My wife and I have become distance over the last several years. I am afraid that she is having an affair. How can I get her to talk to me and go to therapy?

The Cornerstone Café serves as a vocational program of Nexus-Onarga Family Healing where youth in residence build real-world skills by applying, interviewing, training and working at the café.

Our 14-year-old son is out of control. He is very aggressive toward family members and we fear for our safety. We have tried family therapy and we have had counselors come to our home and work with him. It helps for a little while and then his aggression returns. We are thinking about having him placed in a residential treatment program. Is this the right decision and how do we go about getting him admitted?

Fostering or adopting a child can be one of the most rewarding experiences as you help a child rewrite the story of their future. We sat down with Melissa Moore, a foster and adoptive parent for Nexus-Kindred Family Healing, to ask her what rewriting the story means to her and her family.

My girlfriend and I just moved in together after dating for about 2 years. She has a 13-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter who live with us full time. They are great kids and we get along really well, but my girlfriend is pressuring the kids to call me dad and I don’t think that’s a good idea. She also expects me to discipline them when she gets upset and I don’t think that’s my role. Am I wrong about this?

t can be easy to write off foster kids as “bad kids” but I hope anyone reading this will understand the loss and trauma these kids suffer daily and how truly resilient they are to even be functioning in a society that sometimes disregards them. Being a foster parent is so much more than giving them a safe place to sleep, food to eat, and clean clothes to wear. In fact, most of these kids couldn’t care less about those things. It’s about helping them grow each day, dealing with every hard moment they go through that other kids don’t have to, validating their feelings while teaching them how to move on from them, and making it a priority to show them how worth it they are.

I feel upset all of time. It has been like this for several years. Nothing seems to go right, and nothing makes me feel better. I don't know what to do.

We know more about childhood trauma and its effect on the developing child than we ever have before. The resiliency of the developing brain provides an opportunity for us to intervene and provide healthy, safe, and nurturing experiences that grow the brain and help heal.

Nancy McKenzie, Executive Director for Nexus-PATH Family Healing will be retiring at the end of 2020. She leaves behind a legacy of positively impacting North Dakota youth in foster care and families and children suffering from mental health issues.

McKenzie joined Nexus-PATH in 2014 as the North Dakota Director for foster care and family support services. She became the Executive Director over all Nexus-PATH services in 2018. Nancy has spent her career working for healthcare and mental health organizations, dedicating her 44-year career to helping individuals find new paths to success.

I was wondering if you could help me to better understand how early childhood trauma would affect a person’s behavior. Have you seen any correlations of certain forms of trauma and anger in early adolescence?