Creating a Safe Place for LGBTQ Youth
At Nexus Family Healing, we know that how we treat those who are different from us is incredibly important. When diversity is valued, our uniqueness is recognized, including differences in our gender identities and sexual orientation. These play an important role in everyone’s lives, and those who identify as LGBTQ face unique challenges regarding mental health.Read More
Foster Care and Adoption Children’s Booklist
In honor of National Foster Care month, we wanted to share a list of books and workbooks for youth in foster care or in adopted families that are a wonderful way for children to explore other people's life experiences, while at the same time seeing their own stories represented and know they are not alone in their feelings.Read More
A Foster Mom’s Gratitude List
When I became a foster parent, I had some grandiose mission statements about what I would do, how I would help, and the way in which I would serve vulnerable youth… but I look back now, seven years later, and see I had it all wrong. Well-intentioned, but wrong.Read More
Walking Alongside Birth Families
Families do not set out to put their child in foster care but simply are in a situation that makes it untenable to maintain parenting safely and confidently. People often look at a foster youth and think “those poor kids.” That thought, although maybe well-intentioned, breeds contempt for loved ones. When we reframe the way we look at why a child has entered care, we can be better equipped to care for the youth, and in turn, learn to walk alongside birth families.Read More
Dear Foster Parents, Give Them a Chance
It was Christmas Eve, 2016. The snow was coming down outside the Social Services office where my foster kiddo and I sat. A big storm was on its way, and I was nervously sitting in a dim meeting room, waiting for this sweet angel’s birth mother to join us for the first time. My foster youth was snuggled in a warm blanket with me, snoozing away. Mom was already 25 minutes late. The air hung nervously as my mind raced with negative thoughts and emotions, asking myself how was I going to get home in this snow?Read More
Child Abuse Books Reading List
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. Here at Nexus Family Healing, our employees, therapists, and foster parents continuously work with youth who have experienced different types of trauma, which often include abuse or neglect. We’ve compiled a list of books that speak about child abuse and trauma that may be fitting for children of different ages.Read More
Understanding Childhood Trauma
You may have heard phrases such as “childhood trauma” or “traumatic experience”. But what really is trauma? And how does it affect us? Unfortunately, childhood trauma is incredibly common as one in four children in our community will experience a traumatic event before the age of 16.Read More
National Day of Silence
The National Day of Silence started as a student-led protest in the 1990s where LGBTQ+ students and allies take a vow of silence to protest the harmful effects of harassment and education discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community. Take a look at this event's history and how you can celebrate it.Read More
Childhood Trauma Is Not Just a Mental Health Problem
Exposure to continuous trauma causes the body’s alarm system to be easily triggered, releasing stress hormones that interfere with reasoning and activate that flight, fight, or freeze response. Children cannot learn or get along with friends or family members when living in a constant state of fight, flight or freeze. Rather, their goal is to survive.Read More
It’s Spring – So Why Aren’t You Happy?
Over the past several years humanity has learned how to become resilient in isolation. Many of our face-to-face interactions and relationships were severed during COVID and as a result, we have developed long-term habitual loneliness. So how do we recover? To state it simply, a first step is "do then feel".Read More
