Just weeks earlier, she had been living a quiet life with her husband and baby son. Then two devastating losses shattered everything she thought the future would look like. When she returned home to help her family, she saw something she simply couldn’t walk away from. The decision she made that day would reshape not only her own life, but the lives of everyone around her.

When Dallas was 24 years old, she was a stay-at-home mom living in Texas with her husband and infant son, but her life changed dramatically in 2020.

Within a period of eight weeks that year, she lost both of her parents and suddenly found herself responsible for her two siblings.

Now 29, Dallas is raising her three young sons while also caring for her 33-year-old sister, Tati, who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and her 17-year-old brother, David. It’s a role she says she never expected to take on so soon, but one she always knew might eventually become hers.

“My mom passed September 25 and my dad passed November 25,” Dallas exclusively tells PEOPLE. “It was Thanksgiving that year [2020] on the day he died. So now, every Thanksgiving I cry a little while I’m trying to cook … It was so traumatizing.”

Growing up, Dallas says her family was already navigating significant health challenges. Her mother had multiple sclerosis and later learned she had stage 4 breast cancer, while her father dealt with heart failure and kidney disease.

“Our parents were such great people,” Dallas says. “My mom was always so patient.”

Tati, who is about four years older than Dallas, was born with disabilities and experienced frequent seizures throughout her childhood. Even before becoming her primary caregiver, Dallas often helped care for her sister when their mother’s health declined.

Still, she says nothing prepared her for what happened after her parents died.

At the time, Dallas was living in Texas with her husband and 10-month-old son. After her parents died, she returned to Arizona, where her family lived, to help care for her siblings — but quickly realized she couldn’t leave.

“I saw how everyone was living, and it was awful, so I just stayed and never moved back,” she says.

David, who was 12 at the time, came to live with Dallas as well. “It’s been hard,” she says. “It’s hard raising a teenager, right? I’ve never raised a teenager.”

Today, the household includes Dallas, her husband, their three sons — ages 5, 3 and 1 — along with Tati and David.

Despite the challenges, Dallas says some of her proudest moments have come from watching her sister gain confidence and independence.

“Whenever I first started taking care of her, she couldn’t dress herself,” Dallas says. “Now she can dress herself, so she’s learning every day.”

The progress hasn’t gone unnoticed. “Whenever her doctors tell me, ‘Hey, she’s doing a lot better,’ that makes me feel like I’m doing something right,” she says.

Dallas shares much of her family’s life on TikTok, where more than 700,000 followers have embraced Tati’s cheerful personality and the family’s candid conversations about caregiving, grief and disability.

“For a while I didn’t really want to share my sister with special needs, just because I didn’t want people to judge her,” she says.

Instead, viewers quickly gravitated toward Tati. “People loved her,” Dallas says. “And I love that people love Tati.”

Tati, for her part, enjoys the attention. During a brief conversation with PEOPLE, she shares that she has been dating her boyfriend, Bubba, for four months after meeting him at the ability center she attends during the week.

Asked what she’d like readers to know about her, Tati lists some of her favorite things. “I love shopping, puzzles, heels, fashion,” she says.

For Dallas, one of the biggest misconceptions people have about her sister is that her physical disabilities define her.

“She’s a lot smarter than people think,” Dallas says. “She has hopes and dreams and wants, and she’s her own person who has her own thoughts.”

More than four years after taking on the role of caregiver, Dallas says the experience has changed her perspective on family, responsibility and love.

“Just how to be more lighthearted,” Dallas says about what Tati has taught her. “She doesn’t take things too seriously, and she’s very loving.”

SOURCE: DAILYMAIL