In 2019, three-year-old Aoife Flanagan-Gibbs tragically passed away just five days after being diagnosed with a rare germ cell cancer. For weeks before, her mother, Eilish, had taken her to doctors 11 times, begging them to take her daughter’s worsening pain seriously. Each time, they dismissed it as “just constipation.”

By the time an X-ray finally revealed the truth, the cancer had already spread too far. “They didn’t give us a fair chance,” Eilish said, heartbroken. Aoife—who loved ponies, Paw Patrol, and Frozen—died in her mother’s arms on July 7, leaving behind a family shattered by grief.

But Eilish refused to let Aoife’s story end in silence. She donated her daughter’s tissue for research and went on to found Aoife’s Bubbles, the UK’s first charity dedicated to raising awareness of germ cell cancer. Through her tireless work, she hopes to ensure that no other family suffers from missed diagnoses and that more children are given the fair chance Aoife never had.

Today, Aoife’s legacy lives on in every family helped and every life touched by her mother’s fight for awareness, turning heartbreak into hope.