DMG Warrior Daniya

05/22/2025

🥹 Happy Birthday Dani 💓

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Daniya! 💜🎈Today, we celebrate the beautiful, bold, and bubble-loving spirit of sweet Daniya. Though she is Forever 5, she filled every moment with joy, laughter, and love. Daniya bravely battled DMG, a devastating form of brain cancer, for 10 months. With a larger than life personality she filled every room with light and laughter. We can only imagine the sparkle she’s bringing to Heaven today while she is swimming, sipping pickle juice, and blowing bubbles, cancer-free.

In her five precious years, Daniya gave her family a lifetime of unforgettable memories. As an Ambassador, her spirit continues to shine in the fight for a cure. We’re holding her family close in our hearts today, and always — may they feel her love wrapped around them. 💛

03/02/2025

I had no idea this was a thing. I've heard of people drinking pickle juice, I just thought it involved a jar of pickles.

It's funny the kind of things that can warm your heart and make you smile.

Or make your heart ache.

Usually it's both.

Dani must be knocking these back right now.
Are there /olive/ juicers too??

🙂

02/26/2025

This is the family of our very dear friends. They lost everything today. If you are able to donate anything, or share this link to help them, it would mean a lot to me. Prayers are appreciated as well. 💓 🙏

Hello, my sweet cousin her husband and her son were displaced from their home … Hanna Harris needs your support for Help My Cousin's Family Rebuild After Fire

07/07/2024

Our mission as an ambassador family for The Cure Starts Now is to keep fighting for kids like Daniya, until the day comes when DIPG and DMG are not a death sentence.

This month we are doing that by selling T-shirts (and tanks, long sleeves, and hoodies!) to raise money for pediatric brain cancer research. The hope is that by researching the most deadly form of childhood cancer, it will be a gateway to curing cancer altogether.

My father was diagnosed with brain cancer (glioblastoma) in December, so the cause has become doubly personal for us.

We would genuinely feel honored and so appreciative if you were able to help us in this mission, and spread awareness by wearing a Hearts of Gold shirt.

👕The back of the shirt features Daniya's name amongst all the warrior or angel ambassador families who share our mission. As always, 100% of profits will go towards research. (And if you bought a shirt last year, the designs are updated each year!)

❤️Thank you❤️

📣If ordering or donating, Please be sure to choose “DANIYA KETCHMAN” from the drop down list to note that you are showing support for Daniya! 🌈🦄🩷🌠

ORDER HERE:
http://csnevents.org/HeartsOfGold

⏰ These are PRE-ORDER shirt sales, only on sale from July 1-August 11.

💌Shirts will be mailed the last week of August to have in time for September (Childhood Cancer Awareness Month)🎗

05/22/2024

Eight years ago I met my very best buddy.

I don't know how eloquent or organized this will be because I've got some different thoughts swirling around my head...

I'm remembering her incessant newborn hiccups while holding her in the hospital bed. Brand new shiny little brown eyes peering from under the giant bow on her pink hospital cap.

When other things in my life get difficult, the pain of missing Daniya throbs. Imagine getting cold at night, but blankets don't exist anymore. It's something like that, I guess.

I purposely don't use the phrase "she would be [8] today". I want to be clear that I'm not commenting on anyone else's use of that phrasing. To each his/her own. Even when friends and family say it about Daniya, it doesn't bother me because I appreciate that they recognize the passing of time, and that is very important and meaningful with grief. But as for saying it myself, it just never felt quite right to me. My feelings may change, but this is how I feel right now:

Daniya was meant to be in my life for 5 years. No more, and no less. There was never going to be a 6, 7, or 8. To me, "Daniya" and "8" don't compute. She turned 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Beyond that, it's not Daniya. Not in this world anyway.

Those subsequent years are not in deficit because the 5 were a beautiful gift and honor that was given to me. Maybe I don't feel right saying she "would be" 8 because it makes me feel like I'm overlooking or downplaying just how beautiful the 5 years were. It's like.... If someone gives me the most beautiful, special gift, it doesn't feel right saying what else that gift could have been. Besides, the Dani that lives in my heart and mind is always going to be 5, not more than that.

🌈Happy Birthday Dani. The first thing I want when I see you again iA is one of your super amazing, logic-defying, tiny-yet-larger-than-life hugs💓.

03/23/2024

I'm thankful to my past self for capturing little mundane moments like this on video.
I've watched this on repeat more times than I can count, just lying in bed this morning.

It's kind of a mundane moment, but also, it's not. I can't get enough of watching her overcome defeat and frustration, and seeing that light in her eyes when she realizes she discovered a solution. Then seeing that light turn into energy and confidence that fuels her to keep problem solving.

