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

Brave Like Brynlee, Manchester, Manchester, MI (2026)

02/18/2026

This page is written from the point of view of a mother.

I understand fathers go through their own heartbreak, their own fear, their own trauma watching their child fight cancer. I will never take that away from them. But this space is my voice. A mother’s voice. That’s why my posts say mothers. That’s why they are written the way they are. Please stop coming onto my posts trying to correct or argue that. This page is documenting Brynlee’s journey through my eyes, through my heart, and through the way I experience it as her mom.

And while I’m being honest, I’m tired.

I’m tired of seeing the words I sit and write from my heart being copy and pasted and reposted as if they belong to someone else. These aren’t captions I pull from the internet. I sit in my notes app and write exactly how I feel in real time. The fear. The anger. The grief. The relief. The love. Those words come from living this, not from a template.

If my writing resonates with you, that means something to me. Truly. But taking my statuses and pretending they’re your own without giving credit is not okay. It takes a lot to be this raw and this open. Please respect that.

A lot of pages use AI, recycled quotes, or borrowed words. I don’t. I sit with my emotions and put them on paper the only way I know how. That’s my heart you’re reading. And it’s not cool to keep acting like you wrote something you didn’t.

This page exists to tell Brynlee’s story and my truth as her mother. Nothing more, nothing less. If you’re here to support that, I’m grateful. If not, this might not be the space for you.

02/16/2026

There is a wall of hearts hanging right now that looks like pure childhood. Bright colors, glitter pressed into paint, tiny fingerprints captured in every corner. At first glance it feels light. Sweet. Innocent.

But if you stand there long enough, you start to understand what those hearts are really holding.

One of them is Brynlee’s.

She painted hers beside children who know cancer in ways no child ever should. Some of the hearts in that room were made by kids honoring siblings they lost, children growing up with empty spaces at their dinner tables and memories bigger than their years. And still, their hands chose color. Still, they created something hopeful. Still, they showed up for the next child.

That’s the part that stays with me. These kids are living inside stories that would break most adults, and instead of turning away, they are helping push the future forward. They are turning grief into fuel. Survival into action. Love into something that reaches beyond their own families.

This auction is more than art on a wall. It’s a collection of voices refusing to be quiet about childhood cancer. It’s proof that the smallest hands are carrying some of the loudest advocacy. Every heart hanging there is a reminder that our children are fighting for time, for research, for cures. And they should never have to fight this hard alone.

The hearts will be up through the end of the month, each one holding a piece of a story that deserves to end differently than so many have before.

https://www.32auctions.com/Heart2026

They look gentle when you see them.
But they are carrying a message that could not be louder.
Our children deserve cures.

02/15/2026

International Childhood Cancer Day isn’t a ribbon to me.

It’s survival.

It’s the side of childhood cancer no one puts on billboards. The side you only understand if you’ve stood in a hospital hallway at 2 a.m. bargaining with a universe that suddenly feels cruel and unfair. It’s the sound of machines beeping in the dark. It’s learning how to read lab numbers before you’ve even processed the word cancer. It’s pretending you’re strong because your child is watching your face for clues on whether they should be scared.

Before Brynlee, I didn’t know this world existed.
Now I know it never stops.

Childhood cancer isn’t just treatment. It’s heartbreak layered into everyday life. It’s watching a little body carry more pain than it was ever meant to hold. It’s explaining procedures to a child who should be worried about cartoons, not survival. It’s birthdays scheduled around hospital calendars. It’s fear that never fully leaves, it just learns how to sit quietly in the corner of the room.

This is the side people don’t talk about.

The exhaustion.
The financial strain.
The siblings who grow up too fast.
The parents who master the art of smiling in public and falling apart in private.

And while families are living this reality, childhood cancer remains underfunded, under researched, and treated like a rare tragedy instead of the crisis it is. Kids are still being treated with therapies built decades ago. Survival often comes at the cost of lifelong side effects. Parents are forced to weigh impossible choices because better options don’t exist yet.

That should shake people.

Because these children are not rare.
They are not statistics.
They are entire worlds inside tiny bodies.

Brynlee is one of them. A child who learned survival before she learned multiplication. A warrior princess who carries scars you can’t always see. And there are families right now walking into the nightmare we once walked into, hearing words that split their lives clean in two.

