Join Brynlee’s Battle

Join Brynlee’s Battle Standing with Brynlee as she battles a rare brain tumor (AT/RT)
Brave Like Brynlee 🎗️

https://gofund.me/280baeddc

Some pictures mean so much more than just a picture. 💛These photos of Brynlee will forever hold a special place in my he...
09/03/2026

Some pictures mean so much more than just a picture. 💛

These photos of Brynlee will forever hold a special place in my heart, and I’m so incredibly thankful to Forever Us Foundation for giving us these memories.

As a mom of a child who has battled ATRT, there are so many moments I wish I could freeze in time. The smiles, the little expressions, the way she looks at us, the things that make her her. When your child goes through something so scary, you realize just how precious every single moment truly is.

What makes Forever Us Foundation even more special to our family is that Katelynn, the photographer and one of the founders, has walked this same road herself. Her own daughter battled ATRT. She knows the fear, the uncertainty, the hospital stays, the treatments, and the overwhelming feeling of wanting to capture every little piece of your child because you never want to forget.

Katelynn Smoot and her husband created Forever Us Foundation to give families facing childhood cancer or terminal illness something incredibly priceless professional family photos at no cost to them. 📸💛

And she truly has a gift. She captured Brynlee exactly as she is, her personality, her sweetness, her silliness, and all the little things that make us love her so much. These aren’t just photos to us. They’re memories we get to keep forever.

As a mom, I can’t thank you enough for giving us these. 🥹💛

Thank you for understanding our journey in a way that only another cancer mom can. Thank you for taking the time to capture our family. And thank you for creating something so beautiful out of such a difficult journey.

If you know a family with a child battling childhood cancer or facing a terminal illness, please share Forever Us Foundation with them. They may be able to receive a beautiful family session completely free.

Forever Us Foundation

Because one day, these pictures may be the memories we hold onto the most. Forever us. 💛🎗️📸

💛🎗️ SEPTEMBER IS GOLD FOR BRYNLEE 🎗️💛Childhood cancer is like a house fire.One day you’re living your normal life, and t...
09/01/2026

💛🎗️ SEPTEMBER IS GOLD FOR BRYNLEE 🎗️💛

Childhood cancer is like a house fire.

One day you’re living your normal life, and the next, your house is on fire. There’s no time to prepare or process what’s happening. You just grab your child and do whatever you have to do to get them out alive.

People rush in to help… doctors, nurses, surgeons… and you hand over everything you love and trust them to save it. While they’re fighting the fire, you stand there watching pieces of the life you knew disappear.

Their hair. Their health. Their hearing. Their childhood. Your sense of safety. The version of you who believed terrible things happened somewhere else.

None of it matters more than getting your child out alive. You’d let the whole damn house burn if it meant they survived.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t grieve what the fire took.

Eventually, if you’re lucky, the flames go out and you start to rebuild. Your child gets to go to school. Their hair grows. The hospital bags get unpacked. Life starts looking normal again.

People see the rebuilt house and think the fire is over.

But you still smell smoke sometimes.

A fever. A bruise. A blood draw. A scan. An appointment on the calendar.

And suddenly, you’re standing outside that burning house all over again, wondering if everything you rebuilt is about to go up in flames.

And for some families, the fire does come back.

For some, it takes things that can never be rebuilt.

For some, it takes their child.

That’s childhood cancer.

It isn’t just the fire. It’s what burned and what survived. It’s being grateful beyond words that your child made it out while still grieving everything the fire took from them.

It’s rebuilding a life while part of you still remembers exactly what it felt like to watch it burn.

And it’s knowing you’ll never look at smoke the same way again. 🎗️

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and this month will always hold such a special place in our hearts.

Behind every gold ribbon is a child. A family. A story. A fight that no child should ever have to face.

For us, that child is Brynlee. 💛

Brynlee was diagnosed with ATRT (Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumor), an aggressive stage 4 brain cancer. She has faced challenges that most little girls her age will never have to understand. Yet somehow, through it all, she continues to show us what strength, courage, and pure joy look like.

She may be little, but her fight is BIG. 🎗️

This September, we wear GOLD for Brynlee.

