Angel in the Nursery: Martha Alvarez, LCSW

By Hillary Mayers

Infant mental health luminary Jeree Pawl taught, “How you are is as important as what you do.” Martha Alvarez, LCSW, this month’s angel, is the embodiment of this truth. In one of her colleague’s words:

“Martha has a heart as big as an ocean, and she welcomes not only people, but new experiences, new places and new ideas with energy and optimism. When Martha is taken with something, she wraps herself in it fully, body, mind, and spirit.” 

Martha earned her MSW from Hunter College School of Social Work and earned a certificate in Child and Adolescent Therapy at Fordham University School of Social Work. For 25 years, Martha worked as a social worker in the LYFE nurseries, a Department of Education (DOE) program in which teen parents attend high school while their babies are cared for in nurseries on-site. Here Martha became a fervent advocate of dyadic therapy and joined Chances for Children-NY (CFC) in bringing training and dyadic therapy to 12 LYFE nurseries throughout NYC. After 25 years, Martha retired from the DOE and came to work full-time at Chances for Children-NY. With unflappable persistence, she helped CFC move its program into the greater Bronx community where it has existed for 15 years.

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In 2020, Martha retired from Chances for Children. Now she continues her work providing pro bono psychological evaluations to asylum seekers in collaboration with two non-profit legal organizations: Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG). Born in Bogota, Columbia Martha believes that her own history gives her an innate understanding of what people are enduring. During evaluation interviews, Martha says she tries to offer a little something for the asylum seeker to take away with them: perhaps a small bit of understanding about themselves or their histories, a coping strategy, or even a small insight. In her words, “You can’t change the world, but you can change a person’s life.” 

Martha’s passion for helping others developed from playing at the feet of her mother and aunts as they figured out different ways to help others – - Indeed, her middle name is Amparo! 

In reflecting on her journey, Martha said: “In giving back, in listening and offering people a place to feel heard and seen, you also develop a deeper understanding of yourself.”

For so many teen moms, Martha has been the angel so poignantly described by Lieberman et al. (2005) in their article, Angels in the Nursery, “Angels emerge from ... memories deeply connected to the phenomenology of care-receiving experiences that are characterized by intense shared affect between parent and child and provide the child with a core sense of worth and security. These messages of intrinsic goodness and unconditional love constitute the essence of the angel.” 

Never one to stop giving, learning, and having fun, Martha teaches quilting, plays the ukelele, and travels to exotic places with her husband, Steve.