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Exiled mothers sometimes have to leave one or more of their children behind in uncertain or unknown conditions. This article explores their psychic movements through the clinical situation of Amelia, an Angolan mother of four, two of whose children stayed behind in their country of origin. It is through the clinical encounter with this woman, whose psychic apparatus is bogged down by trauma, that some of the issues of “remote parenting” emerge. Feelings of guilt, unimaginable death anxiety and clinical aspects of the missing child through the present child are addressed throughout Amelia’s situation. The therapist’s place, her observation and her reception of trauma show how, even in counter-transferential work, the potentially traumatic absence of the child severely disrupts parenting – and how parenting tries to survive this process.