One of my favorite parts of being a parent was watching Daniya learn. Being patient while she figured something out. Freezing time and space because magic was happening (Basically). Daniya loved learning. If she asked me a question that I didn't know the answer to (or if she sensed a deficit in my confidence 😅), she would tell me to ask my phone, because she needed answers.

I often daydream about what kind of amazing things she might have achieved with her mind. My imagination sees her in a pant suit, carrying some kind of important papers. Or in the dirt, completely engrossed in uncovering some kind of ancient fossil. I try to remind myself that she's in a place where the possibilities are limitless; she is probably doing ALL the things and getting all the answers. Thinking about that is sort of a balm for my heartache.

❤️‍🩹

02/06/2024

2 years without my baby.
my buddy.
my mini me.

Any time someone remembers Daniya, I get this feeling in my heart... It's joy, comfort, love, consolation, peace, and other things I can't put my finger on. As I got messages and gestures of love/remembrance from different people over the past few days, it made me think about this feeling even more. The best way I can describe it, is like... it makes me *feel* my love for her. That love is always there of course, but when someone remembers her, it's like she's momentarily bouncing around inside my heart stirring up and warming up that love. It's activated.

It's probably the closest thing I've felt to holding her without being able to hold her.

Yesterday when we visited Daniya's grave, we arrived to discover a touching gesture of remembrance. Someone had cleaned all the graves in the surrounding area, in Daniya's honor, and left a few Dani-specific items next to hers.

Daniya's and her brother's plaques were vibrant and shiny, like when they were new. I walked around and looked at all the others in the area. None dirty, none covered in any kind of leaves or debris like usual. None appearing any more or less abandoned than the next.

I'm struggling to express how this made me feel, but all I can say right now is this. Know that even without this particular gesture, these individuals are deserving of any and all good prayers you can make for them. I know for a fact they desire no worldly recognition, so if you feel so inclined, please just make a sincere prayer/supplication for them and their families.

I have to say that the bunnies and the unicorn with rainbow hair got me. It's true that I love bunnies, but Daniya definitely loved them too. Rainbows and unicorns were 100% Dani. Coincidentally, one of the things we brought along with us (besides the companion stuffies) was a container of Dani's colorful plastic unicorns. She loved to bury them in her kinetic sand and make me find them, or she would make me bury them for her to find.

One stuffy we brought was her Llama.
Full name: Lammy Llama.
I suspect she named him Lammy because she initially thought he was a lamb.

Small tangent: Pretty much any animal/stuffy Daniya named was like that, just named after what kind of animal it was: "beary", "rainbow bear", "unicorn-pig", "Mr. Bear", "Mr. Owl", etc. The only thing I ever remember her giving a more creative name to was a pair of stuffed puppies, one white and one brown. She called them Salt and Pepper.

Sub-tangent: I wouldn't say she was obsessed, but Daniya very much loved salt and pepper.
ex) Added pepper to her mac n cheese.
ex) Loved the idea of sprinkling salt/pepper on all her food (quite frequently denied permission, of course).
ex) Caused me to do some panicked googling and call poison control when she got a tummy ache then admitted to eating basically a spoon of salt.
Stuff like that.

Anyway.. Lammy had a pretty good run as her favorite stuffy for a while. She even enlisted my help to build him a house made of craft sticks. He didn't really fit inside the house, but that's ok.

Mama-and-baby dragon came with us too. Those, she got in the hospital after her biopsy. She was horribly bothered by her IVs, so we went on a small field trip to the hospital gift shop to distract her, and she picked them out.

I hope I always remember these random details. Oh, how unimportant or insignificant a memory can seem.. until it's not.

One last story to share: There was this schtick between Hamid and Daniya sometimes, where Hamid would have to tell her something disappointing, and as a result, Dani would be pouty-lipped, slumpy shouldered and say, "awwh." So then Hamid would say some good news and she'd become re-animated and say "Yay!" ......then he would add something disappointing again, and she'd deflate.... and it would go back and forth, basically as many times as Daniya would allow before just being over it, lol.

"They closed the pool because of thunder."
😔awwh.
"but they'll reopen it again when it's clear!"
😃 yay!
"but that could take a while and it might stay closed."
😔 awwh.
"but. we can wait in the clubhouse and play games!"
😃 yay!

etc.

So, the last thing I have to say is for Daniya.

It's been 2 years without you, Dani. 💔
But, that is 2 years closer to being with you again!💓
But,...

🙁
..🤷🏻‍♀️(I was never very good at keeping the bit going.)