There are certain people you meet in life who, no matter how brief the encounter, you never forget. Not for what they did, but for how they made you feel. The type of people who ask how you're doing and actually mean it. They lean in to make sure you know they're locked in, instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. They listen, they remember.

Kaylee is that person and always has been. Even the small stuff stays with her: a little note to show you she's still making that soup recipe you shared with her years ago, a job interview mentioned once in passing, your latest update on the guy you're dating. Following up long after everyone else has moved on, checking in without being asked, finding a way to loop you back in even when it would have been easier not to. None of it ever feels like effort. It's simply her style - an openness that asks nothing in return, a way of loving big without conditions or invisible tallies kept. Just a restless love for being alive, and an instinct to pull the people she loves along for the ride. Ask anyone who's known her more than a few minutes, and they'll tell you the same.

Years of showing up this way - as a friend, a colleague, a wife, a mother - have made her someone many people lean on, though it has never seemed to occur to her that the reverse might be true as well. So when the worst news of her life arrived, she wasn't sure how to move forward, let alone how to tell anyone. Saying it out loud, sharing it beyond her closest circle, made it feel more real in a way she wasn't ready for. It took some convincing just to put this page together — she was hesitant, unsure whether she wanted any of it shared at all, and quietly kept it to herself instead, so no one else would have to carry the worry with her. It was a reluctance consistent with everything else about her: taking help has never come naturally, even though giving it always has.

Her world turned upside down the moment she heard the words "Stage III, Triple Negative Breast Cancer": a rare and aggressive subtype that only shows up in 10 to 15 percent of cases. Treatment meant weekly eight-hour chemotherapy infusions, immunotherapy, surgery, and radiation - layered with a continuous, unrelenting schedule of scans, bloodwork, procedures, and consults. In the first 2 months alone, she had 40 medical appointments, with little room to decide anything for herself.

The side effects of treatment are significant, and they compound a strain that's already considerable - physical, mental, emotional, even spiritual, and harder to name than that. Some days, it's a fight just to get through them. And yet she's still working, still parenting their son, who turns 2 years old at the end of August, still showing up for the version of normal life she had before any of this. She and her husband, Zach, both work full time, but even 2 incomes aren't enough to cover it: out-of-pocket costs after insurance are estimated at around $20,000.

Treatment is expected to continue through at least April 2027. This chapter of her story is going to be long, and it isn't going to be easy. This fund exists for one reason: to help make what's ahead a little more bearable. Contributions go directly toward the cost of her care, easing some of the financial weight so more of her energy - what little treatment leaves her - can go toward healing, and toward her family, the two things she deserves most right now.

Kaylee has spent most of her life finding ways to be there for the people she loves. This is simply a chance to return the favor - to give back even a small piece of what she has spent years giving away. Any contribution helps, and so does simply keeping her in your thoughts. More than anything, we wish her a road to recovery surrounded by the people who love her, lifted through every dark stretch of it, until she's standing fully in the light again. - Alexa Grey