“‘Where are you from?’ It was the question I hated the most. Being the new kid was exhausting, especially when your life is a series of constant moves. I never stayed in one place long enough to plant roots or make lasting friendships. Within a single year, I could’ve walked the halls of a dozen different schools, each one unfamiliar, each one temporary. ‘My name is Jasmine. You can call me Jas,’ I would say, smiling on the outside while feeling untethered on the inside.
I am an Enneagram 6, the loyalist—someone who craves security and stability, whose core fear is the absence of it. But where am I truly from? I come from a broken home, where love was loud, chaotic, and painful. Screaming matched the rhythm of our nights; strained vocal cords replaced comfort. Some might say I was living out my fears, and they’d be right. To understand me, you need to understand where I started.
My parents were both deeply wounded, yet in very different ways. Their lives before me were filled with trauma, and they unknowingly carried that baggage into our family. Both perfectly imperfect for each other, they mirrored a cycle of emotional neglect that I absorbed. My mother married her first husband at fourteen to escape her own childhood. She dropped out of high school, had her first baby at fifteen, and navigated adolescence and early adulthood with little guidance. All her dreams of a white picket fence remained just that—dreams.
My father, the youngest of eight, suffered verbal abuse from his own father. He became a preacher in his mid-twenties, and it was in that office that he and my mom crossed paths. Their connection always felt like a saint-and-sinner love story. But my father had been married four times before my mother, and three of those unions ended due to infidelity. All the anger, insecurities, and fears he carried into his fourth marriage combined with my mother’s past and their unresolved trauma—and chaos ensued.
I’m the oldest of three daughters on my dad’s side—22, with Destiny at 19, and Rae at 15. Dad always dreamed of a son, but three girls became his reality. I now believe it was destined; without us, his resentment toward women might have grown deeper. Growing up, the only love I knew was the kind that kept us awake at night, listening to the storms around us. I remember my sisters running into my room, terrified of the people who were supposed to keep us safe.
No matter where we moved, the chaos followed. I became a protector, singing songs in the dark to lull my sisters to sleep, shoving myself between my parents’ fights, holding both as they cried and screamed. From the time I could remember, I was always in the middle—mediator, comforter, witness.
Morning would come, and we would drag ourselves to school. ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ we were warned. ‘You don’t want to be taken from home, do you?’ But eventually, someone noticed, and CPS questioned us. What did they mean? Wasn’t this love? Wasn’t this life? I had no reference for normal, only a deep-seated fear of love itself. I wished I could go back and hold little Jas the way I held my sisters, and whisper that real love would come.
For 13 years, I watched domestic abuse cycle through our home, sometimes subtle, sometimes horrifying. After fifteen years of this torment, my parents finally parted ways. The first home I ever felt a sense of stability in was a small, run-down foreclosure in Tennessee that my grandmother bought for us. No furniture, just a few mattresses on the floor. We slapped on the ugliest paint colors we could find and called it home.
It was in this imperfect haven that my love story began, though I didn’t yet realize it. The summer before high school, around the time of the divorce, I met Brian—B, as I still call him. He was a tiny, dimpled, bi-racial boy with the largest afro I had ever seen. His laugh was infectious; his spirit, magnetic. Over the years, we became inseparable, even as I moved mid-sophomore year to live with my dad.
Life at sixteen was harsh. I had my first car, a used Toyota Camry, and it became our temporary home. Dad struggled to get on his feet and, for a while, I stayed in motels for hours on end while he worked. Later, we lived in a beat-up trailer, trading labor in chicken houses for shelter. Eventually, my dad insisted I return to live with my mom, leaving behind my car, my home, and a chapter of my life that had forced me to grow up fast.
Returning to my mom, I was met with a new reality. She had remarried quickly, her latest relationship fueled by addiction and unresolved pain. I mourned the death of my mother while she was still alive, enduring blame, verbal abuse, and isolation. I worked during the day, studied at night, and scrambled to provide for my sisters. The one constant in this chaos was Brian, whose presence became my anchor.
Transitioning from friends to lovers with Brian was subtle, almost miraculous. Amid further family upheavals, I struggled with depression at seventeen. Reaching the lowest point, I even planned my own death. But on the day I intended to end my life, Brian showed up. He stayed. Just being there made it impossible for me to go through with it. He is the reason I am alive. Weeks later, after my eighteenth birthday, I was thrown out of my home, alone with only a trash bag of clothes. But Brian never left my side.
A trip to Virginia with a friend’s family changed everything. Watching Brian hand his new shoes to a little boy who had none, returning barefoot himself, I finally understood the kind of love I had been missing all my life. That moment taught me that love could be pure, selfless, and safe—and I didn’t have to run from it.
A few weeks later, Brian asked me to be his life partner. Together, we faced racism and disbelief, but our love only grew stronger. We moved to Georgia, he started his own business, and in May 2019, we married. The following year, our son, River, was born—a boy with his father’s generous heart. When River was just three months old, Brian sold his car to give me a camera, empowering me to start my own business. Today, I am a couples’ photographer, sharing the love I’ve learned from him.
Don’t give up. Even in the darkest storms, the bigger picture is waiting. Sometimes, salvation and love arrive in the form of someone who refuses to leave your side, who shows you the life you were always meant to have.”
