Melba enjoys art and writing poems and music. She wants to go to college and is interested in going into law enforcement or the military.

AUSTIN, Texas — For many teenagers, another birthday means a year closer to freedom and adulthood. But for teens in Texas foster care, an upcoming birthday can be met with fear of the possibility that they will age out of the system without a “forever family.”

This is the reality 16-year-old Melba, a sophomore currently in foster care, is facing. Yet she is channeling her passion for the arts – from fused glass to poetry – to sculpt a future she can be proud of, no matter what lies ahead.

The light and warmth inside Helio’s Fused Glass Studio in Austin offers a welcomed escape for Melba. Here, under the guidance of studio owner Kristine Shafer, she is transforming colorful shards of glass into vibrant works of art.

“You’ve figured it out really quick,” Shafer told Mellba

Melba hopes to use this same transformative process for her own life – taking personal pain and turning it into something beautiful for her future. 

“I draw, I write poems, I write music. So it’s like … some of the pain is channeled into the stuff that I do, but there are days where I just break down. And I really just, like, I can’t do it,” she said. “But the crying like, helps ’cause I really don’t cry that much.”

Melba’s 17th birthday is coming up in December. It’s a milestone that brings her one step closer to potentially aging out of foster care, but she has already begun to make peace with the possibility of being on her own.

“I’m going to be in that mindset [that] if I don’t get adopted by then, I’m going to be in that mindset like, ‘It’s just me,'” she said. “‘It’s just me, myself and I.’ I can’t depend on nobody else. I’m going to have to depend on myself.”

However, she hasn’t completely let go of her hope for a family. She simply wants to ensure that any potential match is a good fit.

“Now I know that everybody is not bad in the world, so I’m thinking about giving it a chance,” she said. “But I’m scared. I don’t want to be around nobody that I can’t trust. I want to be able to trust them. Like, I want to get a good vibe from the forever family.”

Looking to the future, Melba has big aspirations. She plans to go to college and pursue a career in either the military or law enforcement. She believes her inner strength and loyalty are the perfect foundation for those industries.

To learn about adopting Melba, 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.

PHOTOS: Forever Families | Meet Melba

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.