Let me tell you a short story- a story about a girl who knows pain intimately and still smiles.
This girl was born into a family that had tragically lost a daughter at 9 months old to cancer, but they were moving on- the doctors said this was a rarity. But alas, this girl didn’t know a normal childhood—whatever that is—past her second year when her big brother was diagnosed with brain cancer as well. She remembers laughing with her brother, hiding in his closet, playing with him and his friends, and being protected by him- because that’s what big brothers do for their little sisters. She also remembers him being sick. She remembers that he loved strawberry shakes in the hospital and that he wore bandanas to cover his head, which was absent of hair and skull from chemo and over a dozen surgeries. She remembers that in spite of all this, he just didn’t like needles- and neither does she.
