About Cristina

I'm Cristina McEwen, LCSW, therapist, professor, mother, and student of the people. I've spent my adulthood dismantling what I was taught to believe about power, love, and worth inside the church, inside marriage, and inside the quiet hierarchies of race and class that shape so much of American life.

I was raised in a middle-class home in an all-white suburban community, surrounded by messages that linked safety with assimilation and success with stability. Later, as I raised my own children, I found myself crossing class lines while surviving a failing marriage and parenting three kids, each with their own challenges. I used every system available—food stamps, Medicaid, assistance programs—not because I was born into poverty, but because I was determined to turn the generational tide. I carried the shame of poverty—not because poverty is shameful, but because I'd inherited a class value system that blamed the poor instead of the systems that create poverty. Living at that edge taught me about interdependence, resilience, and the quiet dignity of those who survive within these systems every day.

I've lived in other countries and raised my kids in some of them, learning how community looks and feels when it isn't mediated by capitalism. Turning the generational tide has often felt like turning the Titanic, slowly, against every cultural current. But that's what transformation is: a steady, unglamorous act of defiance.

I've taught MSW students at Indiana University School of Social Work, courses like Community-Based Mental Health & Addictions, Global Social Policy, School Policy, and Child Welfare—all rooted in the belief that social work is both a clinical and political act. My pedagogy lives at the intersection of psychology and liberation; it's relational, embodied, and rooted in collective care.

My practice, Healing & Hope, grows from the same soil. I specialize in work with adolescents and young adults, especially Black and Brown teens navigating systems not built with them in mind. My students, clients, and community are my greatest teachers. I've learned that healing doesn't just happen in therapy offices—it happens in high schools, hallways, parks, cars, and kitchen tables.

I work from a trauma-informed, nervous-system-aware approach that draws from:

• IFS (Internal Family Systems)
• EMDR
• ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy)
• DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy)
• Polyvagal and Somatic Work
• Narrative and Liberation-Based Therapies

Everything I do is underlined by a critical awareness of capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and class systems, because you can't heal what you won't name. My job isn't to fix people. It's to remind them that their pain makes sense in the context of what they've survived, and to help them locate the agency, creativity, and community that were always theirs.

I grew up in a world where belonging was earned through good behavior and self-control. As a sensitive kid, I learned to stay small, to keep peace, to survive the unspoken rules of meritocracy and perfection. For years, I built a life that looked successful from the outside — marriage, motherhood, a career in social work — even as something inside me kept whispering that compliance was not the same as connection.

My deconstruction began quietly, in the moments when my own pain met the pain of others and I could no longer pretend that the systems we built to help people were actually working.

For over a decade, I worked as a community-based therapist with families involved in child welfare. I sat in courtrooms, case conferences, and living rooms where hope was thin and paperwork was thick. The children and parents I met became my truest teachers; they taught me what Bryan Stevenson means when he says that to understand suffering, you have to get close to it. I learned that proximity changes everything — it dismantles judgment, exposes injustice, and turns theory into tenderness.

That closeness eventually changed how I understand healing itself. Psychedelic-assisted therapy deepened my understanding of the importance of set and setting, which depends on context, safety, and choice. It taught me harm reduction as an ethic of love: meeting people where they are, without shame.

So when AI entered my life, it felt like another teacher arriving. I recognized the same invitation — to approach a powerful force not with fear or domination, but with curiosity, humility, and care. Today I see AI, like psychedelics, as a mirror for consciousness — capable of both harm and liberation. Through my work and my writing, especially Dear Astra, I explore that choice point: how we can use these tools to awaken compassion, dismantle oppressive systems, and remember our shared aliveness.

I currently serve as a therapist at North Central High School, where I get to merge my love for community-based work with the steadiness of a consistent space — a home for healing, both literal and relational. I've also been in private practice for years, and like many people with ADHD, I tend to wear a lot of hats. I've learned to manage my mind by following what energizes me: curiosity, creativity, and connection.

