https://p2p.thecurestartsnow.org/3291?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR4eMI5-GI7zf9WccJaMMnwEAlAKydxcS-k-fvcIbGOPOeOkPaKrhJbQc

Brave Like Brynlee, Manchester, MI (2026)

10/26/2026

9 MONTHS. NINE WHOLE MONTHS. 💛🎗️

Nine months ago today, I watched my little girl ring a bell that I once wasn’t sure we’d ever get to hear.

Nine months ago, chemotherapy was finally finished. The treatments that had made her so sick, weakened her little body, taken her hair, and stolen so much of her childhood had finally come to an end.

Nine months ago, Brynlee was officially in remission.

I can still remember what it felt like to reach that day. The overwhelming relief. The exhaustion. The happiness. And the strange sadness that came with realizing just how much my little girl had endured to get there.

Because when you watch your child ring that bell, you’re not just celebrating the end of chemotherapy.

You’re remembering every single day that brought you there.

Every time you held your child while she cried because she didn’t want another needle. Every time you watched her become too weak to do the things she loved. Every night you lay awake listening to her breathe, terrified of a future you couldn’t control. Every time you had to smile at her and promise everything would be okay when you were absolutely terrified yourself.

I remember wanting that day so badly. Wanting the treatments to stop. Wanting the hospital stays to end. Wanting to bring my daughter home and never have to watch another medication drip into her body just to keep her alive.

And then suddenly, we were there.

The bell rang. The chemotherapy was finished. And my little girl had survived something that no child should ever have been asked to survive.

But what nobody really prepares you for is what happens after.

Because you spend so long fighting to get your child to the finish line that you almost forget there is an entire life waiting on the other side. A life you somehow have to figure out how to live again.

Nine months later, Brynlee is still healing.

She’s still rebuilding the strength cancer and its treatments took from her. There are still difficult days, exhausted mornings, appointments, and reminders that finishing treatment doesn’t mean the damage disappears.

And there is still a mother who gets scared. A mother who knows that remission is not a promise. A mother who wants to celebrate every single milestone without that little voice in the back of her mind reminding her how quickly life can change.

But then I look at her.

I look at the little girl who was walking around the pumpkin patch yesterday, playing and enjoying herself. The little girl who gets to go to school, laugh with her friends, argue with her brothers, and get excited about Halloween.

And I remember why we fought so hard.

For THIS.

Not for some extraordinary life filled with grand accomplishments.

For the chance to watch her be a child.

For another Halloween. Another Christmas morning. Another birthday cake. Another ordinary Tuesday when the biggest thing she has to worry about is what she’s going to wear to school.

I don’t think people realize how much you can grieve while being grateful. How you can celebrate nine months of remission and still feel your heart break for everything your child went through. How you can be so incredibly proud of how far she’s come while wishing with everything inside of you that she never had to be brave in the first place.

I would give anything to take those memories away from her. To give her back the childhood cancer interrupted. To make it so she never had to know what chemotherapy feels like or what it’s like to be afraid of what’s happening to her own body.

But I can’t.

All I can do is keep showing up for her, keep helping her heal, and keep fighting for a future where children don’t have to go through what she did.

Nine months ago, I watched my daughter ring a bell.

Today, I get to watch her live.

And after everything we’ve been through, I don’t think there will ever be a day when I take that for granted.

My greatest wish is that someday we’ll stop counting the months because there will be so many years behind us. That cancer will become a distant memory instead of something we still have to think about every day.

That Brynlee will grow up, chase her dreams, fall in love with life, and have the long, beautiful future that every child deserves.

Happy 9 months in remission, baby girl. Nine months since your last chemotherapy treatment. Nine months since you rang that bell.

I am so proud of the little girl you were through the hardest days of your life, but even more than that, I am so grateful that I get to watch you become the little girl you were always supposed to have the chance to be.

You deserved a childhood without cancer. You deserved so much better than what happened to you. And I hope the rest of your life is filled with all the beautiful things this disease tried to take away. 💛🎗️

10/25/2026

Today, Brynlee went to the pumpkin patch. 🎃🧡

And I know to some people, that probably sounds like just another fun fall day. But to us, it was so much more than that.

