U.S. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles is opening up about growing up in foster care and understanding hardships that kids go through in a new interview with CNN. On Friday, the gold medalist reposted a clip where she candidly and vulnerably discussed her experiences spending several years in foster care when she was a child, along with her three siblings. She tagged the post “foster child.”
“a conversation I had about a [topic] that is near & dear to my heart,” she wrote on her Instagram Story, adding several heart hand emojis as she shared the clip of the interview.
In the clip, Biles explained how she ended up in foster care and spoke about her connection with Friends of the Children, a nonprofit that provides mentorship for children in challenging circumstances. She was recognized by CNN Heroes for her work with the organization, People reports.
“I actually was a foster kid, so I know some of those hardships that those kids go through,” she said. “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.”
She recalled that she and her siblings were left hungry at times before being taken into foster care: “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 said. “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 were visited by their grandparents Ronald and Nellie Biles, CNN reported, and after three years, at age six Biles was adopted by her grandparents—and discovered her passion for gymnastics not long after. (Biles and sister Adria were adopted by their grandparents; their other siblings, Tevin and Ashley, were adopted by Ronald’s sister and raised in Cleveland, Ohio.) CNN reports that Biles came across a gym during a school trip. “I’d never even heard of gymnastics before,” she said. “I was just like, ‘Oh, I bet I could do that!’”
Elsewhere in the interview, Biles said “Having my parents and that support made me who I am today.” She added that her work with Friends of the Children mattered to her because “It gives them love and support, because that’s what these kids need, so to have that one constant means the world to them.”
In addition to being in foster care, Biles was a mother figure at a young age to sister Adria. “I wanted to take care of Adria, obviously, because she was the baby,” Biles said on her Facebook Watch series 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?” Of her sister, Adria wrote in a 2016 ESPN essay that “She’s also kind and humble, and I’m so proud to have her as my sister.” She added, “I look up to her in every way.”
