July 21, 2025 • 36 mins
After being taken from her father and raised for years in hidden abuse, Aria grew up believing she was unwanted—possibly even by God. But decades later, a chance encounter on a quiet New Orleans street began a chain of events that would lead to healing, truth, and a deeper faith. In this powerful episode, Aria shares how she survived the unimaginable, found her voice, and became a light for others.
⚠️ This episode includes sensitive themes including child abuse. Listener discretion advised.
⚠️ This episode includes sensitive themes including child abuse. Listener discretion advised.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Aria's father, Jerome Smith, returned to their condo to find
it stripped bear no kids, no wife, no note.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I remember the day we moved, thinking like there's something wrong.
So I would always ask, well, where is daddy and
why doesn't he want to see us?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
But the questions brought only anger.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
As a child, it didn't make sense to me, like
you just didn't add up.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
This is the Miracle Files.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I'm Emily Jones and I'm Holly Worthington. We're two sisters
who love a captivating true story, but we're also seeking
more light in our lives.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
So we're on a mission to find and share unforgettable,
uplifting stories of God's miracles. We hope you'll join us
on this journey.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Welcome back to the Miracle Files. We have an amazing
episode for you.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Today, Yes, this one. It is actually a story that
takes place over decades rather than like a day or two,
but it is fascinating. We will warn you though, that
it does dive into some sensitive topics like child abuse.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, and no one has actually been charged that is
in this story with any kind of crimes, So we
just want to be clear that this is from Aria's
perspective based on her interview. But we really think that
it will be an inspiration to all of you, but
especially to anyone who's going through a hard time or
he went through really hard time as a child. Yeah,
(01:33):
and if you're a young person who is going through abuse,
we want you to know that there will be resources
at the end of this as well that we'll share
with you.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
And the most important thing to know is that you
matter and there is hope.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
So amen, Okay, let's get started.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Okay. Before she was a photographer in Europe, before versace
and private events with the King of Spain, was a
missing girl. She wasn't kidnapped by a stranger. She didn't
appear in the headlines or land on milk cartons. What
happened to her was quieter and crueler. She was stolen
(02:13):
by the one person everyone is taught to trust the most.
Her mother, Aria, was born into legacy, a fifth generation
New Yorker. Her roots ran through Harlem and through Columbia
University jazz halls and Ivy League scholarships. Her mother had
modeled her father, Jerome, was a rising fashion designer who
(02:35):
had already sketched hats for Stevie Wonder and suits for
Luther van Dross by his twenties. Her father was a
six foot tall, soft spoken man who Aria called the
gentle Giant. Her grandfather had marched with Martin Luther King Junior.
They weren't just a family, they were history. And then
(02:55):
one day it all ended.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Here's Aria, And after kindergarten, my mother packed up our
condo in New York and told us we were moving away,
and we moved to South Carolina. And I remember the
day we moved because we had this blue, long, old
school nineties Volkswagen. Piled all of us into the car,
and I just remember looking at my nana and her
(03:19):
sisters in the yard, thinking like, there's something wrong with
this situation. We didn't get to say goodbye to our father.
We're just we're moving with this man we don't really
even know, to a state that's extremely far away. It
just didn't make any sense. And I've always been very outspoken.
I was a kid who would say but why, but why,
(03:39):
like a million times. So I would always ask, well,
where is daddy, and why doesn't he want to see us?
And why can't we just call him? Why don't we
go to where he is. Why don't you bring us?
And it was always like Ariyasha, let's stop asking questions.
And it's just something in me, even as a child,
we just didn't add up. And I love my grandfather,
(04:00):
my father's father. And she said, you know, they don't
want anything to do with you either. No.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Aria thought that wasn't true. This was all wrong. She
could feel it. Aria's father, Jerome Smith, returned to their
condo to find it stripped bare, no kids, no wife,
no note. He called everyone he knew, no one had answers.
He went to the police. My children are missing, he
(04:27):
told the officer. She took them and disappeared. But in
nineteen ninety two, there were no Amber alerts for this
kind of thing, no social media posts to go viral,
no laws strong enough to help a father whose name
wasn't on a custody order. The police told Jerome it
was a domestic dispute and that they couldn't get involved.
(04:49):
They handed him a pamphlet. He walked out without taking it.
Jerome tried to contact Aria's maternal grandmother, but arius Nana
refused to give Jerome any information.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
And my mother had told ny Nana, he's crazy. And abusive.
Don't talk to him, he's dangerous.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Jerome called his father, Jerome Senior, in New Orleans. Jerome
Junior's voice cracked as he told his father, she's gone.
She took the kids. His father flew to New York
and searched every place his grandchildren had once been, schools, parks, churches,
but the trail went cold. He often returned to New
(05:28):
York to visit Marcus Garvey Park. This had been a
beloved spot for Jerome Senior and his grandchildren. Whenever he
used to visit them, he would take them there. It
became a place of nostalgia and mourning for Jerome Senior.
Every time he traveled to New York, he sat on
a green bench by the playground where he used to
(05:48):
bring Aria and her siblings, hoping his grandchildren might walk by.
But they never did. Still, he returned again and again.
In South Carolina, five year old Aria's world unraveled. She
was enrolled in school, but nothing felt safe. She kept
asking where her father was, Why can't we call him?
(06:10):
Doesn't he miss us? But the questions brought only anger.
Her mother insisted that her father, grandfather, and all of
that side of the family hated Aria and her siblings.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
As a child, didn't make sense to me that the loving,
caring people that I did know, even at the age
of five, it didn't make sense at all of a sudden,
They just everybody hates us for what you just didn't
add up.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Aria only remembers feeling safe and loved in her father's
and grandfather's presence. In contrast, the man living in her
house now, her stepfather, was not gentle. He was not
kind or loving. He was angry, he was violent. Her
mother was two, and the abuse went on for years.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
There were occasions where our punishment was like to sit
outside in a thunderstorm, our stepfather just was looking at
us with a smirk through the window. Or I remember
having to go outside in the freezing cold and rake
up all the leaves on like this huge property that
we lived on, to the point where from the rate
our hands were bleeding with their skin had peeled from
(07:20):
being left outside for so long. And we would have
to work for hours, and then he would put the
food outside like we were a dog, and we would
eat outside. And I remember my sister saying she saw
on the Discovery Channel, if we stuff leaves in our jacket.
That's how we could stay warm, so it was always
very cool and unusual punishments. He would give us like
prison numbers. When we were grounded, we would have like
(07:41):
a number as if we were a prisoner, and he
would call us by our numbers.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Aria's family moved constantly Lexington, Columbia, back and forth, three
schools before second grade, seven before high school was done,
and the reason was always the same. Someone started asking questions,
a school nurse, a teacher, a neighbor. Aria began to
understand the pattern. If anyone got too close to the truth,
(08:08):
she would never see them again. Aria's mother never kept
a job. When she did, it was short lived. A
sample lady at Sam's Club, a cook, a doula. What
did seem to last was the steady stream of money
from arius Nana, who couldn't say no to Aria's mother, condos, cars,
a custom home. But the money never made it to
(08:31):
Aria or her siblings. They wore hand me downs and
suffered hunger. Even though her nana couldn't protect her, Aria
loved her nana. Her nana had always exemplified compassion and faith.