Watching her walk around, play, explore, and enjoy herself without the walls of a hospital surrounding her was something I don’t think I’ll ever take for granted again.

Because last Halloween, my little girl was in the hospital. While other children were picking out pumpkins, dressing up, and enjoying everything that comes with being a kid, Brynlee was spending her Halloween on the oncology floor.

And today? Today she was out there making memories instead of missing them. 🩷

I watched her walking around and playing, and I couldn’t help but think about how much has changed in just one year. How hard she’s fought to get here. How many things her little body has been through. And how something as simple as a trip to the pumpkin patch can mean absolutely everything to a family like ours.

There was a time when we didn’t know what life would look like after treatment. We didn’t know how much she would be able to do or how long it would take to get pieces of her childhood back.

But today, she was happy. She was playing. She was enjoying every little bit of it. And I got to stand there and watch my daughter experience something that cancer stole from her last year.

Last Halloween, she was a little girl fighting cancer inside a hospital. This Halloween, she gets to be a little girl picking pumpkins, playing, and making memories.

And that right there is something I will never stop being grateful for.

Cancer has taken so much from Brynlee, but getting to watch her reclaim these little pieces of her childhood is one of the most beautiful parts of watching her heal.

Today wasn’t just a trip to the pumpkin patch.

It was another piece of her childhood given back to her. 🎃💛

10/24/2026

I wonder how many times my daughter looked at me during cancer treatment and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t stopping what was happening to her.

That thought has broken my heart more times than I can count.

Because when you’re little, your mom is supposed to be able to fix everything. When something hurts, you run to her. When you’re scared, you reach for her. When the world feels too big, you expect her to make it feel safe again.

And then childhood cancer happens.

Suddenly, you’re the mother standing beside a hospital bed, trying to explain to your little girl why someone has to hurt her again.

Why she needs another needle. Why she has to take medicine that makes her feel terrible. Why she can’t just go home. Why tomorrow might look exactly like today, even though she’s already had more than enough.

And the worst part?

You understand why it all has to happen.

But how do you explain that to a four year old?

How do you explain cancer to someone who hasn’t even had the chance to understand life yet?

How do you tell your child that the medicine making her sick is supposed to make her better? That the people she’s afraid of are trying to save her? That you know she’s hurting, you know she’s tired, you know she wants it to stop, but you have to keep asking her to do it anyway?

There is nothing in this world that prepares a mother for that.

I used to think protecting my children meant keeping them away from things that could hurt them.

Then I found myself agreeing to things that I knew would cause my daughter pain because the alternative was something I couldn’t bear to imagine.

And I cannot begin to explain the anger that comes with that.

Not anger toward the people trying to save her. Not anger because I didn’t understand the importance of her treatment.

Anger because WHY WAS THIS EVER SOMETHING MY CHILD HAD TO EXPERIENCE?

Why was I learning how to comfort my daughter through chemotherapy instead of helping her get ready for another ordinary day?

Why were there moments when I had to swallow my own tears because she was looking at me for reassurance, and I was just as terrified as she was?

Why did I have to watch my little girl suffer and then somehow find the strength to encourage her to keep going?

I remember what it felt like to want to take her place so badly that it physically hurt.

I would have given anything to switch places with Brynlee.

Every needle. Every medication. Every frightening moment. Every single thing that cancer put her through.

I would have taken it all.

But cancer doesn’t give parents that choice.

It makes you watch.

And when watching becomes unbearable, you still don’t get to leave.

You hold the hand. You wipe the tears. You learn how to smile when your entire world is falling apart because your child is watching your face to figure out whether she should be afraid.

And then people call you strong.

Strong?

I wasn’t trying to be strong. I was trying to be a mother.

I was trying to get my daughter through another day without letting her see how terrified I was that someday there might not be another one.

There were times I didn’t want to hear another medical explanation. I didn’t want to sign another paper. I didn’t want to discuss another risk or another possible complication.

I wanted someone to tell me I could take my little girl home and never have to bring her back for any of it.

And I knew nobody could promise me that.

That’s what people don’t understand about having a child with cancer.

