October 19, 2026- Avery’s 18th Birthday
October 19, 2026
Today would have been Avery’s 18th birthday.
The past few months should have been about Avery working on college applications, deciding where she wanted to go to college, what she wanted to major in, and what she wanted to do with her life.
She should have been going to her last Homecoming, Senior Sunsets, playing her final year of high school sports, and college visits.
Her Senior Sunday photos would have been childhood pictures.
She should be working on reasons why she can do things now that she should have been 18. Given her talent in, ahem, negotiating terms that aligned more with her vision than ours, that would have been something.
She and Addison would both be in high school, so the morning bickering would have been loud.
It has been 10 years, eight months, and three days, though, since Avery’s life cruelly came to an end on February 16, 2016, at the age of seven.
Those Senior Sunday pictures that looked back at her childhood?
They’ve been used over the last decade instead, for AveryTuesday, the last pictures taken while she was in first grade, as her body was betraying her.
Because cancer robbed her of so much: most of her elementary school years, all of middle school, high school, the aspiration of college and beyond.
And it took it from her when she was just getting started in life.
We celebrated her 7th birthday that October Saturday in 2015, knowing deep down it would be the last birthday party she’d ever have, the last birthday she’d see.
It wasn’t even four months later, and she took her final breath, forever 7.
What would she want to be when she grew up? Did she still want to be a baker like she did when she was six?
Would she have chosen another career path?
Would she have tried to go to college in-state like her big sister, Alex? Or go out of state like her big brother, Cade?
So many questions, never to be answered.
She would have loved being an aunt - she took her role as Addison’s big sister very seriously, so now, with big sis Alex, a mother of her own with her husband Lucas, Avery likely would have been the opinionated sister-in-law turned loving, doting aunt to her niece, Sofia, born in July.
She loved all her aunts so much - she and her dear Auntie Leesee reunited in heaven in February 2024, so we know she would have loved being an aunt to Sofia here on earth.
She would have probably tried to be best friends with Cade’s girlfriend.
What music would she be listening to? What would her hobbies be?
Again, so many questions that will never be answered.
And yet here we are.
Emboldened and empowered to keep saying her name, to keep honoring her, over a decade since she passed away, as she would have legally become an adult today.
In the decade since we started the Avery Huffman DIPG Foundation, we’re close to raising $2 million to fund research to find a cure for DIPG.
This year alone, we’ve given $100,000 to two hospitals and labs near and dear to our heart and cause- to Dr. Michelle Monje at the Monje Lab at Stanford, where we donated Avery’s tumor and brain the night she passed, and to Dr. Nick Vitanza and the Vitanza Lab at Seattle Children’s Hospital, who previously worked with Dr. Monje and is now doing groundbreaking treatment near Avery’s hometown of Auburn, Washington.
We continue to host events in her name and honor, and donors give in her name and honor, and in the name of other DIPG warriors, committed to helping us find a cure.
At eighteen, you become an adult, a young adult, but an adult nonetheless. So many decisions to make about your future and about your life and your impact.
She never saw eight, let alone 18, but she has already made an impact.
And we will continue to say her name so the impact can keep growing as we work to find a cure for this monster.
Join us in helping that impact continue.
Support the Avery Huffman DIPG Foundation: https://averystrongdipg.org/donate
Forever 7.
Forever in our hearts.
We love you and miss you, Aves.
Forever.
#AveryStrong
Mom, Dad, Alex, Cade and Addison.
