Mother’s Day, May 14, 1989. Uruguay.

Exactly two months earlier, my father had killed himself.

We had been living in Spain. Now we were back in Uruguay, inside the strange geography of after, where the world kept moving on but no longer felt the same, not even the blue of the sky.

In July my mother would turn forty.

She had no husband. She had two sons. She had grief in her body and children who needed the world to continue.

And still, she mothered.

My earliest memories of my mother live in my body. Her presence. Her attention. Before I had words for safety, my body knew it through her.

Mothering after devastation is labor at the edge of collapse. My mother could not keep grief away from us, but she stood between us and its full force. She absorbed what she could. She carried what had nowhere else to go.

That kind of carrying did not begin with her.

My grandmother was fierce, brilliant, difficult, loving, wounded. She came from a world where survival required force and vulnerability had little room to live.

She taught me a Uruguayan phrase I have carried my whole life: sin pelos en la lengua. No hairs on your tongue. Speak your truth. Say it as it is.

And she did.

She could speak with force, clarity, and fire. But speaking one’s mind is not the same as speaking one’s wound.

Some truths my grandmother could name. Others stayed buried in her body, alive and unnamed.

What she did not speak was Ukraine. The pogroms she fled as a child. The fear that crossed oceans and never reached her tongue. The history her body carried alone because there was no one to carry it with her.

When my grandmother was inside her mother, my mother’s beginning was already inside her too.

A baby girl, before birth, already carries the eggs she will have for life.

Three bodies, one inside the next.

So when my grandmother fled Ukraine as a child, my mother was not yet a child, not yet my mother, not yet a widow. But her cellular beginning was already inside a body marked by terror.

The past was not behind them. It was inside them.

What is not worked through does not disappear. It finds another body.

My grandmother survived what she could not fully digest. My mother inherited it not as a story, but as a silence loud with what no one would name. A dread she lived inside since before she was born, without knowing what it was.

My mother did not end the line of pain. None of us does. But she changed its force. She worked enough of it through herself that it arrived in us less raw, less sharp, less able to become the atmosphere of our lives. More tenderness reached us than had reached her.

My mother did not wait for grief to pass. She mothered from inside it.

And from inside it, she made us possible.

Subscribe now

Related Essays

Stephen Hanmer D’Elía (LCSW, JD) is a Yale- and Columbia-trained therapist with a background in international human rights law. He grew up between Colombia, Spain, Uruguay, and Ecuador; holds Uruguayan, American, and British citizenships; and speaks Spanish, English, and French. For 25+ years, Stephen has worked across six continents, from private therapy practice to refugee camps, conflict zones, child welfare systems, and institutions including UNICEF. He writes about how trauma, attachment, and power move from the nervous system to the body politic. Essays are available in English and Spanish.

Earlier this week, in my work as a therapist, I sat with a young child who has already lived through too much suffering. There was nothing to explain away, nothing to fix, nothing a silver lining could touch. Only the work of staying.

I carried that into a Passover Seder. I carry it still as Easter arrives. Both stories, in different ways, bring me back to the same truth: suffering is not something we are meant to outrun.

When pain enters the room, we rush to explain it, fix it, redeem it, or move past it. We want resolution. We want relief. We want the story to go somewhere else.

But some truths can only be known by staying.

Passover does not ask us to leave suffering behind. It asks us to remember it together. To stay close to the pain of bondage, exile, and survival. Not as private memory. As shared presence.

Easter does not ask us to move past suffering. It asks us to remain near what love bears. To stay close to grief, abandonment, and the broken body. Not outside it. Within it.

I grew up with Easter as a central story. My father’s family is English Anglican. My uncle, a vicar. The Jewish thread of my family carried suffering differently. My maternal grandmother fled pogroms as a child and arrived in Uruguay. That part of the story went quiet for decades.

And yet one of the deepest gifts of my life is that these stories were not kept apart. My uncle married us alongside a rabbi who has since become family. I was wed by both stories. I live inside both.

Subscribe now

Related Essays

Stephen Hanmer D’Elía (LCSW, JD) is a Yale- and Columbia-trained therapist with a background in international human rights law. He grew up between Colombia, Spain, Uruguay, and Ecuador; holds Uruguayan, American, and British citizenships; and speaks Spanish, English, and French. For 25+ years, Stephen has worked across six continents, from private therapy practice to refugee camps, conflict zones, child welfare systems, and institutions including UNICEF. He writes about how trauma, attachment, and power move from the nervous system to the body politic. Essays are available in English and Spanish.