You can be grateful beyond words that treatment exists and still absolutely hate what your child has to endure to receive it.

You can respect every doctor and nurse who cares for your child and still feel physically sick walking through the hospital doors.

You can know you’re making the best decisions available and still spend nights wondering whether your child will someday understand why you had to make them.

And that last part is something I don’t think I’ll ever completely make peace with.

Because Brynlee was so little.

She didn’t deserve to have her childhood interrupted by conversations about survival. She didn’t deserve to learn that sometimes getting better meant feeling worse first. She didn’t deserve to be afraid of things that other little girls her age didn’t even know existed.

And I hate that there are thousands of parents who understand exactly what I’m saying.

I hate that somewhere there is a mother trying to convince her child to swallow another medication while fighting the urge to cry.

I hate that somewhere there is a father holding his child still for a necessary procedure, knowing that his child doesn’t understand why Daddy isn’t making it stop.

I hate that there are parents who remember the exact moment their child stopped asking if they could go home because the hospital had become such a normal part of their life.

THAT IS NOT NORMAL.

I don’t care how often childhood cancer happens. I don’t care how incredible these children are at adapting to things nobody should ever have to adapt to.

We have become far too comfortable expecting children to endure the unimaginable.

And somewhere along the way, we’ve turned their suffering into stories about bravery because that’s easier to talk about than how horrifying it actually is.

But I need people to understand something.

When you see a picture of a little child smiling in a hospital bed, you have no idea what that child may have endured just to make it through that day.

And when you see their mother smiling beside them, you have no idea how many times she may have cried where nobody could see her.

There is an entire world of heartbreak behind those pictures that people will never understand by simply looking at them.

I love my daughter more than anything on this earth.

And one of the most painful truths I will ever carry is that there were moments when she needed me to protect her from everything that was happening, and all I could do was help her survive it.

I hope one day, when Brynlee is old enough to understand her story, she knows that I never wanted any of this for her.

That every time I had to tell her we weren’t finished, a part of me was begging for it to be over too.

That every time I told her she could do something hard, I wished with everything in me that she didn’t have to.

And that if loving her enough could have taken away even one second of what she experienced, she would never have felt a single moment of pain.

I would have done anything to save my daughter from childhood cancer.

And the cruelest part of all is that loving her with everything I had was never going to be enough to make cancer leave her alone.

10/23/2026

42 children will be diagnosed with cancer today.

Approximately 5 children will die from childhood cancer today.

And somewhere, a family will sit across from a doctor and hear that there are no treatment options left for their child.

By the time you finish reading this, another family may be stepping into a life they never imagined. A life where nothing feels certain anymore, where parents are forced to make decisions no parent should ever have to make, and where children lose pieces of their childhood they will never get back.

I want to tell you about one of those pieces cancer took from my daughter.

Before Brynlee’s brain tumor was removed, she was right handed.

Four years of her little life, she used that hand. To color, to play, to feed herself, to do the million ordinary things we never think about because we never imagine our children could lose the ability to do them.

Then a tumor grew inside her brain.

And when that tumor was removed, my daughter’s body was no longer the same.

Brynlee is left handed now. Her right side is weaker, and she is still working to rebuild the strength she lost.

Read that again and really think about what it means.

My daughter had to change the way she does things she had already spent her entire life learning how to do.

And I am supposed to just be thankful she’s alive and accept everything else?

I AM thankful she’s alive. I thank God every day that I still get to hold my little girl. But I am also angry. I am heartbroken. And I am grieving things most people wouldn’t even realize a parent could grieve.

Because I remember who she was before all of this.

I remember when her body wasn’t something I had to worry about. When being tired meant she’d played too hard, not that her little body was struggling to keep up. When I didn’t have to wonder how much a school week would take out of her or whether she would have the strength to do everything she wanted to do.

I remember a childhood that didn’t revolve around what cancer had done to her.

And sometimes that grief comes from the smallest things.

A pencil. A tired afternoon. Watching her work to build strength in her right side.

Things that would mean absolutely nothing to someone who hasn’t lived this.

But to me, they are reminders of what happened to my baby.

And I hate it. I hate that cancer was allowed to change so much of her life before she even had the chance to live it.

