We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christin Frederick a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Christin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
My defining moment was the sudden passing of my husband, Steve, from a heart attack at the age of forty-nine. That loss did not just end his life; it reshaped mine.
To understand why, I have to begin with my childhood. I grew up in the 1980s as the daughter of a single working mother. My parents’ divorce left me craving wholeness and stability—a longing for a family life that felt strong, safe, and complete.
That longing followed me into adulthood. When Steve and I reconnected—two decades after high school, both divorced with children—we created a big, blended family of seven. For the first time, I experienced what I had always wanted: a sense of wholeness within family life. Together we explored our values, and I discovered my passion for understanding family dynamics. That passion led me to pursue graduate school in marriage and family therapy while raising seven children under one roof. Through it all, I found my vocation and began my path into private practice.
During those years, my identity was intertwined with our family. I structured my life around Steve’s role as provider and the rhythm of our household. He was decisive, supportive, and dependable, and my role was woven around his and around our children.
When Steve died, that entire structure collapsed. Overnight, I became everything—provider, strategist, emotional anchor, and financial head of household. It was a role I had never expected to carry alone. In that moment, I realized how much of my identity had been tied to family.
And yet, with the grief came release. Steve’s passing freed me from the childhood fantasy I had been chasing since I was eight years old—the illusion of a perfect and complete family. His death returned me to myself.
Over the past four years, I have grieved not only the loss of Steve but also the original loss of family wholeness that shaped so many of my choices. In that process, I found something deeper: a sense of wholeness within myself.
Today, with my children now in their twenties, our relationships feel more authentic and grounded. There is less armor, more vulnerability, and a closeness rooted in honesty.
Steve’s passing was the most defining moment of my life. It shattered my identity, freed me from illusion, and guided me toward the truest version of myself—whole, complete, and present.
Christin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Christin Frederick, MA, LMFT, and my journey into integrative therapy and community healing has been both a personal odyssey and a professional calling. As the daughter of a single working mother in the 1980s, I learned early what it meant to navigate fractured family systems while longing for wholeness and belonging. Those experiences did not break me; they shaped a deep empathy for human struggle and a determination to transform pain into purpose.
That longing became my compass, guiding every chapter of my life and leading me to psychotherapy. Today, my work centers on creating spaces where wounds can be healed, relationships restored, and individuals empowered to reclaim their strength. My mission is not only to provide therapy, but to facilitate corrective emotional experiences and help repair the systems of connection that allow us to thrive.
I earned my Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California. My diverse background in education, sales, the Marine Corps, and business development, combined with personal experiences of marriage, divorce, widowhood, co-parenting, and step-parenting, deeply informs my clinical work and my ability to connect with clients in authentic ways.
At the core of my practice is the creation of corrective emotional experiences and the restoration of the social engagement system—the foundation of how we connect, heal, and grow. My approach integrates interpersonal neurobiology, ecotherapy, depth psychology, and person-centered therapy into a model that bridges clinical, educational, and community-based healing.
I am the founder of several interrelated ventures:
Joya Sagrada Family Therapy (JSFT): A professional psychotherapy practice on California’s Central Coast offering therapy for individuals, couples, and families, including integrative modalities such as ketamine-assisted therapy. I support trauma recovery and help high achievers shift from anxiety-driven performance to passion-driven success.
Adventure Therapy Associates (ATA): A psychotherapist training and practice network that incorporates nature-based therapy and workforce development through outdoor programs and community partnerships.
Joya Sagrada Consulting: A consultancy that helps organizations and leaders build emotionally intelligent, sustainable systems.
Through these ventures, I provide therapy, training, supervision, consulting, and creative partnerships that promote both individual healing and systemic transformation.
At the heart of my work, I address two core challenges:
For clients: Making therapy accessible, relational, and transformative for those facing anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship issues, burnout, or family dynamics.
For the field: Expanding the mental health workforce through training programs and community partnerships that bring care beyond traditional clinic walls.
What sets my work apart is the integration of clinical excellence with creativity, spirituality, nature, and community. Healing belongs everywhere—in an office, on a surfboard, in a garden, or among peers.
