The high school will “go grey in May” again this year to support one student’s mother as she continues to fight brain cancer.

“Similar to last year, what I want to do is bring awareness to brain cancer as many people don’t really think about it as much. It’s always either Leukemia or Breast Cancer,” Sonja Brueggemann, junior, said. “[Brain cancer has] impacted my family a lot, and I just want to get support for my mom to make her feel supported and help her fight.”

This year’s date to celebrate life and fight brain cancer is Friday, May 26. Brueggemann hopes this year will be a more successful campaign, due to her planning.

“I posted a lot more, I think because I got a date a lot sooner this year,” Brueggemann said. “I was hoping I would talk to someone for announcements or something. I want as many people that want to support it as possible: people that I don’t know, people who don’t even know me, [or] people who don’t have any kind of experience that just kind of realize […] it impacts people.”

When informing people about the cause, Brueggemann wants to share her mom’s story and also bring awareness up overall.

“I don’t know if it’s just my mom’s story that I want to get out there or if it’s just everybody’s, but I just love to share my mom’s stories because she was given 18-36 months of prognosis and she’s beaten that,” Brueggemann said. “She’s gone much further than they ever thought she was going to. I just think that it’s amazing that she’s still going strong.”

Through Sonja’s mom’s long journey, Sonja says that her previous teacher, whose mother passed away from brain cancer, “was really supportive.”

“I hope each year it just continues to get bigger and better, […] and hopefully [there’s] more donating so less people have to go through what Sonja has had to deal with. It’s not easy when a family member gets any type of cancer or sickness or disease. I hope that [Sonja] does well, that she continues on in it, and that she finds the support that she needs or that everybody needs in a time like this,” Michael Kaufman, social studies teacher, said. “I hope it brings awareness, and just the idea that it’s out there, that it affects people, and that people [you may] know have been affected by it. It brings people closer together and closer to the situation as well as the cause.”