Today is for the children still fighting.
For the ones we lost.
For the parents learning how to breathe inside a storm.

If this makes you uncomfortable, don’t scroll past it. Sit with it. Share it. Talk about it. Demand better research. Demand funding that matches the urgency of what these kids are facing. Refuse to let childhood cancer stay in the shadows where it’s easier to ignore.

Because survival should not be the goal.
A full, untouched childhood should be.

And every child deserves a world that fights for them as fiercely as they fight to stay here.

02/14/2026

Today is the day. 🩷

The Cure Starts Now Heart Auction officially opens today, and my heart is so full watching Brynlee be part of something bigger than herself. She, along with other incredible kids, poured love into the hearts they created. Little pieces of hope that now get to travel into the world and remind people why this fight matters.

Every single dollar raised goes straight back into research to find a cure for childhood cancer. Not just awareness. A real cure. For our warriors. For the families walking this road. For the kids who deserve long, beautiful lives.

Brynlee was so proud to make her heart, and knowing it helps push science forward and brings us closer to a future where no family hears the words we did… that means everything.

If you want to be part of something meaningful, this is your chance to stand with these kids and fight forward with us:

https://www.32auctions.com/Heart2026

For Brynlee
For all our warriors
For the cure

02/13/2026

Today Brynlee got to celebrate Valentine’s Day with her class, and I don’t even have the right words for what that meant to us. Some of these kids she hasn’t seen since before her diagnosis. Before hospitals. Before chemo. Before our whole world flipped upside down. Walking her back into a classroom felt like stepping into a piece of the life we’ve been fighting so hard to get back to.

Her teachers are nothing short of angels. The patience, the kindness, the way they welcomed her like she never missed a single day..I’ll carry that in my heart forever. You can tell when people genuinely love what they do, and these teachers love those kids with everything they have.

And these children..I really mean this when I say they are incredible. The way they surrounded Brynlee, talked to her, played with her, and made space for her without hesitation. They didn’t stare. They didn’t question. They just loved her. They made her feel included in every little thing, and you could see it all over her face. She felt safe. She felt normal. She felt loved. Watching her laugh with them was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time.

To their parents, thank you. Truly. You are raising compassionate, gentle, empathetic kids, and it shows. That kind of kindness doesn’t happen by accident. It’s taught at home, and today it wrapped around my daughter like the biggest hug.

Our community continues to amaze me. Every time I think my heart can’t hold any more gratitude, something like today happens. You’ve all carried us through the darkest year of our lives, and moments like this remind me how lucky we are to be surrounded by people who care the way you do.

Today wasn’t just a Valentine’s party. It was a glimpse of healing. A reminder of how far she’s come. And a room full of little hearts showing my girl that she still belongs right where she’s always been. 🩷

02/12/2026

After your child survives cancer, people expect you to exhale.

They think the hard part is over. The bell rang. The scans are clear. The hospital bags are unpacked. Life is supposed to snap back into place like nothing ever happened.

But nobody talks about what happens inside a mother after.

There’s a terror that doesn’t leave. It just changes shape.

I walk through normal days carrying invisible alarms in my chest. A cough is never just a cough. A bruise is never just a bruise. A headache can steal the air right out of my lungs before my brain has time to be rational. My mind learned a language in those hospital halls that it can’t unlearn. It learned how fast life can flip. It learned how fragile a child’s body can be. It learned what it feels like to sit in a room where your entire world is balanced on a doctor’s breath.

And it doesn’t stop with the child who was sick.

Cancer rewires the way I see all of my children. Every fever one of her brothers gets makes my heart stutter. Every complaint of pain sends my mind sprinting to places I never used to go. I hate that fear touches them too. I hate that a shadow follows moments that should be simple. I watch them play and part of me is celebrating, while another part is quietly begging the universe to let them stay safe. All of them. Always.

That doesn’t disappear when treatment ends.

There’s a grief that lives next to the gratitude. Gratitude that she’s here. Gratitude that we get to wake up together. But grief for the mother I was before I knew how to read lab numbers. Before I knew the sound of infusion pumps. Before I knew the specific silence of a cancer floor at 3 a.m. That version of me is gone. Cancer didn’t just touch her body. It rewired my soul.

