THERAPY BEYOND BORDERS

By María Gómez Soler

Therapy Beyond Borders stands as the debut of Argentine psychotherapist María Gomez Soler, who developed her professional career between her country and the United States, where she emigrated in 2003.
Her job gave her the privilege of listening to hundreds of stories of patients who also migrated in various circumstances. This allowed her to learn

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maria Gomez Soler
• Release date: Oct 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781737897613

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Ihad the pleasure of meeting the author of this wonderful book several years ago. I am also a migrant woman, but, in my case, it has been by choice, since traveling and living in different countries and cultures is part of a diplomatic career.

However, I understand that migrating is not easy. I can perfectly understand those who go through this process, and especially those who go through it with their family, since, in my case, I have been accompanied by my husband and my young son.

When I began my job as an Argentine diplomat in Atlanta, I led one of the most rewarding projects of my tenure in Georgia, organizing meetings of Argentine migrant women in the southeastern United States. This task allowed me to meet professionals from different disciplines willing to share their personal and work experiences.

Over time, I heard countless stories starring women with admirable strength, energy, and resilience. Between all of us, we were creating a community.

There, María quickly emerged as a leader, using her creativity to build strong and sustainable bonds. Together with a group of psychologists, she began to organize meetings to address issues that all migrant women face: parenting, language barriers, discrimination, school conflicts, and job placement, among others.

In 2020, along with the rest of humanity, I had to go through one of the most challenging moments of my profession: the COVID-19 pandemic, which presented us with an unimaginable social and humanitarian scenario.

In my case, my primary responsibility was assisting people from the Argentine community who were in vulnerable situations. I had to do this in an ever-changing and unpredictable context, where resources were often scarce.

In this challenging situation, while she assisted compatriots who had been stranded in the southeastern United States, María was there. I will never forget our conversation one afternoon in March:

Count on me! How can I help? I read one day on my cellphone screen. I could barely read María’s text because my vision was blurred from barely sleeping for the past week.

Don’t offer, because I’d accept your help right now! I replied.

A few seconds later, my phone started ringing, and I answered without looking at who it was. On the other side, I heard María’s voice.

Here I am! she said immediately.

My eyes blurred again, but this time with tears of gratefulness. She had said the exact right thing - classic María.

From that day on, this experienced therapist, whom I admired and with whom I often had interesting academic discussions, became truly invaluable for our community, displaying her talent for being at the service of others unconditionally. She always approached every experience with patience, love, and dedication. I have never received an I can’t from her when I’ve asked for her advice, guidance, or help.

María worked ad-honorem assisting vulnerable migrants. We went through stress, anguish, and sadness together. But we also celebrated with joy and were moved to tears when humanitarian flights repatriated Argentine people who were stranded far from their homeland.

The pandemic transformed us and made us question our everyday life and even the meaning of our existence. We are not the same as we were, and we never will be again.

Suppose María had never sent me that fateful text. In that case, I’m sure we would have continued to see each other post-pandemic at the meetings of Argentine women. But that text ended up changing everything.

María decided to transcend her barriers and made her talents available to the Argentine community in an unprecedented situation. Thus, our paths intertwined, and together we understood that we can always go one step further to assist those who need us.

This book presents stories that have been carefully selected so that each chapter leaves us a message and teaching. It retraces the work of a therapist who has challenged herself to reveal her technique and her work style in pursuit of helping those who have been in similar situations and educating those who haven’t.

I have heard similar stories to those in this book in my profession, while others are entirely unfamiliar to me. However, it is clear that, regardless of the problem of each migrant, they found in María a professional fully prepared to address it in the appropriate therapeutic setting.

Throughout the reading, you will see that one of María’s significant contributions to her patients has to do with her gender perspective. The fact that she is a migrant woman undoubtedly makes a real difference, unleashing powerful concepts that reflect the heart of a resilient, empathetic, and professional person.

From the first chapter, María instantly grabs the reader’s attention. Her candid narration recreates the atmosphere of intimacy necessary to understand the changes that migrants go through.

Readers will be able to imagine themselves in her office as flies on the wall. From there, they will observe how the professional technique of the therapist provides the necessary space for each migrant patient to build a spiritual refuge.

