Written By: Michael Rich

I used to live in Traverse City some years ago, and that was where my mental illness started. I was in adult foster care homes and decided to move back down to Southeast Michigan. I was living in an apartment on my own for a while, and I realized that I needed a little bit more help and support.

My father had heard about Kadima and thought it might be a good thing for me, in conjunction with some mental health services I was already receiving. Kadima offered to help me get into one of their homes, and I accepted. That was about four or five years ago.

I had individual and group therapy when I first started going to Kadima, and that opened the door for me on figuring out what I needed and what would help me more. There was a time when I was pretty mixed up. When I first came to Kadima, I was still working through some substance abuse issues. Talking to my therapist and going to groups to meet with others at Kadima, it helped me more than trying to do this on my own. I will be 5 years sober next month.

Every week, I meet up with Nelton from Kadima. He checks up on me to see how I’m doing, and I’ve been meeting with my counselor Rebecca, and I think seeing them both is helping. Rebecca helps me when I have issues come up and to build my coping skills. I’ve come a long way, and now my work with Kadima is more about maintenance than when I first started working with Kadima staff.

I’ve had to figure out a lot of stuff, but I feel more like I’m running the show now. I have a good idea of what helps and what works for me. The help from Kadima has been able to make me more independent and be able to figure things out for myself.

Coming from where I came from, I knew what needed to be done to change, but I didn't have the right tools and energy to set my plan in action to make a difference for myself. Kadima helped a lot with that. They helped me get things organized in my life and opened my mind to ways I hadn’t tried before, at a time when I thought nothing would fix my situation. I felt hopeless. I gave it a shot, and here I am now with my life going so much better.

It takes a lot of work, but I really truly believe Kadima has been instrumental in helping me change a lot of things that were not working for me. I’m really thankful to Kadima for all of the services they’ve provided me. They’ve helped me so much.