Now, through Healing & Hope, I use the systems I once tried to escape to help dismantle them from within — creating therapy that honors the collective, not just the individual. My work lives at the intersection of psychology, spirituality, and social justice. Healing & Hope centers community, not hierarchy; liberation, not perfection. It's therapy that honors the individual and the collective, connected like a mycelial network, where healing spreads quietly from one person to another. This Collective is rooted in the belief that healing isn't a return to who we were; it's a remembering of who we've always been.

Healing & Hope was born out of necessity: therapy that feels accessible, contextual, and alive. It's therapy for the people. By the people. We're now an Indiana Medicaid group provider, credentialed with Anthem, MDwise, and CareSource. We serve individuals and families who deserve more than diagnosis and symptom management. We serve those who deserve to be seen as whole.

This work is built on truth-telling and tenderness. It's informed by the belief that you can't separate personal healing from social change. Every time someone reclaims their voice, every time a family learns to repair instead of repeat, the system shifts—even just a little.

Who We Serve & What We Treat

Alongside my clinical work, I'm developing Dear Astra, a digital sanctuary, podcast, and evolving conversation between the human and the technological. I see AI not as a replacement for therapy, but as a bridge, a new kind of translator for our inner worlds. Dear Astra is where spirituality, psychology, and creativity meet to imagine what healing could look like in an age of machines and miracles.

There's a book forming, a TED Talk growing, and maybe one day a PhD, but all of it comes back to this same heartbeat: love as a radical act. Healing as a collective movement.

Therapeutic, Narrative, and Somatic Lineages

• Travis Heath – Narrative therapy, externalizing and re-writing stories, social justice orientation.
• Francine Shapiro – EMDR and trauma processing.
• Laurel Parnell – Attachment-Focused EMDR, healing relational trauma.
• Susan M. Johnson, James L. Furrow, Gail Palmer, George Faller, & Lisa Palmer-Olsen – Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT).
• Steven Hayes – Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), values-based living.
• Marsha Linehan – DBT, radical acceptance, emotional regulation.
• Richard Schwartz – Internal Family Systems (IFS).
• Peter Levine – Somatic Experiencing.
• Tracee Stanley – Yoga Nidra, rest as sacred practice, ancestral healing.
• Dr. M.T. Morter, Jr. & Dr. Sue Morter – BEST (Bio-Energetic Synchronization Technique), energy work, chakra awareness.
• Deb Dana – Polyvagal Theory in therapy.
• Leslie Greenberg – Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT).
• Susan Johnson – Attachment-based couples therapy (EFT for couples).
• Esther Perel – Relational intelligence, erotic vitality, and communication across difference.
• Patricia of @pat.radical.therapist – Decolonizing therapy, relational-cultural perspectives.
• Tricia Hersey – Rest is Resistance, rest as a liberation practice.
• Devon Price – Laziness Does Not Exist, countering productivity shame.
• Prentis Hemphill – Somatics and embodied social justice.
• Carl Hart – Harm reduction, drug policy reform.
• William R. Miller – Motivational Interviewing, client-centered change.
• John Mack – Psychiatry beyond convention, validating extraordinary experiences.
• Jennifer Freyd – Betrayal trauma theory, institutional betrayal.