But the years passed and soon it wasn't just Aria's nana,
Aria's father, or his family who felt so far away.
(08:54):
Soon even God felt far away.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I grew up in a Baptist church, and I grew
up in a household. My nana always took us to church.
My mother would never go, so I always wore a
cross around my neck, and I removed my cross when
I was tighten because the abuse in our family was
so bad, and I thought, if there's a God, why
would he want us to go through this.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Even though Aria wondered if God had abandoned her, she
felt something inside her telling her to keep fighting.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I remember watching Matilda in elementary school and I told
my mother, you can put me up for adoption, and
she lost it. I thought that is a great alternative,
and I just never I just thought, well, somebody else's
house has got to be better than this, so if
I can go live somewhere else, I felt like I
could do something great with my life. I don't know
(09:45):
where that came from, because I was being told the
opposite by my mother and my stuff. Oh you're never
going to be any saying you're not good enough, you're
an idiot, whatever negative things they would say, But it
never penetrated me for some reason. I think for my
siblings it did. It was a way to keep them attacked.
But for me, I just thought, you're the idiot like
I just even as a kid. I just it didn't
(10:08):
phaze me for some reason.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
But what did continue to bother Aria was how God
could allow such cruelty. One day, Aria's baby sister broke
her ankle, and Aria went with her and their mother
to the doctor's office.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I remember their doctor saying I was malnourished to my
mother and the doctor said, you know, oh, Ari, you
really need to eat more. And I said something along
the lines of oh, my mom won't let us. But
I remember blurting it out in the doctor's office. And
they would have these locks on the cabinet, and when
I had mentioned the lots, my mother said, oh, they're
(10:45):
child proof for like the baby. But that wasn't it,
because she would lock the top cabinets as well. So
it was like to control our eating because their stepfather
said we ate too much because there's too many of us.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Aria hoped that speaking up would get the doctor's attention.
She felt like everything could change if someone just became
aware of their circumstances. But no As soon as the
doctor started asking questions once again, her family moved like
a relentless river coursing through her life. Abuse felt like
a constant Where was God? And then in the midst
(11:19):
of her feeling of hurt and abandonment, Aria found a
message of comfort in a most unusual place.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
I remember using my Christmas money to buy a Bible,
and I was trying to find something that would possibly
explain why is there so much evil in the world
If there's a god that doesn't make any sense, and
you're gonna think I'm totally crazy. There was a cartoon show,
Rocco's Modern Life and the cow. On the show, Heifer
(11:48):
died and he became a guardian angel, and he had
gone through a series of bad things in the cartoon
to become a guardian angel. So he couldn't become a
guardian angel, and so he went through all these bad things.
So at the age of ten, after removing my cross,
I thought, oh, this is it. I'm supposed to go
through these bad things because that's the only way I
(12:11):
can go to heaven and become an angel and help people.
And so as I got older, I kind of carried
that with me. It was like, maybe I don't need
to die to help people, Like I'm going through these
bad things so that I could help my siblings. I'm
going through these bad things so that I can help
other kids in the future.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
There he was.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
At last.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
God hadn't forgotten Aria at all. She'd found his love
and she clung to it. Wearing her cross again. Aria
knew she had a purpose and she tried to do
all she could to help the other kids. She often
took blame to protect her siblings. She didn't cry when
she was hit. Unfortunately, that only made her stepfather angrier.
(12:53):
At fourteen, Aria watched her stepfather knock her sister out cold,
slamming her head through a sliding gol door.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
And I remember watching her falls the floor and she
was just completely knocked out and my other sister was
screaming trying to pick her up, and I went to
grab my younger siblings, who at the time were three
and five, and he's told me don't touch them, and
I said, okay. So they sat on the couch watching
and my sister called the police at time, and the
(13:23):
police came and they asked the question, has this happened before?
And one sister said no, and one sister said yes.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
The police took down a report, and once again Aria's
family picked up and moved. Aria didn't want to leave
her siblings, but at just fifteen years of age, she
knew she couldn't help them or herself by staying in
that situation. When her nana came to town, Aria begged
her mother to let her go back to New York
City with her nana. The answer was no.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So my nana said, listen, I will take her for
the sake of school. I need to custody and legal
guard it. And my mother said no, Like, if that's
the case, she's staying here because taxes money. That's what
it was.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
But then Aria reframed the request as if she were
doing her mother a favor.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
And I remember the comment my stepfather made was, well,
it's one less mouth to feed, and so I thought, okay,
I have to approach it from something that is appealing
to them. It is, Yeah, it's one less mouth to feed.
And I told her, you know you're gonna have to
take me. I'm going to be the only one in
high school. It's going to be out of your way.
The other three are all in school together and I
pitched it in a way that made it more appealing,
(14:37):
and she said, okay, you can leave as long as
I can continue to claim you on my taxes.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Aria's nana agreed to not claim Aria as a dependent,
and Aria packed her bags and left with her nana.
New York represented a fresh start and finally safety and peace.
But New York offered something else, opportunity. Aria got a
job scooping ice cream at Hoganda's. She went to college
at seventeen, then NYU. She then became a production assistant
(15:05):
for a photography company, where she advanced quickly in her career.
She worked fashion events, celebrity pr gigs, designer shows. She
earned every promotion through calm, skill and focus. People said
she was ambitious. What they didn't know was that she
was building a lifeline so she could go back and
(15:26):
rescue the siblings she left behind. Meanwhile, her mother fed
her siblings a new version of the old lie.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
My mother had told them Aria left because she doesn't care.
So what she told us about our father is what
she told my siblings about me, and it was just
repeated to them for years and years and years, where
they started to think you left because you know, you
wanted to do your own thing, and you don't care
about us.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
While Aria was fighting for a future and against her
mother's lives, her father, Jerome, was fighting his own demons.
After years of searching for his family, of trying to
send money and hearing nothing back, he gave up and
sank into the deep dark hole of depression. Aria had
no idea that her father was now living in the
(16:15):
same city as her. He was no longer an up
and coming fashion designer, but living on the streets homeless.
In fact, he lived on the very streets of New
York where Aria went to school. She may have even
walked past him, possibly hundreds of times, and never have
known he didn't know either, the same blood, the same
(16:38):
sidewalks strangers. At twenty four years old, Aria left New
York to become a travel photographer and see the world.
She only returned home when she found out her mother
had put her nana in a nursing home and had
sold her nana's house. It wasn't long after that that
her nana passed away. The money that her nana had
(16:58):
saved for her own fears Gneral was gone. Aria's mother
had taken it the service was nothing like Nana had planned.
Aria paid for the obituary herself. The woman who had
lived through the Great Depression, been a teacher for thirty
five years, raised a family, and given everything to her
children and grandchildren, was memorialized with a single photo and
(17:21):
a stolen legacy. Years passed, and now at thirty three,
Aria had built a life out of light and focus,
capturing faces through the lens of her camera in cities
all over the world, portraits, fashion weeks, presidential dinners. She
built the name without ever needing to post a photo
of herself. Word of mouth carried her further than Instagram
(17:44):
ever could. She traveled constantly, but something in her never
quite landed. She had success, yes, but no family, no roots.
