By Marc Raimondi

Ashley Barlow has experienced more in her 17 years than most people do in a lifetime.

Barlow is a senior leader on the West Carroll (TN) High School softball team. But that just scratches the surface of who she is and what she has been through. 

“I guess everything happens for a reason,” she told the Jackson Sun in an interview that published Thursday. “I don't know. It's hard to describe it in one word. It's crazy the way things definitely happen. That's for sure.”

Barlow is a two-time cancer survivor and the mother of a 3-year-old daughter, Madalyn Cook. While her teammates and high school peers are concerned about parties and proms and getting ready for college, Barlow’s primary duty is raising her daughter with her boyfriend, Dakota Cook, 20, and her mother.

“It’s definitely difficult,” Barlow said. “There’s a lot of challenges, and plus I have a part-time job. … She (Madalyn) can be really sweet, but she can be the devil sometimes, too.”

Barlow was first diagnosed with epidermal carcinoma around her ninth birthday. She had two surgeries and beat it, per the Jackson Sun. But then it came back when she was about 13—and spread to her lymph nodes. 

“(It was) kind of devastating,” said Brenda Barlow, Ashley’s mother. “I mean, you just don't know what to expect. It kind of flips your whole world upside down.”

After another surgery, which has left a scar on her neck, Ashley beat cancer again. She’s been in remission ever since.

During a checkup a little more than three years ago, doctors found that Barlow, then 13, was pregnant. Ashley told Brenda that she wanted to keep the baby because with her bouts with cancer she wasn’t sure if this would be her only opportunity to bring life into the world.

“She said, ‘Mama, this may be the only chance I ever have to have a baby,’” Brenda said. “She'd already had cancer twice and she's like, 'You don't know how much longer I'll be around and if it'll be back.' And then she said, 'if something happens to me this is God's way of giving you a piece of me.’”

Paul Acuff was hired last year as West Carroll’s softball coach and he has been blown away by Ashley’s story. It has made him look inward, to his own life and children.

“I have two daughters myself, and I can't imagine going through what she's gone through,” Acuff said, fighting back tears. “I've never seen anybody go through so much; just bad, you don't want to say bad luck, bad experiences. She just keeps coming back. Great leader, real good girl. I'm going to miss her next year.”

Ashley says she’d had a “pretty rough life.” But it hasn’t stopped her. She keeps going and embraces the fact that she is the kind of person—strong beyond her years—who can deal with what life has dealt her.

“In a way, there's a lot of people who wouldn't have handled it as well as the way I have, so I'm kind of grateful it happened to me and not them,” Ashley said. “I probably wouldn't be anywhere close to the person I am today if that stuff hadn't happened though. I'm grateful for that.”