When she was only 11 years old, Abigail Camacho’s father was diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma brain cancer. Though given only a few months to live, her father well surpassed that timeline by a decade before passing away. Their journey was not without adversity, and because of this, Abigail and the rest of her family had to learn to cope with the unpredictability of her fathers illness.

A More Hectic Tax Season Than Usual

During the 2015 tax season, Abigail (Harder) Camacho’s father began to show signs of constant drowsiness that the family thought was just exhaustion from working during this busy season as an accountant. It wouldn’t become alarming until he suffered a grand mal seizure at a work lunch.

Through a CT scan, doctors found a lemon-sized tumor on his left frontal lobe that was soon identified as a result of stage 4 glioblastoma brain cancer. Around this time, Abigail was only 11 years old when she heard this news over the phone.

Then the 2020 pandemic hit. While a hectic time for everyone, it was especially hectic for Jauwaun who was told that she had a large mass inside of her uterus. The next year, she had a hysterectomy to see if the procedure would protect her body from more serious conditions.

Seemingly overnight, the family’s life was flipped upside down. While Abigail and her 5 younger siblings were usually being homeschooled with their mother watching over them, now their mother had to leave the house more often for doctors appointments and hospital visits during her husband’s illness. Sometimes Abigail and her siblings went, but they only went to a few at a time because it was hard to take all 6 of them at once.

Most of the time, she remembered her and her siblings constantly going through different babysitters and family coming into town to temporarily take care of them while their parents were away. “I love my grandma, but I don’t want my grandma to be taking care of us all the time,” Abigail said.

A Little Splash of Sunshine in the Darkness

4 years later, the family heard about Inheritance of Hope in 2019. Though initially wanting to go on a Legacy Retreat® in April of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic struck before they could attend. Despite being a hectic time for everyone,  the Harder family was still able to gain resources and community through an online Hope@Home™ Weekend before the family’s in-person retreat in March of 2022. “Literally one of the best things I’ve ever experienced,” Abigail remarked. “I loved meeting other people my age who also had either a parent who was sick or is sick.”

A little after the retreat, her dad’s tumor came back in 2023. He received a second removal surgery and was doing alright, but not as well as the first time he got a tumor 10 years prior. Around this time, her mother was also diagnosed with stage 3 uterine cancer a few days before Abigail left for her senior year of college.

Emotionally, this was hard on Abigail who felt isolated in her friend groups as she was the only one who had both parents struggling with high level cancer diagnoses. They would get upset that she kept certain details to herself, leaving them to find out about the news from her mother’s blog. While this was out of concern, she realized that she would need some time by herself to process her feelings before telling other people.

Her church community also acted out of concern and gave her family supportive messages, but sometimes they too crossed the line. “It’s hard when people are like, ‘oh yeah, your dad’s completely healed of his cancer.’ And it’s like, we don’t actually know that…That’s the thing with this cancer, we can never know.” Abigail said. “It wasn’t like they were trying to say anything wrong, but it just is that they can’t comprehend the actual unknown that comes with it.”

In October of that year, her father’s cancer began resisting treatment and he lost the ability to walk. He was also running the risk of having communication difficulties. “He has always had a thing where he wanted quality over quantity…he would rather die sooner than to not communicate with people or not be able to just enjoy life,” Abigail stated. 

The family was told that at this point, he only had 6 months to live. Similar to what they were told when he was first diagnosed as Abigail remarked that “he was already a walking miracle because we had been given six months to like a year and a half-ish estimate the first go around with his cancer. He had outlived that by what would have been eight, nine years at that point his second tumor came back.”

Following this, Abigail moved back home to help out with her father. She noticed that the side effects from this go around seemed stronger than the last time, prompting the family to make funeral arrangements with her dad’s help while he was still alive.

When not helping with funeral arrangements, Abigail was busy planning her wedding. She and her then fiance had to figure out if they could schedule the occasion at a time early enough for her father to attend or if they couldn’t, they needed to see which time would be okay for Abigail while she healed from her possible loss.

Thankfully, her father got to know her now husband and lived to see her wedding day, where he walked her down the aisle. He also did the daddy-daughter dance with her, during which Abigail remembered that there “wasn’t a dry eye in the room but mine.” That said, she did tear up while watching her wedding footage afterwards as she remembered that they once didn’t know if he would make it to her high school graduation, let alone her wedding.

Abigail dancing with her father on her wedding day

Unfortunately, Abigail’s father passed away in December of 2025. While a rough moment for the family, Abigail continues to live her life and serving other families as a Legacy Retreat® volunteer. “I love being able to give back and just serve a family that’s facing something similar to what mine is going through,” Abigail remarked. “It was really fun to just see Inheritance of Hope in action and seeing the love and the joy of Christ that every volunteer has.”

Hear more of Abigail’s story on the Inheritance of Hope Podcast. Listen now >>