Our child comes to us in pain.

Something happened at school. A friendship broke. A teacher said something cutting. The world they live inside just cracked.

And before we say anything, our body has already moved.

Our chest tightens. Our jaw sets. Something in us surges forward. Not only because our child is hurting. Because their hurt touches something older in us. Helplessness. Fear. The wish to make pain stop before it spreads.

A part of us starts reaching for the exit.

We leave through reassurance. It’s going to be okay.

We leave through explanation. Maybe they didn’t mean it that way.

We leave through solutions. Here’s what you should do.

All of it can sound loving. But often it is an escape.

Our child wants the pain to stop. So do we. But what is rushed out of the room does not disappear. It freezes. And what freezes does not leave. Some feelings do not move because they are explained. They move because someone stays. In the presence of someone who stays, our child’s body learns that a feeling can rise, crest, and pass. Staying does not mean agreeing. It does not mean surrendering limits. It means holding the line without abandoning the feeling.

Can you stay with me here?

Our children rarely ask this out loud. But it is the question beneath more moments than we admit.

Reassurance is one of the hardest exits to recognize because it sounds so gentle. But often it asks our children to leave reality before they have been met inside it.

So the feeling does not disappear. It just loses company.

They learn which feelings we can bear and which ones make us speed up. Which ones bring us closer and which ones make us retreat. They learn what kinds of pain can come into relationship, and what kinds must be carried alone.

Often, pain arrives sideways. A slammed door. A shrug that does too much work. Silence in the back seat. An edge in their voice. A look that says, do not come near me unless you can bear this.

Sometimes it gets sharper than that. Sometimes their pain turns on us.

You don’t care.

You always make it worse.

You’re the worst parent in the world.

This is where staying gets hardest.

It is one thing to remain close to our children’s sadness. It is another to remain when their pain rages at us.

Then our body wants two things at once: to soothe our children and to save ourselves.

We want the record set straight. We want the facts restored. We want them to see that we are not cruel, not failing, not the cause of this.

But pain rarely softens when it is cornered. Children do not calm because we won the argument. They calm when the room stops abandoning them.

And in these moments, our need to be right can become more urgent than our children’s need for us to stay with them inside what hurts.

Sometimes what overwhelms us is not only our own history being touched. It is the force of what our children cannot yet hold crashing into us.

The helplessness. The panic. The sense that nothing will ever be okay again.

We do not just witness their distress. We feel it, while also feeling everything it stirs in us.

And that changes what staying means. It is not only enduring our own discomfort. It is holding a feeling that did not begin in us but has arrived in us all the same.

When we can hold it without breaking, our children learn something words alone cannot teach: that what feels unbearable can enter relationship and still be held.

We can hold the line. We should. But the line cannot come from our own flight. It cannot come from our need to stop feeling like the bad one. When the limit comes too fast, sharpened by our own injury, our children learn something deeper than whatever lesson we meant to teach. They learn that when pain gets jagged, relationship goes with it.

And sometimes we fail.

Sometimes we leave.

Sometimes our voice hardens. Sometimes we correct too soon. Sometimes we bring order back into the room at the cost of contact.

Our children may not remember the exact words. But they remember the shift. They remember when we were still there, but no longer with them. When their pain became too much for the relationship to hold.

And when that happens, the work is not perfection. It is return.

Not with a better argument. Not with a cleaner defense. But with honesty to come back and say: I left. I got scared. I made your feeling smaller because I could not bear it. I want to try again.

This is what children carry forward.

The memory of whether their pain had company.

Subscribe now

Related Essays

Stephen Hanmer D’Elía (LCSW, JD) is a Yale- and Columbia-trained therapist with a background in international human rights law. He grew up between Colombia, Spain, Uruguay, and Ecuador; holds Uruguayan, American, and British citizenships; and speaks Spanish, English, and French. For 25+ years, Stephen has worked across five continents, from private therapy practice to refugee camps, conflict zones, child welfare systems, and institutions including UNICEF. He writes about how trauma, attachment, and power move from the nervous system to the body politic. Essays are available in English and Spanish.

A colleague told me she’d been estranged from her father for years. Not angry. Not indifferent. Flooded.

He wasn’t violent. He was the kind of person who walked into a room and everyone recalibrated. His need filled the whole room. Her body learned to brace before he even spoke. For years she absorbed him. She tracked his mood like weather. She kept herself small so the relationship could “work.”

