Then one day, as young girls sometimes will do, Lilian had a serious conversation with her mother. She asked her mother, Tiffani, who was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer 10 years ago, some “hard questions,” her mother said.
The 11-year-old asked: Will her mother’s cancer return? Is there a cure?
Her mother was brutally honest, and when Lilian heard the answers, she decided to shift the fundraising focus from herself to others like her mother battling breast cancer.
The mother-daughter conversation “changed the narrative and sparked something inside her,” said Moore, who was diagnosed with breast cancer when Lilian was 18 months old.
That spark has turned into a fundraising inferno.
Lilian’s Popsicle Stand raised $800 three years ago, followed by $1,000 and $3,000. This year, after soliciting family and friends and accepting on-line donations through a QR code, Lilian generated more than $6,000 during the three-day Trenton community garage sale.
She has raised more than $10,000 in four years. Besides popsicles, Lilian sold bottles of water and flavor packets that were donated by area Kroger stores, Todd’s IGA and Skyline Chili in Trenton.
All proceeds were donated to METAvivor, an organization that uses 100% of its funds for research and treatments for metastatic breast cancer, or Stage IV breast cancer.
Lilian, entering sixth grade at Monroe Elementary School where her father teaches, said she wants to help her mom and other people with this disease to have more treatment options and live longer.
She said her mother’s disease makes her “really sad.” Her entire life, her mother has battled breast cancer.
Todd Moore called his wife ‘the strongest person I know.”
Then the phone conversation switched from his wife to his daughter. Rightfully so, Moore is proud of his daughter for her selfless act of kindness and generosity. His daughter is “an awesome child,” he said.
Lilian never missed a beat. “I am awesome,” she said. “No need for modesty.”
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