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Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson will always keep Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell’s memory alive.
In PEOPLE’s exclusive sneak peek at the upcoming episode of Mama June: Family Crisis, Alana is planning her birthday, which also falls on what would have been her late sister’s “dirty 30.” During a walk with her boyfriend, Dralin Carswell, the pair contemplate how they can incorporate Anna into the festivities as they grieve her 2023 cancer death.
“Me and Anna share the exact same birthday,” Alana explains in the preview. “She was just obviously born years before me. This will be the first one without her, so it’s definitely going to be hard. But I know for a fact that I want to do something to remember her by, and I want to do something that she would want me to do to celebrate us together.”
“I’ve been looking at this place out here, and they actually do I — didn’t even think it was an actual thing — releasing some doves,” she continues. “Like, release one dove for Anna and then one dove for me and then another dove to symbolize her life. It would be different. People don’t do it all the time.”
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Dralin worries that Alana’s family is going to bring too much drama to the celebration.
While Dralin is supportive of the idea, even suggesting that they do it by the water where they live in Colorado, he was less enthusiastic about the other part of Alana’s plan.
“I was thinking about inviting the fam,” she reveals. “I feel like it could be something that we could do as a family.”
“Your mama is drama,” Dralin points out — and Alana agrees, saying: “Can’t even tell [me] to leave the drama with your mama because she is the drama!”
Alana explains that the family should be together on such a difficult day.
Still, because it’s the first birthday without Anna, who died in December 2023 at the age of 29 after a battle with stage 4 adrenal carcinoma, the former pageant star thinks it “might be best if we’re just all together.”
“I do feel like it’ll be important to have the whole family out here,” she shares in her confessional. “I mean, we all went through Anna’s death and Anna’s cancer and stuff as a family.”
“I feel like it would only be right to tribute Anna on my birthday, well, our birthday, as a family,” she adds.
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Dralin doesn’t believe there won’t be family drama if they all come together.
When Dralin jokes that “they’ve got too much drama” back home in Georgia, Alana says she hopes they won’t bring it to such a special occasion.
“Your mother, she’s going to bring it everywhere,” he insists, but notes: “It’s your birthday, Alana. You can do whatever you want.”
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Mama June: Family Crisis airs Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on WEtv.
