This foundation was born from experience, built on pain, and rooted in hope.
It started with Kristen.
I’m Kristen Lisitano, founder of Restoring Oklahoma Youth Foundation.
Before this was a dream, it was a lifeline I was searching for first for myself, and later, for my daughter.
I was that angry, hurting girl. The one labeled “too much,” “too broken,” “too far gone.” I survived a childhood filled with abuse, addiction, abandonment, and silence. I held trauma in my body for years. I fought, rebelled, and pushed people away—because I didn’t know any other way to survive.
At 15, I was sent to a long-term wilderness therapy program. That’s where things started to shift. It didn’t “fix” me—but it gave me tools I’d never had before. It gave me space to be seen and a routine that made me feel safe. It showed me that healing doesn’t come from being punished—it comes from being understood.
Then it was Madison.
Years later, I became a mother, and I carried so much of my pain into parenting, even when I didn’t realize it. For the first 10 years of my daughter Madison’s life, I was physically there, but emotionally gone. I repeated some of the same patterns I swore I’d never fall into.
Madison began struggling with anger and self-harm at just 8 years old. By 10, she had suicidal thoughts. She was hurting and I couldn’t find a single program in Oklahoma that offered what we truly needed: a safe place for long-term healing.
There were institutions. There were short-term solutions. But there was nothing that met her where she was — nothing that gave us both a real path forward.
So I made a promise: if I couldn’t find it, I would build it.
That’s where this foundation began.
Restoring Oklahoma Youth Foundation is not just another nonprofit
It’s my life’s work. It’s a place for the girls who feel like no one’s listening. The ones who’ve been labeled, passed around, punished, or overlooked. It’s for the moms who don’t know where to turn. It’s for the kids who don’t trust anyone—because they’ve never had a reason to.
We’re building a place where they can finally feel safe enough to stop surviving and start healing.
Why we do what we do
Because trauma isn’t fixed in 30 days.
Because Oklahoma teens deserve more than institutions.
Because I’ve seen what happens when families fall apart, and I believe in what happens when they fight to come back together.
Because discipline without love doesn’t heal.
This foundation exists to offer a new model:
One built on activity, structure, therapy, connection, and real human empathy. No judgment. No pretending. Just people who’ve lived it—guiding those still in it.
Who we’re becoming
A faith-guided organization, but one that welcomes every story, every doubt, and every background.
A place where belief in something bigger whether God, hope, or healing, leads to belief in yourself.
A community built by people who’ve lived through trauma, not just studied it.
A team in progress, with a clear vision and a heart for the long haul.