Maria Elena Acevedo
Founder of Hilinai | Creator of the Hilinai™ Method
I created Hilinai from a simple conviction: we often carry within us more wisdom, strength, and resources than we recognize.
My work is rooted in listening without judgment, asking the questions that invite a different perspective, and helping people recognize the patterns, beliefs, and experiences that have shaped the way they see themselves and their lives.
I do not believe it is my role to tell someone who they should become or to walk their path for them. I create a space where people can look at their story with greater clarity, recognize what is already within them, and decide for themselves what they want to carry forward, what they are ready to question, and how they choose to move.
Hilinai is not about becoming someone else. It is about recognizing yourself more fully, and trusting yourself enough to act from that recognition. I work virtually with individuals and groups in English and Spanish.
How I work
Perspective before answers
I don't tell you what your story means. We look at it together from different perspectives, so you can recognize patterns, question what you have assumed to be true, and arrive at your own understanding.
Without judgment
Your story has a place here, including the parts that may feel difficult, contradictory, uncomfortable, or hard to say out loud. The work begins with seeing what is there; not judging what should or should not be there.
Tools you can make your own
I may offer questions, reflections, exercises, and practical tools along the way. You decide what resonates, what you practice, and what you choose to put into motion in your own life.
Your path, your pace
There is no version of you that I am trying to create. I can walk alongside you, offer perspective, and help you recognize what may be difficult to see from where you are. The choices, and the path, remain yours.
My path
I believe that who I am today cannot be separated from what I have lived, questioned, discovered, accepted, and chosen along the way.
My life has included many of the challenges that make us human. I have experienced relationships that made me question my own worth. I have had to work deeply to understand patterns of dependency, the need for approval, and the difference between adapting to be accepted and having the courage to be authentic.
I built a career as an economist and later worked in financial services. For years, my professional identity represented stability, achievement, and a sense of who I was. When I unexpectedly lost my job, the ground beneath me shifted. I had to confront a question that would become central to my own path: Who am I when the roles, titles, and structures I have used to define myself change?
Motherhood brought another profound transition. Becoming a mother was something I deeply desired, and the path into motherhood challenged me in ways I had not anticipated. It invited me to meet new parts of myself: my strength, my fears, my vulnerability, and a love that changed the way I understood my place in the world.
Then came one of the greatest challenges of my life: breast cancer. I went through treatment, surgeries, uncertainty, physical changes, fear, and recovery while learning how to live inside a body and a life that were changing. Cancer became part of my story, but I chose not to make it my identity.
Alongside these experiences, I have never stopped exploring who I am. My curiosity has taken me through therapy, personal study, spirituality, energy practices, Gestalt, the Enneagram, family constellations, and years of questioning my own beliefs and patterns. Some things have stayed with me; others have changed as I have changed.
I am still discovering myself.
I have learned to recognize and accept both my light and my shadow: the parts of myself I celebrate and the parts that continue to challenge me. I don't believe self-knowledge is a destination we reach. As life changes, we meet ourselves again.
That is part of what gave birth to Hilinai. Not a perfect life. Not having all the answers. Not a belief that my path should become someone else's path.
Hilinai grew from the experience of repeatedly having the ground move beneath me and discovering that I could look again, recognize myself again, choose again, and move again.
Today, I don't stand in front of another person because I have figured life out. I stand beside them as a human being who knows what it is to question, to change, to begin again, and to keep discovering who I am.
“Compassion is honoring another person's process without interfering with it.”
Let us talk
If any of this resonates with you, send me a message and we will see if it is a good time to start.