A Journey of Resilience, Faith, and Purpose
As a little girl, Sheree Smith believed her father was traveling to the moon.
Together they built imaginary spaceships from blankets and cardboard boxes, pretending to explore distant worlds. She didn't understand that before each journey, he was using drugs. When he became still, she believed he had simply arrived on the moon.
Then one night, he never came back.
Her frantic 911 call marked the end of childhood innocence and the beginning of a lifelong search to understand pain, addiction, and healing.
Years later, Sheree would realize that moment planted the first seed of her calling.
"I wanted to help people who were hurting."
Growing up, instability became familiar. As the oldest of four children, she learned to care for others long before anyone cared for her. Abuse, addiction, homelessness, and difficult relationships repeatedly interrupted the future she imagined for herself.
Still, one dream never disappeared.
She wanted an education.
Again and again, life forced detours. Financial aid became unavailable because of circumstances beyond her control. Becoming a mother brought both joy and enormous responsibility. A secure job with the United States Postal Service provided stability but left her feeling unfulfilled.
"I wanted work that changed lives."
When her young daughter began experiencing speech delays, Sheree trusted her instincts despite reassurances that everything would be fine. She left Ohio, walked away from a stable career, and moved to Colorado believing better resources could change her daughter's future.
They did.
The move also changed hers.
While pursuing massage therapy school, Sheree and her daughter experienced homelessness, rotating between shelters, friends' homes, and nights sleeping in their car. Even then, she continued volunteering at the Denver Dream Center, helping distribute food to families facing hardships much like her own.
"Homelessness didn't define my worth. It simply described a season of my life."
Through a church community, compassionate mentors, and unexpected acts of kindness, Sheree slowly rebuilt her life. Eventually, she enrolled at Red Rocks Community College, where she discovered something she had been searching for all along—a learning community that saw her as a whole person rather than simply another student.
Her success opened the door to nursing school, though another difficult decision followed when she realized a prestigious program wasn't the right fit for her well-being. Instead of viewing that choice as failure, she trusted herself once again and found a program designed around the realities of adult learners balancing work, parenting, and life.
Today, Sheree is pursuing her bachelor's degree while preparing for a career in nursing, raising her children, and continuing the work she first imagined as a little girl.
Looking back, she no longer sees a life defined by hardship.
She sees every chapter preparing her to walk beside people during some of the hardest moments of theirs.
Her story reminds us that education doesn't erase our past. It gives us the opportunity to transform it into purpose.
Sheree Smith is one of fifty adult learners featured in Beyond the Degree: Stories of Adult Learner Comebacks and What They Teach Us. Read her complete story in her own words, and discover what these remarkable comebacks teach us, in the book from the Center for Academic Innovation.