Simone Biles Opens up About Growing Up in Foster Care

Simone Biles is opening up about her childhood in foster care. 

On Friday, the Olympic gold medalist, 26, reposted a clip from a brand new interview the place she candidly mentioned her experiences spending a number of years in foster care, alongside along with her three siblings, when she was a baby.

Tagging the publish “foster child,” Biles wrote on her Instagram Story, “a conversation I had about a [topic] that is near & dear to my heart,” including a number of coronary heart hand emojis as she shared the clip of the interview with CNN.

In the clip, Biles defined how she ended up in foster care and her reference to Friends of the Children, a nonprofit that gives mentorship for kids in difficult circumstances, as she was acknowledged by CNN Heroes for her work with the group. 

“I actually was a foster kid, so I know some of those hardships that those kids go through,” Biles stated. “When my siblings and I entered foster care, it was because our biological mom was struggling with drug and alcohol abuse. I was three years old.”

Biles recalled in the clip her and her siblings being left hungry at occasions earlier than they have been taken into foster care.

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“I just remember, like, us as kids being so hungry and then I just remember this cat that would get fed and not like, quite us,” she continued in the clip. “And so we were taken and, thankfully, we actually got to stay in one foster home and we were all together … it was some of the best times ever. We were just so excited.”

During her time in foster care, Biles and her siblings Adria, Tevin and Ashley have been visited by their grandparents, Ronald and Nellie Biles, CNN reported. After three years, Biles was then adopted at age 6 by her grandparents and found her ardour for gymnastics quickly after. 

According to the outlet, Biles got here throughout a fitness center throughout a college journey on the time. “I’d never even heard of gymnastics before,” she added. “I was just like, ‘oh, I bet I could do that!”

“Having my parents and that support made me who I am today,” she stated elsewhere in the interview, earlier than discussing Friends of the Children and why she needed to be concerned. The athlete defined that the group presents official mentors for greater than 12 years for kids in foster care. “It gives them love and support, because that’s what these kids need, so to have that one constant means the world to them,” she advised CNN.

Biles and sister Adria, 24, have been adopted by their grandparents. Their siblings Tevin and Ashley have been adopted by Ronald’s sister and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Biles has beforehand spoken about being in foster care as a baby, in addition to being a motherly determine from a younger age to youthful sister Adria.

“I wanted to take care of Adria obviously because she was the baby,” Simone stated on her Facebook Watch sequence, Simone vs. Herself. “I just felt like I needed to look out for her because if family doesn’t look out for you, who’s going to?”

Speaking of Biles in an ESPN essay in 2016, Adria stated, “She’s also kind and humble, and I’m so proud to have her as my sister.” She add, “I look up to her in every way.”