St. Jude patient Avalyn survived leukemia. Now the 11-year-old budding writer and actor takes the stage for her second act

Avalyn steps onto the stage in her community theater’s production of Disney’s Descendants: The Musical, and she feels a little nervous. This isn’t her first production — or even her second. In fact, she’s already rehearsing for next year’s play. 

She recognizes this feeling for what it is: normal pre-show jitters. 

“Everybody gets a little bit of stage fright,” Avalyn said. 

Avalyn is in fifth grade and in the gifted program at her school in Mississippi. She enjoys the challenge of memorizing scripts. She has studied her lines with care, understanding their meaning and the motivations that drive her character. It’s a gift — this empathy. A defining trait. 

So is her bravery.

When she’s onstage, her charged anticipation becomes fuel, igniting a surge of energy and focus. She delivers each line with precision and power, her voice reaching the furthest corners of the auditorium. 

“Her daddy and I are not theater people whatsoever,” Avalyn’s mom, Hannah, admitted. “So, the fact that she has gotten into acting, I'm like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I am not a theater mom. I’ve got to learn everything.’” 

Hannah and her husband, Lee, believe, as with most things in Avalyn’s life, this talent must be a gift from God. And when Avalyn stands onstage and begins to sing, her parents first and foremost are enjoying themselves because Avalyn is that good. But they also think to themselves:

There was a time when she couldn’t walk anymore.

There was a time when we couldn’t sleep at night because we were so worried.

That’s why even happy moments can move Hannah to tears: because she knows the backstory. She knows what it took for Avalyn to stand before them now, a healthy child.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital® cured Avalyn of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia when Avalyn was a little girl, and her family’s gratitude is a constant refrain. 

Everything hurt

In 2017, Avalyn, just 2 years old, was playing on the playground when she complained her leg hurt. Not long after, she woke up crying in pain, unable to identify what was hurting.

“This child was speaking in full sentences and having full-blown conversations before she was 2 years old, so for her not to be able to communicate what was hurting — I just knew everything must be hurting,” Hannah said.

As Avalyn’s symptoms worsened over the next two months of doctor visits, so did her parents’ concerns. 

Avalyn lost 5 pounds, an alarming amount of weight.

“She lost her ability to walk,” Hannah said. “At that point she was no longer potty trained because she couldn’t walk or sit up.”

A range of lab tests at a local hospital were consistent with possible leukemia. “I knew something was going on when our sweet nurse was wiping her tears,” Hannah said.

Avalyn was referred to St. Jude.   

At St. Jude, Avalyn was diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. The doctor sat with Hannah and Lee and explained the diagnosis, providing analogies and helping them feel fully informed. 

They learned Avalyn would undergo a two-and-a-half-year chemotherapy plan informed by decades of research at St. Jude. 

Hannah, who knew about St. Jude through the Math-A-Thons she had participated in as a child, felt comforted.

“We had an overwhelming peace that this was just going to be part of her story one day,” Hannah said. “This wasn’t going to be an end to anything. Part of that peace came from knowing we were at St. Jude.”

More birthdays

Avalyn was inpatient at St. Jude on her 3rd birthday, so her parents threw a party in the Imagine Room at St. Jude. The space is interactive with a giant screen that wraps around the room, allowing St. Jude patients and their siblings to choose immersive adventures, such as a trip to space or an undersea adventure.

Avalyn’s doctor stopped by to wish Avalyn a happy birthday, and she sat and played with the little girl.

Hannah has never forgotten this image of Avalyn and her doctor.

“I was sitting behind them, watching them,” Hannah said, “and I just thought, ‘We might not be here celebrating this 3rd birthday if it weren’t for that woman sitting right there.’”

Avalyn completed treatment in 2020 with no evidence of cancer. Now she returns for annual checkups.

“I’ve always known St. Jude was an amazing place,” Hannah said. “But now, it’s a life-altering place.”

Avalyn’s family, including Avalyn’s three siblings, formed a St. Jude Memphis Marathon® Weekend team called Team brAvalyn (a combination of “brave” and “Avalyn”) to give back and share their story.

A new world

Avalyn is writing diamante poems in class — a seven-line, diamond-shaped poem often used to teach parts of speech and the concept of opposites.

A student might start with the word “night” on the first line and use the next few lines to describe what night is like, and then transition to describing the opposite of night, ending on the word “day.”

“It turns into a poem. It’s cool. It’s not confusing once you write it out,” Avalyn said.

She loves a good challenge.

That’s part of the reason she loves acting.

“Getting to put yourself in other characters’ shoes, it’s just fun,” Avalyn said.

But as much as she loves acting, she loves writing the most. She writes songs, poems and short stories, with hopes of being published one day.

“You can come up with different things and show the character’s personality in them,” Avalyn said. “And it’s always fun to dive into and create a new world.”

Avalyn and a friend collaborated on a story about two girls who find an enchanted forest.  

She’s also written a story about a girl and her two siblings who face a tsunami and find shelter. It’s set in the future with robots everywhere, Avalyn said.

Most of her stories are wildly fictional, grounded by a main character who’s a lot like Avalyn. “Every story I write gets longer and longer and longer,” Avalyn said.

But there was one story she resisted telling for years.

“For the longest time she didn’t want to talk about cancer,” Hannah said.

Recently Avalyn created a PowerPoint presentation and stood in front of her class to share it. She told them about the time she got cancer, went to St. Jude and got better. 

It was the first chapter of an adventure that, like all of Avalyn’s stories, keeps getting longer and longer: the story of her life.