For every child fighting cancer.
For the children who rang the bell.
For the ones still fighting.
And for the families praying for more time.

💛 Gold isn’t just a color.

It’s a reminder that childhood cancer deserves more awareness, more research, more funding, and ultimately, more cures.

So if you see gold this September, know that for our family, it means Brynlee. 💛🎗️

SEPTEMBER IS GOLD FOR BRYNLEE. 💛

📸 : Forever Us Foundation

Some days, it’s just hard not to think about all the what-ifs…What if her cancer comes back? What if cancer really does ...
08/29/2026

Some days, it’s just hard not to think about all the what-ifs…

What if her cancer comes back? What if cancer really does win? What if there is never a cure? What if we have to do this all over again?

I try so hard not to let my mind go there. I try to take it day by day and enjoy every single moment with her, but sometimes, especially at night when everything is quiet, my mind just won’t stop.

I lay there thinking about everything she has already been through. Thinking about how big of a nightmare it all was. The hospital stays, the appointments, the fear, the unknown… and the thought of ever having to watch her go through anything like that again absolutely terrifies me.

Every appointment. Every scan. Every test. It all brings back that scary reality that she does have cancer. That cancer is aggressive. That there is no cure. And even though we have made it through so much already, there is always that little voice in the back of my mind whispering, what if?

I don’t want fear to steal the beautiful moments we have now. I don’t want to spend every day worrying about tomorrow when I should be soaking up today. I want to laugh with her, make memories with her, watch her grow, and enjoy every single second of the life she fought so hard for.

But I’m human. And sometimes, I’m scared.

Really scared.

People say, “Don’t take my sunshine away,” but our reality is so much deeper than that.

Please don’t take my Brynlee away.

Because she isn’t just my sunshine. She is my heart walking around outside of my body. She is the little girl who has fought battles that no child should ever have to fight. She has already been through more than most people will ever understand, and somehow she still finds reasons to smile.

So yes, I will keep praying. I will keep hoping. I will keep believing in miracles, in better treatments, and one day, a cure. And I will keep trying my hardest to choose joy over fear and today over tomorrow.

But some nights, the what-ifs are loud.

And on those nights, all I can do is hold my baby a little tighter and pray with everything in me…

Please, God. Let me have more time. Let me watch her grow up. Let me see her live the beautiful, healthy, carefree life she deserves. And please… don’t take my Brynlee away.

08/26/2026

Ive spent a year co-parenting my daughter, Brynlee, with cancer.

I know that sounds like a strange way to say it, but if you’ve lived it, you understand.

The day Brynlee was diagnosed, our entire world changed. I was still her Mom. Still her safe place. Still the person she needed most. But suddenly, something else was making decisions for our family.

Cancer decided where we slept. Whether we went home. What was put into her little body and when. Which plans had to be canceled. How much of her childhood had to be interrupted.

And I had to share my baby.

I shared her with oncologists, nurses, surgeons, therapists and countless people who became part of our lives. I handed her over for procedures and watched her disappear behind doors I desperately wanted to walk through. I signed papers that terrified me because the alternative terrified me even more.

I learned words I never wanted to know. Blood counts. Medications. Scans. Treatments. Procedures. Hospital routines.

I learned the little things about Brynlee that only a mother knows — the look on her face when she wasn’t feeling right, the signs that she was scared, the things that comforted her when nothing else could.

And there were so many moments when a part of me wanted to scream:

“But that’s my baby.”

I’m her Mom. I’m supposed to protect her. I’m supposed to make the pain go away. I’m supposed to be enough.

But one of the hardest things I had to accept was that I couldn’t love Brynlee out of cancer.

I couldn’t kiss it away.

I couldn’t trade places with her.

I couldn’t make every scan good or every procedure easy.

All I could do was hold her hand, advocate for her, love her harder than I knew was possible, and trust the people fighting alongside us with the most precious thing I have ever been given.

And I will forever be grateful for every person who helped Brynlee fight.

But I can be grateful for them and still hate that my baby needed them.

That’s what people don’t always see about childhood cancer.

It doesn’t just attack a child’s body.

It walks into an entire family and starts making decisions it was never invited to make.

It changes birthdays, holidays, plans, routines and dreams.