Throughout the years, she tried to visit her siblings, but
had been met with the feel even colder than she'd
felt raking Leaves as a child. It had broken her
(18:05):
heart that her family had bought into the lives her
mother had told them. In the summer of twenty twenty one,
amidst the COVID nineteen restrictions, Aria booked a trip to
California for a series of photography sessions, but when her
housing fell through. At the last minute, she made a
spontaneous decision she'd stop in New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
The reason why I told New Orleans was because it
was very cheap during the lockdown, and the states in
the south were more open than the states in the north.
So I thought, Oh, I've never been to New Orleans.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Why not?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
And I knew my grandfather was from there, but I
haven't spoken to them in almost thirty years.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Aria arrived on a Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, she was
at a six thirty am gym class downtown. After the workout,
the instructor casually recommended a smoothie shop a couple blocks away, and.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
The instructor of the class said, Oh, Aria, you should
try this smoothie spot. She's just one block up and
one block over. I said, okay, and I watched one
block up and one block over.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
She watched the quiet morning streets, the air heavy with
summer heat and humidity. Then halfway to the smoothie shop,
she saw a tall woman walking toward her. Something in
the woman's face snacked Aria's attention, something uncanny, familiar. They
made eye contact, and then both looked away. Aria's pulse quickened,
(19:28):
but she kept walking until She reached the shop and.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
The door was open, but there was nobody in there,
which I thought was very strange. I said, oh, helloone.
The guy said I were not ready yet, sorry, can
you come back for a few minutes? And I thought, oh, okay,
I'll just go back to my RBND, which was only
two blocks of that.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Aria retraced her steps. Here was the tall woman again
across the street, this time talking with two men. Aria
made eye contact with the woman again and sheepishly looked away.
Every logical thought told Aria to keep moving, but another
thought tickled her mind as an overwhelming emotion hit Aria
square in the chest. The thought the feeling she looks like.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Me, and I thought, oh, I know her. I don't
know why I kind of looked alike. I'm five eleven,
so there's not a lot of women walking around my height.
She was the same exact height, same built. I don't
know why I know her. And she's looking at me, like,
why are you staring at her? Why? Why are you
glaringa So I frantically walked away and I just walked
(20:30):
down the street. I probably got halfway home, and something
in me, said Aria gobak.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Aria stopped, turned back, paced So.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
At this point, I'm pacing in front of some huge,
beautiful government building and she's talking to two other men
and there all three of them are looking at me
because I probably looks dipodic. To be honest, I'm literally
just walking back and forth, and I had the worst
chest pain, and I was trying to tell myself to
walk away. But I felt like something was holding me, like, no,
(21:03):
this moment, whatever this is, you have to do. Something
would this. It was like something else was present and
it would not let me leave.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Something deep inside Aria, older than fear, louder than logic,
told her she had to talk to the woman. She
couldn't explain it. She just knew if that woman got away,
something irreplaceable would be lost forever. God had never forgotten Aria,
and the message Aria was receiving from God right now
(21:32):
was loud and clear. Go to her. Aria across the
street in a rush, heart pounding.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So she was getting her car, and I thought, oh
my gosh, she gets in her car and drives away.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
This is it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
So I run across the street and I'm so afraid
to talk to her. So I turned to the two
men and I say, it's her last name, Smith's writes
chance and they were like, yeah, why, And in that moment,
it was like everything just locked in. Oh my god,
that's my dad's sister. It was like everything just all
the missing pieces just in that moment were like plugging in.
(22:06):
And so I just blurted out to these guys, I
think I'm related to her. My dad's name is Jerome Smith,
and I'm his daughter. And he's like, who are one
of the missing girls?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Missing girls. A jolt ran through Aria, as if her
heart had skipped a beat. The words landed like thunder.
She stood frozen in stunned silence, and.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I just started crying, and they're screaming at her like
come back, come back, like waiting for her to come back.
And she walked over and without anybody saying to her
what I had just told them, she says to me,
I haven't seen you since you were in diapers.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
In an instant, time folded, the street disappeared, and thirty
years of silence unraveled. The miracle had begun. It was
too much to process at once, the timing, the faces,
the fact that the story she had spent her whole
life trying to understand was now standing across from her,
in the form of flesh and Memory. Aria and her
(23:09):
aunt stayed on that sidewalk, embracing, talking in guests, crying
in turns, piecing together decades of lost history. Then Aria
mentioned it almost off handedly, she had a ticket for
an art exhibit. The next day, a local muralist she
admired was unveiling a new piece.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Her aunt froze, and all three of them just got
very quiet, and I thought, oh, no, what And they said,
when do you have the ticket for it? And I
showed them and it was for the next day, Thursday,
at one o'clock. Thursday, at one o'clock, this artist was
revealing a mural he did in my Grandfather.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
The words rushed through Aria like a gust of wind.
The mural wasn't just local art. It was a tribute
to Aria's grandfather, Jerome Smith, the freedom writer, the civil
rights activist, the man who used to sit on a
park bench and wait for a child who never came.
It was part of the city's Juneteenth celebration, and her
(24:08):
grandfather's face wasn't just in a frame. The painting would
also be printed on the side of city buses. His
eyes staring out at streets he'd once marched down. Aria
had booked the ticket days ago. She thought it was random.
It wasn't. God had been guiding her footsteps the whole time.
She hadn't just stumbled into New Orleans. She had been led.
(24:32):
She hadn't just walked down a side street. She had
been carried. The timing wasn't lucky, it was divine. At
the unveiling, Aria stood surrounded by strangers who looked like her,
same height, same eyes, same fire, And best of all,
she stood beside the man in the mural, her grandfather.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
And the first thing he said to me was I
used to sit in the park where are we took you?
And I would sit and wait, hoping you would just
walk by. He knew the parks that we went to
because he used to take us to the same parks,
and he said, I would just sit there. I would
go up to New York all the time and hope,
maybe this year they'll walk by.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
She had finally walked by, just not then, not there
and not alone. And in that moment, as Aria stood
beside the man who had stared down injustice and never
given up hope, Aria understood something she'd never known with certainty.
This is where she came from. This is where the
(25:34):
fight in her was born, the strength, the defiance, the
refusal to let darkness win. It wasn't just survival, it
was legacy. Her father, Aria would later learn, now lives
in Georgia. He's alive, he knows she's alive, but he
is buried in silence and sorrow. The weight of those
(25:55):
missing years still crushes him. He believes he failed. He
doesn't yet know how to return. Aria hopes one day
he will. But even if he doesn't, she is at
peace because now, for the first time in her life,
she has family, not in name only, but in presence,
in warmth, in memory. Aunts who call just to hear
(26:18):
her voice. Uncles who tell her stories about the father
she loved and the man he used to be, and
a grandfather who never stopped hoping she'd return. They celebrate her,
They believe her, They love her. She is no longer
a girl who stands alone. She has a home, not
a place, but a people who know her story and
(26:41):
hold it sacred, a family who never stopped waiting for her.