I am most proud of creating opportunities for others—clients achieving breakthroughs, interns growing into clinicians, and partners recognizing the power of embedded therapeutic presence. My work also honors family legacy and love, with my children joining in service through Adventure Therapy Associates.
If you are a client, know that healing is possible and can be vibrant, relational, spiritual, and creative. If you are a trainee, know that there are pathways that honor your humanity and calling. If you are a community partner, know that mental health can be integrated into every space of life.
Above all, my work stands for integrative healing, community development, and love as a guiding principle.
How’d you meet your business partner?
I met my business partner as a potential life partner. Early in our dating, he asked what I knew
about Costa Rica. By coincidence, after my husband passed, I had been considering selling my
house and relocating there. A few weeks later, we had a trip booked to a country that neither of
us had ever visited to contemplate a permanent relocation. This love for shenanigans which is
what we endearingly call our high tolerance for risk, change and adventure, lay the foundation
for our symbiotic business partnership.
On that trip he was evaluating a land-development project he’d been recruited to join. As a
result of our mutual drive towards curiosity, we discovered a natural, symbiotic way of working
together—strategic planning, relationship building, and spotting challenges and bottlenecks.
What started as a personal relationship quickly grew into a strong, well-synthesized business
partnership.
We subsequently moved to Costa Rica, deepened our personal relationship and forged our
formal business partnership. Together we formed a Costa Rican corporation, Holistic Healing
Costa Rica, and began consulting with a team of visionaries focused on bringing cannabis to the
forefront of pain management as an alternative to opioids. Through that work, we re-envisioned
my psychotherapy practice and rebranded it as Joya Sagrada, aligning the medical focus on
pain with the emotional and traumatic roots that often drive it. Additionally, in the dialogues we
had with other wellness leaders, we identified a vacuum for ongoing psychotherapeutic care in
the wellness retreat space and we created a plan for Joya Sagrada to support those seeking
long term healing.
When we returned to the United States a year later, we kept expanding Joya Sagrada. As a
practice, we enjoy our dedicated “coffee talk” time every morning from 5:30–7:30 and review
every aspect of each project. Our partnership feels “magical” because it’s anchored in deep
mutual respect. We even share a language for hard moments: when fear shows up, we call it
being “pulled under,” which helps us know how to support each other—and what not to
expect—when fear is driving.
We now have a team of six. Doug supports the vision in a consulting role for both Joya Sagrada
and Adventure Therapy Associates (ATA). He leads business development and grant
opportunities at ATA and is expanding our employee assistance program participation to grow
caseloads for associates and strengthen their training pipeline.
This partnership is a precious pillar of our organization, and I’m very proud of it.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The lesson I had to unlearn was that marriage is the center of family life.
Growing up, my family of origin did not have marriage at its core. Without that stable center to
orbit around, I had to search for something more transcendent. That search deepened when I
went through my own divorce from my former husband, Todd.
Together, Todd and I had built a beautiful early family life with three children. Yet our personal
histories created challenges that made sustaining a functional marriage difficult. Despite those
struggles, there was always deep love at the heart of our relationship. When our marriage
ended, we both remained committed to co-parenting our children with stability and care. That
shared devotion gave us proximity and forced us to reimagine what our relationship could look
like beyond marriage.
During this time, as I studied depth psychology in graduate school, I encountered James
Hillman’s Re-Visioning Psychology. His work on image—not as a mental picture, but as an
emotionally charged presence that moves us beyond words—helped me understand what I was
experiencing.
The image that came to me was the Copernican revolution. For centuries, people believed the
Earth was the center of the universe, until it was revealed that the Sun, not the Earth, held
everything in orbit. In the same way, I realized I had been orienting family life around marriage,
when in truth it was love that belonged at the center.
With that shift, Todd and I were no longer circling a broken marriage—we were orbiting around
love. That realization allowed us to deepen our connection and maintain strong family bonds,
even in a culture that often expects divorced couples to hate one another.
What I ultimately unlearned is that marriage defines family. What I learned instead is that
love—in all its forms—is the true center.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://joyasagradatherapy.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joyasagrada.therapy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Joya-Sagrada-Therapy/61566843593982/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christin-frederick-ma-lmft-959643b/
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joyasagradatherapy
Image Credits
Jessie Mondo