Eight-year-old Charlotte Sexton had never had a birthday party. Her mother, Jennifer, had been battling brain cancer for the last 11 years, and the illness had kept her from being able to make a big event of the occasion. “My mom was generally pretty sick and tired and had done radiation and chemo five and six times each. There just wasn’t a lot of room for her to party plan,” Charlotte’s sister, Chloe, told Today. Sadly, Jennifer lost her battle with cancer on April 12^th of this year, leaving Charlotte in the care of 28-year-old Chloe. After what she had gone through, Chloe decided Charlotte needed a birthday party to celebrate her and sent out invitations. Charlotte had changed schools in the middle of the school year due to her mother’s death, and despite teachers and classmates knowing of her situation, the response to the invitations was underwhelming. “I sent the invites out early, and I heard nothing back except from one person. It upset me that I couldn’t give her the birthday I wanted to,” Chloe told CNN in an interview.

Chloe took to Tik Tok to lament their situation, having already established a large number of followers from her cookie baking business, Bluff Cakes. “I was just sad. My Tik Tok has always been a place where I keep things very transparent. It’s a new age of social media to give your brand and your brand’s journey a personality and let people get this very transparent view of your struggles. They want to see what it’s taken to get to where you are and there’s no way to do that unless I show them what I’m up against to make this company go around.” As of Monday, the video has been viewed over 2 million times and has over thirty thousand comments. “If a kid in your child’s class gives out birthday invitations, just come. My mom should be doing this. My mom is not here,” Chloe said in the video.

People who had seen the video reached out to Chloe, offering to help her give Charlotte the best birthday ever. On July 9, people came from all over to their Memphis home to help decorate, bring gifts, and one woman even brought her horse all the way from Mississippi to offer rides. A drive-by parade was also organized by a local group, and nearly 30 cars came by the house, with some people offering gifts out their window to the birthday girl. There was even a visit from reptiles with the kids at the party learning about snakes and lizards. Charlotte was floored. “She kept asking me ‘Is this all for me?’” Chloe recalled.  The experience has helped her view on humanity. “It saved something in me that I was giving up on which is that nobody really sees you on social media. They think they see you, they like your video, but do they ever really see you and care or is it just pretty sentiments… It’s that extra bit of love, where they didn’t have to, but they did because they could. Everyone needs a bit more of that.”