Then she stopped. Not because she finally understood. Because she finally could.

She found a distance her body could tolerate, where his emotional spillover could not reach her. And from there, something unexpected returned: love. Not because the past was resolved. Not because he changed. Because she stopped carrying what was his, and her body finally had room for what was true.

A father she loved, and a father she could not keep regulating for.

She stopped absorbing him.

We are taught love means closeness and distance means failure. Boundaries get labeled as coldness, avoidance, disloyalty. We rarely ask what the body already knows: some kinds of closeness require self-erasure. The body isn't making a moral argument. It's doing math under constraint. Closeness when you can't leave. Distance when you finally can.

Distance is not the opposite of love. Sometimes it is love’s only container.

This is adulthood. The capacity to hold contradiction without splitting the world into saints and monsters. To let someone be both: someone you love, and someone whose weight you can no longer carry.

Distance lets the body stop bracing long enough to sort: this is mine, that is yours.

Sometimes what returns is grief. Sometimes it is relief. Often, for the first time, it is love without contamination.

Not every separation is a wound. Sometimes it's how the wound finally gets to breathe.

Subscribe now

Stephen Hanmer D’Elía (LCSW, JD) is a Yale- and Columbia-trained therapist with a background in international human rights law. He grew up between Colombia, Spain, Uruguay, and Ecuador; holds Uruguayan, American, and British citizenships; and speaks Spanish, English, and French. For 25+ years, Stephen has worked across five continents, from private therapy practice in NYC to refugee camps, conflict zones, child welfare systems, and institutions including UNICEF. He writes about how trauma, attachment, and power move from the nervous system to the body politic. Essays are available in English and Spanish.

To be human is to be in relation. There is no self without the other, no identity outside of the contexts that shape and reshape us. The quality of our lives depends not on what we accumulate but on how we encounter the world and those around us: whether we engage in ways that enliven, transform, and attune us to something beyond ourselves. And yet, in so many ways, modern life seems structured to disrupt these encounters, pushing us toward alienation, fragmentation, and an endless pursuit of optimization rather than presence. The challenge is not simply to resist this movement but to learn how to live in ways that allow for deeper connection. Where we are not only seen but also moved. Where we do not simply act upon the world but also participate in a continuous exchange, shaping and being shaped in return.

Human beings do not exist in isolation; we are bound to one another in an ongoing process of unfolding and shaping ourselves. This is not incidental to who we are. It is who we are. Identity is not a possession but a process, shaped by the people, objects, histories, and ideas that form our world. The way we see, speak, move, and even think is not entirely our own; it emerges through an intricate interplay of genetic inheritance, cultural memory, and the relational, environmental, and structural forces that shape us. Even the way we conceive of ourselves, as individuals with unique desires and aspirations, is shaped by a broader moral and social space that gives meaning to those desires. But this interconnection is not always felt as a source of vitality. When relationships become instrumentalized, when the world around us feels rigid or unresponsive, when our interactions become transactional rather than transformative, we experience something deeper than frustration. We experience alienation.

Alienation is not merely a feeling; it is a state of being. It is what happens when the vibrancy of our relationship to the world is lost, when the structures that surround us condition us to move faster, produce more, achieve endlessly, yet rarely pause to listen, to respond, or to engage with what is alive. It is the sensation of speaking but not being heard, of looking but not truly seeing, of moving through life but never quite arriving. It is the condition of acceleration, where we are compelled to run just to stay in place, always reaching toward something that recedes as soon as it is grasped. In this state, even our relationships become muted. We may be surrounded by others, yet still feel profoundly alone.

But if alienation is marked by severance, then its antidote lies in resonance: the ability to be affected by the world and to respond to it in turn. A life well-lived is not one of endless accumulation but of meaningful engagement, where we do not simply pass through experiences but inhabit them, where we allow ourselves to be changed. Resonance is the opposite of mastery; it requires letting go of control, surrendering to the possibility of encounter, and recognizing that life is not something to be conquered but something to be engaged with and transformed by. It is found in the moments when we are moved. By music, by art, by love, by conversation. It is what happens when we read a passage that suddenly clarifies something we have always felt but never articulated, or when a stranger’s kindness unexpectedly breaks through the weight of a difficult day. It is the experience of standing before something (an idea, a person, a song, a work of art) and realizing that it is speaking to us, that it demands something of us, that we are no longer exactly who we were before.

