Hello Kimberly,
Do you mind sharing the specs of your laptop? that gives us an idea where you are now. some of the art done by CG cookie employee were much older hardware than we can buy now ^^. Even then they managed. So our advice is too be taken with a grain of salt. Any GPU , even an older 3080 can handle the job.
Low power GPU laptop can still render as Martin of CG cookie mentioned, the render time just increases.
There are ways to render smart, render in PNG, and in parts. You can actually choose which parts to render as an PNG, and you can even tell Blender to take a break and continue later. Because you rendered frame 1 till 100, so you know you have to start rendering from 101.
Or, render in parts, then join them later.
Oh, there are free online render farms by the way: https://www.foxrenderfarm.com/share/best-and-free-blender-render-farm/
I do not have experience with them, but if it is not a company render, sending to a render farm cannot do any harm. If it is a future project of your, your own Intellectual property, I am not sure. They say they will not use your IP, but in the shadows it is been fed to A.I. Who knows. No one is checking the A.I.