Each story is different and allows us to reflect on the everyday and the not-so-everyday situations of those who suffered migratory displacement. The writing is powerful. At the end of each chapter, the reader will reflect on the title and the quote at the beginning and will understand the story’s meaning from beginning to end.

María communicates with respect and empathy how the migrants who have undergone therapy with her have been able to find a place of solace and welcome.

The book is compelling, not only because of its theme (especially for those of us who have had to migrate at some point in our lives), but also because it is written from the perspective of a woman who has experienced migration in the first person.

Migrant women, in general, are the ones in charge of sending remittances to their home countries. They are usually the first to react in a moment of crisis, and they are the ones who often fulfill a fundamental role in the reconstruction of common understanding among the displaced. They often become the de facto spiritual leaders of their families and communities, reconstructing a semblance of their native countries in this strange new world.

Because of all this, I imagine that for any migrant, finding the help of a professional like María will make a difference because, as she says, many times, practical help is more therapeutic than any interpretation.

Hopefully, every reader will enjoy the following pages just as I did. But not only that. I hope that it will also serve to provide a different perspective on the migrant, both as practical advice to help those who go through similar situations and to generate empathy in society.

Ursula Eyherabide,

Argentine Diplomat

I make the reservation that the subjective expressions contained in the stories in this book are the sole responsibility of their author and do not represent my official position or that of my country.

INTRODUCTION

Igrew up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires. However, I have lived outside my country for almost two decades. I immigrated to the United States when I was 32, shortly after the political and economic crisis that Argentina went through in 2001. I brought with me my husband and my daughter, who was barely four months old, but, above all else, I carried with me the hope that in my new home, I was going to be able to access everything that had eluded me in my homeland: security, the possibility for progress, stability and, above all, predictability.

That said, I must admit that I went through the whole process full of fear and uncertainty. I was aware that betting on that dream would inevitably force us to be far from our families and friends. Moreover, I felt guilty for denying my young daughter the opportunity to grow up around her grandparents, uncles, and cousins, who had been crucial throughout my childhood.

Immersed in that whirlpool of thoughts, which has kept me awake many nights, I never considered the impact that changing cultures would have upon me. Back then, I assumed that our privileged social status would travel with me. I believed that if I were privileged in Argentina, I would be even more so in a country as wealthy and well-developed as the U.S. That was my first mistake.

Allow me a moment of vanity: I am well-educated and intelligent, yet I never anticipated the culture shock that immigration always brings. And the truth is that, although I had heard about discrimination against minorities in the U.S., I did not think that would apply to me. I just did not consider myself part of a minority.

Just as people say that they remember exactly where they were when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot or, for my generation, when we learned about the attack on the Twin Towers, I remember the exact moment when I discovered that in the United States, I was considered Hispanic.

I was in my office and mentioned to an American colleague that I was looking to buy a car. He recommended to me a nearby dealership known for working well with the Hispanic community. At that very moment, I suddenly realized that, in the United States, I belonged to a category that had never felt like my own.

I also remember how irritated I was that they generalized under the term Hispanic all people from any country where they spoke Spanish. I felt that they erased with a single stroke all the differences between the nations that make up the broad tapestry of Latin America, an area with such rich cultural diversity.

I was confused because I did not yet understand the implications of this new label imposed on me by others, which I did not personally identify with.

As a psychotherapist, I hear stories from patients who migrated for reasons similar to mine or very different ones. I have learned to appreciate a common thread shared by all of them, even if their motivation to seek therapy has not necessarily been related to their migrations.

I have heard many stories of patients who have come to the United States crossing the desert at night, without documents and risking their lives, and I have also heard stories of people who have come in very different circumstances, from academics hired by American universities, to managers of multinational companies that arrived traveling first class and with generous expatriate compensation packages.

I began to find that all these patients shared the same confusion that I had felt regarding the new identity that emerges naturally after arriving in a new place.

Immigrants wonder who they are and what they should consider themselves to be. Like a constantly shifting mirror, they receive different images and definitions from the people around them every day. In their countries of origin, many see them as the privileged who could escape and take advantage of new opportunities. In contrast, others consider them like traitors who abandoned the ship instead of staying