GEORGETOWN, Texas — Growing up in foster care, waiting for someone to adopt you, can sometimes feel like a never-ending and even hopeless process.
Sixteen-year-old Jasmine has been in foster care for 10 years. She's found a healthy way to mentally cope with the challenges that can arise while waiting for adoption.
"I think I learned how to mainly talk from books," Jasmine said.
KVUE's Hannah Rucker met up with Jasmine at Lark & Owl Booksellers in Georgetown. The staff kindly allowed Jasmine to go home with a handful of free books she picked out.
Jasmine said books work as portals that allow her to travel to all kinds of places and time periods in her mind. She first got into reading as a little girl.
"I do remember one foster home I had – her name was Peggy, and I always called her 'Mama Peggy.' And she really loved to read, and she introduced me to this really good book and I told her, 'I'm not gonna read it,'" Jasmine said. "Then one night, I was bored and I couldn't sleep. The electricity was out, so I couldn't turn on my TV. So I grabbed the flashlight out and started reading the book. And ever since that day, I just read every day."
PHOTOS | Forever Families: Meet Jasmine
Looking back on her early childhood, when she first entered into foster care, Jasmine said she stopped counting her foster homes after three moves.
"I think I was six [when I entered the system]," Jasmine said. "I don't really remember. I don't know how to explain it, but I forgot what we did last week. My brain just says, 'The past is the past. We focus on the future.'"
She loves animals and wants to possibly become a veterinarian someday. But she admits she struggles with she sees suffering.
"My goal is to become a vet, but I am super sensitive to just random things. [Someone] can fall over right now, and I'll start crying," Jasmine said. "So like I was telling them, 'How am I gonna handle having to do surgery on an animal or having to put them down?'"
To learn more about Jasmine or to put in an inquiry to adopt her, visit her page on the Heart Gallery of Central Texas.
KVUE launched the Forever Families segment with Partnerships for Children (PFC) in June 2020 to highlight children in the Heart Gallery of Central Texas who need secure and permanent families. Every day, there are nearly 1,000 children waiting to get adopted in Central Texas, according to PFC.
Editor's note: The children who are in the Heart Gallery program and featured in KVUE's Forever Families segments are children who have had every effort made on their behalf to connect them with family or others in their community to provide options for permanent, adoptive homes. Through no fault of their own, that hasn’t happened yet, and so in partnership with the Department of Family and Protective Services, we collaborate to bring awareness to KVUE viewers about these children in the hopes of finding them permanency before they age out.