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I got pregnant when I was 12 and I found out on my 13th birthday. I felt so sick. I was like, "Oh, he it's that same feeling I had had a week ago." And I was like, "I should probably go to the clinic and get a pregnancy test." And I went and I remember going in and they had um done a test and they had me wait in a room and they took a long time to come into that room. The doctor comes in. I'm sitting down and the nurse comes in with him and they look at me like someone had died. My face was just very like neutral, but I knew what he was about to say. And so with concern in his face, he says to me, um, "Miss Ayala," he called me by my last name. He goes, "Miss Yala, you were 5 weeks pregnant." And I didn't say nothing. Like nothing came out of my mouth. And he goes, "And because of a state law, you got pregnant when you were 12 and that falls under statutory rape." and um uh I'm going to have to by law tell your parents like I'm I'm going to have to tell your mom. So, you have about 2 weeks before a social worker shows up to your house. And I think that was like the beginning of it sinking in like that. My life was going to change a bit. 2 weeks later, um I used to write my mom these love notes. I wrote her a love note. I folded it up. A love note. It wasn't a love note, but I like made it seem like it was. My mom thought it was too. And I said, "Mom, please don't open it until I'm downstairs cuz I went to my my friend's house." And she's like, "Okay." Like normal. You know, this is very normal for me to do. So, I folded it up, gave it to her. I went downstairs about an hour later. Amy, my mom, she calls me and she says, "Um, like come upstairs, you know." And I can hear like she's crying. And I sit down like a little girl telling her mom, you know, something. I sit down on the floor, crisscross applesauce. And uh she's like crying and she goes, "You know, I don't know what you're going to do, but what you're not going to do is have an abortion. So that's not an option. Um I don't have money to help you, so you're going to have to figure this out." And I remember it was like a coin dropped and the room was silent. And that's the moment that like I I knew that I was going to have to do this by myself. And when I think about that, it makes me so emotional because I wish she would have like hugged me or like told me that it was going to be okay. Um, and that she had my back, but she was upset. So, uh, it was like the beginning of me going through my pregnancy journey by myself. Um, I took myself to every prenatal appointment besides the first one on my own. Like, no one went with me. When I met Jasine, we call her Jazzy. That's my baby. And I remember they pulled her out and they, you know, they always placed the babies to start um breastfeeding. And so she went on and immediately went into breastfeeding. That was the moment. And that night, cuz I couldn't sleep cuz she cried all night. Um that I realized, oh, like my life really is changing. You know, being a teen mom doesn't only affect the mom, it affects the child as well. And I think for Jasine being a daughter of a teen mom, um, you would get a completely different story, right? Because as much as she was part of my life, she has her own story. It took a lot of therapy and a lot of tears to get to where we are now, which is a like that like she told me the other day, I'm like her best friend. Like I started crying because I was like, man, like it took so long for us to get there. Um because there was just so much that happened while I was raising her that she wishes, for example, she wishes I was more present. I went to school for writing and producing and was able to also work in that. And I've been working um in the entertainment industry as a makeup artist for TV and film. I've worked with some of the most famous people rooms that I went into that I could have never imagined I'd walk through. you know, you know, even later on when I like worked at Paramount Studios and I was working with all these cool ass people and, you know, celebrities and stuff and I I remember I would come home and, you know, um tell my mom about her, tell my brothers about it. But my daughter, she didn't care that I worked with like any famous person. Like she wanted her mother. Like she wanted her mother to comb her hair. And even though I was a teen mom, even though I went through that, like it pushed me to pursue the things a lot harder because I wanted Jazzy to look at a world where you could do the things you say you want to do. You know, that teen mom, like I wear that title very proudly because my life turned out to be pretty cool. But maybe for someone else it it it seems like you're never getting out of the challenge. You're never getting out of the hardships. I know you will though. Like I if I was talking to someone who's going through it right now, like you will like you will look back at this and it's only going to be an empowering moment of your life and your child's going to just thank you for um pulling through, you know, and continuing. Life doesn't end when you become a teen mom. If anything, it just encourages you to push more uh and keep going.