Yet resonance is fragile. It cannot be forced, and it cannot be sustained without care. If we seek only to optimize, to extract, or to use relationships for our own ends, we flatten the possibility of true encounter. This is the distinction between encountering someone as a whole person, complex, autonomous, and irreducible, versus seeing them only in relation to what they can offer or fulfill for us. True encounter requires risk: the willingness to be changed by another, to allow for unpredictability, to resist the urge to categorize and contain.

But for these encounters to happen, space must be preserved. Just as neurons do not directly touch but communicate across synaptic gaps, transmitting the signals that make thought, movement, and feeling possible, human connection relies on the presence of space. An openness that allows for both differentiation and encounter. If everything collapsed into everything else, if self and other were indistinguishable, there would be no relationship, only fusion or erasure. It is in the space in-between, where recognition and response unfold, that relationships come alive.

Boundaries are the conditions for resonance. Not rigid walls but permeable membranes, like the structure of a living cell, allowing for exchange while preserving the distinctiveness that makes true engagement possible. Just as our ability to understand the world (our sense of continuity, time, and meaning) requires some distance from what we observe, our relationships require space to hold and recognize each other. When we collapse ourselves into another, we lose the continuity of self that allows for recognition and response. If we don’t understand what’s going on between the lines, we can’t translate the lines. A relationship without boundaries is not intimacy but enmeshment, and in enmeshment, there is no room for real seeing, only projection. Boundaries are what enable presence. Not as separation, but as the structured space where true encounter can occur.

In many ways, parenting offers the most visceral experience of this tension. To raise a child is to witness oneself reflected back in ways that are at once familiar and utterly foreign. We long for our children to recognize us, to affirm us, to carry our unfinished dreams, and to carry something of us forward. And yet, they are not us; they are always beyond us, always becoming something we cannot fully grasp. The struggle of parenthood, and of all deep relationships, is learning to love without possessing, to guide without controlling, to hold without constraining. The moments of greatest pain often arise when the longing for continuity collides with the inevitability of difference: when the child we imagined does not align with the child who is. And yet, if we can embrace the tension rather than resist it, if we can see love not as making another in our image but as bearing witness to their unfolding, then being in relationship becomes something richer than mere reflection.

This is true beyond parenthood. Every relationship, whether with a child, a partner, a friend, or even an idea, requires us to navigate the space between recognition and difference, between longing and letting go. There is no formula for how to do this well. But we know, intuitively and viscerally, when it is happening. We feel it when a conversation becomes more than an exchange of words, when something shifts in the air between us, when we step outside of ourselves long enough to be truly present with another. We also know when it is absent: when our interactions feel perfunctory, when our words are met with silence, when we are in a room full of people yet feel unseen.

To live relationally is not to resolve tension but to remain open to it. To resist the pull toward isolation and control and to keep reaching for connection even when it feels uncertain. Meaning is not a solitary creation; it emerges in the space between us, in the fragile, unpredictable process of encounter. Of being met, of missing, of trying again. When we truly meet another, when we feel the world resonate within us, when understanding bridges the space between us, something alive takes shape. And that, more than anything else, is what makes life worth living.

Subscribe now

Note on Influences

The ideas in this piece are shaped by my lived experience in relationship: as a therapist, husband, father, brother, son, friend, godson, colleague, and through my own long-standing therapeutic relationship. I have witnessed how relationships fracture and how they mend, how they challenge and how they sustain. I live the tensions between autonomy and connection, between holding on and letting go. These identities are not separate but deeply intertwined, continuously shaping my understanding of what it means to come into being through relationship.

In my lived relationships, it is women, with the exception of my brother, who have most profoundly shaped me. Who have taught me what it means to be in connection, to listen, to hold complexity, to remain present in ways that deepen over time. And yet, the writers who have most shaped my intellectual and philosophical explorations, those with whom I have built a kind of reading relationship, have overwhelmingly been men. Perhaps this is not accidental. My father left me as a child. Abruptly, single-mindedly, without reciprocity or room for intersubjectivity. In life, he was not someone I could meet in the space in-between.

Maybe, in turning to the words of these men, with the solitary yet reciprocal engagement that reading provides, I have been able to be in relationship with what was lost. A way to make sense of a presence that became an absence, an attempt to find resonance where there had been only severance. In reading, I find myself in dialogue with those who continue in relationship beyond death, whose voices remain alive in the space between text and reader. Perhaps this, too, is a way of staying connected to my father. Not in the abruptness of his abandonment, but in a form of relationship that continues to evolve beyond physical life.