Because she knows the truth. She was never unwanted, she
was never forgotten. She was never unloved, She was never lost,
not to God, not for a second.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Such an incredible story, and I am so glad that
Aria was reunited with her family after all those years.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
I know this story. Did it remind you of Ruby Frankie?
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Oh? Yes, yes. And if you don't know who rub
Frankie is, she was like this social media influencer, lady
abusive mother.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, you can watch a documentary about it.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yeah, there's a documentary. But it just breaks my heart.
The kids have to go through things like that. It's
just so wrong.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
It's not fair, and it breaks my heart too. But
I am so grateful that Aria was able to make
it through that and that the story turned out the
way it did. I mean the fact that she went
to New Orleans, the fact that she ran into her
aunt there, the fact she had a ticket to go
see her grandpa's mural unveiling. I mean so many details
(27:55):
that are just more to me, they're more than coincidence.
I think that YEAHD was directing it.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Absolutely, It was such a cool story.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
And can you.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Imagine what that would be like? Like you're walking down
the street and you've seen this woman who looks like you,
who has the same build and a similar face. I
know it would be so weird, it would be shocking,
and it's so shocking. It's so cool that you know
she was reunited with their family, but also like her
family's legacy, her grandpa marched with Martin Luther King and
(28:26):
that the city was celebrating.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Him that weekend. Yeah, such a cool story.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, Like I feel like it's an honor to even
talk to Aria. I mean, her family history is so
incredible and you can definitely see where Aria got her
fight from yea, which is also so cool.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yeah, for sure, I do feel really bad for her dad.
I mean, I know that homelessness comes with so much
shame and it's really hard to dig yourself out of
that hole, and I just my heart breaks for him.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yeah, minds too. And we actually spoke with a woman
named Tamika Riley a while back who had been homeless herself,
who'd been an alcoholic, who'd been through so much, and
she shared such an inspiration little story with us where
she talked about how she went to church with a
friend and a pastor there actually cast an evil spirit
(29:21):
out of her and after that she turned her life around. Yeah,
and she's doing amazing now. But we asked her. We
had just done our interview with Aria right before we
talked to Tamika, and so we said, what would you
say to somebody like Jerome who is going through this now,
who is in that pit of despair? Like, what message
(29:43):
would you give to him? Yeah, and this is what
she said.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
I had been homeless. I was alcoholic.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
I would drink like a fifth of eighty proof a day,
and it was hard to function without it. And I
felt condemned. I didn't think I wanted anything to do
with me too dirty. I wanted to be free, but
I just didn't know that I was bound. I didn't know,
and I would pour out the alcohol and say I'm
not going to do this anymore.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
The next day I would be doing it again. I
didn't have the strength within me to stop. I didn't
know that I was bound. I didn't know that there
was a spirit behind it.
Speaker 5 (30:15):
You know. I knew that Jesus cast out spirits, but
I thought that was off for back then.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
I didn't know that that, you know, that they still.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
Were behind a lot of what people are going through today.
But I just felt, you know, condemned. I didn't feel
good enough everybody.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
That that I had meant that would try to evangelize
or witness to me.
Speaker 5 (30:34):
It was just warning. It was never help or hope
or love. It wasn't his true heart towards me. And
I thought that they were representing his heart for me,
and they were not.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Okay. So this is the part where her friend invited
her to church and she went, and when she was there,
they cast out an evil spirit from her.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
That next morning, it was the weirdest thing.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
I was laying in bed asleep, half awake, and I
remember feeling like I was being picked up out of
my body, and my body was on the bed, but
I was picked up and I was being held in
rocked like a baby with so much love and compassion
and just warmth.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
And I knew it was him. Nobody could tell me
it was not. I knew it was him. His presence,
the love and everything. I knew it was him.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
And then he laid me back down and I sat
up and I looked around. Nobody was in the room.
I sat up and I just kind of looked around
and there was no fear, there was nothing. But I
didn't know that was his heart towards me. Even in
my sin. But he looked at me and he saw
the difference between who I was and what was trying
to take me over, and he separated us. He separated
(31:42):
it from me, and so that I could, you know, live,
He told me, You're not just gonna exist, You're gonna live.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Baby.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
Steps would just be to give your life to Christ
and to believe that He loves you, and that he
does not feel the way about you that you do.
You know that he desperately loved He really does. And
there's no such thing as being too far. When people
would say is there anything too hard for God? I
used to say I am. I was Matt.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I love what Tamika said, and I truly hope that
Jerome one day will realize his worth and know how
much God truly loves him.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, I love her matter what too.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
And if you want to learn more about Tamika's story
or here's some other inspirational story, she actually has her
own podcast. You can check them out at Tamikailey dot com.
That's t A m E K A r I L
e y dot com.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah, And if Jerome and Aria ever do rehiunite, we'll
try to keep you posted on that yeah, But regardless,
Aria is at peace and she's so glad she's found
that family that she was missing, and she's such a
force for good at this point. Like yes, she also
has a message that she would like to share with
anyone who is going through something similar to what she
(33:07):
went through as a child.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I think the first thing for people to do is
to take the first step, whatever it is, whether it's
calling someone for help or acknowledging that there's a problem
or talking about it with someone is the first step.
But when you do one thing, you realize, oh, that
wasn't so bad. Okay, let me try a little more,
and then you kind of gain steam. You're like, Okay,
I can do I can do anything. And now I
(33:31):
think I'm in a better place to put myself out
there more, to speak about it more, and to potentially
help other people, especially other kids, because I think a
lot of kids who grow up in households like that.
You believe what you're told. If you're told you're not
going to be anything, or you're told you can't do something,
or you know, it's natural to take in whatever you're
(33:51):
receiving from your parents, and it's very hard to break
free from that for most people, I think, and I
feel like I was the BlackSheep of the family because
God made me strong enough to handle it. And I
think if my siblings had dealt with some of the
things I dealt with, it would have destroyed them. And
there was a quote that I saw. There's two quotes
(34:13):
that I saw. One that God gives his strongest battles,
who's toughest soldiers, And you were given this mountain to
prove that it could be moved. And I feel like
I was given all of this because it's something that
I am strong enough to handle even though it's painful.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
I am so impressed with Aria. I mean, she has
done amazing things with their life. She's worked like parties
for justin Timberlake. She photographed an event for the United
Nations where Prinney Nellium spoke amazing. She's just as impressive
as her family. And yeah, I mean, just such a
good role model for someone who can thrive after going
(34:55):
through such a chart a hard childhood.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Yeahsolutely. And we just want to thank Aria so much
for sharing her story with us, for her courage. She's
a man, and we're so grateful for this miracle that
she experienced, and we know God has never left her side.