I hate that children have to undergo surgeries that can change how their bodies function. I hate that treatments necessary to save their lives can leave them with lifelong complications. I hate that parents have to celebrate their children’s progress while silently grieving the fact that their children ever had to fight to make that progress.

Do you know how hard it is to feel so much pride and so much anger at the exact same time?

To look at your child and think, you are the strongest person I know, while also thinking, you never should have had to become this strong.

Brynlee should have been able to spend these years being a little girl. Not recovering from brain surgery. Not enduring cancer treatment. Not rebuilding strength in her body. Not trying to make it through an ordinary school week while carrying the exhaustion of everything she’s endured.

And there are thousands of children carrying their own versions of this story.

Some are learning to walk again. Some are living with hearing loss. Some struggle with their vision, their memory, their balance, or their ability to learn. Some face medical complications that will follow them for the rest of their lives.

These are not small sacrifices. These are pieces of children’s lives.

And I am so tired of childhood cancer being treated like something we should simply be grateful modern medicine can sometimes get children through.

I want MORE for our children.

I want them to survive. I want them to grow up. I want them to have birthdays, friendships, graduations, and futures.

But I also want them to have the best possible quality of life. I want treatments that do less damage to their developing bodies. I want more research into the long term effects of treatment. I want every child to have access to the care and rehabilitation they need.

And I want the world to understand that a child surviving cancer does not mean cancer is finished taking things from them.

I look at Brynlee and see the most beautiful, determined little girl. Cancer never took away her heart, her kindness, or the joy she brings into this world.

But it changed her life.

It changed her body.

It changed our family.

And there are days when I am so overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all that I don’t even know where to put the anger.

She was FOUR. Four years old when her life became a fight to survive.

That should make every single person uncomfortable.

Not just because of what my daughter went through, but because it is happening to children every single day.

I don’t want people to look at Brynlee and feel sorry for her. I want people to look at what happened to her and ask why we aren’t doing everything humanly possible to give children better options.

Because my daughter is not a statistic. She is not just a success story. She is a little girl who deserves every opportunity to live a full, beautiful life.

And so does every other child facing this disease.

We should never be satisfied with children simply making it through cancer when there is still so much we could be doing to protect the lives they have left to live.

My daughter was right handed before cancer.

She isn’t anymore.

And I wonder how many more things my little girl will have to fight to regain because of a disease she never should have had to face in the first place.

I will never stop being grateful that Brynlee is here. But I will also never stop being angry about what she had to endure to stay here.

Because she deserved a childhood that didn’t have to be fought for.

Every single one of these children does.

10/22/2026

Imagine being told that your child has a brain tumor. Imagine walking through the doors of one of the highest ranked children’s hospitals in the country, believing that if anyone can give your child everything they need, it’s the people inside that building.

And then imagine being told that part of your child’s treatment will have to happen somewhere else.

Not because the doctors aren’t capable. Not because your child doesn’t deserve that treatment. But because the care your child needs isn’t available in the place you’re trusting to save their life.

This is the reality of childhood cancer care in America, and I don’t think nearly enough people are angry about it.

When Brynlee was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, I learned just how complicated accessing lifesaving treatment could become. You would think that after being told your child has cancer, the focus would be entirely on getting them better. But somewhere between surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, insurance, appointments, and trying to keep your family together, you discover that even getting your child to the right treatment can become another battle.

And one of those battles is access to proton therapy.

For children with developing brains, this matters tremendously. Proton therapy can reduce unnecessary radiation exposure to healthy tissue compared with conventional radiation, potentially lowering some of the long term damage children are forced to live with after treatment.

We’re talking about their brains. Their ability to learn, grow, remember, and develop. We’re talking about the quality of life they will have long after their cancer treatment is finished.

Surviving childhood cancer should not have to mean sacrificing more of a child’s future than medically necessary.

Yet families across this country are being told they need to travel to different hospitals, sometimes different states, to access this treatment. Some have to temporarily relocate, separate their families, arrange transportation, find somewhere to live, and figure out how they’re supposed to afford it all.

Think about how ridiculous that is.

