Who I Am and Why I Created The Kinship Initiative
My name is Cindi, and I’m the founder of the Kinship Initiative—a trauma-informed care framework designed to reimagine how we care for children, families, and entire communities impacted by adversity.
I didn’t set out to lead anything. I set out to survive.
I entered foster care on my 12th birthday. Four of my five siblings were placed in care. Over the years, I watched the effects of untreated trauma unfold: addiction, incarceration, homelessness, fractured families. I spent decades living with PTSD I didn’t know I had. And the truth is—it wasn’t until recently that I finally received the kind of care that actually worked.
That care came from trauma-informed healing—specifically, nervous system regulation, somatic therapy, and a framework of compassion over control. I found it through research, personal determination, and relentless healing. I pieced it together because no one ever handed it to me.I realized: This is what every child and family deserves from the start.
Kinship Is Built on What I Lived—and What I Learned
I’ve written a five-book memoir series, At the Circus, which chronicles my life through the lens of generational trauma and hard-earned healing. But Kinship isn’t just based on memory—it’s built on systems thinking.
When my mother entered palliative care, I had to learn what that meant—on my own. When my nephew was born with a rare heart condition, I had to navigate lifelong medical trauma. In my professional life, I was a part of implementing ISO 9001, which showed me how to build scalable, adaptable, frameworks that don’t just work once—they work everywhere they’re needed.
This is how Kinship was born:
A trauma-informed care framework that is locally adaptable, community-centered, and built for prevention—not reaction.
This Can’t Be Done Alone—And It Shouldn’t Be
I’m not trying to fix this alone. I can’t.
Kinship is designed to be implemented by communities—by providers, organizations, and neighbors who already care and are desperate for something that actually makes a difference.
We need those already doing the work—mental health clinicians, family advocates, school counselors, foster parents, nonprofit leaders, and everyday citizens—to come together under a unified trauma-informed framework that doesn’t wait for crisis to hit.
This isn’t new work. It’s the right work, organized the right way.
We Already Know the Cost of Doing Nothing
Just look around:
- Record-high homelessness, particularly among youth and young adults
- Overcrowded jails filled with trauma survivors, not criminals
- Mental health systems that are overwhelmed and reactive
- Families caught in cycles of chaos and removal
- Communities continuing to spend billions reactively, while root causes go unaddressed
We’ve known this for decades—and yet we keep funding emergency rooms while neglecting wellness centers. We build bigger jails instead of trauma hubs. We pay to manage pain we never tried to prevent.
The root?
Untreated childhood trauma.
And unless we address that root, we will keep watching generations repeat the same suffering—just with different labels.
Kinship Is the Alternative We’ve Been Waiting For
This is not a model. It is not a pilot.
Kinship is a trauma-informed care framework—built for communities, led by lived experience, guided by science, and designed for long-term healing.
An entire country—Scotland—has attempted something similar. But they are now facing challenges around adaptability, community-specific needs, and sustainability.
What they’re missing, Kinship has already built in.
We’ve merged the compassion of community with the clarity of systems design.
And now we’re ready to bring it where it’s needed most—one city, one provider, one family at a time.
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