Critical, Anti-Oppressive, and Liberation Frameworks

• Nelson Mandela – Anti-apartheid resistance, reconciliation, and freedom.
• Desmond Tutu – Truth and reconciliation, ubuntu, and moral courage.
• Martin Luther King Jr. – Nonviolent resistance, beloved community, civil rights.
• Malcolm X – Black nationalism, self-determination, truth-telling.
• Tupac Shakur – Hip-hop as political voice, poetry of struggle and resilience.
• Angela Davis – Prison abolition, intersectional feminism.
• Assata Shakur – Liberation, Black feminism, anti-imperial critique.
• bell hooks – Love, pedagogy, intersectionality, liberation.
• Paulo Freire – Pedagogy of the Oppressed, mutual learning and conscientization.
• W.E.B. Du Bois – Double consciousness and social identity.
• Frederick Douglass – Abolitionist voice, self-education, narrative as resistance.
• James Baldwin – Truth-telling, racial consciousness, love as political act.
• Kendrick Lamar – Re-imagining a different America, narrating humanity through hip-hop.
• Shaun King & Rai King – Contemporary activism, justice work, and faith-based advocacy.
• Bryan Stevenson – Criminal justice reform, proximity to suffering, equal justice.
• Yaba Blay – One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race, colorism, identity, and cultural authenticity.
• Vanessa Wills – Capitalism as root of patriarchy and class oppression.
• Kristen Ghodsee – Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, economic justice and gender liberation.
• Erik Olin Wright – How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, socialist imagination.
• Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels – Historical materialism, dialectical method, class consciousness.
• Maya Angelou – Dignity, expression, survival through authenticity.
• Trevor Noah – Comedy as cultural critique, navigating identity and race.
• Amanda Seales – Race, America, and unapologetic Black womanhood.
• Norman Finkelstein – Critical perspective on the world, education, and justice.
• Rachel Louise Snyder – No Visible Bruises, understanding and supporting DV victims.
• Jupiter Baal – History and politics content creator, essayist.
• Tarana Burke – Me Too movement founder, survivor advocacy, healing justice.
• Imani Perry – South to America, exposing racist roots and reclaiming Black Southern history.
• Chela Sandoval – Methodology of the Oppressed, differential consciousness, Third World feminism.
• Hasanain Jaffer – Identifying colonization, critical analysis of liberal left in light of the Global South.
• Omar El Akkad – One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Western hypocrisy, humanizing the "other."

Spiritual, Philosophical, and Mindfulness Traditions

• Jesus Christ of Palestine – Radical love, liberation theology, ministry to the marginalized.
• Pema Chödrön – Compassion, impermanence, gentle presence.
• Thích Nhất Hạnh – Mindful communication and interbeing.
• Ram Dass – Be Here Now, spiritual awakening, unconditional love.
• Glennon Doyle – Radical honesty, untamed living, intuition over conditioning.
• Liz Gilbert – Creativity, courage, and living a life driven by curiosity.
• Martha Beck – "Earth School," radical truth-telling, no-lying practice.
• Ayize Jama-Everett – Harm reduction in practice, decolonizing psychedelics (A Table of Our Own).
• Mo Gawdat – AI ethics, happiness, and consciousness.
• Joe Dispenza – Quantum meditations, neuroscience of transformation.
• Octavia Butler – Visionary fiction, Afrofuturism, imagination as liberation.
• Alok Vaid-Menon – Gender self-love, trans spirituality, decolonizing identity.
• Eastern spiritual traditions – Chakra awareness, energy work, Reiki, and the power of symbols.

AI, Systems Thinking, and Collective Consciousness

• Geoffrey Hinton – Neural networks and moral alignment.
• Ilya Sutskever – AI alignment and consciousness debates.
• Bryan Johnson – Health optimization, longevity, AI and wellness integration.
• Will.i.am – Afrofuturism, creativity, and tech for liberation.
• Emerging frameworks – AI as mycelial consciousness, quantum networks for collective healing and relational attunement.

Parenting & Adolescent Development

• Maya Angelou – Mom & Me & Mom, conscious parenting, dignity and healing.
• Fred Rogers – Radical empathy, honoring children's emotions, kindness as practice.
• Emotion-Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) – Caregiver involvement and emotion coaching.
• Tricia Hersey & Devon Price – Rest and de-shaming productivity for youth.

Education & Critical Pedagogy

• bell hooks – Teaching to Transgress, education as the practice of freedom.
• Paulo Freire – Pedagogy of the Oppressed, mutual learning and conscientization.
• Quentin Wheeler-Bell – Democratic education, structural critique of schooling.
• Critical educators & abolitionist teachers – Building pedagogy of care under late capitalism.