Lidia Flores Bush

Joined Esperanza in December 2023. Lidia grew up in El Salvador during the civil war. This experience would mark her life forever and that is how she became interested in how people cope with adversity and emotional pain.

She was the first child of her family to attend college. After graduating from college, her first job was in an orphanage where she also devoted many hours to writing a book in collaboration with a professor that was published in 2005 about Domestic Violence in El Salvador.

As a result of this project, she was granted a scholarship to study for a Graduate Degree in Clinical Psychology in Madrid, Spain. While studying for her master’s degree she worked in research for the Tokiwa International Victimology Institute of Japan. In Madrid, she worked for one year post masters as a shelter coordinator for women that were in the process of ending jail sentences. She wanted to gain more experience prior to returning to El Salvador. As per advice of the Master’s Program Director, Lidia applied and was accepted to an internship at Roberto Clemente Center in Manhattan, New York, a family psychotherapy center which specializes in Latino immigrant families and how the processes of immigration and acculturation lead to mental health needs.

Lidia never thought of living in another country. She really wanted to study her master’s degree overseas and then, return to El Salvador where she had already created a community mental health clinic. However, life has interesting paths to follow, and she chose one of the least known at the time.

She came to NY in 2008, initially for one year, but NY had so much to offer that she did not return to Spain nor to El Salvador. After the internship completion, Lidia continued her professional development: became a Licensed Family Therapist in the State of New York, studied an integrative trauma certificate and made 3 more years of study of EMDR. Her areas of work include: working with Latino /a immigrant families in the topics of: survivors of domestic violence, mentoring, preventive services, and educating immigrant families about financial literacy. More recently, she was a case coordinator for the Office of Refugee Resettlement with minor refugees.

Lidia has written professional articles and participated as speaker at Fresno State University, Central University of Florida, University of Hong Kong and Universidad de La Plata, Argentina.

Lidia has lived in Belgium, Spain, Peru and the US. However, she considers NY to be her steppingstone where she fell in love with the US. She became US Citizen in 2015. Also, during the years living in NYC she learned typical New York hobbies: roller skating at Central Park in the spring and summer and she used to go Ice skating at Rockefeller Center and Bryant Park, during winter time.