He's always been with her and he is still with her. Yeah,
it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
And if you or anyone you know is going through abuse,
then you can call one eight hundred four two two
four four five three or visit childhelphotline dot org.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Yes, thanks again everyone for joining us today. God is
great and you are loved, so don't forget it. Thank
you for joining us. If you have a miracle to share,
contact us at the Miracle files dot com or find
us on Facebook.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
We're now releasing multiple episodes each month, so subscribe on
your favorite podcast platform and YouTube for amazing video content
as well.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Join us next time as we discover more of God's miracles,
and don't forget to look for His light in your
own lives
Aria's father, Jerome Smith, returned to their condo to find
it stripped bear no kids, no wife, no note.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I remember the day we moved, thinking like there's something wrong.
So I would always ask, well, where is daddy and
why doesn't he want to see us?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
But the questions brought only anger.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
As a child, it didn't make sense to me, like
you just didn't add up.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
This is the Miracle Files.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I'm Emily Jones and I'm Holly Worthington. We're two sisters
who love a captivating true story, but we're also seeking
more light in our lives.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
So we're on a mission to find and share unforgettable,
uplifting stories of God's miracles. We hope you'll join us
on this journey.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Welcome back to the Miracle Files. We have an amazing
episode for you.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Today, Yes, this one. It is actually a story that
takes place over decades rather than like a day or two,
but it is fascinating. We will warn you though, that
it does dive into some sensitive topics like child abuse.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, and no one has actually been charged that is
in this story with any kind of crimes, So we
just want to be clear that this is from Aria's
perspective based on her interview. But we really think that
it will be an inspiration to all of you, but
especially to anyone who's going through a hard time or
he went through really hard time as a child. Yeah,
(01:33):
and if you're a young person who is going through abuse,
we want you to know that there will be resources
at the end of this as well that we'll share
with you.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
And the most important thing to know is that you
matter and there is hope.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
So amen, Okay, let's get started.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Okay. Before she was a photographer in Europe, before versace
and private events with the King of Spain, was a
missing girl. She wasn't kidnapped by a stranger. She didn't
appear in the headlines or land on milk cartons. What
happened to her was quieter and crueler. She was stolen
(02:13):
by the one person everyone is taught to trust the most.
Her mother, Aria, was born into legacy, a fifth generation
New Yorker. Her roots ran through Harlem and through Columbia
University jazz halls and Ivy League scholarships. Her mother had
modeled her father, Jerome, was a rising fashion designer who
(02:35):
had already sketched hats for Stevie Wonder and suits for
Luther van Dross by his twenties. Her father was a
six foot tall, soft spoken man who Aria called the
gentle Giant. Her grandfather had marched with Martin Luther King Junior.
They weren't just a family, they were history. And then
(02:55):
one day it all ended.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Here's Aria, And after kindergarten, my mother packed up our
condo in New York and told us we were moving away,
and we moved to South Carolina. And I remember the
day we moved because we had this blue, long, old
school nineties Volkswagen. Piled all of us into the car,
and I just remember looking at my nana and her
(03:19):
sisters in the yard, thinking like, there's something wrong with
this situation. We didn't get to say goodbye to our father.
We're just we're moving with this man we don't really
even know, to a state that's extremely far away. It
just didn't make any sense. And I've always been very outspoken.
I was a kid who would say but why, but why,
(03:39):
like a million times. So I would always ask, well,
where is daddy, and why doesn't he want to see us?
And why can't we just call him? Why don't we
go to where he is. Why don't you bring us?
And it was always like Ariyasha, let's stop asking questions.
And it's just something in me, even as a child,
we just didn't add up. And I love my grandfather,
(04:00):
my father's father. And she said, you know, they don't
want anything to do with you either. No.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Aria thought that wasn't true. This was all wrong. She
could feel it. Aria's father, Jerome Smith, returned to their
condo to find it stripped bare, no kids, no wife,
no note. He called everyone he knew, no one had answers.
He went to the police. My children are missing, he
(04:27):
told the officer. She took them and disappeared. But in
nineteen ninety two, there were no Amber alerts for this
kind of thing, no social media posts to go viral,
no laws strong enough to help a father whose name
wasn't on a custody order. The police told Jerome it
was a domestic dispute and that they couldn't get involved.
(04:49):
They handed him a pamphlet. He walked out without taking it.
Jerome tried to contact Aria's maternal grandmother, but arius Nana
refused to give Jerome any information.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
And my mother had told ny Nana, he's crazy. And abusive.
Don't talk to him, he's dangerous.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Jerome called his father, Jerome Senior, in New Orleans. Jerome
Junior's voice cracked as he told his father, she's gone.
She took the kids. His father flew to New York
and searched every place his grandchildren had once been, schools, parks, churches,
but the trail went cold. He often returned to New
(05:28):
York to visit Marcus Garvey Park. This had been a
beloved spot for Jerome Senior and his grandchildren. Whenever he
used to visit them, he would take them there. It
became a place of nostalgia and mourning for Jerome Senior.
Every time he traveled to New York, he sat on
a green bench by the playground where he used to
(05:48):
bring Aria and her siblings, hoping his grandchildren might walk by.
But they never did. Still, he returned again and again.
In South Carolina, five year old Aria's world unraveled. She
was enrolled in school, but nothing felt safe. She kept
asking where her father was, Why can't we call him?
(06:10):
Doesn't he miss us? But the questions brought only anger.
Her mother insisted that her father, grandfather, and all of
that side of the family hated Aria and her siblings.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
As a child, didn't make sense to me that the loving,
caring people that I did know, even at the age
of five, it didn't make sense at all of a sudden,
They just everybody hates us for what you just didn't
add up.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Aria only remembers feeling safe and loved in her father's
and grandfather's presence. In contrast, the man living in her
house now, her stepfather, was not gentle. He was not
kind or loving. He was angry, he was violent. Her
mother was two, and the abuse went on for years.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
There were occasions where our punishment was like to sit
outside in a thunderstorm, our stepfather just was looking at
us with a smirk through the window. Or I remember
having to go outside in the freezing cold and rake
up all the leaves on like this huge property that
we lived on, to the point where from the rate
our hands were bleeding with their skin had peeled from
(07:20):
being left outside for so long. And we would have
to work for hours, and then he would put the
food outside like we were a dog, and we would
eat outside. And I remember my sister saying she saw
on the Discovery Channel, if we stuff leaves in our jacket.
That's how we could stay warm, so it was always
very cool and unusual punishments. He would give us like
prison numbers. When we were grounded, we would have like
(07:41):
a number as if we were a prisoner, and he
would call us by our numbers.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Aria's family moved constantly Lexington, Columbia, back and forth, three
schools before second grade, seven before high school was done,
and the reason was always the same. Someone started asking questions,
a school nurse, a teacher, a neighbor. Aria began to
understand the pattern. If anyone got too close to the truth,
(08:08):
she would never see them again. Aria's mother never kept
a job. When she did, it was short lived. A
sample lady at Sam's Club, a cook, a doula. What
did seem to last was the steady stream of money
from arius Nana, who couldn't say no to Aria's mother, condos, cars,
a custom home. But the money never made it to
(08:31):
Aria or her siblings. They wore hand me downs and
suffered hunger. Even though her nana couldn't protect her, Aria
loved her nana. Her nana had always exemplified compassion and faith.
But the years passed and soon it wasn't just Aria's nana,
Aria's father, or his family who felt so far away.
