I often wonder how I got to this place. This was not supposed to be my life. September is upon us, and I should be getting Allie ready for her last year of preschool. I should be buying her a backpack and meeting her new teacher. I should be making plans for her 5th birthday party. Or at least that’s what I thought I would be doing. So how in the world did I get here?

I was frozen for a long time after Allie died from brain cancer. I would try not to think about the horror of it all. In fact, I would push those thoughts out and go to a different place in my mind. Sometimes, I would just press rewind and go back to the glory that was my life in 2012. I’d replay those days over and over in my head. I had two healthy girls, a happy marriage, and an awesome part-time job. Those memories are gold.

Other times I would let my thoughts go down a different path. I would think about the choices in my life that led me to here. Was there a missed opportunity to avoid this place? Was I not supposed to have children? Would I have been happy with a different life?

All of these thoughts served the same purpose. I was attempting to block out the most painful memories seared into my mind. If I just thought about something else, I didn’t have to deal with the trauma of watching my child die from cancer.

I am forever scarred from finding Allie unresponsive in her bed and everything else that followed. I can still hear the sound of the door closing as her doctor gave us the devastating results of her second MRI. I can still see Allie’s lips turning blue from each seizure. I can still hear her weak voice telling me her head hurts. I can still feel her nails digging into my skin as the seizures turned violent. I can still hear the siren of the code blue. I can still feel my entire body shake as I signed a DNR. I can still remember Kyle and I kissing Allie’s face for the final time.

Blocking these memories just offered a temporary relief, and it never helped me to miss her any less. And I miss Allie so much. When your life falls apart, it’s not easy to know where to begin picking up the shattered pieces that remain. The journey over the last year has put me on a path of raising awareness and funds for pediatric brain cancer research. Which leads me back to my original thought. How did I get to this place?

The answer is easy. The odds weren’t that slim. I just wasn’t educated on it. Childhood cancer is not that rare. One in 285 children will be diagnosed with cancer before age 20. That’s a statistic that should be on every parent’s radar. I am young(ish). My daughter, Evie, is seven years old and attends elementary school with 450 other students. Childhood cancer will continue to strike in our schools and our communities, and the odds tell me that Allie will not be the only child I personally know to get cancer. Awareness is the first step in working towards better treatments and a cure.

September is childhood cancer awareness month, and it’s appropriate that the color is gold. My memories of having two healthy girls are of the same color. Gold. Please help us raise awareness of childhood cancer in September. Wear gold ribbons or shoelaces and share Allie’s story with your family and friends. We are turning the Team Little Owl logo gold in recognition of this important month – to honor the children that have died, the ones still fighting, the ones who survived, and the ones not yet diagnosed.