Your child has cancer, and instead of being able to devote every ounce of yourself to helping them survive, you’re trying to figure out how to get them to a hospital that can provide the treatment their doctors recommend.

And what about the families who can’t just leave? The parents who can’t afford weeks away from work? The families with other children at home? The children whose treatment options are limited by geography, insurance, or the availability of a specialized facility?

What happens to them?

We have some of the most incredible pediatric oncologists and medical institutions in the world, yet access to specialized childhood cancer treatment is still far from where it needs to be.

We should be expanding access to care before families ever have to beg for it.

And yes, I understand that building medical facilities, expanding treatment programs, and operating proton therapy centers cost money. But I also watch money pour into construction projects, city developments, and infrastructure improvements year after year, while families are told that expanding pediatric healthcare is too expensive.

I’m not saying our roads and cities don’t matter.

I’m asking when we’re going to start treating the health and futures of our children with that same urgency.

Because we always seem to find a way to build something when we’ve decided it’s important enough.

Why isn’t access to childhood cancer treatment considered important enough?

I’m tired of hearing about how advanced medicine has become while watching families fight to actually access those advancements. I’m tired of a system where having exceptional doctors doesn’t automatically mean having access to every treatment they recommend.

And I’m tired of children being expected to endure the consequences of decisions made around budgets, capacity, and priorities they had absolutely no say in.

I never imagined that having a child with brain cancer would teach me so much about the things our healthcare system still cannot provide.

A child’s access to treatment should not depend on their ZIP code, their parents’ ability to travel, or whether a hospital has enough resources to accommodate them.

These children have already been asked to sacrifice enough.

It’s time we stop asking them to sacrifice access to care, too.

10/21/2026

Childhood cancer is a national emergency. Whether people want to admit it or not.

And I am genuinely starting to believe that we have become so selfish as a society that we cannot recognize an emergency unless it is happening directly to us.

I know everyone has problems. I know people are struggling financially, emotionally, physically, and in ways the rest of us will never see. I know the world is full of suffering, and I would never expect someone to pretend their own struggles don’t matter.

But somewhere along the way, we have become so consumed by everything happening in our own lives that we have forgotten how to care about what is happening to our children.

And I don’t mean just our own children. I mean the children living down the street. The children sitting in classrooms with ours. The children whose parents we’ve never met. The children whose names we will never know because their stories never make it beyond the walls of a hospital.

Those children matter, too. And they are being failed.

I can sit here all day sharing statistics about childhood cancer. I can tell you that approximately every 34 minutes, another child in America is diagnosed with cancer. That an estimated 15,340 will be diagnosed this year, and approximately 1,820 will lose their lives.

I can share their stories, explain what these diseases do to their little bodies, and show people the reality of something most families never imagine experiencing.

And I can almost guarantee that somewhere in those comments, there will be someone who believes some of these children are lost causes. Someone who thinks spending money on their treatment or research is pointless. Someone who believes that because a child has a devastating diagnosis, their future is somehow worth less.

Can you imagine that?

We’ve reached a point where parents fighting for their children’s lives have to listen to complete strangers debate whether their children are worth saving.

I will never understand how anyone can look at a child with cancer and see anything other than a life worth fighting for.

And I think about that every time I look at Brynlee.

I think about the little girl she was before we knew there was a tumor growing inside her brain. Before I knew the word medulloblastoma. Before I understood that there are diseases that can begin developing inside a perfectly loved, perfectly cared for child without anyone being able to tell you exactly why.

There was no warning telling me that my daughter was going to have brain cancer. There was no way for me to look into the future and protect her from it.

And that should terrify every parent reading this.

Because for most childhood cancers, we still cannot explain exactly why they happen. There is no guaranteed way to prevent them, and there is no treatment that can promise every child a 100% chance of survival.

You can do absolutely everything right as a parent and still find yourself standing where I stood.

That is the reality people don’t want to think about. We like believing terrible things happen somewhere else, to other families, under circumstances that somehow make us different from them.

But cancer doesn’t care about any of that.

And when we talk about childhood brain tumors, I cannot understand why there isn’t more concern. Brain and central nervous system tumors are among the most common cancers in children, and one of the leading causes of childhood cancer deaths. Thousands of children are diagnosed with brain tumors every year, and we still have devastating forms of these diseases for which treatment options are painfully limited.