(08:54):
Soon even God felt far away.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I grew up in a Baptist church, and I grew
up in a household. My nana always took us to church.
My mother would never go, so I always wore a
cross around my neck, and I removed my cross when
I was tighten because the abuse in our family was
so bad, and I thought, if there's a God, why
would he want us to go through this.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Even though Aria wondered if God had abandoned her, she
felt something inside her telling her to keep fighting.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I remember watching Matilda in elementary school and I told
my mother, you can put me up for adoption, and
she lost it. I thought that is a great alternative,
and I just never I just thought, well, somebody else's
house has got to be better than this, so if
I can go live somewhere else, I felt like I
could do something great with my life. I don't know
(09:45):
where that came from, because I was being told the
opposite by my mother and my stuff. Oh you're never
going to be any saying you're not good enough, you're
an idiot, whatever negative things they would say, But it
never penetrated me for some reason. I think for my
siblings it did. It was a way to keep them attacked.
But for me, I just thought, you're the idiot like
I just even as a kid. I just it didn't
(10:08):
phaze me for some reason.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
But what did continue to bother Aria was how God
could allow such cruelty. One day, Aria's baby sister broke
her ankle, and Aria went with her and their mother
to the doctor's office.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I remember their doctor saying I was malnourished to my
mother and the doctor said, you know, oh, Ari, you
really need to eat more. And I said something along
the lines of oh, my mom won't let us. But
I remember blurting it out in the doctor's office. And
they would have these locks on the cabinet, and when
I had mentioned the lots, my mother said, oh, they're
(10:45):
child proof for like the baby. But that wasn't it,
because she would lock the top cabinets as well. So
it was like to control our eating because their stepfather
said we ate too much because there's too many of us.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Aria hoped that speaking up would get the doctor's attention.
She felt like everything could change if someone just became
aware of their circumstances. But no As soon as the
doctor started asking questions once again, her family moved like
a relentless river coursing through her life. Abuse felt like
a constant Where was God? And then in the midst
(11:19):
of her feeling of hurt and abandonment, Aria found a
message of comfort in a most unusual place.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
I remember using my Christmas money to buy a Bible,
and I was trying to find something that would possibly
explain why is there so much evil in the world
If there's a god that doesn't make any sense, and
you're gonna think I'm totally crazy. There was a cartoon show,
Rocco's Modern Life and the cow. On the show, Heifer
(11:48):
died and he became a guardian angel, and he had
gone through a series of bad things in the cartoon
to become a guardian angel. So he couldn't become a
guardian angel, and so he went through all these bad things.
So at the age of ten, after removing my cross,
I thought, oh, this is it. I'm supposed to go
through these bad things because that's the only way I
(12:11):
can go to heaven and become an angel and help people.
And so as I got older, I kind of carried
that with me. It was like, maybe I don't need
to die to help people, Like I'm going through these
bad things so that I could help my siblings. I'm
going through these bad things so that I can help
other kids in the future.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
There he was.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
At last.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
God hadn't forgotten Aria at all. She'd found his love
and she clung to it. Wearing her cross again. Aria
knew she had a purpose and she tried to do
all she could to help the other kids. She often
took blame to protect her siblings. She didn't cry when
she was hit. Unfortunately, that only made her stepfather angrier.
(12:53):
At fourteen, Aria watched her stepfather knock her sister out cold,
slamming her head through a sliding gol door.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
And I remember watching her falls the floor and she
was just completely knocked out and my other sister was
screaming trying to pick her up, and I went to
grab my younger siblings, who at the time were three
and five, and he's told me don't touch them, and
I said, okay. So they sat on the couch watching
and my sister called the police at time, and the
(13:23):
police came and they asked the question, has this happened before?
And one sister said no, and one sister said yes.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
The police took down a report, and once again Aria's
family picked up and moved. Aria didn't want to leave
her siblings, but at just fifteen years of age, she
knew she couldn't help them or herself by staying in
that situation. When her nana came to town, Aria begged
her mother to let her go back to New York
City with her nana. The answer was no.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So my nana said, listen, I will take her for
the sake of school. I need to custody and legal
guard it. And my mother said no, Like, if that's
the case, she's staying here because taxes money. That's what
it was.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
But then Aria reframed the request as if she were
doing her mother a favor.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
And I remember the comment my stepfather made was, well,
it's one less mouth to feed, and so I thought, okay,
I have to approach it from something that is appealing
to them. It is, Yeah, it's one less mouth to feed.
And I told her, you know you're gonna have to
take me. I'm going to be the only one in
high school. It's going to be out of your way.
The other three are all in school together and I
pitched it in a way that made it more appealing,
(14:37):
and she said, okay, you can leave as long as
I can continue to claim you on my taxes.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Aria's nana agreed to not claim Aria as a dependent,
and Aria packed her bags and left with her nana.
New York represented a fresh start and finally safety and peace.
But New York offered something else, opportunity. Aria got a
job scooping ice cream at Hoganda's. She went to college
at seventeen, then NYU. She then became a production assistant
(15:05):
for a photography company, where she advanced quickly in her career.
She worked fashion events, celebrity pr gigs, designer shows. She
earned every promotion through calm, skill and focus. People said
she was ambitious. What they didn't know was that she
was building a lifeline so she could go back and
(15:26):
rescue the siblings she left behind. Meanwhile, her mother fed
her siblings a new version of the old lie.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
My mother had told them Aria left because she doesn't care.
So what she told us about our father is what
she told my siblings about me, and it was just
repeated to them for years and years and years, where
they started to think you left because you know, you
wanted to do your own thing, and you don't care
about us.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
While Aria was fighting for a future and against her
mother's lives, her father, Jerome, was fighting his own demons.
After years of searching for his family, of trying to
send money and hearing nothing back, he gave up and
sank into the deep dark hole of depression. Aria had
no idea that her father was now living in the
(16:15):
same city as her. He was no longer an up
and coming fashion designer, but living on the streets homeless.
In fact, he lived on the very streets of New
York where Aria went to school. She may have even
walked past him, possibly hundreds of times, and never have
known he didn't know either, the same blood, the same
(16:38):
sidewalks strangers. At twenty four years old, Aria left New
York to become a travel photographer and see the world.
She only returned home when she found out her mother
had put her nana in a nursing home and had
sold her nana's house. It wasn't long after that that
her nana passed away. The money that her nana had
(16:58):
saved for her own fears Gneral was gone. Aria's mother
had taken it the service was nothing like Nana had planned.
Aria paid for the obituary herself. The woman who had
lived through the Great Depression, been a teacher for thirty
five years, raised a family, and given everything to her
children and grandchildren, was memorialized with a single photo and
(17:21):
a stolen legacy. Years passed, and now at thirty three,
Aria had built a life out of light and focus,
capturing faces through the lens of her camera in cities
all over the world, portraits, fashion weeks, presidential dinners. She
built the name without ever needing to post a photo
of herself. Word of mouth carried her further than Instagram
(17:44):
ever could. She traveled constantly, but something in her never
quite landed. She had success, yes, but no family, no roots.
