For Jessica Mosley, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition couldn’t have come at a better time. The Bakersfield, California social worker was living in her mother’s small home after the sudden death of her father left her, as well as the three previously-deemed “unadoptable” children she is mother to and her two biological children, homeless. It was a tight fit for the family, but even when Mosley was approached by a woman she had helped adopt her own child about possibly being nominated for the HGTV reboot of the beloved show, she still had a mindset of helping others.
“I was like, I think there’s more deserving families and people out there struggling more in life and could benefit more than I can,” Mosley told PopCulture.com ahead of Sunday’s premiere.
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Eventually convinced to let others help her, Mosley said it was a difficult, but healing experience to say goodbye to the home her mother and father had shared before his death.
“The first year is the hardest when you lose someone so close,” she said. “Talking about it, you don’t realize how, if you talk about that and you open up about that, you heal.”
“Never did I think being 37 with five teenagers I would live with my mom,” Mosley continued. “I think it was a sense of, prior to [Extreme Makeover: Home Edition], it seemed like every major thing was being ripped away from us.”
In addition to just having space for all the people in their home, Mosley said there was a “breath of fresh air” at not having to worry about their home anymore.
“This is one thing that can’t be taken away from us,” she said, calling the experience “overwhelmingly beautiful.”
Bringing positive attention to foster care and adoption was also special to Mosley.
“I’m just a mom, I just did my job,” she told PopCulture.com. “But in the bigger picture … that foster care and adoption is being recognized is healing for my kids. And for America to have foster care and adoption shown in a different way, it comes full circle.”
HGTV’s reboot of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition premieres Sunday, Feb. 16 at 9 p.m. ET.
Photo credit: Casey Durkin/HGTV