Some nights I still wake up in a panic, reaching for a child who is sleeping peacefully right next to me. My body hasn’t caught up to the safety yet. It still thinks we’re fighting. It still thinks we’re counting platelets. It still thinks I have to be ready to run. And sometimes I check on all of them, one by one, just to feel their chests rise and fall, just to prove to my heart that this moment is real.

And the strangest part is doing all of this while smiling. Packing lunches. Folding tiny clothes. Sitting at parties. Laughing with other parents who don’t know that a piece of me is always scanning for danger, always measuring time in what ifs, always whispering thank you for three children I get to tuck in at night.

This is the after no one prepares you for.

Mothers of childhood cancer survivors carry a quiet storm. We are grateful beyond words, yes. But we are also changed in ways that don’t fit into celebration posts. We love harder. We fear deeper. We hold our babies a second longer because we know exactly what it feels like to almost let go.

And if you ever see a mother like me staring a little too long at her children, just know she isn’t being dramatic. She’s remembering the war her heart survived. She’s honoring the miracle in front of her.

She’s breathing in a life she knows is never guaranteed.

02/11/2026

Last month, this brave young girl rang the bell after her final round of chemotherapy.

Today, her numbers are improving, her strength is returning, and her journey is filled with hope and encouraging milestones along the way.

Stories like hers remind us why community, support, and continued research matter so much.

This is why we support the American Cancer Society.
This is why we continue Relay For Life.
This is why the work matters. 💗

02/10/2026

Today felt like one of those days I’ve been dreaming about for almost a year but never knew if we would actually reach.

Today was Brynlee’s last day in the infusion clinic.

I sat there watching her like I always do, but everything felt different. Lighter. Her labs are doing so good. Numbers that once ruled our lives and stole our sleep are finally on our side. We also saw her neurosurgeon and hearing the words that she is doing great felt like oxygen after holding my breath for months. We’ll still see her every six months because Brynlee’s oncologist wants to keep a close eye on her pretty frequently, and honestly I’m grateful for every extra set of eyes loving and protecting my girl.

Her end of treatment MRI and lumbar puncture are scheduled for 3/18, and she’ll continue scans every two months. That part never fully stops being scary, but today it didn’t feel heavy. Today it felt like a finish line we ran through with scraped knees, tear stained faces, and the biggest victory we’ve ever known.

We are standing at the end of something that tried so hard to take her from us, and she is still here. Laughing. Talking. Planning her next big thing. She even gets to see her classmates on Friday for a little bit for their Valentine’s party and she has been talking about it nonstop. The smallest normal moments feel like miracles now.

I don’t think I’ll ever have words big enough to explain the gratitude in my chest. For the doctors. For the nurses. For the clinic that became a second home. For every single person who prayed, showed up, and carried us when we couldn’t carry ourselves. Most of all, for this little warrior princess who never stopped fighting.

We are so grateful to be at the end of this chapter. And so unbelievably proud of the girl who wrote it. 🩷

02/08/2026

We had Brynlee’s beating cancer party today and I don’t even know how to put into words what it felt like to watch her standing there surrounded by people who love her, smiling so big, soaking in every second of a moment we once prayed we would live to see.

I have to tell you about the Walmart bakery in Saline because their kindness deserves to be shouted from the rooftops. I placed her cupcake order a few days ago, just excited to celebrate my girl, and when I went to pick it up they refunded me and told me the cupcakes were on them. Just like that. The baker was the sweetest soul. She hugged me, congratulated Brynlee, and treated her like the little warrior princess she is. It wasn’t just cupcakes. It was love. It was someone stopping in the middle of their workday to say, “We see her. We’re celebrating her too.”

Brynlee loved every minute of today. Every hug, every laugh, every cupcake, every person who showed up just to cheer for her. You could see it all over her face how special she felt. How loved she felt. After everything she’s been through, watching her get to have a day that was pure joy felt like healing in a way I can’t explain.

To our family, thank you will never be enough. We could not do this without you. You’ve carried us, celebrated us, cried with us, and stood next to us through the hardest season of our lives. Today was a reminder that none of this was fought alone.

Our girl is here. She is celebrated. And she is so, so loved. 🩷

Brave Like Brynlee

02/18/2026

02/16/2026

02/15/2026

02/14/2026

02/13/2026

02/12/2026

02/11/2026

02/10/2026

02/08/2026

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