She became a mom at 18 while living in poverty and thought she was selfish; 18 years later, this American woman helped her daughter get to her dream college

When Jeanice Perez became pregnant at 18, she was not sure what the future would look like. She knew one thing, though. She wanted her daughter to have a life that looked different from her own. Jeanice had grown up in Las Vegas and in poverty.“Being poor was just kind of the air we breathed,” she told PEOPLE. “Nobody talked about it openly; it was just the way things were.” “I learned really early what it felt like to make ‘not having enough’ be enough,” she added.

When she found out she was going to become a mother, those thoughts became even more intense. “I remember crying and promising that she would have a better life,” Jeanice recalled.Today, her daughter Jordyn is 18 and preparing to begin college at her dream school, New York University, where she plans to study biology.For Jeanice, the journey from an 18-year-old mother worried about poverty to a mother helping her daughter prepare for NYU has been about far more than money. It has been about breaking a cycle.

“The guilt still eats me up 18 years later’

Jeanice has spoken openly about the guilt she carried after becoming a mother so young. In a TikTok video that has received more than 250,000 views, she described the complicated feelings that still stayed with her.“The guilt of bringing Jordan into the world and poverty eats me up still 18 years later,” she said in the video. “That was selfish of me. I’m gonna be very honest. It was so selfish of me to bring a child into poverty and not know what I was doing and not have a plan.” But rather than allowing that guilt to define her, Jeanice used it as motivation.She had no roadmapJeanice says that when she was growing up, higher education was not presented to her as an obvious route to a different life. “No one ever taught me that education was the way out,” she told PEOPLE.“For a lot of people growing up like me, the American Dream looks like getting a job as soon as you can, helping your family with bills and just working whatever jobs you can to keep food on the table.”“Everyone is in survival mode, so no one ever really sits you down and says, ‘Hey, higher education is the way out. It can take you far,’” she added.

Saving $5 at a time

Jeanice began putting aside whatever she could for Jordyn’s education. She used a high-yield savings account and invested, even when the amounts were small.For Jeanice, saving for college was not about having a large amount of money from the beginning. It was about starting. “You don’t! You can start saving with $5 a month,” she said when discussing the misconception that parents need substantial savings before putting money aside for college.“The ‘right time’ is never going to come,” she said. “Life is going to keep happening, so you’ve got to start with whatever you have right now. A little bit consistently over a long period of time becomes something.”

Then came the NYU acceptance

After years of planning, saving and preparing, the moment Jeanice had imagined finally arrived. Jordyn had applied to New York University, her dream school. When her admission decision came, Jordyn was at a Student Council meeting. She left the meeting, went home and opened the decision. Her first reaction was disbelief. “‘How did I get in?’” Jeanice recalled her daughter saying.Jordyn froze for a moment and read the acceptance again and again, making sure she had understood it correctly. Then came relief. And almost immediately, she went back to being a teenager. “OK, I have to go back to school now,” Jeanice said Jordyn told her.For Jeanice, however, the moment carried the weight of nearly 18 years. “I don’t even know how to answer this without crying,” she said. “I’ve tried a hundred times to describe what that moment felt like, to watch your baby have her dream come true, and I still don’t have the words for it.”

But NYU is not what Jeanice calls her biggest achievement

For all the years Jeanice spent saving and preparing for Jordyn’s education, getting her daughter into NYU is not what she considers her greatest accomplishment. That, she says, is the relationship they have built. Jeanice grew up without a strong relationship with her own mother. When she became a parent, she wanted to create something different.“I was very intentional about raising a good human above all else,” she told PEOPLE. “I’m proud that she’s confident, kind and emotionally intelligent. I’m proud that I created a safe space where she feels comfortable talking to me about everything.”That safe space, she says, matters more to her than any college acceptance. “She never shrinks herself, but she also never makes herself feel bigger by making others feel small,” Jeanice said.

“Being a young mom doesn’t have to be the end of your story”

Jordyn’s college journey has also become part of Jeanice’s work online. Now a full-time creator, Jeanice has nearly 2 million followers across social media, where she talks about motherhood, growing up in poverty and saving for her daughter’s education. She began sharing her story after noticing that much of the motherhood content online did not reflect her experience.“I wanted to show that a mother-daughter relationship doesn’t have to be toxic,” she said. “That being a young mom doesn’t have to be the end of your story. That where you come from doesn’t determine where you end up.”

From a difficult beginning to a future she once could not imagine

Jeanice has now moved from Las Vegas to New York, where she works full-time as a creator. She was previously a high school teacher by profession and plans to return to the classroom once she becomes certified to teach in the state. Jordyn, meanwhile, is preparing for her first year at NYU, where she will study biology on a pre-health track and hopes to eventually attend dental school.