Sometimes, you end up finding family where you least expect it.
A family in Kentucky is preparing to celebrate their ninth Christmas together as a family of three after an adoption that began in an unlikely way.
School principal Jason Smith met his daughter, Raven Whitaker-Smith, in 2015 when she was sitting outside his office after being suspended from the sixth grade.
“She was just this sweet looking, little innocent child sitting there, kind of defeated,” Smith told Good Morning America.
“I asked her, ‘What’s going on?’ and she said that she had thrown a cup of yogurt at lunch and had been suspended and was waiting to be picked up,” he revealed.
Smith went on to say that when he asked his now-daughter if she would ever throw food at a restaurant, she revealed to him she had never eaten in one. At the time, Whitaker-Smith was living in a group home after being in the foster care system for most of her life.
“At that point, I had felt like she just needed a hand, needed help,” Smith said. “I recognized that she needed something to go in her favor, maybe for once, that it hadn’t gone in her favor in the past, but she just needed somebody to help her.”
While Smith admitted that his conversation with the now 20-year-old struck him profoundly, he was reluctant to share it with his wife, Marybeth Smith, when he got home from work that night.
For many years, the Smiths struggled with infertility as they tried to have a child of their own. They also became foster parents in hopes of adopting a child, but left that dream behind nearly six years prior after a trio of siblings they fostered for nearly one year were returned to their biological parents.
Marybeth Smith said that when her husband finally opened up about his interaction with the student, she knew it wasn’t something he was taking lightly.
“This was something that, obviously, he felt pretty passionate about because I’m sure she’s not the only kid that he has dealt with who has been in a similar situation,” she said. “So something about Raven was special to him, and obviously I trusted him.”
It was then that the Smiths began exploring the idea of fostering Raven. They said they first reached out to her case worker and then went through the process of getting re-certified as foster parents.
Once they were approved, the Smiths opened their home to Whitaker-Smith, who moved in with them in June 2015.
“It was really weird at first because, in my mind, I thought of [Jason Smith] as the bad guy because I was always getting in trouble,” Whitaker-Smith recalled.
“But then for my first weekend visitation, they made me feel extremely welcome, like I was already in the family,” she said. “They got everything that I needed without even knowing that I would be there forever. They just did it.”
Whitaker-Smith said at the time, because of her age and all that she had been through, she thought of the Smiths as another temporary foster family. But, looking back now, she said she “always knew” that they would be her parents.
The Smiths shared the same sentiment, saying that Whitaker-Smith immediately “brought purpose” to their lives, even as she admittedly struggled at times to accept their consistency and love she was being given.
“I gave them a bunch of trouble to see what would happen,” Whitaker-Smith recalled of her early time with the Smiths.
“I kind of tested whether or not this was real or not to see if they would keep me no matter what, because they would tell me that but, you know, I’d heard that a lot before,” she continued. “I wanted to just challenge and see if they were really willing to accept me.”
Marybeth Smith said she and her husband were not surprised by the push-back they received from their daughter at times.
“She had been let down by all the adults in her life, so why would she trust us,” Marybeth Smith said. “We were just two complete strangers to her at first.”
Not only did they overcome emotional challenges, the Smiths also helped Whitaker-Smith overcome the lack of structure and learning she faced in her early years.
The 20-year-old says she learned everything from routines—like taking a shower and brushing her teeth daily—to working her way up from being on a third-grade reading level at age 11 to being up to par with her classmates in high school.
“She was willing to do all that extra work,” Marybeth Smith said of the hours her daughter put in. “It wasn’t just us pushing her. She saw the benefit in education and wanting to better herself, so she was willing to stay after school.”
Finally, on Nov. 3, 2017, the Smiths formally adopted Whitaker-Smith, by then a high school freshman.
Four years later, Whitaker-Smith was accepted to the University of Kentucky. She is now a junior studying social work, a major that she said was inspired by what she’s experienced in her own life.
Marybeth Smith recalled that when Whitaker-Smith took her first class as a social work major, she called her parents and told them, “I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
“I need to choose something that I’m passionate about,” Whitaker-Smith said. “It feels really cool to tell my other classmates that I was in the system, and then they go and they tell their friends and everyone else about my story.”
As part of her course work, Whitaker-Smith shared her story publicly in an essay to mark National Adoption Month, which is celebrated annually in November to “raise awareness about adoption issues,” according to the U.S. Children’s Bureau.