It changes Mom.

It changes Dad.

It changes everyone who loves that child.

And to the parent who just heard the words “your child has cancer”…

I wish I could reach through the screen and tell you that you are not alone.

You’re going to enter a world you never asked to be part of. You’ll meet people who know things about your child’s body that you’re still learning. You’ll hear words you never knew existed. You’ll make decisions no parent should ever have to make.

But please remember this:

You are still their person.

When the room fills with doctors, they’ll look for you.

When they’re scared, they’ll reach for you.

When nothing feels like home anymore, you will be home.

Ask questions. Speak up. Trust your gut. Learn what you can. Cry when you need to. And when you can’t carry it all, let someone help carry it with you.

You never asked to co-parent with cancer.

Neither did we.

But through every doctor, nurse, hospital room, medicine, machine, scan and sleepless night…

I am still Brynlee’s Mom.

I am still her safe place.

I am still her home.

Cancer has taken pieces of her childhood that I wish I could give back.

But it will never take who she is.

And it will never take the love between a mother and her daughter.

Brynlee is my warrior. My brave girl. My whole heart. 💛🎗️

And no matter how many people become part of her fight, I will always be her Mom.

🎗️💛

08/25/2026

just a girl and her papaw who is apparently hilarious 😂
the sweetest video 💛

sunshine girl ☀️
08/24/2026

sunshine girl ☀️

Describing Brynlee’s cancer is almost impossible. Describing it, talking about it, or trying to explain what this life h...
08/18/2026

Describing Brynlee’s cancer is almost impossible. Describing it, talking about it, or trying to explain what this life has been like feels so heavy, almost like you’re talking to a wall. Because unless you’ve lived it, there really is no way to fully understand it.

Childhood cancer is raw. It’s scary. It’s heartbreaking. And it is almost unbearable to watch your child go through something you would give anything to take away from them.

Sometimes I think about the life we had before cancer, and honestly, it doesn’t even feel real anymore. There was a time when our biggest worries were normal mom worries. There was a time when I didn’t know what an MRI meant, what an ANC was, what counts needed to be high enough to go home, or what it felt like to sit in a hospital room praying for numbers to change.

Now, this is our normal.

People move on. Life keeps going. People get busy. They stop asking. They stop visiting. They stop checking in. And I understand that life doesn’t stop for everyone else but it feels like mine did.

Because while the world keeps moving, my girl is still living life scan to scan.

We celebrate the little things differently now. We appreciate ordinary days in a way I never knew was possible. A good day isn’t something we take for granted. A day without an appointment feels like a gift. A laugh, a good meal, playing with her toys, things that once felt so ordinary now feel incredibly sacred.

And underneath every happy moment is that quiet fear.

The fear that never completely leaves.

The fear that lives in the back of my mind while I watch her play. The fear that comes rushing back when a scan gets scheduled. The fear of waiting for results. The fear of hearing words that could change everything all over again.

We pray for one word.

“Clear.”

It sounds so simple, but that one word carries the weight of our entire world.

I wish people understood that even when she looks happy, even when she is laughing, even when she is running around and being a normal little girl, cancer is still a part of our lives. The trauma doesn’t disappear just because treatment ends. The fear doesn’t disappear because you get to go home. You don’t just wake up one day and become the family you were before cancer.

There is always the next scan.

The next appointment.

The next blood draw.

The next phone call.

The next “wait and see.”

And as her mom, I carry all of that silently more often than people realize.

I carry the memories of everything she has already endured. I carry the fear of what could happen next. I carry the weight of knowing how quickly life can change.

But I also carry hope.

Because my girl is here. She is smiling. She is growing. She is learning. She is fighting. She is living.

And I will keep showing up for every appointment, every scan, every hard day, every good day, and every moment in between.

I will keep praying for clear scans.

I will keep believing in the future I picture for her.

And I will keep telling her story, even when my voice shakes and the words feel impossible to find.

Because childhood cancer may have changed our lives forever, but it does not get to define who Brynlee is.

She is so much more than her diagnosis.

She is my daughter.

She is such a light.

And every single day, I am grateful that she is still here. 💛🎗️

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New Lex
Perry County, OH

Telephone

+16149147363

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