Below are some of these men, whose influence is deeply woven into this piece.

Donald J. Cohen, my mentor at the Yale Child Study Center, underscores that our sense of self first emerges through relationships, as we regulate and understand ourselves in the presence of others, making connection foundational to cognitive and emotional development.

Martin Buber argues that true human life exists in encounter, urging us to relate to others as subjects rather than objects, as meaningful relationships require presence, openness, and genuine reciprocity.

Alva Noë challenges the notion of a fixed human nature, asserting that we are shaped by cultural practices, technologies, and habits, and that art and philosophy continuously reorganize our way of being.

Thomas Ogden deepens our understanding of intersubjectivity, exploring how we co-create experience through unconscious and conscious exchanges, emphasizing that who we are is continually shaped in the relational space between self and other.

Hartmut Rosa examines how modern acceleration disrupts deep engagement, showing that resonance (the experience of being moved and responding to the world) is essential for a fulfilling life.

Andrew Solomon explores the tensions between difference and belonging, particularly in family relationships, revealing how identity is shaped through both inheritance and uniqueness.

Charles Taylor emphasizes that identity is not formed in isolation but within a moral and social interspace, where recognition by others shapes our sense of self and provides the shared arena in which meaning, values, and authenticity are negotiated.

Colwyn Trevarthen demonstrates that our capacity for connection begins in infancy, as primary intersubjectivity allows us to engage with others through expressive movement, forming the rhythms of human interaction before language.

Postscript (April 2025)

When I first wrote this, I shared that women, apart from my brother, had most deeply shaped my lived relationships: teaching me connection, complexity, presence. I also noted that the writers who had shaped my intellectual explorations were overwhelmingly men. At the time, I didn’t question this division. But now, rereading this piece, so threaded with my father’s presence and absence, I wonder if, unconsciously, I was reaching for a kind of dialogue I once longed for and could not have. Seeking presence where absence lived.

As I continue to write, I see that the conversation has always been wider than I first named. Women, both in my life and through their words, have long been part of the weave, even when I hadn’t yet fully recognized them. And men, family, friends, mentors, writers, have shaped me in ways both intimate and intellectual. It was never simply about gender. It was about longing, resonance, and the many ways we stay in relationship with what we have lost, and with what is still becoming.

This isn’t just about expanding a reading list. It’s about recognizing the multitudes already within: the voices we lift, the ones we overlook, and the ones that find us when we are ready.

There is no fixed map.

Only the ongoing work of staying open. To what shaped us, to what we once missed, and to what is still arriving.

Stephen Hanmer D’Elía (LCSW, JD) is a Yale- and Columbia-trained therapist with a background in international human rights law. He grew up between Colombia, Spain, Uruguay, and Ecuador; holds Uruguayan, American, and British citizenships; and speaks Spanish, English, and French. For 25+ years, Stephen has worked across six continents, from private therapy practice in NYC to refugee camps, conflict zones, child welfare systems, and institutions including UNICEF. He writes about how trauma, attachment, and power move from the nervous system to the body politic. Essays are available in English and Spanish.

Haz clic para leer en español

Every child wants to feel seen, safe, and understood. And every parent wants to offer that — even when it’s hard.

One of the simplest and most powerful approaches I know comes from the PACE approach: Play, Acceptance, Curiosity, and Empathy. These four ways of being help you connect with your child — not just in calm moments, but especially when emotions run high.

Parenting isn’t about getting it right every time. It’s about showing up, staying present, and repairing when things go sideways. These principles help you do just that.

PLAY (“I want to connect with you”)

Playfulness brings lightness, laughter, and life into the relationship. It reminds both of you that connection doesn’t have to be serious to be meaningful.

Try to make room for small moments of play — a silly face, a shared joke, a game of chase. Play helps your child relax and feel close to you. It tells them, I enjoy being with you.

ACCEPTANCE (“I see you and accept you”)

Acceptance doesn’t mean agreeing with every behavior. It means separating your child’s feelings from their actions and showing them that all feelings are welcome, even when limits are needed.

When your child says something like “You hate me,” resist the urge to defend or fix. Instead, stay curious and calm:

“If you think I hate you, I can see why you’d feel really hurt.”

