapes you.
It walks beside you.

And one day, when every goodbye has finally given way to forever, love won’t need another language.

It will simply be home.

Love never learned how to die. It simply learned how to live beyond what death could touch.