Noelle Franklin was your typical girly-girl — full of sass, sparkle and confidence. She loved to dance, and her fake nails were always so long she could barely function with them — not that she cared. Noelle was obsessed with skincare and makeup, always borrowing from the best brands, even ones her mom, Toni, didn’t use. Drunk Elephant? She had it. At just 6 years old, she knew how to work a beauty routine better than most adults.

She grew up in the Raleigh-Clayton area of North Carolina, surrounded by love, especially from her 12-year-old brother, Christian, and her parents, Dylan and Toni. The Franklins were a typical family in every sense: busy days, school pick-ups, family outings and lots of laughter.

But on May 4, 2024, their world was turned upside down.

The night before, Noelle had come inside after playing and pointed to a swollen spot on her leg. It looked like a bug bite — nothing alarming, and it wasn’t causing any pain. Still, just to be safe, her parents scheduled an urgent care visit for the next morning.

“That Saturday started off like any other,” Toni remembers. “We took the kids to the farmer’s market, stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast, and then went to the urgent care appointment. We were sitting in the back of the car, eating by a little pond while we waited.”

Noelle was taken in for an x-ray. What the doctor saw didn’t look like a bug bite at all — it looked serious.

What followed was a whirlwind: a week packed with appointments, scans and biopsies. The diagnosis came quickly and painfully — osteosarcoma, a rare and aggressive bone cancer. Even worse, further scans revealed the cancer had already spread to both of Noelle’s lungs.

“I don’t think we really knew what to think,” Dylan says. “One minute everything’s normal. That week leading up to this, we went to gymnastics. We were doing everything just as a normal family would be doing. Then overnight or in a blink of an eye, everything changed.”

“We’re lucky that we live kind of in a more populous area of North Carolina, so some of the better medical facilities are not outrageously far away,” he adds. “So we didn’t have to start small and then work our way up. We just kind of jumped straight to a larger facility.”

At that time, the parents’ minds were filled with questions: Where can we go? Who’s going to give her the best treatment?

“It’s just something you don’t ever expect to happen until it happens,” Dylan says. “And then when it happens, literally your whole world shifts and changes, and you’re just filled with emotions and thoughts and the what-ifs. And I think at the initial point, we just wanted everything to be okay, and how do we get there? And so that was our first focus.”

Right away, the Franklin family dove headfirst into treatment. Noelle began MAP chemotherapy — a standard but intense regimen for osteosarcoma. It started with one round of inpatient chemo, where she would stay in the hospital for three to five days at a time. After that, she’d get a three-week break, then begin the next cycle.

The pattern became the family’s new normal: three to five days on, three weeks off — and repeat.

Typically, patients go through about 10 weeks of this pre-surgical chemo. Then comes surgery to remove the primary tumor — in Noelle’s case, the source of the cancer in her leg. After surgery, more chemotherapy follows in hopes of slowing or stopping the disease from progressing.

In total, the treatment plan usually spans about 28 weeks, including both “on” and “off” weeks. But the reality is that beyond that point, the options become painfully limited.

“A lot of the studies and trials just don’t show meaningful benefits,” Toni explains. “You’re kind of fishing in a barrel, just throwing things at the wall hoping something sticks. If there were a proven treatment that worked, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We’d have a cure.”

“I think Noelle proved, although we had worries every step of the way that we had to deal with, that she just wasn’t your typical cancer and chemo patient,” the mom adds. “I mean, besides not having hair, if you saw her out at the grocery store, you wouldn’t have even known that she was going through cancer.”

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Although every part of Noelle’s cancer journey was difficult, one moment in particular stood out as the hardest: when she had to have her leg amputated. Since her primary tumor was in her leg, on Oct. 25, 2024, she underwent a hip disarticulation, where doctors removed her entire leg at the hip.

For her parents, it was admirable — and astonishing — to see how she continued to function, despite the pain and recovery.

“We thought we’d have a month or two where she wouldn’t want to do anything,” Dylan says. “I think we had a week, and that’s just because she was in recovery. But as soon as we got home, she was raring to go. She wasn’t the type to settle. We tried to get her in a wheelchair, and she hated it. So she said, ‘Nope, I’m going to do my walker.’ And she just took off from there.”

“If they told her to do 10 reps of something, she would do 20,” Toni adds. “She’d surpass it. And everyone knew that about Noelle at the hospital. I just feel like her strength… A lot of people come up to Dylan and me now,9 and they’re like, ‘She got it from y’all.’ And I know we’re part of her cancer journey too, but just seeing how Noelle was — I hate to take credit for that because she was just so strong throughout the whole thing.”