That kind of response tells your child you can handle their feelings and that they don’t have to hide from you.

Helpful ways to show acceptance:

• “Thanks for sharing that with me.”

• “I can see how hard this feels.”

• “If you feel ___, I can understand why.”

EMPATHY (“You’re not alone in this”)

Empathy means feeling with your child. It shows up in your tone, your eyes, your posture — not just your words.

When your child is hurting, your steady presence tells them: We can face this together.

Even when they’re angry at you, empathy builds safety and trust.

Helpful phrases:

• “That sounds really tough.”

• “I’d feel sad too if that happened to me.”

• “I’m sorry this has been so hard.”

CURIOSITY (“I want to understand you”)

Curiosity opens doors that judgment closes. When you wonder instead of react, your child feels safe to explore what’s really going on inside.

Instead of asking “Why did you do that?” try gentle questions:

• “I wonder what was happening for you then.”

• “Could it be that you were feeling left out?”

• “Help me understand what that was like.”

Curiosity says, I’m listening, and I care more about understanding than correcting.

Parenting isn’t a performance. It’s a relationship that grows through repair, not perfection. When you lead with play, acceptance, curiosity, and empathy, you teach your child — and remind yourself — that connection is stronger than conflict.

*NOTE: PACE is an attachment and brain-based parenting approach developed by Dan Hughes, the founder of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy.

Stephen Hanmer D’Elía (LCSW, JD) is a Yale- and Columbia-trained therapist with a background in international human rights law. He grew up between Colombia, Spain, Uruguay, and Ecuador; holds Uruguayan, American, and British citizenships; and speaks Spanish, English, and French. For 25+ years, Stephen has worked across five continents, from a private therapy practice in NYC to refugee camps, conflict zones, child welfare systems, and institutions including UNICEF. He writes about how trauma, attachment, and power move from the nervous system to the body politic. Essays are available in English and Spanish.

Every interaction with a young person—no matter how brief—can be a doorway to healing. Over the past 25 years, I’ve learned this again and again: in a child welfare office in New York City, a youth center in Liberia, a refugee camp in Pakistan. What changes us is not the program or policy, but the moment of attunement—the quiet recognition that says, I see you. You matter.

Below are seven ways of seeing and being with young people—relational lenses that open pathways to connection, safety, and growth. They are written from the perspective of a young person, and shaped by what I’ve witnessed as a therapist, social worker, and policy maker.

1) CARE ABOUT ME - Show me that I matter to you.

Be dependable, respectful, and honest—even about what you don’t know. Communicate clearly, and tell me the truth about risks and choices so I can make informed decisions about my own life.

2) LISTEN TO ME - Really pay attention when we are together.

Be fully present—your attention is how I know I exist. Validate what I feel, not by fixing it, but by understanding and staying with me in it.

3) BE WARM WITH ME - Show me you enjoy being with me.

Let me feel that you enjoy being with me. Encourage, support, and notice me. Patience matters. Follow my lead in how connection unfolds.

4) SUPPORT ME - Help me complete tasks and achieve goals.

Help me make sense of things and follow through. Set clear boundaries, advocate for me, guide me through hard moments, and remind me—through your steadiness—that you believe in me.

5) CHALLENGE ME TO GROW - Push me to keep getting better.

Hold me to what you know I can be. Encourage me to stretch, to risk, to learn from both success and failure. Growth feels safer when I know you’re beside me.

6) EXPAND MY WORLD - Connect me with people and experiences that broaden my world.

Open doors. Introduce me to people, ideas, and experiences that widen what I think is possible. Help me see beyond what I already know.

7) SHARE POWER WITH ME - Respect and include me.

Let me participate in decisions, lead sometimes, and tell my story my way. Recognize that collaboration is not a gift—it’s how trust grows.

** These seven lenses are drawn from the Search Institute’s Developmental Relationships Framework and shaped by my work with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Unaccompanied Children’s Program.**

Stephen Hanmer D’Elía (LCSW, JD) is a Yale- and Columbia-trained therapist with a background in international human rights law. He grew up between Colombia, Spain, Uruguay, and Ecuador; holds Uruguayan, American, and British citizenships; and speaks Spanish, English, and French. For 25+ years, Stephen has worked across five continents, from a private therapy practice in NYC to refugee camps, conflict zones, child welfare systems, and institutions including UNICEF. He writes about how trauma, attachment, and power move from the nervous system to the body politic. Essays are available in English and Spanish.