Throughout the years, she tried to visit her siblings, but
had been met with the feel even colder than she'd
felt raking Leaves as a child. It had broken her
(18:05):
heart that her family had bought into the lives her
mother had told them. In the summer of twenty twenty one,
amidst the COVID nineteen restrictions, Aria booked a trip to
California for a series of photography sessions, but when her
housing fell through. At the last minute, she made a
spontaneous decision she'd stop in New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
The reason why I told New Orleans was because it
was very cheap during the lockdown, and the states in
the south were more open than the states in the north.
So I thought, Oh, I've never been to New Orleans.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Why not?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
And I knew my grandfather was from there, but I
haven't spoken to them in almost thirty years.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Aria arrived on a Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, she was
at a six thirty am gym class downtown. After the workout,
the instructor casually recommended a smoothie shop a couple blocks away, and.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
The instructor of the class said, Oh, Aria, you should
try this smoothie spot. She's just one block up and
one block over. I said, okay, and I watched one
block up and one block over.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
She watched the quiet morning streets, the air heavy with
summer heat and humidity. Then halfway to the smoothie shop,
she saw a tall woman walking toward her. Something in
the woman's face snacked Aria's attention, something uncanny, familiar. They
made eye contact, and then both looked away. Aria's pulse quickened,
(19:28):
but she kept walking until She reached the shop and.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
The door was open, but there was nobody in there,
which I thought was very strange. I said, oh, helloone.
The guy said I were not ready yet, sorry, can
you come back for a few minutes? And I thought, oh, okay,
I'll just go back to my RBND, which was only
two blocks of that.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Aria retraced her steps. Here was the tall woman again
across the street, this time talking with two men. Aria
made eye contact with the woman again and sheepishly looked away.
Every logical thought told Aria to keep moving, but another
thought tickled her mind as an overwhelming emotion hit Aria
square in the chest. The thought the feeling she looks like.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Me, and I thought, oh, I know her. I don't
know why I kind of looked alike. I'm five eleven,
so there's not a lot of women walking around my height.
She was the same exact height, same built. I don't
know why I know her. And she's looking at me, like,
why are you staring at her? Why? Why are you
glaringa So I frantically walked away and I just walked
(20:30):
down the street. I probably got halfway home, and something
in me, said Aria gobak.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Aria stopped, turned back, paced So.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
At this point, I'm pacing in front of some huge,
beautiful government building and she's talking to two other men
and there all three of them are looking at me
because I probably looks dipodic. To be honest, I'm literally
just walking back and forth, and I had the worst
chest pain, and I was trying to tell myself to
walk away. But I felt like something was holding me, like, no,
(21:03):
this moment, whatever this is, you have to do. Something
would this. It was like something else was present and
it would not let me leave.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Something deep inside Aria, older than fear, louder than logic,
told her she had to talk to the woman. She
couldn't explain it. She just knew if that woman got away,
something irreplaceable would be lost forever. God had never forgotten Aria,
and the message Aria was receiving from God right now
(21:32):
was loud and clear. Go to her. Aria across the
street in a rush, heart pounding.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So she was getting her car, and I thought, oh
my gosh, she gets in her car and drives away.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
This is it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
So I run across the street and I'm so afraid
to talk to her. So I turned to the two
men and I say, it's her last name, Smith's writes
chance and they were like, yeah, why, And in that moment,
it was like everything just locked in. Oh my god,
that's my dad's sister. It was like everything just all
the missing pieces just in that moment were like plugging in.
(22:06):
And so I just blurted out to these guys, I
think I'm related to her. My dad's name is Jerome Smith,
and I'm his daughter. And he's like, who are one
of the missing girls?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Missing girls. A jolt ran through Aria, as if her
heart had skipped a beat. The words landed like thunder.
She stood frozen in stunned silence, and.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I just started crying, and they're screaming at her like
come back, come back, like waiting for her to come back.
And she walked over and without anybody saying to her
what I had just told them, she says to me,
I haven't seen you since you were in diapers.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
In an instant, time folded, the street disappeared, and thirty
years of silence unraveled. The miracle had begun. It was
too much to process at once, the timing, the faces,
the fact that the story she had spent her whole
life trying to understand was now standing across from her,
in the form of flesh and Memory. Aria and her
(23:09):
aunt stayed on that sidewalk, embracing, talking in guests, crying
in turns, piecing together decades of lost history. Then Aria
mentioned it almost off handedly, she had a ticket for
an art exhibit. The next day, a local muralist she
admired was unveiling a new piece.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Her aunt froze, and all three of them just got
very quiet, and I thought, oh, no, what And they said,
when do you have the ticket for it? And I
showed them and it was for the next day, Thursday,
at one o'clock. Thursday, at one o'clock, this artist was
revealing a mural he did in my Grandfather.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
The words rushed through Aria like a gust of wind.
The mural wasn't just local art. It was a tribute
to Aria's grandfather, Jerome Smith, the freedom writer, the civil
rights activist, the man who used to sit on a
park bench and wait for a child who never came.
It was part of the city's Juneteenth celebration, and her
(24:08):
grandfather's face wasn't just in a frame. The painting would
also be printed on the side of city buses. His
eyes staring out at streets he'd once marched down. Aria
had booked the ticket days ago. She thought it was random.
It wasn't. God had been guiding her footsteps the whole time.
She hadn't just stumbled into New Orleans. She had been led.
(24:32):
She hadn't just walked down a side street. She had
been carried. The timing wasn't lucky, it was divine. At
the unveiling, Aria stood surrounded by strangers who looked like her,
same height, same eyes, same fire, And best of all,
she stood beside the man in the mural, her grandfather.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
And the first thing he said to me was I
used to sit in the park where are we took you?
And I would sit and wait, hoping you would just
walk by. He knew the parks that we went to
because he used to take us to the same parks,
and he said, I would just sit there. I would
go up to New York all the time and hope,
maybe this year they'll walk by.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
She had finally walked by, just not then, not there
and not alone. And in that moment, as Aria stood
beside the man who had stared down injustice and never
given up hope, Aria understood something she'd never known with certainty.
This is where she came from. This is where the
(25:34):
fight in her was born, the strength, the defiance, the
refusal to let darkness win. It wasn't just survival, it
was legacy. Her father, Aria would later learn, now lives
in Georgia. He's alive, he knows she's alive, but he
is buried in silence and sorrow. The weight of those
(25:55):
missing years still crushes him. He believes he failed. He
doesn't yet know how to return. Aria hopes one day
he will. But even if he doesn't, she is at
peace because now, for the first time in her life,
she has family, not in name only, but in presence,
in warmth, in memory. Aunts who call just to hear
(26:18):
her voice. Uncles who tell her stories about the father
she loved and the man he used to be, and
a grandfather who never stopped hoping she'd return. They celebrate her,
They believe her, They love her. She is no longer
a girl who stands alone. She has a home, not
a place, but a people who know her story and
(26:41):
hold it sacred, a family who never stopped waiting for her.
Because she knows the truth. She was never unwanted, she
was never forgotten. She was never unloved, She was never lost,
not to God, not for a second.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Such an incredible story, and I am so glad that
Aria was reunited with her family after all those years.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
I know this story. Did it remind you of Ruby Frankie?