We should be demanding to understand these diseases better. Demanding more research into why they develop. Demanding treatments that give children more than a fighting chance.

Instead, so much of that urgency is carried by the families who have already been devastated by them.

And then there’s the money.

For years, childhood cancer advocates have had to fight over the fact that historically, only around 4% of federal cancer research funding was identified as going toward childhood and adolescent cancer research. More recent accounting puts the pediatric share of National Cancer Institute spending closer to 9%, but the overwhelming majority of funding still isn’t specifically directed toward pediatric cancer.

And I want to be very clear about something. This is not about taking money away from adults with cancer. They deserve every advancement, every treatment, and every chance at survival, too.

But why should children have to fight so hard for their share of the same urgency?

Why are parents holding golf outings, selling shirts, organizing benefits, and begging for donations to help move research forward? Why are families who have buried their children creating foundations because they cannot bear the thought of another child facing the same disease without better options?

Think about the heartbreak behind that for a moment.

A family loses their child, and instead of being able to simply grieve, they find themselves trying to raise money to help researchers discover what medicine couldn’t do in time for their own child.

That should break something inside every single one of us.

I think about how different our world would be if childhood cancer received the kind of attention that so many other issues receive overnight. If the suffering of children could hold our attention longer than another argument on social media. If we measured our country’s priorities by what we were willing to do for the people who cannot fight for themselves.

Because I don’t believe the problem is that people are incapable of caring.

I think far too many people have become comfortable believing somebody else will do it.

Somebody else will donate. Somebody else will speak up. Somebody else will demand better funding. Somebody else will help the families. Somebody else will make sure those children aren’t forgotten.

Until that somebody else is you.

Until you’re sitting beside your own child’s hospital bed, wondering how something so horrific could happen and why there are still so many unanswered questions.

I never wanted to know this world. I never wanted to know how many types of childhood brain tumors exist or how many families have heard the words that completely changed my life. I never wanted to learn that some parents are told there are no curative treatment options available for their children.

But now that I know, I cannot pretend I don’t.

And the part that hurts the most is knowing that the children we’re fighting for have no idea how much convincing it takes to get the world to pay attention to them.

They don’t know about research budgets or government priorities. They don’t understand why one treatment exists and another doesn’t. They don’t know why their parents spend countless hours searching for hope that might not exist yet.

They’re just children.

They want to go home. They want their moms and dads. They want to play with their siblings, see their friends, celebrate another birthday, and grow up.

And somehow, giving them that chance is something we are still fighting to make a priority.

I am angry because I know what childhood cancer can do to a family. I am heartbroken because I know Brynlee isn’t the only child who has suffered. And I am terrified by how easily society has learned to live with the reality that children are dying from diseases we still desperately need to understand.

This isn’t about making people feel guilty for having their own problems. It isn’t about pretending that other suffering doesn’t matter.

It’s about realizing that there should be certain things we refuse to become comfortable with as human beings.

And children dying from cancer should be at the very top of that list.

Our country is failing our children when their diseases don’t receive the research, resources, and urgency they deserve. And we are failing them as a society when we decide that because it isn’t our child, it isn’t our problem.

I don’t want sympathy for being a childhood cancer mom. I want things to change. I want future families to have answers I never received. I want more children to have real treatment options, and I want researchers to have the resources to pursue them.

I want the next mother who hears the words “your child has cancer” to have more hope than the mothers who heard those words before her.

And I want people to understand that none of us should have to experience this personally before we decide it’s unacceptable.

Childhood cancer is a national emergency.

Not because every child will be diagnosed. Not because every diagnosis has the same outcome. But because every single child deserves a future, and we should never be satisfied while there are children whose lives are being cut short by diseases we have not invested enough into understanding and treating.

We have become far too comfortable living in a world where children are expected to fight for their lives while the rest of us decide whether their fight deserves our attention.

And I will never be comfortable with that.

Not for Brynlee. Not for the children still fighting. And not for the children who deserved so much more time than they were given.

Brave Like Brynlee

10/26/2026

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