At the beginning of Noelle’s journey, her parents started a Facebook page called “Noelle Strong” to keep friends and family updated on their daughter’s prognosis.

On that account — and later on TikTok — Noelle began posting daily videos. She’d say “Happy Monday,” and people came to recognize and look forward to her updates. She also shared skincare routines and day-to-day moments. It became more than just a place for cheerful posts — it was a space for real, raw updates.

“We didn’t sugarcoat anything,” Toni says, adding how the Facebook page and TikTok accounts eventually amassed nearly 13,000 supporters. “I used it as a space, as a mom, to do videos and post updates. It was raw. But seeing how many people joined that group — it was not what we expected.”

“I would say we just wanted a platform and a space to show Noelle and show that cancer sucks and it’s not fair,” Dylan continues. “But even in the hard days, Noelle was on there doing videos, making people smile and a lot of people have really crappy days, but your day, no matter how crappy, might not be as bad as what she dealt with. And I think that just gave a lot of people inspiration.”

On Jan. 17 of this year, Noelle underwent extensive lung surgery. She had her entire right lung removed, along with 54 spots from her left lung. At the time, Dylan and Toni had no idea what recovery would look like — everything felt like uncharted territory.

But as Noelle spent 90 days recovering in the hospital, her cancer continued to spread like wildfire. New spots began appearing — spots she hadn’t had before the surgery. Faced with this devastating progression, her parents had to make the difficult decision about whether to pursue more chemotherapy and treatment.

That’s when the parents decided they just wanted to get her home and have her be Noelle.

“We were able to get her home, and our hospice team actually said, ‘We commend you for getting her home,’ ” the mom says. ” ‘There are a lot of people that wouldn’t have done that.’ I think it just kind of goes back to Noelle — how hard she fought through every single thing. She would still smile, laugh and play pranks and jokes. That was our reason to keep pushing.”

“Once we found out, we knew in the back of our minds things were going down a path of no return, but we also just knew that we would keep pushing as long as she was willing,” Dylan adds. “That was kind of our motivation and determination to do whatever she wanted.”

On May 12, Noelle passed away at 7 years old. In the days leading up to her passing, her family spent her final week at the beach — a place of peace, love and one last adventure.

Noelle had always dreamed of going to Hawaii. Since that wasn’t possible, her local community came together to transform a nearby beach — Emerald Isle — into her very own version of Hawaii.

“I feel like that was really special,” Toni says. “I think she knew we needed that.”

The family left the beach in an ambulance and returned to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about three hours away. When they arrived, doctors ran more scans and confirmed that the cancer had continued to spread rapidly.

“Her whole body was riddled,” Dylan says. “Just to put it into perspective — I said this at her funeral — Noelle had one leg, one lung, and part of one lung at this point. And she left the world with a smile.”

“She was happy. She had her moments — just like any kid would — but the whole time she was there, seeing those scans that were done that Sunday, it just blows my mind how she was able to keep going,” he adds. “She never showed pain; all the doctors said they had no clue how she wasn’t expressing it. She just kept pushing. And that’s what keeps us going. This is a very difficult time, and life sucks. It’s not easy losing your daughter, but her strength and her ability to keep going — that’s what keeps us going.”

Since Noelle’s passing, Toni says their home has felt quiet — and the days, heavier.

“I know she’s in a better place,” she says. “But then it hits me — the memories from before her diagnosis, of her growing up. Grief is very uncharted territory. I feel like we’re still trying to navigate it. Some people say it gets worse. Some say it comes in waves. And it really is like an ocean to me — it comes in waves. But we do have good days, and we have bad days. We’ve been doing things we know Noelle would want us to be doing. And I think that brings me personal joy.”

The family is thankful for the digital memories they’ve collected through her social media accounts — videos, voice messages and even text messages.

“20, 30 years ago, you didn’t have those recordings or those snippets,” Dylan says. “We have all of that now to help us through a moment or two. It brings us peace.”

Now, the Franklins are channeling their grief into something bigger: they plan to start a nonprofit in Noelle’s name called Noelle Strong. Their goal is to raise awareness for osteosarcoma, fund research and help bring more attention to childhood cancers.

“People call these cancers ‘rare,’ but they’re not so rare when it’s your child,’ Dylan says. “Childhood cancer needs a bigger platform and the only way to do that is to get more people on board.”

“She didn’t go through everything she went through this last year for us to just stop. And so we won’t. We’re going to keep pushing.”