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Oh? Yes, yes. And if you don't know who rub
Frankie is, she was like this social media influencer, lady
abusive mother.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, you can watch a documentary about it.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yeah, there's a documentary. But it just breaks my heart.
The kids have to go through things like that. It's
just so wrong.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
It's not fair, and it breaks my heart too. But
I am so grateful that Aria was able to make
it through that and that the story turned out the
way it did. I mean the fact that she went
to New Orleans, the fact that she ran into her
aunt there, the fact she had a ticket to go
see her grandpa's mural unveiling. I mean so many details
(27:55):
that are just more to me, they're more than coincidence.
I think that YEAHD was directing it.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Absolutely, It was such a cool story.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
And can you.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Imagine what that would be like? Like you're walking down
the street and you've seen this woman who looks like you,
who has the same build and a similar face. I
know it would be so weird, it would be shocking,
and it's so shocking. It's so cool that you know
she was reunited with their family, but also like her
family's legacy, her grandpa marched with Martin Luther King and
(28:26):
that the city was celebrating.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Him that weekend. Yeah, such a cool story.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, Like I feel like it's an honor to even
talk to Aria. I mean, her family history is so
incredible and you can definitely see where Aria got her
fight from yea, which is also so cool.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yeah, for sure, I do feel really bad for her dad.
I mean, I know that homelessness comes with so much
shame and it's really hard to dig yourself out of
that hole, and I just my heart breaks for him.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yeah, minds too. And we actually spoke with a woman
named Tamika Riley a while back who had been homeless herself,
who'd been an alcoholic, who'd been through so much, and
she shared such an inspiration little story with us where
she talked about how she went to church with a
friend and a pastor there actually cast an evil spirit
(29:21):
out of her and after that she turned her life around. Yeah,
and she's doing amazing now. But we asked her. We
had just done our interview with Aria right before we
talked to Tamika, and so we said, what would you
say to somebody like Jerome who is going through this now,
who is in that pit of despair? Like, what message
(29:43):
would you give to him? Yeah, and this is what
she said.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
I had been homeless. I was alcoholic.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
I would drink like a fifth of eighty proof a day,
and it was hard to function without it. And I
felt condemned. I didn't think I wanted anything to do
with me too dirty. I wanted to be free, but
I just didn't know that I was bound. I didn't know,
and I would pour out the alcohol and say I'm
not going to do this anymore.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
The next day I would be doing it again. I
didn't have the strength within me to stop. I didn't
know that I was bound. I didn't know that there
was a spirit behind it.
Speaker 5 (30:15):
You know. I knew that Jesus cast out spirits, but
I thought that was off for back then.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
I didn't know that that, you know, that they still.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
Were behind a lot of what people are going through today.
But I just felt, you know, condemned. I didn't feel
good enough everybody.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
That that I had meant that would try to evangelize
or witness to me.
Speaker 5 (30:34):
It was just warning. It was never help or hope
or love. It wasn't his true heart towards me. And
I thought that they were representing his heart for me,
and they were not.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Okay. So this is the part where her friend invited
her to church and she went, and when she was there,
they cast out an evil spirit from her.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
That next morning, it was the weirdest thing.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
I was laying in bed asleep, half awake, and I
remember feeling like I was being picked up out of
my body, and my body was on the bed, but
I was picked up and I was being held in
rocked like a baby with so much love and compassion
and just warmth.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
And I knew it was him. Nobody could tell me
it was not. I knew it was him. His presence,
the love and everything. I knew it was him.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
And then he laid me back down and I sat
up and I looked around. Nobody was in the room.
I sat up and I just kind of looked around
and there was no fear, there was nothing. But I
didn't know that was his heart towards me. Even in
my sin. But he looked at me and he saw
the difference between who I was and what was trying
to take me over, and he separated us. He separated
(31:42):
it from me, and so that I could, you know, live,
He told me, You're not just gonna exist, You're gonna live.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Baby.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
Steps would just be to give your life to Christ
and to believe that He loves you, and that he
does not feel the way about you that you do.
You know that he desperately loved He really does. And
there's no such thing as being too far. When people
would say is there anything too hard for God? I
used to say I am. I was Matt.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I love what Tamika said, and I truly hope that
Jerome one day will realize his worth and know how
much God truly loves him.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, I love her matter what too.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
And if you want to learn more about Tamika's story
or here's some other inspirational story, she actually has her
own podcast. You can check them out at Tamikailey dot com.
That's t A m E K A r I L
e y dot com.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah, And if Jerome and Aria ever do rehiunite, we'll
try to keep you posted on that yeah, But regardless,
Aria is at peace and she's so glad she's found
that family that she was missing, and she's such a
force for good at this point. Like yes, she also
has a message that she would like to share with
anyone who is going through something similar to what she
(33:07):
went through as a child.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I think the first thing for people to do is
to take the first step, whatever it is, whether it's
calling someone for help or acknowledging that there's a problem
or talking about it with someone is the first step.
But when you do one thing, you realize, oh, that
wasn't so bad. Okay, let me try a little more,
and then you kind of gain steam. You're like, Okay,
I can do I can do anything. And now I
(33:31):
think I'm in a better place to put myself out
there more, to speak about it more, and to potentially
help other people, especially other kids, because I think a
lot of kids who grow up in households like that.
You believe what you're told. If you're told you're not
going to be anything, or you're told you can't do something,
or you know, it's natural to take in whatever you're
(33:51):
receiving from your parents, and it's very hard to break
free from that for most people, I think, and I
feel like I was the BlackSheep of the family because
God made me strong enough to handle it. And I
think if my siblings had dealt with some of the
things I dealt with, it would have destroyed them. And
there was a quote that I saw. There's two quotes
(34:13):
that I saw. One that God gives his strongest battles,
who's toughest soldiers, And you were given this mountain to
prove that it could be moved. And I feel like
I was given all of this because it's something that
I am strong enough to handle even though it's painful.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
I am so impressed with Aria. I mean, she has
done amazing things with their life. She's worked like parties
for justin Timberlake. She photographed an event for the United
Nations where Prinney Nellium spoke amazing. She's just as impressive
as her family. And yeah, I mean, just such a
good role model for someone who can thrive after going
(34:55):
through such a chart a hard childhood.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Yeahsolutely. And we just want to thank Aria so much
for sharing her story with us, for her courage. She's
a man, and we're so grateful for this miracle that
she experienced, and we know God has never left her side.
He's always been with her and he is still with her. Yeah,
it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
And if you or anyone you know is going through abuse,
then you can call one eight hundred four two two
four four five three or visit childhelphotline dot org.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Yes, thanks again everyone for joining us today. God is
great and you are loved, so don't forget it. Thank
you for joining us. If you have a miracle to share,
contact us at the Miracle files dot com or find
us on Facebook.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
We're now releasing multiple episodes each month, so subscribe on
your favorite podcast platform and YouTube for amazing video content
as well.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Join us next time as we discover more of God's miracles,
and don't forget to look for His light in your
own lives
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