Hi! I’m Cristine,

I identify as a cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, Millennial, Filipina-American woman. I am a decolonial, Indigenist therapist and these values strongly influence my practice. I was born and raised in unceded Gabrielino/Tongva land (Los Angeles) by my parents who emigrated from the Philippines in the early ‘80s. They had followed in my late Lola’s (grandma’s) footsteps a decade after she immigrated on her own in the early ‘70s.

My practice is dedicated to them. It’s dedicated to all people of color who came to the States for a better life, for the “American Dream,” and in so doing sacrificed cultural rootedness for uncertainty and disconnectedness. It’s dedicated to their descendants, all the first and second generation folx who are made to feel less than due to being too American for their ancestral people, and not American enough by American society. It’s dedicated to the immigrant parents and their adult children whose relationships are fractured by chasms in values and understanding created by colonialism and colonial mentality. It’s dedicated to my AANHPI siblings navigating and learning who they are by reconnecting with their indigeneity. And above all, it is dedicated to all BIPOC who seek softness and slowness in a society that tells us the cost of surviving, let alone thriving, is our peace and compassion.